Work Text:
Part One: Mortal
"Can't you destroy Babel yourself, with your powers?"
She snorts. "I wish! No, since I became this"—she gestures to herself, all pressed suit and immaculate hair—"I can't intervene in mortal affairs too much. Plus, their chairman made a deal with me, and I literally can't break my contract. So, you're it."
Vincenzo sips from his espresso cup and considers her. She's radiant, somehow lovelier now that her father is dead; as if he'd been her last tether to her mortal life. "And what's in it for me?"
"Well, as a lawyer I can get you the building." Her eyes flicker amber-gold, like a promise, a glimpse into the realm that's claimed her. "And as the emissary of hell, I can get you impunity for the rest of your mortal life."
"And this doesn't break your contract with Babel's Chairman?"
Her teeth are sharp and inhumane when she grins, and for a moment her lipstick looks like smeared blood. "He's not the type to read the small print."
"A finger flick, then."
He looks up from his too-ketchupy hot dog and raises an eyebrow at her. "You're a devil, and you want to bet a finger flick?"
Her smile is all mischief and glee. "Low stakes can be fun. I'm bored of trading in souls and lives and all that deep stuff, you know?"
"Fine," he eventually relents, and she makes a giddy little squeal that he can't help but think is cute.
Her amber eyes flare bright; the snow around her melts and sizzles into steam. Some ways away from them, four innocent people are slumped in their vacation car, unjustly dead. How does it feel, he wonders, to be as powerful as she is, and as chained?
"What do you want," she asks quietly, "in exchange for the deaths of those who did this?"
His eyes water from the sheer heat and light, but he doesn't look away from her. "Nothing," he replies. "I'll do this one for free."
"Thank you," she replies, and he marvels at how human her heart is, after all of this.
"Will you marry me?"
"Yes, I will."
The proposal is pretend. Hypothetical, at best. Anything said under the guises of Mr. Anderson and Ms. Bening is automatically null and void. They'd added that clause before embarking on this mission. As such, they're not actually engaged to be married.
But when she kisses him, no words are spoken, no promises exchanged. It's the most honest thing they've done all night, and if her mouth tastes like smoke and eternal damnation, then it comforts him to know what awaits him when his time comes.
"Please," he begs.
"It'll cost you," she says calmly, though her eyes glisten with golden tears. "I'm sorry, I'm so so sorry, but this one thing—undoing a death—it's the most expensive thing you could ask for."
"Anything," he says. "My mother should have had some time left. She shouldn't—please, anything." He burns with the need to chase his mother's murderer, a life for a life, a suffering for a suffering, but it can't bring her back.
She, however, can, but while she's usually straightforward about what each of her promises costs, this time she won't even look directly at him.
"What's the price?" he asks.
"I can tell you now that you're already booked for hell, so it's not your soul," she says jokingly, but her smile falters. When she finally answers him, her voice is slow, careful. "What you value most." She smiles sadly at him, and he understands.
"You won't—" he begins, but he can't say the rest.
"Die? No." She laughs. He thinks it's meant to sound comforting. "No, nothing like that. I'm immortal, remember?"
"But..." You're what I value most, he wants to say, though she already knows. She's the one who sets the price, after all.
"You'll forget," she says. Her voice is gentle, but the words feel cruel anyway. "Everything that doesn't pertain to our standing contract, everything beyond our working relationship, everything that we've—well. You'll forget all that."
"But she'll live."
"For some time. I can't tell you how long." She scrunches her eyes shut, then opens them again; the fire in them burns bright and hot. She extends her hand. "Will you take the deal?"
He doesn't take her hand, not yet. "Will you remember?"
Her smile is pitying and pitiful and he thinks, oh. Oh, of course she will. Having him forget about her will crush her, break her inexplicably mortal heart, and is that not the higher cost to him? Isn't it preferable to him if she could just blissfully live without having to carry the weight of what they could have had for an eternity?
If he takes her hand, he'll forget he'd ever loved her. If he takes her hand, she'll ache for him forever. If he takes her hand, he'll never know how much she hurts, because he'll see her only as a business partner until their contract is fulfilled.
"Take it," she says. "I'll be fine. Your mother deserves this, so take the deal."
He takes her hand, tugs her into his embrace. She's fever-hot and her tears, when he wipes them away, scalds his fingertips. He frowns.
And he asks, "Why are you crying, byeonhosa-nim?"
She extricates herself from his arms and sniffles a little. "Oh, come on, why wouldn't I? Your mother nearly died for real tonight, you know?"
He thinks she's lying, but he can't really tell why. He remembers his mother's death and the deal he made just now, but not the terms. "My mother. She's—"
"Back, yes. Go greet her properly and call her eomma this time, okay?"
"So this is the end," he says, cradling his coffee cup as he leans on the bridge railing, looking to the distance.
"It is," she sips from her own cup. She seems sad a lot, lately. He doesn't know why, but it's not really his business. "You're staying?"
"I promised my mother I would," he replies. She's doing better every day, and even her retrial is promising. "And you?"
She shrugs. "I'll make other deals. There's no limit to human greed, after all." She finishes the coffee, then crumples up the cup. "Well, goodbye then."
Wait, he wants to say, but the word jams in his throat, thick as smoke and scalding as hellfire, and before he could even cough, she is gone.
Part Two: Immortal
The first time Cha Young meets him again—though not the first time she sees him—is at his mother’s grave. It has been two years. The last sixteen months, Oh Gyeong Ja had spent as a free woman under the care of her son, but in the end, there’s no cheating death forever.
So Cha Young keeps tabs on Vincenzo. So what? She keeps tabs on all her deals, because she likes to know what they do with what she gives them even though the price is paid.
As it turns out, he used the impunity she had gifted to him so he could buy a house under his own name in the country. Hire a private nurse and a concierge doctor to care for his mother. Freely go on walks in the park with her, twice a week until her final days.
Here’s a man who can get away with any and all crimes because a devil says so, and he used it to be a good son for his dying mother.
What an idiot, Cha Young thinks, and ignores the way her treacherous heart squeezes at the mere sight of his figure, tall and besuited and missed. She’s almost used to the bleeding emptiness in her. Give it another half-century, maybe, and when he’s dead and in hell she'll probably be over him.
He doesn’t immediately notice her approaching, busy watching the gravestone with an inscrutable expression while absently smoking a cigarette.
“You know those things are bad for you, right?” she asks by way of a hello.
He looks up. “Byeonhosa-nim,” he greets. “How have you been?”
It’s polite. Small talk. He doesn’t actually care about how she has been, and so instead of an answer, she places the bouquet she’s brought with her on the grave and says, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” A thin smile curls his lips, just a little. Despite the fact that his mother just died a few days ago, and that there’s a small furrow between his brows that she cannot read, he seems… content. Almost pleased. She senses the kindling of unease in his soul, but it’s barely there, nowhere near a ripe fruit ready to be plucked. This is not a man she can persuade into a deal, even if she wants to.
He moves to take a drag from his cigarette, but she plucks it from his fingers and places it between her own lips, pulling in the last inhale of smoke and nicotine before crushing the butt in her fist. When she opens it, it’s nothing but ash; she blows the smoke out and watches it scatter the gray flecks on her palm away.
She feels his eyes on her, so she turns to him and says, “I mean it, you know. Smoking’s bad for you.”
Scoffing, he replies, “I think I’m more likely to die from getting shot than from lung cancer.”
“I thought you’d quit a long time ago.” The few times she’d succumbed and watched him and his mother out and about, he didn’t touch the thing. Did he only start again, or has he been hiding it from his mother like a guilty middle-schooler?
He lifts his empty hand as if bringing a cigarette to his mouth, but falters. Instead, he catches the side of his thumb between his teeth, a thoughtless gesture for when he’s trying to think. “Something has been bothering me,” he eventually says.
“Your mother?”
“No. I knew it was only about time, and I made sure it was as comfortable as it could be for her.” He smiles again. “And, we had enough time to reconcile—I have you to thank for that.”
“A deal’s a deal,” Cha Young says, looking away from that little, happy smile so she can read the engraved characters on the gravestone, tracing the lines over and over again with her eyes. “You paid the price. I only facilitated it.”
“What was the price?” In him, she feels the lazy stirring of want, of idle curiosity.
“I can’t tell you that,” she says. If only she could, just to tell him what it is he’d forgotten and therefore unable to miss, but no. She is as bound by the contract as he is. “Is that what’s bothering you?”
“Maybe. I don’t know for sure.” From his pocket, he takes his half-empty pack of cigarettes and takes one out. “But when I’m smoking, I feel a little closer to figuring it out.”
“Closer to death, maybe,” she says, but as he reaches into his pocket for his lighter, cigarette held between his lips, she holds out an index finger and touches the unlit tip until it flares red. His eyes follow the movement with casual interest, then flutter closed as he sucks in a short drag through his mouth.
She steals the cigarette again, takes a drag as he exhales. Some vices simply don’t hit the same ever since she’s turned into this. Alcohol still kind of works, but cigarette smoke just tastes like her own breath, but off. Still, there’s something nostalgic about it. Something that reminds her of a simpler time. She hands the cigarette back to him. Ignores the cool callused brush of his fingers against hers and the flaring discontent tugging at his soul.
“I have to go,” she says, and leaves before she can do more ill-advised things.
It’s another two years before they meet again. This time, they run into each other in Paris at the benefit gala of one socialite or other; she doesn’t really remember which one, and doesn’t really care. He’s there for some philanthropic reason, wining and dining with his charm in full force. She’s there for business.
There are few crowds greedier than the rich, after all, and none with more to lose.
She walks around the room, letting the wants and needs of the crowd wash over her like a gentle summer breeze. A few are more potent than most; she acquaints herself to the shape of them, the edge of ambition and the strain of desperation, and files them away for possible deals to be made. She doesn’t rush. In a crowd like this, it’s better to wait until she knows the lay of the land well, just so the favors she trades around doesn’t end up tangling into a mess. Her work is to enable the most covetous of humanity while maintaining some semblance of status quo, not sowing chaos wherever she goes.
She’s sipping on bubbly when she senses the significant spike of lust from the entrance. When she turns, she finds him, and oh, of course it’s him, and of course he’s still unbearably beautiful. He must be forty by now, but he looks distinguished rather than diminished, his figure still well-maintained and his smile somehow even more charming with the lines on his face.
Their eyes meet; for a moment, she thinks he might approach her, but he simply inclines his head before turning to greet someone else.
Well, then. Back to work.
Cha Young takes another turn about the room, then approaches the illegitimate son who wants to win the dynasty promised to his half-brother. It’s all too easy. The boy is stupid enough to agree to promise her a favor in the future; in ten or fifteen years, she’ll come back to collect—with interest.
Next, she finds the matriarch with an attic full of grudges; Cha Young promises a long and painful end to her philandering husband, in exchange for the woman’s own disgrace. The matriarch agrees, not knowing what the word means when a devil promises it. Right now, she can’t imagine a worse fate than an unfortunate paparazzi photo gone viral, but it’s her own fault that she lacks imagination—or the shrewdness to ask for details. Personally, Cha Young will be bringing about the woman’s complete social and financial ruin. A fine price, she thinks, for a grudge that big.
As soon as she closes the transaction, an older man with a far simpler, far baser desire asks her for a dance; she asks him what she’ll get in exchange, and he says for you, my darling, anything. He shivers when she takes his hand and seals the deal and she giggles girlishly at the thought of his terror when she makes him pay later.
The man sends her on a twirl, but before she’s yanked back into his sweaty embrace, she finds herself in his arms instead.
“Est-ce que je peux, Monsieur Flaubert?” Vincenzo Cassano asks. His voice has changed, too, the lower register of someone older and the slight rasp of a smoker. Not so much that it’s unrecognizable, but enough that she wonders what else has changed.
“Mais bien sûr, Monsieur Cassano,” comes the high-pitched, choked reply, and even without looking up Cha Young knows what kind of face Vincenzo is making.
She pulls back and, yep, there it is. The face she’s privately dubbed his mafia murder man face. Somehow, it’s gotten even more intimidating, and therefore more endearing.
Clicking her tongue, she says, “Aish. I didn’t need rescuing, you know.”
He smiles, a small slanted grin; it’s one of the few things that didn’t change even after he’d forgotten. “I know, Byeonhosa-nim. I was rescuing him from you.”
“Too late,” she says lightly.
“It’s not even two minutes,” he says, incredulous. “What did he ask for?”
Cha Young grins. “A dance.” As he scrunches his eyes shut in exasperation, she adds, “I asked him what he’d give me in return and he said anything.”
Vincenzo swears. “That moron.”
“He couldn’t have known what I was,” she says. “He’s not a moron; he’s a pervert. There’s a difference.”
Leveling an unamused stare at her, he asks, “And what are you getting from him, then? You know he’s useful to my family, right?”
Cha Young didn’t, actually. She’s not actually omniscient. Not that she would tell Vincenzo that. Instead, she raises an eyebrow and says, “Now that information, you’ll have to pay for.”
“What do you want?”
She hums, closing her eyes, swaying in time with the music. He’s good at leading; she doesn’t have to pay attention to know when to step and with which foot, and for a moment she lets herself enjoy the indulgence of her hand in his, of his arm around her waist, of the solidity of his shoulders. It has been far too long. It’ll never be long enough.
When she opens her eyes, she finds him watching her with a little frown. In him, there’s more of that unease, more of that desire to know the answer to the question that is her, the question he doesn’t even understand.
She’s been selfish. She should have erased herself entirely from his memories. She shouldn’t have come to his mother’s grave, two years ago. She should have left this party immediately the moment he’d arrived. The hollowness that used to hold them festers more and more every time she indulges in his presence.
If it was anyone else, she would let it rot. Let it eat away at him until he comes begging to her, and extract a deal out of it. She’s always been a merciless negotiator, but now she has the ability to measure desire and stoke it until it incinerates. It would be too easy.
Except he is him, and she loves him, and that’s how they got into this mess in the first place.
Breathing in, Cha Young singles out the embers of ambition and lust she’d sensed earlier, then follows it until she finds the owner. “Redhead at four o’clock,” she says, and he obligingly turns them until he can see who she means.
“Giuliana D’Orazio,” he says, and in him stirs attraction. Admiration, even.
Good, Cha Young thinks. It’s easier this way. “She wants to take over her father’s… illicit importing business, but he thinks she doesn’t have the temperament for it.”
Vincenzo snorts. “You mean he’s a misogynist. Her brother is too young and doesn’t have the brains to run that business, but he’s set to inherit the business anyway.” He turns to her, tilting his head. “What does she have anything to do with this?”
She shifts her hand from his shoulder, curling it around the nape of his neck, pulling him closer. “Take her out on a date, and I’ll tell you what I’m planning to do with Monsieur Flaubert.”
“Just one date?” he asks, disbelieving.
Rolling her eyes, she says, “Just one date, but make it good. Actually try. I’m looking out for you, you know. The dreaded capo of the Cassano Family, a bachelor at his age? You know kingdoms are unstable without a viable heir.”
For a moment, as he contorts his face into an expression of great suffering, he looks much younger. As if she’d just asked him to be the honey trap for a bank president, many years ago. It’s a little unfair, she thinks. For one, Giuliana D’Orazio is exactly his type.
“Come on,” she cajoles. “It’s just one date, and you two have much to gain from each other if it works out. Don’t you want to know what I’m planning for your family friend?”
He narrows his eyes suspiciously. “I’ll do the date, but I want one other piece of information on top of the one on Monsieur Flaubert.”
She knows what he’s about to ask. She knows what every soul wants, and she knows him. If she has any better self-restraint, she would refuse him on the spot.
But she’s Hong Cha Young and a devil to boot, and she can never walk away from a good bargain.
So she says, “Depends on what the information is.”
Vincenzo tilts his head, as if saying you know what. She lifts a brow: say it.
He sighs. “What did I pay in exchange for my mother’s life?”
Her grip tightens around him; he pulls her even closer, too close for this kind of party. “I’ll tell you this for free,” she says, her mouth but a handbreadth away from his. “You can’t afford the answer to that question.”
He looks at her, unblinking. There’s the small tug of lust in him; she tries not to think too much about it. She has that effect, after all, being inhumanly beautiful. Practically everyone wants her, to the point she’s learned to tune out that desire so she can focus on more important things.
But Vincenzo Cassano has always been a man of restraint, and so he doesn’t kiss her. Instead, he simply asks, “Why not?”
“Two reasons. One, you don’t want it enough. Two, you don’t have enough to lose. Now, do we agree on the date, or not?”
His eyes narrow; he’s thinking, scheming a mile a minute as he considers her offer. Ambition and desire and desperate want curl in his soul like smoke, and she knows he won’t refuse.
“Fine,” he says eventually. “One proper date, in exchange for the fate of Monsieur Flaubert.”
Somehow, the satisfaction of a well-negotiated deal doesn’t come to her. There’s instead the heavy, grim feeling of an unpleasant duty, settling on her like a yoke. “Done,” she says, tasting the brimstone on her tongue.
“Will you tell me now?”
“Of course.” She pulls him down until her mouth is next to his ear, and—quietly, so only he can hear her—says, “I’m taking his skin.”
He freezes.
She continues. “Tonight, I’m going home with him, and I’ll peel his skin off. He wanted me to touch him, and I’m obliging him. I’m sorry. I know he’s useful to you.”
“I’ll manage,” Vincenzo replies, breathless.
“I’m sure you will,” she says, and peels herself off of him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have plans for the night.”
As she leaves, she feels him watching her, a plea dying on his tongue.
Cha Young arrives at the wedding of one Vincenzo Cassano and Giuliana D’Orazio just as the party is in full swing. There’s raucous laughter and the heady smell of alcohol, cheers and toasts and the occasional business dealings in corner tables. It is, after all, an Italian wedding, uniting two big families no less. The bride, who looks as lovely as she did one year ago in a different sort of party, is currently dancing with her notoriously sexist father.
The groom is nowhere to be seen, but Cha Young doesn’t need to see to find the shape of his soul. She sneaks out and finds him in the fire escape, smoking. Again. In him, the wound she thought would have already scarred over is open, bleeding anew with every drag he takes from his half-burnt cigarette.
“Aren’t you a little old to be playing hooky?” she asks. “From your own wedding, too.”
“Byeonhosa-nim,” he greets, and it aches, that. It’s been far too long since anyone calls her that. “I wasn’t sure you received my invitation.”
She sits down next to him and extends a hand; he passes her the cigarette and she takes a long, delicious drag. “Please,” she scoffs. “Do you think I would ever miss a chance to tell you, ‘I told you so’?”
He laughs. It almost sounds like a sob, and that’s how she knows what he’ll eventually ask. Not yet, though, because he replies, almost lightheartedly, “Of course. Please, by all means.”
“I told you so,” Cha Young says sweetly, passing the cigarette back to him. “And congratulations for finally conquering all of Italy.”
“You were right,” he admits. “She and I have much to gain from each other.”
She seeks for the tell-tale hearth found in the souls of those who love, and finds nothing. Respect, yes. Some affection. But… “You don’t love her,” she says, and it escapes her far too much like a question to her liking. “Does she know?”
“Of course. She doesn’t love me, either. But since when is this kind of marriage about love?” He takes a short drag and offers the cigarette back to her. “Giuliana and I have the same views on many things and we get along well enough. It’s a good partnership.”
Partnership. Cha Young was in one, once. She shakes her head, refusing the cigarette, and he shrugs and brings it back to his lips.
“Well,” she says, “if you’re happy, good.” She pushes herself up. Smooths the skirt of her dress. “I can’t stay long. Then—”
“Wait.”
She stops, but doesn’t turn.
“Tell me what I paid in exchange for my mother’s life.”
“It’ll cost you.”
He sighs. “I can afford it, then.”
She turns and finds him looking at her with open desperation. “Byeonhosa-nim,” she says, even though he hasn’t been a lawyer for years, “I don’t run a pawnshop. If you want to buy back what you’ve traded away, I’ll be charging with interest.”
“Name it.”
“Bringing someone back to life is already the most expensive thing someone normally asks. This…”
“Name it,” he repeats, firm and unyielding.
“Everything,” she says. “Everything you have, and then more, and you’ll have to pay in full first before I can fulfil my end of the deal.”
He doesn’t falter. Instead, he stares her down as if staring down an enemy. “I understand.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “No, you don’t. And I cannot make you understand, because part of the price is that you must accept without knowing what everything could even mean when I’m the one collecting.”
“Are you telling me,” he says slowly, carefully, “to not take the deal?”
Yes, she wants to say, but even opening her mouth and drawing in the breath to say that word hurts more than the pain a mere mortal could inflict. She doubles over, choking—his hands close around her arms as he steadies her.
She breathes, in and out. Her eyes are hot and wet as she feels her own contract with hell tightening around her, compelling her to close the deal. Her throat still feels scorched, broken, but she opens her mouth and tries to find a loophole, a way to tell him not to take the deal without so many words, but then he speaks.
The pain vanishes before she can even understand his words, and when she straightens up he looks straight at her and repeats:
“I accept.”
It takes another eleven years for his empire to fall. She finds him in his family estate, bleeding and in pain, surrounded by the bodies of his people. He’s covered in red, the gray streaks on his temples dyed crimson. His breath rattles, in and out, and yet he manages to smile when she crouches before him.
“Byeonhosa-nim,” he greets, the same as ever but for the wet sound of his dying voice. “Is it time, then?”
“It is,” she answers, wiping blood out of his squinting eyes. When they properly open, they pierce her; she swallows down the cry of pain and forces a smile to her lips. “Any regrets?”
Instead of an answer, he says, “You look as beautiful as always.”
“You’re losing blood,” she says, snorting. “I look even more beautiful with every deal I make.”
“Let this old man sit up, then, so he can see you better.”
“Yah,” she chides, though she helps prop him up against the wall anyway. “You’re not that much older than me, you know. I just age better.”
He chuckles, but it morphs into a wracking cough; she rubs her hands on his back as if it could be any comfort. When he’s done, he looks up at her and frowns. “You should be happy, Byeonhosa-nim. You’re completing a contract. Isn’t that what usually makes you happiest?”
She closes her eyes. Opens them, now ember-bright. Her tongue tastes like brimstone again, and that’s how she knows. “It’s time,” she says. “I’ll collect the last thing you have to lose, and fulfil my end of the bargain.”
He nods. Stares at her like he’s staring at a bonfire, then closes his eyes. “Do it.”
She cups his cheek. Tilts his face up.
And kisses him.
For a moment, he freezes, surprised and uncomprehending, but then his mouth opens beneath hers and he gasps as he tastes the smoke of hellfire in her mouth, as he begins to remember—
—but then the hellfire itself leaps, scorches him from inside out.
He screams.
She swallows the sound with her mouth, holding his jerking, spasming body in place with her own inhuman strength, burning as he burns with the pain. His mortal flesh trembles with the want—no, the need, the desperation—for the pain to end, but too late for that. Too late by eleven years, if not more. All they can do now is see through it until the end.
It doesn’t end for a very long time.
But then it does, as suddenly as it began.
She releases him. Wipes the boiling tears on her face, closes a hand over her mouth.
In front of her, he heaves in a breath, then another, smoke spilling from his mouth, his eyes lit golden from inside.
“I don’t understand,” he says, heaving.
“What does a man who has nothing left have to lose?” she asks, and answers it without waiting for him: “His death.”
Comprehension dawns on him; he pats his body down, then looks up when he finds himself uninjured. “You healed me?”
“I cursed you,” she says gently. “You’re just like me, now. You have to roam the earth forever, making one deal after another on the behalf of hell. You don’t even get to go to hell. Just here, bound by the contract.”
“How is that a curse?” he asks.
She laughs hollowly. “Sounds pretty sweet, right? Being immortal, able to do pretty much anything as long as you keep working? Trust me, it’s not a blessing.”
Despite the fiery glow of his now inhuman eyes, there’s only the gentle warmth of his gaze. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it. She feels the remorse in his soul, the kind that only comes with remembrance. “I’m sorry I sacrificed you for my mother.”
“No, don’t be. I asked you to.”
He shakes his head. “Forgetting you nearly drove me insane. I can’t imagine how you felt, knowing everything.”
“I managed,” she says, hating how weak her voice sounds.
He smiles. “I’m sure you did.”
Cha Young tries to breathe, to pull herself together. In the end, she manages one half-hearted smile. “I meant it, you know. Your mother deserved it.”
“But you didn’t.” He reaches forward, cradling her jaw. Their bodies are the same temperature, now, fuelled by the same unholy force. He can surely sense her soul the same way she has sensed his for years and years.
She wonders if the rotting shape of it disgusts him.
“Byeonhosa-nim,” he begins, careful. “Having you again is not a curse.”
He kisses her, then, and this time, it tastes like a second chance.