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Demons in general didn’t trust, they didn’t love, they didn’t care. They held nothing but anger and hatred in their hearts and souls, revenge was supposed to be a sport not something held so personally.
Yet here Hastur was, carrying around grief, honest to Satan loss and trauma and pain. Pain he felt, not something he did to others. He hurt on such a spiritual level; he could almost write poetry on the void in his soul. It wouldn’t be good, and it wouldn’t be anything less than literal from such an unimagitive demon, but he had never even felt the need to describe things he felt before. They didn’t matter to him, not like this.
There was only one bastard to blame, one manky son of a bitch who called himself Anthony J Crowley. He killed him, he took his own kind in cold blood and for what? What did that son of a bitch gain?! He gained the world that’s what he got. He got the world, he got freedom and he found a pretty little nothing to fill his endless time with.
Hastur, formerly Lord Hastur, once a great Duke of Hell, once something worth fearing and hating. Hastur who once towered over the bastard Crowley, who once supervised over his every action and got to reap in the rewards of managing over the bastard who got to personally deliver the antichrist, what an honor, what an honor that was wasted. Hastur, formerly Duke of Hell, now demoted to lowly Baron of Hell soon to be Peasant if their lord ship Beelzebub had promised if they grew angry enough about their war again, was nothing.
They lurked, they always lurked, into the fog of the graveyard on moonless nights, through the shadows of the flickering lamp light, across the creaking halls of old estates to give many a mortal a shiver and fright. It wasn’t the same though, it would never be the same though, he wasn’t the fear that bumped in the night but just another lost soul stumbling in the dark.
He glared at his right hand, it was empty, it was light without Ligur there to brush against it or smack it. He stared towards his shadow cast against the wall, no it wasn’t right, it shouldn’t be alone. There should always be two shadows cast on the wall, two lurking in the night.
From out of the dark alley, he emerged in Soho. It was just past three in the morning and the streets had begun to die down. The only ones out now were the demons and a demon’s normal prey, Hastur found himself passing by any desperate soul willing to sell themselves for a way out of a desperate situation though.
He hissed at the ward around the book shop and instead found himself pounding on the door. Louder and louder with each strike waking the dead in the process no doubt.
Hastur was partly surprised when the door was miracled open and the front lights came to life to greet him.
“There is no point in waking my neighbors,” a prim and proper southern voice sneered towards him from somewhere out of his line of sight, “Come in and say your piece over tea and then I expect you to go, Lord Hastur.”
Hastur puffed his chest and put on his best scowl, he came here for revenge but the closer he was to it, he didn’t feel it. He felt just as empty standing in front of Crawly’s angel as he did staring at his lone shadow in the alley. It weren’t like Hell fire was going to kill this angel anyway, all he was going to do was get curb stomped by an angry angel for even thinking of destroying his demon in the same way he destroyed him.
“I sensed your pain for hours, you know,” the angel informed him firmly setting a cup of tea in his hand and forcing him on the couch near the roaring fire.
“I felt your sorrow as I sorted my books and couldn’t find myself indulging in a single freshly baked biscuit from the lovely girls next door while I felt my soul burning and bleeding out thanks to you.”
Hastur wanted to spit at the angel and snarl and fight the angel, but he sat there and took his disapproving glare. Allowed him to judge him from his throne of comfort and love, he got to have Her love and he got to experience the love of a demon, both things Hastur once had but he was never getting back.
“I was going to seek you out earlier and maybe force you away from my home but…”
And here it came, something that made Hastur regret coming here at all, something that made his nostrils flare and his teeth clench, a hiss making its way out of those grinding teeth.
“I can’t help but feel sympathy, even for a demon like you, a demon who has lost everything and has nothing left. I can even relate to you if you will believe it.”
Maybe it was imagined on Hastur’s part, but he thought he saw a glint of pain in the angel’s eyes as he glanced momentarily up towards his ceiling before settling on Hastur with absolute sympathy.
“I know you aren’t going to sit here and admit it but you didn’t come here to kill me, you want me to kill you.”
Hastur’s head shot towards the angel as he took an even sip from his cup and drummed well-manicured nails against porcelain. He took a deep breath and kept his face neutral as he went on, lining Hastur’s thoughts out on the table, leaving his mind as bare as his soul.
“Oh yes,” he said slowly with a slight pause and another sympathetic eye, “I felt you. Everyone would think of it as revenge, an eye for an eye, Crowley took your love and you were to take his, but we both know you wouldn’t have stood up to a principality. You would have died and that wouldn’t have mattered to you, you think there is nothing left.”
Hastur snarled and found himself tipping over one of the shelves of books in anger, not wanting to listen to this dribble a moment longer. He turned his back to leave, he turned to go pick his fight with Crawly instead, he had enough sense in his damned brain to fight him back.
He didn’t make it to the door, he felt himself immobilized by a gentle touch on his shoulder, a kind touch he wasn’t used that left him shivering. He hadn’t felt such a touch since Heaven, since Ligur and he had known light and love.
“Duke Hastur, please stay,” the angel commanded but in such a loving way like a stern mother soothing her child Hastur couldn’t find the anger to rebel against it.
He was led back to the couch and wrapped in blankets and given another cup of tea. He stayed for had he had nothing else to go back to, nothing in Hell, no way back to Heaven and no Ligur in the shadows he lurked. He stayed for the hope Crawly must have felt on that day in Eden when he fell in love with an angel.