Take These Broken Wings And Learn To Fly

Chapter One

"Come on." Crowley sounds as desperate as he feels, heart beating wildly in his chest. "Angel, please, I need you to hold on."

There's no way he'll get Aziraphale on his feet again, so he doesn't even think about it when he crouches down to get one arm under the angel's knees instead, the other under his arms as carefully as he can without putting pressure on the screaming red patch colouring the angel's back. He picks him up, carries him down the hallway.

"I've got you." Crowley looks down at Aziraphale's chalk-white face, curls sticking to his forehead. "It'll be alright, you're gonna be alright, I got you."

Aziraphale's eyes flutter one more time, then his whole body goes lax as he passes out in Crowley's arms.

~oOo~

It's been hours.

Crowley doesn't know how many.

The flat is silent, the only sound the occasional whisper of Aziraphale's shallow breath.

Crowley listens, tries to force his heartbeat to follow the rhythm of those breaths.

There are flashes before his eyes, his own hands carrying the angel to his bed, undressing him mechanically, a clinical task so different from his fantasies.

His hands peeling away fabric and revealing torn and tattered skin, the mere memory so gruesome it makes him feel sick. He hadn't, in that moment. He hadn't felt anything, had simply gotten up and fetched supplies to clean the wounds - he'd seen worse during the endless wars of humanity, had tended to soldiers torn to shreds almost beyond recognition, but never on his angel, never his angel.

It's all bandaged now, clean white cloth wrapping around Aziraphale's bare torso and covering up the battleground on his back, clammy pale skin in sickly contrast to Crowley's black sheets.

He sees his hands bloody as he washed them in the sink afterwards, water turning pink and vanishing down the drain, taking the messy testimony of it all with it, but not the pain. He'd scrubbed until his skin was wrinkled and raw, picked at his nails until the black polish chipped off at the edges.

His hands had been trembling the entire time.

They still are now, the only part of his body he can't force to stop moving as he sits motionlessly next to the bed, eyes fixed on the angel in his bed, waiting for every shallow breath, every flat rise and fall of his bandaged chest.

The white coat Crowley hated at first sight is hanging over the back of a chair in the corner, angry red stains staring accusingly at him. There is a cruel sense of poeticness to it, the picture of red blood on heavenly white, Aziraphale's life force draining from his body and being soaked up - being swallowed and consumed - by the cover Heaven forced him to wear. It's so unlike anything Aziraphale would ever choose, so clean and perfect and hollow, lacking any kind of personality until splotches of red broke it open and ruined its lifeless uniformity.

Crowley can't keep sitting still with nothing to do but wait, so he starts cleaning away bottles, cleaning away months of his own despair in order to have a clear head now to take care of Aziraphale's instead. He could have miracled it all gone in a heartbeat, but he likes something to do, some mundane task to occupy his hands with something that isn't-

His hands ball into fists, heedless of the shards of glass he's holding, remnants of the whiskey he'd thrown against the wall earlier. They dig into his palm, cut deep and fall to the ground with a soft melody of clinking sounds. Crowley stares, watches as his blood runs over his hand and drips down. He feels nothing, makes the cuts vanish with a simple gesture, picks the shards back up and throws them away.