Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

After six months, Charlie had grown used to the constant hum that filtered throughout the hotel. 

The soft, melodic tune of jazz would float along the barren corridors, and etch into the nooks and crannies of the empty rooms. It layered itself in the corners like the webs Niftty so painstakingly tackled. 

So, it was safe to say; that some could argue that she had grown used to its presence and enjoyed it. From dusk to dawn the tinny jazz would play. The noise had become a welcome comfort to all the hotel's inhabitants, albeit limited. 

Charlie’s fluffy padded slippers tapped along the stairwell, gently creaking despite her efforts to remain quiet. The hotel was dark, silent, eerily still as she made her way to the kitchen.

The jazz filled the air thickly, coating the air in a swing tune. A voice following along smoothly, humming in time with the music broadcasting. She stopped in her tracks at the aforementioned door, it was ajar, cracked open the littlest of bits and light spilled out. Like a moth to a flame, Charlie found herself drawing closer to the light, squinting her eyes to peek inside the kitchen. 

Alastor stood at the kitchen aisle, hunched over a fluffy dough of what Charlie assumed to be bread. His usual coat was removed leaving him in only his ruby red shirt bushed up to nobbly elbows and black suspenders taught over his thin frame, ungloved hands revealed his skin faded from its pale grey complexion to a midnight black. 

His claws sliced through the bread like butter before his palms pulled it back together and kneaded the dough again. She leaned closer to get a better look at the image, peering through the crack as closely as she could. 

The closer she looked the more she became aware of the forward tilt of his normally handlebar ears, they always looked as if to droop lazily. Charlie squinted closer at the red deer in the kitchen. And there it was, gently swaying with the rhythm of the song, was a fuzzy red and back tail. A tail.  

Charlie then proceeded to stumble and push the door as wide open as it would go. Because of course, she did. 

The static in the hair halted and the jazz came to a record scratching stop. Alastor himself remained unaffected, however, his previously drooping ears had alerted, standing high and proud over his head, giving Charlie at least some awareness that the Radio Demon had been startled. As for the tail, it had stopped its mistranslations falling as still as the rest of its owner. 

She righted herself and rocked back and forth on her heels. “Alastor, hi!” she said, voice chipper despite the early hours of the morning. A quick snap and he was dressed in his usual coat once again. Pristinly dressed, not a hair out of place. 

He hummed, turning to run his hands under the water and dry them off before acknowledging her. His mouth pulled into a tight grin, he faced her. 

“Charlie! My dear, what are you doing up so early?” he asked, hands falling behind his back. He blinked quizzically at her. 

Clammy palms itched to intertwine themselves with each other, and she narrowly escaped drying them on her silk top. Nifty would have an absolute fit if she had to get sweat stains out of someone else's clothes. 

“Oh, um, Alastor.” she plastered on a grin. “I was just – I couldn't get to sleep, I guess.” 

“I see I see,” he said before snapping his fingers once again and suddenly a mug of warm milk and honey sat on the table.

 “There we are. A glass of warm milk should put you right to sleep!” his grin stretched wider, letting Charlie see the crude stitches that pinned his mouth back. 

Pulling out a chair, the Princess of Hell sat down. “So,” she began awkwardly, “Why are you up so early, Al?” 

Without missing a beat he spun on his heels and continued what he was doing before she interrupted him, soft jazz started back up and continued to float out of the microphone.

 “Why I’m preparing breakfast for today!” he said “It’s nothing extravagant I’m afraid, just simple toast and jam!” 

She warmed her hands around the mug, letting heat seep into her skin. “Why so early then?” she rephrased. 

“Well, my dear, I won’t be around later to conduct a feast for you all.” he turned to watch her over his padded shoulder, “I’m going to see, Rosie, she has asked a rather exciting favour of me!” his razor teeth clacked against one another as a chuckle rose out of him.  

Curiosity perked, Charlie leaned forward, her smile softening. Rosie, the matriarchy of the cannibal colony was a seemingly long-time friend and contributor to Alastors work and downtime. 

The woman in question was tall, beautiful, and wore the same torrid smile that was also etched onto their resident cannibal’s face. Rosie was freakishly similar to the Radio Demon in regards to taste and eccentricities. But, she very clearly cared for him, just Alastor allowing her to touch him so freely told her that. Charlie’s grin deepened. 

“ Rosie, huh?” she perched her chin on her hands. “And what does, Rosie want with you? ” 

Again the soft melody came to an ear-piercing screech as it stopped. This time, Charlie could see the lines of tension that grated on the deer demon's shoulders. He stopped his work, stood up taller than Charlie had seen him do in months and turned stiffly to face her. 

For a second, and it was only a second, he looked like the feared Radio Demon that had stood on her doorstep all those months ago. His face pulled into a wicked smile. Eyes alit and shone a bloody red. 

“And, just what are you insinuating?” he leaned forward. 

Finishing her warm beverage, Charlie stood her ground. “Well, You seem to be spending a lot of time with Miss Rosie lately. That’s all.” she finished lamely. 

“Oh, and?” 

“It’s just, well you know…” she gestured at him in a manner she hoped she would understand. 

“No. I don’t.” of course he didn’t. “Please, do tell?” he asked. His hands had found his cane and were tightly squeezing the staff, so tight his black knuckles bled grey. 

“Well… You and Rosie seem to be spending a lot of time together lately, y’know after the battle with Adam and everything I guess, we haven’t seen much of you is all.” 

“Have you been missing me, Charlie, dear?” he hummed, deflecting and leaning on his cane more deeply. Drawing the conversation away from Rosie. 

She wrung her hands together. “Yeah, a bit,” she said. “You never seem to be around much. Can’t even here your frequencies?” she shrugged, before finishing “Everywhere anymore.” 

While his fixed smile did not falter, Charlie caught the slightest twitch of his left ear.”Much to be done, dearest Charlie! Much to be done, Rosie simply needs some assistance with the colony is all.” 

“Is that it?” she asked “That’s all it is really?” 

Turning back to his neglected dough, he said “Yes. That is all it is, Charlotte. Now if you’ll excuse me I really must let this prove for a few hours, and you must be off to bed, I’m sure you’re delightful girlfriend is missing you greatly.”

Chair scraping along the floor as she stood she placed her mug by the sink. Before she slipped out of the kitchen, she turned to face the other once more.

“Hey, Al.” she started nervously. He hummed.  “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?” 

“But of course, Charlie, dear, but of course I would.” Without turning to face her he continued kneading the bread dough. 

“Okay. Um, thanks for the milk.” he didn’t respond this time. 

 Letting the kitchen door close behind her and shutting with a soft click of the latch. The jazz started playing again and the baritone hum accompanied it softly. 

Charlie imagined Alastor, free of his jacket and levees rolled back to reveal ropes of scarring across skin arms like the webs Niffty could never always get. She imagined them etched in the nooks and crannies of his skin, letting nothing be free of its paint.

Climbing their stairs again, she imagined he would let his ears softly fall forward, resting gently rather than pointed so harshly up straight, his now free tail let loose between the gap in his slacks to sway gently with the music. 

Reaching her and Vaggie’s door she wondered if it was lonely. 

Was it lonely to be at the so called top? Her dad certainly seemed lonely. She wondered as she slipped between the quilt, If that’s why Alastor disliked him so much. 

Vaggie’s arm slipped around her waist and pulled her into the warm, comforting embrace of their bed. She fell asleep not long after. 

By the time Vaggie was moving away from her, light was spilling through a crack in the curtain. Forcing Charlie to open her eyes at the disruption. 

It seemed to be early morning. She turned, watching Vaggie get dressed for the day. “Hey, Babe,” Vaggie said buttoning up her shirt, “You want to get up and start the day?” she prodded, pulling back the quilt over Charlie. 

“Yeah, yeah. I’m up.” she groaned, burying her face into the pillow. 

“Come on. Up.” the Angel said tapping her cheek. “I’m heading down. So get up.” Vaggie anounciated each work with a gentle kiss on her girlfriends forehead. 

The Princess of Hell once again groaned at the loss of Vaggie’s presence and forced herslef to slide out of bed and get dressed. 

Once dressed she left their bedroom and once again made her way down the hotel’s stairs to the kitchen. The light was off this time and Alastor was nowhere to be found, the lack of radio frequencies and jazz filled the rooms of the hotel. 

Niffty was bringing out jams and butters on a small cart she could push to the dining room, where she imagined the rest of the wayward souls were sitting. 

“Oh! hi , Charlie!” the little cyclops grinned toothily up at her, her heels tapping against the stone floor every few seconds. 

“Morning, Niff. Alastor gone already?” 

The tapping stopped. “Yep, Mister Alastor got picked up by Miss Rosie an hour ago. Said he won’t be back until late.” 

“Okay  then.” Charlie sighed. “You want a hand with all this?” she gestured to the cart.

“It’s Alright, Charlie, I’ve got it! You go join the other.” Niffty’s lone eyes dragged back to the table of jams and butters before she continued to stack them in the cart. 

Following the noise around the corner Charlie entered the dining room and slumped down in the chair next to her partner. 

“Alastor gone again?” Vaggie asked, stroking the back of her hand. 

“Yep. Won’t be back ‘till late apparently.” 

Vaggie scoffed. “Of course.” she muttered under her breath. 

Just as the little cleaning demon pushed the cart of goods into the dining room Husk fell into an awaiting chair, pulled out by Angel Dust. 

The cat demon had thick knots matted in his fur and his eyes seemed to have suitcases attached to them. 

“Long night, Husky?” Angel purred, leaning his face into one of his hands. 

“You have no idea.” the bartender said, folding himself over the table not bothering to acknowledge anyone else. He began to pick flecks out of his claws, dirtying the pristine white cloth with black and red. 

“Must have been one hell of a night if you got your claws dirty. Literally.” Angel asked raising a brow. 

“You don’t want to know. Trust me.” 

Angel pushed further, leaning over the table to grab a slice of freshly baked bread. “It have anything to do with a certain… deer leaving your room ?” he goaded. 

Charlie, Vaggie and Husk all came to a stop. 

“What?” Vaggie spat. “Why was he in there?” 

“Wait, pause I saw Alastor last night, or I guess early this morning – around 5 I think.” 

“Nah, Toots, I saw tall, dark and creepy when I was letting Nuggests out to shit. Like early as fuck. I’m talking 2am.” Angel sat back in his chair eyeing Husker expectantly. 

Charlie sat forward, a pit opened up in her stomach filling with bile and tar. “Husk. Why was Alastor leaving your room?” her heart clenched in her chest cavity when Husk’s eyes flicked down to Niffty on his right. 

Niffty herself made no aims to look at Husk, she kept her eyes firmly on the table in front of her. “Look, Mister Alasto-” 

“Niff, It’s fine.” he ruffled a paw through her hair. “I’ll do it.” another heavy sigh left his throat as he dragged his paws through his hair. 

“Listen up chuckle fuck beacuse I’m only explaining this to you once.” every member of the hotel leaned closer expectantly. Charlie’s heart thudded against her ribs and work it’s way up he throat. 

“Alastor.. Is-” he stopped and folded his hands together. “He’s a little under the weather and Rosie is helping him out. That’s all.” 

“Yeah right.” Vaggie breathed. “No way you’d both be so on edge if he was ‘a little under the weather’ what’s really going on with him?” she pointed a long finger between the two contractees 

“Hey, it ain’t my business to go dropping. So thats all your getting. Ask Alastor if you really want to know but don’t blame me when he brushes you off.” Husk held up his arms in surrender. 

“So he’s sick.” Angel said. 

“Sure, we’ll go with that. Yeah the freaks sick. ” Husk said, pouring coffee into his ‘I know everything’ branded mug. 

Niffty vibrated in her seat, little body shaking like a leaf. “He’s hungry .” she whispered. “And hurt. ” 

“ Niff.” Husk warned. 

“Hurt?” Angel sat back in his chair. “When did that guy get hurt?” 

It seemed the little denim couldn’t contain herself anymore and spilled whatever came to mind. 

“With Adam.” She grasped at her hair “ He got all cut up and now he’s hungry all the time . That’s why he goes to Rosie. She can feed him and he can heal with the extra energy.”

Thick nothingness filled the dining room once agin. 

Finally Charlie spoke, quietly. 

“...Wait. Alastor can be hurt?”

Chapter Text

It was thick. The silence, the undeniable empty presence, the empty, empty air. Filled with nothing but the breaths of the hotel’s residents.

More now than ever was Charlie aware of the jazz, the tinny hum of 1920s music that had wasted throughout the hotel for so many months. Now more than ever was Charlie aware of the blatant lack of it. 

“I-I don’t know he could be hurt.” Angel dragged all four hands through his hair, blinking owlishly at Husk. 

The cat demon tilted his chin up at the Spider, long brows raised. “Did you think he was invincible? At the end of the day, he’s a mortal soul.” 

Charlie clenched her fingers around the tablecloth, Vaggie looked between Husk and Niffty again. “Why didn’t he say anything?” her previous hostility had mellowed and smoothed over. 

“Why would he?” Husk said, “Does he strike you as the type of man that would accept help?” 

“Mister Alastor really, really doesn’t like it when people see him hurt. Makes him all…” Niffty trailed off, her voice sounded so young and childlike. “Makes him…more aware of himself.”

Awoken from her previous stupor by Niffty’s tone, Charlie perked up. “Like, self-conscious? I really don’t think we’d care about that. If he’s hurt, he’s hurt. We can help.” 

The idea of imagining their resident cannibal deer being something as human as being self-conscious was an uneasy concept, the pit expanded in Charlie’s stomach, bile rising up slowly, creeping up on her like a tsunami. She felt sick . 

“Nah, Princess not that.” Husk spoke up, scratching nonchalantly at an ear,  “The Boss can’t stand people seeing him weakened and shit. Says you never know when someone could take advantage of it.”

“And what? He thinks we’d take advantage of him being all sick?” Angel slumped potently back in his chair, spine falling over the back of the chair. 

“Course he would think that.” Vaggie grumbled, forgotten anger creeping back into her voice. “All-powerful Radio Demon needs help and thinks his empire will collapse the moment he takes a day off.” 

“Vaggie, give him a break you know how he is.” Charlie soothed her girlfriend. “He’s all… Alastor about things.” 

“So. now you know all his business,” Husker grumbled, his paws going back to musing up the fur on his face. “I was stitching him back up last night.” 

“It’s that bad?” Charlie sounded out, breathlessly. “He’s that hurt?”

“Nah,” Husk brushed off, “He’s just being stubborn about it. Doesn’t want to take too much away from the colony s soon after…everything.” 

“Take too much? What would he be.. Oh.” Vaggie grimaced and her face pulled in a sour expression. 

“So, Smiles is going to Rosie’s to what? Binge?” 

Standing up on her chair Niffty excitedly proclaimed; “Exactly!” 

“Lovely.” Angel hissed. “Just lovely.” 

“Gross,” Vaggie muttered. 

Charlie stood, pressing her hands on the table, breakfast forgotten. “So what can we do to help him?” she asked, piercing her eyes into Husker. 

“Honestly I haven’t got a clue,” Husker said lamely, Charlie deflated at the answer sinking back into her chair, Vaggie’s warm palm like a brand against her back, soothing away the nausea. 

“Wait! Wait!” Niffty yelled, “You could ask Miss Rosie! She's been helping Mister Alastor you could ask her what to do!” he plopped back down on her chair. 

Suddenly revived from the depths of the inferno Charlie jumped up. “Of course! Since Rosie’s been feeding him then she’d definitely know what we could do to help!” 

She clapped her hands together, rocking back on her heels excitedly, brimming with newfound propose. Pushing her hair away from her face a look of pure determination etched onto her features.  Hands on her hips she took a deep breath. 

“Okay so game plan!” she grinned, wide enough to rival the man himself. “I go see Rosie in the colony, get her on board with our plan, help Alastor and-” 

“Breathe, Charlie,” Vaggie whispered in her ear. She did. 

“-and we get him better than he’s ever been! Right, guys!” 

Nods worked their way around the table, and even Vaggie subtly tilted her head, agreeing with her plan. The temptation to illustrate the master plan was itching under her fingers but if Alastor found that before they’d been able to confront him it’d be a disaster. 

Finally, they sat down to eat. toast every so slightly cold. 

The anxiety started to creep up on Charlie as she made her way through the colony. The smiling residents greeted her warmly, waving and showing off all the teeth they could. The most surprising part of hell, in Charlie’s modest opinion, was how much the cannibal colony looked as normal as a place could. 

The houses were a mix of stone and brick, with thick bushes of flowers and ivy climbing the walls and curling around the windows, the streets were clean, well-trimmed grass spread out next to the roads and pavements. 

Following the path around to Rosie’s Charlie Morningstar prayed to a cruel God, that Alastor wasn’t in the shop, or at least not in the main lobby. 

Pushing the door open, the bell trilled, alerting the woman herself to Charlie’s presence. Rosie was free of her usual hat, her hair pulled back into a neat bun. Her dress, as usual, was immaculate and brushed against the floor as she stood, eyes traversing across the young Princess. 

“Why, Charlie!” her smile widened, pristine teeth clacking together. “What do I owe the pleasure of your company to today, dear?” she cupped a pale hand against Charlie’s cheek. 

“Ah,” she said, smile dimming. Charlie didn’t even know she could do that. “Alastor, Hm?” she questioned, head falling to the side. 

Bobbing her mouth like a broken nutcracker she struggled to get her lips to cooperate with her brain.

 “H...how did you know that?” Charlie whispered, eyes darting around the store, looking for a hint of vibrant red and black ears. 

“Not to worry, dear,” she patted Charlie’s face. “Alastor is otherwise... occupied. ” she laughed, lips curling back from her mouth. 

The way she said ‘occupied’ told Charlie all she needed to know as to what Alastor was up to. It seemed that Alastor was having a late breakfast. 

Rosie clicked her tongue, “Now, now Charlie, dear.” she said, “Let's not berate the poor man while he’s feeling so unwell.” she chastised gently.  Stepping away from Charlie and beckoning her to follow her to the back room. 

Sinking down into the plush armchair, Rosie folded he hands across her lap. “So, Princess Charlie.” she began “What can I do for you today?” her head tilted questioningly at the hotel owner. 

Rubbing sweaty hands on her trousers, Charlie started. 

“Well we know Alastor is… sick.” she paused “And we know he’s coming here to…um…”

“If you can’t say it, dear then you really don’t have the right to ask it of me.” Rosie squinted at Charlie, her mouth pulled into a thin, toothless line. Pale, blank eyes watching Charlie’s every move, tracking each twitch with cool, sightless eyes. 

“...here to eat.” Charlie finished, Rosie smiled, the previous animosity seemingly fading from reality. “He needs a lot to get better, we know that much and… well… is there anything we can do to help.”

“ We? ” Rosie raised an immaculate brow. 

“ Us. at the hotel.” Charlie clarified. “That’s why I came here today. I wa- no need to know what we can do to help Alastor get better.” 

The void smile worked its way back onto the colony’s matriarchs face. Eyes glistened with a joy Charlie hadn’t seen before.

“Better, Charlie, much better.” Rosie leaned forward in her chair. “You’ll be just delighted to know that there is in fact something you can do for our dear Alastor.” 

Charlie too, leaned forward in her pinstriped chair, hands braced against the chair arms. 

“What?” she felt herself close to begging, “What can we do for him?” 

“Heal him.” the cannibal finished dully. 

"What?” she sounded dumb even to her own ears. 

“Well,” Rosie's grin stretched further, “An angelic weapon caused his injuries so by default, only an angelic being could heal him. ”

Coming to this realisation herself Charlie, flopped back into her chair. 

“Fuck.” her hands tugged at the roots of her hair, and the filled pit went out from under her and was once again empty and deep. 

“Quite right, yes.”  Rosie agreed, crossing one leg over the other. Someone must have come in and handed her a cup of tea because the scent of chamomile drifted lazily around the room. 

“Fuck, fuck .” 

“As you’ve previously stated.” the calm and collected Rosie to a long sip of her tea, humming around the lip of the china. 

Letting herself look up at the woman across from her, “But they hate each other.” Charlie said. 

Rosie nodded, “So I’ve been told.” she agreed. 

Piercing Rosie with her gaze she asked, “Would he even do it?” it sounded even dumber than before.  Internally Charlie wished she could muster some of Alastor’s charm. 

“Well, Charlie, dear, he’s your father, not mine, so I wouldn’t have the authority to answer that.”

“No, no, not my dad.” she shook her head.” I mean Alastor. Would he even let my dad do that?” Charlie reiterated. 

Alastor was stubborn on a good day, Charlie could imagine one of the hotel members coming up to him and asking Lucifer to heal the wound he’d been hiding for weeks. He’d blink, say something snappish turn on his heels and disappear, the likelihood of talking to him after that would be slim at best. 

Agreeing Rosie said, “Probably not, no.” and took another deep sip of her tea. 

“Then-”

“But you’ve never failed to inspire and convince before, my darling Charlie,”  Rosie said. Setting her empty cup down. Her smile was less viscous and more gentle now. 

Her head jolted to the side, pointing to a door behind her. “Just down there, love,” she said softly. 

Standing abruptly, Charlie marched up to the door. Hand frozen on the gold, round handle. Rosie spoke again. Voice silky and soft. After all, she was speaking about a loved one. 

“Do be kind to him, Charlotte. Despite his attitude, he is aware of what he looks like. ” Charlie nodded in finality. 

Turning back to the oak door in front of her, the only barrier between her and Alastor. The door came loose with a quick click. 

 She pushed the door open it scraped along the tiled floor. It was dark, no light was spilling out from under the doorway, and there was no jazz, no smell of bread dough, no warm milk and honey. 

No Alastor. 

Because what she was seeing couldn’t be Alastor. Not their Alastor. It didn’t look like him, didn’t even sound like him. 

The hollow moans, groaned, bouncing off wet, dripping walls. Charlie took a step forward. Letting the door close softly behind her,  The dim red glow being produced through the thing's eyes was the only light in the cold room.  Sickening snaps and twinges were dulled by the wetness of the walls. It slid down the stone, an endless feedback loop.  She took another step forward. Not daring to make a sound. The thin- no, Alastor almost seemed too large for the square room. 

Thin twisting limbs twitched against the floor, hands too rigid, cracked and creaked with every movement. His arms were free of his jacket, only donned in his shirt and slacks, it seemed this time they couldn’t grow with his bloated body. 

Almost distending through the thinning fabric, forcing it to rip at the seams, leaving his legs and feet open to the sticky air, the same for his arms, black and red painted his scarred, torn skin, decorating his body up to his biceps in a mixture of body fluids. 

His back was pushed up tightly to the ceiling, his neck stretched and twisted around in unbearable angles was forced to the floor by the weight of his head. 

Alastor’s antlers, like the rest of him were mangled and swollen, his left was broken, bloody ichor dripped from the open wound, sliding thickly down his face and matted in his tatted and clumpy hair. This tongue wove out to lick up the blood that wasn’t knotted in his hair. 

The right antler was pushed through into the ceiling, breaking the stone and trapping Alastor until he deflated. 

And his face. 

Well, his face was wrapped in an array of torrid scarring, crude stitching pulling eyes and mouth open, pinning his features into an unending smile. The cross on his forehead was inflamed and oozing a thick yellowing pus. Only to be caught by a hungry tongue. 

He was facing her, teeth and gums bleeding a discharge of saliva and blood. His own and others. 

Alastor’s spine was twisted in thick, tight loops, scabs smearing along the sordid floor. The stitching on his chest, just visible through his scraps of shirt, looked fit to burst, straining against Alastor’s distended sternum. It followed from a sharp clavicle down to below his hip, finishing below his trousers. 

The syrupy sludge of a weak gold oozed around the stitches and bleached the ruby red shirt a burnt orange. A cloying sound rumbled throughout the room, it was the only sound that didn’t stick to the walls. 

Heavy-sounding breaths fell through the gaps in his teeth. 

His eyes pinned her down. Tracking her eyes tracking him. 

“ Alastor? ” she stifled a sound, it clotted in her throat like a bubble about to burst. She felt sick. She’d felt sick the entire day, but this was. This was just… scary. 

She realized. She was scared. 

Charlie could count on one hand the times she had felt this way. 

When Adam announced to the world that Vaggie, the love of her life, was an Angel. 

And the first time, when Adam revealed the shortened extermination dates. 

Both times were at Adams's hand. To some extent, this was too. But Charlie knew better. She’d always known just what Alastor was.  She had seen it, the day she met Rosie. Those crude stitches and thin, swollen body, threatened to push out of his clothes. 

“Al.” she breathed out again. “Al, can you hear me?” hands twitching at her sides, begging to reach out at him. “...do you recognize me. ”

His eyes rolled around his skull like pinballs again before being forcefully dragged back to her. The matted ears clogged and snarled with gummy, viscid juices, twitched towards her. The movement seemed jagged and delayed. 

Another wheezy pant stuck to the walls. An acknowledgement at the very least. Braving herself up she took another step forward to her business partner. Her shoes would be stained red and brown when she left the room. The oozy squelching stuck her in place like a deer in headlights. 

The closer she drew the Alastor and his mutated swollen form, the clumps attached to him squished in the nooks and crannies of his body looked thick and seeped and secreted more juices onto his body.

Alastor’s tongue darted out to lap at the tacky floor again, gnawing on the remaining chunks of people. 

At Charlie’s approach, the deer demon pushed himself further into the limited space he had. Embedded antler scraping and cracking, ready to be snapped at will with one more sharp tug against it. 

“No!” Charlie froze at his movement. “No! Don’t move, it's fine. You’ll snap your antler, Alastor .” she warbled up at him. 

The grounding sound howled again. He twitched, his body swelling and constricting against its seems. His teeth clenched further, and slobber and blood lapped at his bottom lip, creating a small puddle under his head. 

The sound started up again and Alastor hunched himself as much as he could. One spidery puffed, inflated hand swept around to grip at the remaining fabric of his shirt, pulled taunt over his hollow, cavity of a stomach. His claws gorged into his skin, narrowly missing his pus-oozing angelic wound. 

He let out a pitiful sound. A pitiful sound. Alastor didn’t do that. He would never do that. Not in front of someone else. 

The gnawing, hollow, sound was originating from him. He was making that sound. Or at last, his stomach was. 

The door creaked open and light filtered into the room. Alastor’s clotted ears pinned back. The sound finally stopped and his teeth eroded at his tongue, scraping back layer upon layer of skin, swallowing in thick, sickly gulps, like he was dying of thirst. 

“He can’t keep this up.” Rosie had moved to stand next to the Princess. “The cycle of binge, starve, binge. It's nothing more than a treadmill.” 

“Why does… what happened to him?” the pressing instinct to step back was only stopped by a firm hand on her shoulder, which grounded her in place. 

“A wendigo, dear. One could say. You didn’t think Alastor only dabbled in the occult and cannibalistic lifestyle down here did you?” 

“No… but… what's happening to him. I thought you were helping him!” Charlie’s voice was drowned out by the vicious panting from the Radio Demon. 

“Anything he consumes in my sanctuary will inevitably be used up to heal that wound there.” pointing with her cane at Alastor’s golden oozing wound like he was nothing more than a particularly interesting specimen in a glass container. 

Like a deer mounted on the wall for decoration. Only the sorrowful tone of Rosie’s voice prevented Charlie from pushing her out the door and away from Alastor. 

“As a result, the hunger gnaws away at him.” she shook her head sadly. 

“But., Charlie started, “The hotel has food it doesn’t have to be-” She avoided looking around. “ People .” 

The hand on her shoulder forced her to turn and face Rosie. “My dear, Alastor’s tendencies for this diet in life means he can’t gain any sense of nutrients let alone a feeling of fullness from regular foods down here.” 

“He can’t eat normal food?” her mouth cradled each word like it was gospel. The pit in her stomach fell through. An endless abyss of nothingness, Charlie supposed this was how Alastor felt everyday.  

“Oh, he can. But he derives nothing from it.”  Rosie let her go. The loss of grounding pressure let the want to flee well up inside her again. 

“Al…”  Charlie felt tears threaten to fall over thick lashes. 

He had scraped crudely along his tongue, a deep pit in the center, where he had torn strips back and swallowed whole. The puddle under his face grew. His limp tongue flopped languidly against the stone tiles. Alastor’s eyes darted back and forth between the two women. 

He made another sound that was blocked by a wet gulp as he used what was left of his tongue to lap lazily at the puddle under his face, greedily gulping down each time. 

He made a jagged twitch and finally, finally began to deflate. His swollen, enlarged, emaciated body began to untwist itself, sharp, piercing snaps and cracks sounded wetly throughout the room as his puffy limbs shrunk back to their rightful size. 

Alastor lay limply on the tiles, torn clothes and heavy pants heaved out of his chest, the broken antler was hidden by his ears and hair, and the other was matted and tangled with his hair. 

For once his face relaxed, deep clogging breaths choked out of the deer. 

Rosie signed. Handing Charlie her cane she crouched down at Alastor’s level. Worming her arm under his, the other warped around the concave cavity of his stomach. 

She practically dragged him out of the sludgy room. Charlie followed obediently. She didn’t want to be in that room a second longer. She didn’t want to know how long Alastor was in there. Eating for nothing more than scraps of sustenance. 

The light of the outside room was practically blinding compared to the darkness of the previous one. Rosie gently deposited the still-heaving Alastor onto the nearest sofa and propped his legs over the arm. 

Finally, she turned to Charlie. 

“I don’t think he can do this again,” she said naturally. “He won’t have much choice but to let your father assist him.” 

Stunned into silence, Charlie held out the sleek cane to Rosie. She was led from the back room through the lobby and to the front door. It opened with the bell trilling as it was knocked against. 

The sound of Alastor’s collapsing chest echoed in Charlie’s ears. She didn’t think she’d ever forget it. It would follow her, just like the static followed him. 

Forever bound in blood.

Chapter Text

The door shut softly behind her. A dull thud shook Charlie out of her stupor. Outside Rosie’s sanctuary, the colony was thriving. The hellish sun shone down on the street with a golden glow. The residents minded their business, smiling and waving at their Princess as they passed. The breeze was cooling on her clammy skin. Her hair was damp and sticking to her forehead. 

Each step she took weighed heavily against her shoes. Pulling her deeper into the rings. Walking back to the hotel felt like entering battle, an oncoming storm brimming on the horizon. 

The hill of the hotel had never felt so steep before. Dragging herself up to the front door, she pushed it open. 

It was still quiet, the hum gone and left for Rosie to take care of. Charlie collapsed into the loveseat. She imagined Alastor, chest heaving and clothes torn to pitiful shreds being maneuvered with warm, spindly hands into a bed and taken care of. She imagined Rosie was the only one he would let take care of him.

The image of Alastor stripped and bare brought down to his most basic instincts invaded her head, flashing in short sharp bursts behind her eyes. She groaned, shoving her face as deep as she could into the plush cushioning that surrounded her face. 

Light taps along the floor made her turn her head to look at the intruder of her wallowing. Long socks and a pencil skirt. Vaggie.

“Hey, Vaggie.” Charlie moaned. Hair crumpled and knots formed as she rolled onto her back, looking up at her girlfriend, illuminated by artificial light. 

“How did it go?” Vaggie questioned, lifting Charlie’s head and slipping in under her, letting the Princess flop back into her lap. Gentle hands started carding through her hair, loosening strands and massaging Charlie’s head lightly. 

Charlie squeezed her eyes shut, blinking back the wetness of her eyes. She intertwined her fingers with Vaggie’s free hand. 

“Not good, huh?”  she said soothingly. Brushing back Charlie’s fringe to peer down at her more, a mushy smile drawing along her face. 

She shook her head, Vaggie’s fingers following the movement. “No, no I know what we can do to help him... It’s just…” she huffed. Sniffing back another surge of emotions. 

“It’s just?” Vaggie prompted, velvet voice attempting to ease her girlfriend. 

Screwing her eyes shut and snatching her hand back to rub viciously at her eyes she snorted sickly out; “It’s just… angelic wounds need angelic healing and…”

“You’re dad.” Vaggie supplied clicking her tongue. 

“Yeah.” Charlie laughed, hands covering her face, she dragged her palms harshly over her eyes again. 

“Alastor won’t like that,” Vaggie said, grasping both of Charlie's hands and moving them away from her rubbed-raw face. 

“Nope.” Charlie laughed again, voice hitching once more. 

“The fit he threw when your dad was here last time would be microscopic compared to the one he’d have this time.”

“I know.” Charlie wined, burying her head in Vaggie’s stomach and wrapping her arms around her Girlfriend’s waist. Vaggie continued fiddling with Charlie’s hair quietly. 

“I’ll get the others down here.” Vaggie said, slipping away from Charlie, leaving the Princess cold from the lack of warmth. Vaggie left and Charlie clutched at a pillow, cradling it close to her chest, curling around it. 

“You okay, Toots?” A white, fluffy hand waved in front of her face. Angel Dust peered down at her, all eight eyes blinking. 

Charlie let go of the pillow and bolted up, swivelling round to face the group Vaggie had summoned. 

All the hotel’s residents stood circling the loveseat she’d collapsed in. “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks, Angel.” He preened and crossed his arms over his chest and stomach. 

“You talk to Rosie,” Husk asked, arms also crossed, mirroring Angel’s stance. 

“Yep, it was definitely a talk to her alright,” Charlie said, voice becoming a murmur at the end. Brightening up and the raised brows Charlie began to recount the talk with Rosie. “She said only an angelic being can heal a wound made by an angelic weapon .” Charlie stopped talking, doubting whether or not she should tell the others about what she saw. 

Charlie prevailed, guilt could eat at her later. For now. They needed to know. The Princess of Hell summoned all the u holy power she could muster into her being. 

“... And then, she pointed to this room. And I  thought Alastor would be, like eating or sleeping-” They all grimaced at the eating. “...But he was… he was all.. Fucked up.” She screwed her eyes shut, willing the flashes of Alastor’s mutilated, bloated form away from her foresight. 

“And I mean fucked up. ” She looked back up at their faces, going from each one. “We’ve all seen his different forms… but guys this was… not right he was all… swollen and big and thin…” Charlie quickly shot her hands up to cover her ears. 

“And the noise… I can’t get it out of my head… He was in so much pain… he was….”

“Starving?” Husk finished. “Loud-ass creaking and groaning right?” Husk scratched the back of his neck, his claws sank into his fur. 

“His body’s too heavy to hold itself up, yeah.” At Charlie’s nod, he continued, “Boss’ has only been like that once. At least with me contracted to him.” 

Niffty scurried up Husk’s body and curled around his ears, tugging at the tufts of hair there. “Mister Alastor was really messy . Took me hours to fix up his clothes!” Niffty added to the conversation. 

“Why was he like that then?” Vaggie asked, leaning into Charlie’s side. 

“He never said.” Husk grouched, for once not holding a drink. “Won’t even talk about it. Let alone acknowledge it.” 

Charlie slid her cell phone out of her pocket, it stuck to her sweaty hands as she fiddled with it. 

“Once I call my Dad we can’t take it back. Al will be so pissed when he finds out.” She groaned, head hanging. 

“Go for it, Toots.” Angel patted her head. His hands were fluffy, large and soft, like a warm blanket. 

Charlie’s phone felt like holding a tonne of bricks with a single hand in her palm. Finger hesitatingly held over her father’s contact picture. Vaggie and Angel put warm, comforting hands on her shoulders, giving her encouraging smiles. 

Husker and Niffty, the contractees of the Radio Demon, stood off to the side of Charlie, Niffty sitting between Husk’s pert ears, anxiously giggling with tufts of hair, singular eyes flickering around sporadically. As if expecting Alastor to appear. 

Husk had his arms crossed over his chest, mouth pulled into a thin line, brows relaxed, but his eyes were slitted, watching the other three with shallow breaths. 

Working herself up, Charlie tapped the contact number as fast as she could, putting her phone on speaker for the others and letting it ring. 

They stood around her phone with bated breaths. Finally, it clicked, and her Dad’s jovial voice came down the phone line. 

“Charlie!” Bright and cheery his voice poured out of the phone. “How you been, Char!” He boasted when she didn’t respond. 

“Um, hi, Dad,” Charlie said, tremor worming its way up her throat and into her voice, the hands squeezed again. 

“Charlie?” He said, voice losing its cheer and becoming serious. She pictured him cradling his phone between his large hands like it was her. 

“ Charlie? ” Lucifer repeated, “Are you alright? Are you okay?” 

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine, Dad.” Charlie said, breathing deeply before she spoke again, interrupting her Dad. “-Look, Dad I-we need your help.”

“Of course,  of course.” He said she could hear the shaking of his hat as he nodded, and the squeaking of his spinney throne as he leaned back. “What can I do for you, Sweetheart?” He said tenderly. 

Charlie’s heart clenched again. She’d missed him so, so much. “Dad, it’s Alastor.” 

You could hear the sound of ducks squawking on the other end of the phone. Angel and Husk made worried glances at each other, Angel’s fingers danced across her shoulder in surprise at the sound. 

“ Oh…right, Alastor. ” Lucifer scoffed, honeyed tone lost at the mention of the deer demon. “And what has Alastor  done?” 

He- he hasn’t done anything!” Niffty yelled, leaning across Husk’s ears to get better access to the phone. “Mister Alastor’s hurt!”

“Yeah, Luci,” Angel purred down the line, “Creepy McSmiles is real banged up from fucking Adam .”He shuddered. Husk came closer to the phone, Niffty guiding him with his ears. 

“Boss got real fuckin’ hurt by that guy. Keeps getting me to stitch him up.” Husk said gruffly. 

“He’s hurt.” Lucifer summed up. “Really bad. And what do you want me to do about it?” 

“Well since you’re an all-powerful Archangel, we want you to buck up to fix the guy,” Angel said. Then when Husk gave him a look, brow raised. “ Sir .” Angel closed. 

“Let me get this right.” Her Dad sighed, Charlie could almost see him hunched over, head in his hands. “You want me to come to the hotel and heal Alastor. ” He said simply. 

A chorus of agreements circled the phone and flowed through the line.  

“ Why? ”  He asked genuinely. “Why should I? Do any of you even like him? He owns two of you.” He questioned, his voice was core clipped now. 

 “Because… because..” Vaggie attempted to defend their resident Overlord. They’d never gotten along and her lips struggled to supply an answer. 

Lucifer hummed, “Exactly.” he said. 

“Look, Al can be a real freak show, but y’know the guy's… he’s important here. He does real good work.” Angel said, pausing, “He’s never done what other Overlords…do. From what I've heard.” Angel faltered, Husk’s paw stroked along his bottommost forearm. 

“Some of those guys are real sick fucks, y’know, but ol’ Al, he’d never go as far as some of them. Nah, Al only goes after guys as sick as him or worse.” Angel waffled before clamping his mouth shut. The paw on his arm rubbed in soothing circular motions. 

“He may own my soul. But he ain’t ever abused that. He doesn’t call on me for dumb shit, like some overlords.”  Husk said, eyes drifting up to the spider before shooting away. 

“Mister Alastor has always looked after me!” Niffty grinned, “He’s been kind to me since I got here!”  She patted Husk’s head again, before reaching over and doing the same to Angel. 

“Dad… please, ” Charlie said. No begging. She’d never begged before and she didn't want to start now. This was the only exception to that rule. 

Her Dad faltered. A long waver drifted down the phone line, and a new type of silence filled the room. It was a dreadful, straining silence that made the hands on her clench, curling into the fabric of her blazer. 

The pause continued. Static breezed around. But it wasn’t their static. Her head fell limp and she could feel the sting behind her eyes bubble again. Festering like a hungry rat waiting to spill from her eyes.

A sigh came down the phone line. Charlie’s head sprung up, neck twinging at the action. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Charlie asked excitement chafed her throat. “You’ll do it?”

“ Okay, ” Lucifer said reluctantly. “ Yes, I'll play doctor to the deer.” 

“Yes, Yes, Yes !” The Princess broke free of the hands and spun her phone around, light on her feet, rejuvenated. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Dad! Thank You! ” Charlie, stopped her erratic spinning, sighing softly down the phone line. 

Her Dad chuckled, “Okay, Bug, let's tone it down, yeah.” 

Smoothing her hair down, Charlie glanced at her grinning friends and partner. “Yep. cool, okay, calm.” 

Lucifer laughed once more before falling seriously again. “If the wound is as serious as you’re saying. Then give me a few days. Can he hold out that long?”

“He’s been hiding this for weeks. Yeah, he can hold out for a few more days.”  Husk interrupted, popping the illusion of privacy. 

“Okay then,” Lucifer said. “Give me two or three days to get the energy. Haven’t healed a wound made by an angelic weapon in… a while. ” He concluded awkwardly. He was giving a dry, humourless huff. 

Taking him off speaker Charlie brought her phone back up to her ear. “Seriously, thank you , Dad,  you have no idea how horrible it was to see him like…that.” She whispered, turning away from the others. 

Pausing, Lucifer asked, “Like what? ” 

“...He was all messed up, I think. I don’t really know. But Dad… he was starving . I could hear it. He was eating bits of himself and…” Her breath wobbled and she cringed at how she sounded. 

“Alastor is really hurt, Dad.” Charlie finished. Her Dad didn't say anything for a moment before his voice became, honey soft and sweet. 

“Okay, Charlie. I’ve got it. Don’t worry.” 

“...Seriously, thank you.” 

“Of course. I love you, Char.” Lucifer cooed. 

“Love you too, Dad.” 

The call ended with a soft click . Turning back around, Vaggie took charge. 

“Battles stations people.” She clapped, gaining all their attention. “Charlie will speak to Alastor. And whether he likes it or not he’s being babied!” 

Nods circled the small group and that solidified it. A plan was made. And now, they wait. And wait and wait.

Vaggie cupped Charlie’s face gently, holding her like she was made of something precious. Her eyes softened, pushing the blonde strands away Vaggie pressed scorching lips against Charlie’s forehead. When the angel moved away it left a sudden cold throbbing in its wake, festering a chill over Charlie’s body. 

Her girlfriend smiled, lips curling up quickly before squeezing her shoulders and moving away from the Princess. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, Vaggie gave her one last encouraging look, a firm nod and a quick thumbs up before starting her ascension to their bedroom. 

And then, she waited. Sitting in the lobby of her hotel. Waiting for her business partner to return. He’d look normal, she thought, he’d look like nothing had happened, a wide grin and sharp eyes, not a hair out of place, both antlers firm on his head. He’d be…Alastor. Just Alastor. 

And maybe that was the problem. 

Alastor had been the Radio Demon for decades, over one hundred years. His perfectly crafted persona could only hold so much back. Something had to give eventually. Charlie supposed it had. 

The front door clicked open, the handle turning softly.  It clicked shut. She looked up. 

There he stood. Immaculate suit, smile and microphone. Alastor watched her, watching him. Not a word was spoken for minutes as he stood by the door. 

A standoff, who would crack first and break the thick, heavy fog of silence that coated the hotels’ walls. The Overlord and Princess of Hell watched each other. The Hellish moon glowed faintly through the windows, blinking in tandem with them. 

His neck snapped as his head fell to the side, eyes tracking her flinch. The Princess took a wobbling breath, catching it behind her ribs before it bubbled out of her throat and into the cloying air. 

Her palms stuck to her red slacks and Charlie forced them to stay still, preventing the need to grasp them together. She understood on a fundamental level that everyone confronting Alastor would end in a hopefully metaphorical bloodshed. So, Charlie understood why it had to be her. 

Charlie for a second, and it was only a second. 

Felt as small as an ant, looking at Alastor. She wondered what it was like to be in his head, all that power clotting his veins and filling his breath with unbridled ability. 

Charlie wondered if it drove him mad. 

But, in this case. She was not the ant. He was. And in this case, he was the mad one, and she was not. 

An ant does not open pools into the abyss when it sees a threat to its home. They may find this threat strange but nonetheless, they do not do anything. It is nothing more than a landscape of strange happenings, angles and depths of darkness they cannot comprehend. The ant may be scared and terrified even of the pool, but it is not mad. No, that is not madness, Charlie thought. 

Madness would fall upon the ant when the ant realised, it could understand the pit of abyss when it could understand the threat to its home, and hear the buzzing and churning that surrounded its territory. 

The madness would only come to the ant when it started to understand why it was under attack, why this was happening to it. And the ant would copy the threat, and learn its tricks and turns. Follow in its attacker's footsteps. 

Charlie wondered if that was what happened when Alastor was alive. Was he so completely and utterly powerless to defend himself, that he let himself sink into things, wonders, and shadows, he did not fully understand. She wondered if that's what drove him mad. 

Alastor blinked at her. 

Finally, she relented. “Alastor.” she smoothed her voice, keeping it neutral and audible. No inflexion was allowed to pass her lips. 

“Welcome home.”  His ear twitched, his head righted itself and he took measured steps towards her. He came to a halt a few feet from the loveseat. 

“Charlie.” He grinned. “How have you been, my dear?  Why, I haven’t seen you since our rendezvous in the kitchen this morning.”  

“I’ve been better.” She stared at the deer. Or maybe he never was a deer. 

“Oh.” his ears twitched again. “And whatever for, dearest Charlie. I shall endeavour to fulfil your bizarre requests to ease your mind in whatever way I can, my dear.” he leaned forward on his cane, bending at the waist, coming down to her eye level. 

“Would you though?” Her brows twitched in time with his ears, furrowing briefly before relaxing. 

“Why of course,” he said with a flourish, twirling his cane around to settle behind his back. 

The air was silent again. The static slowly started to drift, oozing into the walls. She hated that it loosened something in her chest. 

He was playing with her, twirling and smiling, but he was watching her. Each of his words was carefully curated and picked out specially for her. 

“ I saw, Alastor .” as softly and carefully as she could, Charlie leapt into the deep end. 

“Oh, and what did you see?” Static buzzed hectically around her. “Do, tell, Charlotte .” Her hair stood on end, loose strands got caught on the static, being twisted and lifted away from her face, being pulled towards the man in front of her. 

Charlie could hear his spidery, thin, skeletal fingers methodically tapping along his microphone. 

“ You. ” 

His jaw clenched. Audibly cracking under the pressure being forced on it, grinding yellow teeth screeched against themselves one by one. 

Slowly, he leaned forward again, spine visible under his coat, neck stretching out, like someone had wrapped a noose around it and let his body hand loosely to the ground, forcing it to elongate, begging for his feet to touch the ground again

His antlers wrung around each other, twisting and curling around the other. Radioactive green spider webs wormed their way up his uncovered skin, cracking it and illuminating the both of them, in a sickly fluorescent light. 

His eyes, were so blank and dull that Charlie pushed herself back into the sofa. 

His face was almost limp, the tight smile had dropped away, leaving his skin loose and flabby, and the stitching pinged as they snapped away. He looked dead. Well and truly dead. 

“Please…” his voice was devoid of static, shallow, whispery and hollow. Like his mouth couldn't understand the words and was too far away from his throat to get them out. “Do tell me, Charlie. What did you see? ”

Thickly she swallowed. “You, I saw you.” She cleared her mouth of the bile and gulped it down. “I saw you, Alastor. Hurt, hungry and sick.” 

Standing up from the sofa, she pushed his shoulders, forcing him to weakly step back from her. Sticking a black matte nail to the cross on his forehead. She lent down to him, drawing them to the same level once again, she gripped an antler, keeping him still in place. 

Charlie felt both his ears twitch in tandem with the warm hand on the smooth bone. “You can’t scare me, Alastor. I saw . Nothing you do to me will ever be as terrifying as that.” 

Alastor tugged back, forcing her hand to tighten around his antler. His mouth solidified, and the loose, wrinkled skin, pitched back into the permanent smile, stitched loosening as it did. 

“Seeing my friends hurt is far worse than anything, anything you could do to me right now, Alastor.” she shook his head, following him forward as he compressed down. She looked right at him and his usual form. 

“Really. Do you want to test that theory, Charlie?” He asked her simply. 

“Really,”  she confirmed. 

“I can think of some, unbelievably awful things that could be done to you. And it wouldn’t even hurt.”  Alastor pushed against her hand. Eyes, dilating and lips curled over his teeth. 

She grimaced, speaking quietly, “But that's not you, Alastor.” she scoffed at him. “You may be an Overlord. But you would never, ever do that. You’re not Valentino, Vox, or even Velvette. They would. But not you .” 

“Are you truly sure, Princess?” Alastor, pushed back against her grip, forcing himself to loom over her. His shadow bled into hers. 

“ Yes! ”  

Planting her feet, she shoved him back, switching their positions. She walked them back to the seat he always took in the lobby. With one last shove, she pushed him down, knees cracking as he fell backwards. 

“I’m sure. Unlike them, you don’t enjoy that kind of thing. You may be a bad person, Alastor.  But you’re not cruel. Not like that.” 

Pushing his head back into the plush seating, her chest heaved. You knew, fundamentally, that he let her push him. Either out of exhaustion, pain or simply surprise at Charlie’s attitude. 

Lights flickered, and the electrical hum of the pressure building invaded the hotel. Sweat beaded on both their skin. 

Keeping him pinned in place, she spoke down to him. Loosely she wondered how much she would get away with before he snapped. 

“You, you, You - are hurt!” she screeched, distantly the sound of a bulb shattering shook the air, glass twinkling down to the floor. 

“And you, fuckface!” she pulled him closer to her, his eyes were wide, pupils small and smile straining, simply begging to fall, his breath caught. “Are going to accept our help! You hear me? You are going to lay down and let us care for you, got it?”

Her horns felt like hot pokers digging into the delicate skin of her forehead. Hair whipping around her like a sudden storm. The static rose once again, sticking fuzzily against the walls and their bodies, oppressing them both. 

“My dad is going to walk through the door!” Charlie jabbed a claw at the aforementioned door. “And you are going to let him heal you, we’ll pin you down for all we care. You are getting healed, Alastor!” Her chest was hauled and dragged with quick, sharp breaths. 

And Alastor. Well, Alastor simply.

Snapped. 

He snarled forward. Limbs being pulled out from under him, twisting around each other, his torso looped in thick gangly spirals, jacket glued to his body like a second skin, clothes stretching and adhering to their master's whims. The pinging sound was drowned out by the sickly sound of bones crunching, teeth clacking against each other like they were too loose for his gums. 

Drip. 

Spider-like appendages overshadowed and bulked over her. Charlie fell back, collapsing to the hard ground. Alastor crouched over her. Drool lapped at the edges of his mouth. Static crackled and surged around them. 

Drip. 

“ Do not.” He ground out through clenched, squeaking teeth, “ Ever. speak to me like that again, Charlotte. Do not test me. I may not be a cruel man. But do not assume I am a good one.” 

“I…don’t.” She panted out, heart about to burst, banging against her ribs, compressing her arteries like bits of jelly. A long hand smoothed around her delicate throat, pressing down on pale skin, leaving a trail of red to bleed around the hand. 

“But… I k-know… that you eat bad people… I know t-that you despise the Vs…” A gasp of oxygen failed to reach her lungs. The hand, mercifully loosened allowing honeyed air to breach her body. 

“That you hate how they treat the s-souls under their care…” she choked, “You would never treat Husk or Niffty that way. You may o-own them but you’re not cruel to them like you could be-e.” 

Drip. Drip. 

The sound of wet sludge stopped both of them. Charlie’s immaculate white and red ensemble was bleached with crimson. The rub red and snow white was being stained. A thick, gooey discharge bled onto her. 

Both their gazes flickered down to his chest. The pressure around her throat disappeared as he leaned on both arms, looming over her like a hunter in search of its prey. 

“Shit.” Charlie finalised for him when the dripping didn’t stop. Alastor crawled back from her, becoming smaller as he did so. He slumped back into the chair. Crossing one leg over the other. He faced forward, looking down at her. 

Bringing a hand up to the sore skin around her throat, she rubbed and soothed the inflamed skin, luckily he hadn't broken it.

 “...Alastor.” Charlie sat up, leaning on her knees and tracked along his body again. And there they were, watching the other watch them. Alastor watching Charlie watch him. 

“That’s quite enough of that, Charlie.” He said, the usual tone and radio soundtrack filtered behind his voice.  “I think that’s quite enough.” He reiterated,  looking at the skin around her throat. 

“My apologies, Charlotte .”  Charlie didn’t think she’d ever heard Alastor’s voice so soft and quiet. His Louisiana accent broke through against the building radio buzz. 

“...Alastor?” 

Charlie crawled forward, just in time to stop him from fully slumping to the floor. He curled over her body, he was clammy, sweat clinging to his suit, dampening it and bleeding into hers. His nose pressed into her back and the warmth of the pooling blood oozed onto her shirt. 

Alastor went limp in her arms.

At the top of her lungs, mustering that power she exhibited over the Radio demon just a few minutes before. She screamed. 

“ Vaggie! ”

Chapter Text

Alastor burdened down on Charlie, his lythe and compact form was surprisingly heavy, pushing down over her shoulder like Atlas hefting the weight of the sky. 

Alastor’s listless shape had contented itself over one of her shoulders, his pungent weight forcing her to hold her arm angled over his knobbly spine, fingers clenched and grasped at the vertebrae to hold him up and avoid further damage for his aggravated wound. 

The deer's quick pulse thudded against her skin, he was cool to the touch, leaving frozen patches that trickled runny, potent sweat through his clothes and onto hers. The sickly odour of rot coated her nostrils.  

“Vaggie!” Charlie wailed, echoing her voice up the staircase. She focused on holding him up. Pointedly ignoring the wet warmth that she had started to swim in, the puddle around them thickened into a mushy mixture of body fluids. 

“Vaggie! Please , Vaggie!” Charlie’s face dampened with salt, and warm tears tickled her lips, falling into her mouth. Drying her mouth and cracking the tender skin on her lip. 

Clenching her eyes shut she breathed in and out. 

In and out. 

In and out. 

Sudden soft hands lifted the weight off of her. Glancing up revealed Husker. Face pulled into a drown, Angel Dust standing behind him, hands positioned to grab something, anything at a moment's notice. 

Husk grasped his boss, heaving the limp chest to his own. Alastor’s knees and hips snapped loose as he was moved. Husk heaved the man back another few steps and the limbs popped back into their sockets. 

Charlie flinched at the sound. 

Alastor’s mouth was relaxed, shut tightly, almost sewn closed. The stitches along the sides, once again visible and the skin loose and inflamed with strain. 

Charlie flopped back against the floor, knees giving out from under her for the second time that night. This was the worst of those two events

“Angel, grab him,” Husk said earnestly. Ears flickering towards the spider. 

Angel took a few steps forward. “Right.” He said, reaching with all four arms to the Radio Demon. They wrapped under Alastor’s arms alongside Husker’s. The lower pair clasped at his lower back. 

“Careful now, Legs,” Husk muttered, turning his back to Angel. Extending his wings away from himself. 

Angel, understanding Husk’s idea, carefully altered his hold on Alastor so he was facing Husk, antlers poked into Angel’s delicate skin, but he didn’t seem to notice, nor care. 

 “Gently does it,” Husk said, bracing as the weight of Alastor hit his Back. he groaned as Angel’s hands quaked. 

“Lower him slowly onto me.” Husk reprimanded without real heat.  

Angel hesitated, pulling the weight back towards himself. “Are you sure about this?” 

“Yeah, be slow,” Husk said. 

“...Okay.” Husk grabbed onto the back of Alastor’s legs. Hefting the weight upwards on his back. Already, red stained the grey fur, once again, brandishing a member of the hotel. 

Angel stood back up to his full height, hands a steady presence, ready to catch Alastor if he fell. 

Charlie too, stood back up.  Slowly they started to make their way to the stairs, taking each step one at a time with precision worthy of prizes. 

Niffty and Vaggie met them at the top of the stairs. Faces grim. They turned and led the way to Alastor’s room without speaking. 

Niffty dragged a medical supply box behind her with practiced ease. Calmly, they all entered the elevator up to the sixth floor. Only the sound of sludge hitting the metallic floor and echoing off the walls could be heard. 

With a ping, the lift doors opened to Alastor and Angel’s floor. Going down past Angel’s neon purple and sparkly door they went to the end of the hallway. 

Vaggie, using the master key, unlocked Alstor’s bedroom door. Above them, the hallway lights flickered in distress. Vaggie pushed his door open with a shoulder, flushing her hands away from touching it. 

Alastor, like other patrons of the hotel, had a red carpeted floor, and burgundy walls with white and gold accents. The remodel had allowed for more creative liberties to be taken thanks to a magical intervention. 

The centre light was a stunning apple tree design, with woven snakes carved into it. Each branch had dripping crystals crying from it. Angel tears , Lucifer had called them. Angel Dust flicked the switch on, illuminating the room in a warm yellowed glow. 

Charlie was the last to enter the privacy of Alastor’s room. Following in after Niffty, she watched Husk deposit his owner onto the bed, it was four poster, dramatic and old. Made of harsh blacks and browns, each post was decorated with ivy and small fireflies that seemingly were stuck to the posts. 

Angel’s heels clicked across the carpet as he manifested his tertiary arms to help Husk gently lower Alastor upright on the bed. 

“Jacket off,” Husk said and Angel complied, rolling up his sleeves and using all six arms to remove the red item of clothing, it was stained and sweaty, patchy and sodden. He dropped it to the floor quietly before he started on Alastor’s tie and shirt. 

Angel and Husk’s conversation was lost in Charlie’s ear. Instead, her eyes were drawn to the extension that had been clearly added by himself.

It was beautiful in hindsight, fireflies dotted the sky, sprinkled around, like perfectly placed stars, illuminating the forever present night sky, it was cloudless, and grew out from the back of Alastor’s room. 

Thick, long vines and rooms carved into the hotel's infrastructure, like claws hooking into skin. Leaving permanent scars. The trees bent down curving down to etch themselves into the hotel, leaves hanging down over the partition. 

Water spilt onto the red carpet flooring before it dipped, mud thickly kay by the water's edge, lapping at the hotel and something else. 

It smelt like water, moss and something irrevocably old. The Bayou, because that's all it could have been. 

Vaggie had been it before. When she went to Alastor’s room with the eggbois. She had never described it as this. It was a mess of reality and other. Ripping the corporal world at its literal seams. 

From the corner of her eye, Charlie could see Niffty opening a chest of drawers and pulling out soft-looking, cotton clothes, moth bitten and stretched at the hems. Well-loved and aged. 

Just like Husk’s bar, it was oddly placed, not really belonging, having no sense of attachment to the hotel. 

And it was so silent. No hum, no buzz, no radio. It was silent. Beyond silent. Charlie felt, for just a moment, that if she spoke her voice would be absorbed by the Bayou. Sucked in and swallowed whole, nothing more than a meagre meal. 

Her steps towards the wetland were halted by prickly paws and razors gripping her bicep. Only pinching but the sensation bit at her. 

“Don’t,” Husk said, letting her arm go. 

She turned around, putting her back to the Bayou. 

Suddenly, the sound pierced her ears again, as if the void had untangled its web from her. The others in the room were busy and fussing, Niffty clicking open a first aid kit and pulling out a needle and thread. 

Angel shoved Alastor’s sweat-infused clothes into a basket in the corner of his room, by his desk. Husk pulled black and red pinstripe pyjamas up over Alastor’s concave, sharp hips.

 Vaggie stood next to her, slowly etching her hand closer to Charlie’s before Charlie caught her pinkie and intertwined their hands together. 

Niffty had climbed up on the bed, she sat parallel to Alastor’s bare chest. It raised and dropped with almost microscopic movements. His ears were pinned back, falling like his hair to the side, sweat-damp and sticky with fluids.

 While his eyes were rolled back in his skull, the red iris was surrounded by black sclera that breached out of his sockets and painted over the grey complexion of his face. 

His breath came out cool and visible in the syrupy fervour of Alastor’s room. 

“Fuck me, he’s cold guys,” Angel said, shaking the frost out of his hand. Charlie and Vaggie watched Niffty work with practice ease and surgical precision. 

Her little sharp nails made it easy for her to thread the needle and handle it to Husk. She pushed the skin of the wound closed, small fingers barely leaving a mark on the inflamed skin as Husk pulled and tugged the threat through Alastor’s chest.

Similar to Rosie’s sanctuary, the angelic wound was dripping gold, like angel blood. As if an angel was attempting to claw itself out through the gaping hole in Alastor’s torso. 

It was tinged with black and red, thickening the gold and forming a thick sludge and slowly pooling in the caverns and craters of the deer's body. It was chunky and fat, curdling together before hardening and creating a crusty layer over Alastor’s skin. 

Removing his shirt and tore away any of the previously formed scarring scabs, leaving dips and groves around the edges of the cut. 

Without Alastor being stretched and wrung out like a particularly old towel Charlie could see the depth of the cut. A chunk of Alastor was missing, like the guitar blade had pinned the deer like prey and expertly chosen how to take a piece out of him. 

“He don’t feel that, does he?” Angel asked, leaning over Niffty to watch Husk sew the Overlord back together, previous attempts at holding him together could be seen as Husk made new incisions. 

“Nah.” Husk said, not looking up, but slowing down his work to speak, “Look, he ate earlier so his body’s already regenerating itself.” 

They all leaned over the bed to watch as the top of the cut scabbed and left pinkish fragile tissue behind, the stitching still protecting it against reopening. 

Husk continued sewing Alastor like he was nothing more than a rag used to mop up spillages on the bar top. Niffty’s razor-like fingers methodically pinched down, a shy faster than Husk’s stitching, keeping the settling skin from popping back open. 

Angel’s face scrunched up, prying eyes work their way up and down his body. Vaggie dropped her hand to smack the back of Angel’s fluffy hair. 

“Are you fucking serious right now?” She accused. “You’re eyeing him up while he’s literally a kid's textile project?”

Letting out a disappointed sign Charlie just said, “Angel.” 

“What?” Angel twisted around to face them. “Ew no. ” he shook his head back and forth, “Was just thinkin’ how he’s all skinny like, don’t he eat a fuckin' lot?” Angel questioned, turning around to ask Husk, “Though he was a bingeing guy?”

Husk let out another massive exhale, warm breath colliding with Alastor’s cool. “Yeah.” He said removed, “Al, he’s got issues that followed him here.” Husk stabbed at the grey, almost translucent skin again. 

“Like what?” Vaggie stiffly asked, like having to care about Alastor was pulling her brain in knots. 

Husk stopped, leant back and reached for the bandages off to his side of the bed. “Niff.” He said, signaling to her, she looked up and took the bandages from Husk’s open paw. 

The cat demon crawled both arms under Alastor’s and yanked him up, his neck audibly snapped at the hash movement but the man himself didn’t stir from his state of nothingness. 

The Bayou made a loose-limbed groaning noise from behind her and Husk gentled his movements after a quick glance at the moor. Niffty started to hop around and bandage the deer up. 

“ Like what? ” Vaggie repeated once the thing behind them quietened again. 

“Like I ain’t completely sure Al was Al near the end.”  He craned his neck to face the three at the end of the bed. “He’s said some real messed up crap, about what he was like topside. The shit he got wrapped up in when he was alive…” 

Husker paused, helping Niffty tie off the bandages that wrapped the length of Alastor’s emaciated form. 

“Mister Alastor doesn’t really remember how he died,” Niffty said, jumping down from the bed and coming to stand in front of them. “Said he was just hungry. Like really, really hungry .” 

“Then he was here and still fucking starving,” Husk said, thumping his feet back on the carpeted floor. “He’s always hungry. Never satisfied or full and all he can ever eat are people.” 

“So he looks like the poster child for anorexia because his body doesn't know when he’s eaten?” Angel said bluntly. Peering at the deer with a look of thinly veiled disgust. 

“ Eh, basically?” Husk shrugged. “He doesn’t tell me how it works.” They looked at him. “What? I’m not a fuckin’ mind reader.” He shrugged.  

“Better to leave him be for now.” Husker furthered, walking towards the door. He shooed them to the door before rushing out himself. Tail perked up, Charlie thought it almost curved through his legs. 

“And, Princess.” Charlie snapped up to look at the bartender. “Call your fucking father.” 

Calling her father and telling him to and she’s quoting Husk here; “Hurry the fuck up and get his ass down here before we have to bury a fuckin’ body in the yard”.  Had never been so nerve-wracking. 

She had hidden in her and Vaggie’s room, preparing to call her father. She pressed the dial button and brought the phone up to her ear, waiting for his voice to zip down the phone line. 

Click click

“Char Char!” He squealed “And what can I do for you, duckling?” 

“Dad, we need you here now.” She clutched the phone to her ear with two hands, pressing it up to the cartilage. 

“Charlie?” 

“I think he’s dying, Dad?” It bubbled over, the day, the stress, and the fact that the man who helped her start the hotel was possibly dying in the room next door flooded her systems, tsunami-like and downing her. 

Maybe it was dramatic, Husk said he’d be fine, but so help her, she was scared well and truly scared . His form in Rosie’s sanctuary had nothing on this. Nothing.  

Alastor was right. In the end. 

She was scared of something he could do. 

“Oh, Sweetie. ” Her father soothed down the phone. It meant nothing without him there to hold her.

She blubbered wetly, bobs of tears once again cracked her lips open. She bit them, sucking back a pitiful sound. Copper and iron tasted bitter in her mouth and she gulped it down greedily to escape the sound. 

“Dad. Please. Please. ”  Snot dribbled down her face. Her blazer wou;d be stained beyond repair by the time wash day came around.

 “Can you come earlier?” Charlie whispered the words as if an eavesdropper would rob her of them if she didn’t. 

“ Of course, duckling. ” She quivered at the nickname. “I can be prepared by tomorrow morning.”

“Early?” Charlie asked childishly. 

She felt two feet tall and begging her father to pick her up. She can’t remember when he stopped doing that. When did he put her down and never pick her up again?

“ Early. ”  He confirmed, giving a gentle sigh. 

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you th- ”  She rushed out, faster and faster and her chest beat wildly and faster and faster and fast-

“Breathe, Charlie.”  Lucifer hushed, gentle and kind. She tugged air back into her emptied lungs, huffing in each precious breath. 

“I’ll be at your door early tomorrow, Charlie, okay?” He sounded like a proper parent soothing a young child. 

“...Okay.”

“Yeah?” He questioned her. 

“Y eah. I love you.”

“I know, sweetie. I love you too. Bye-bye.” He ended the call with the sound of a kiss. 

Leaving the comfort of the hotel to once again delve into the cannibal kingdom of hell for the second time that week was not something Charlie Morningstar had planned. 

But, here she was, once again, on her lonesome trekking through the prettily maintained and clean streets to find the Queen of cannibalism.

Alastor’s partner? Wife? Charlie wasn’t sure what to call their strange relationship between the matriarch and patriarch of the cannibal colony. 

The bell trilled, notifying Rosie at the front desk of her arrival. This time, with the large hat atop her head. Rosie stood, sashaying towards Charlie. 

Only a grin on her face, eyes blank. 

“Charlie, darling!” Rosie commemorated, arms wide, frilly sleeves billowing around her. “What have I done to receive not one but two visits so close together from the Princess!”

The woman closed in on Charlie, she paused, a few feet from her. “Alastor.” 

The foreboding sense of Deja vu washed over Charlie, she was almost scared she’d see Alastor twisted and swollen in a room too small for his bloated, elongated, mutated form. She blinked and was back with Rosie. 

“What do you need? She demanded. Hands collapsed behind her back. 

Very simply and without stuttering, Charlie said one word; “ Meat. ” 

“Of course.” Rosie snapped her fingers, her heart clenched at the familiarity she felt at the action. “Hands out, dear.”

A large, brown, sloppy box appeared in Charlie’s arms. The contents were flesh. Warm, steamed and juicy, it dripped onto her shoes. 

They stood staring at each other. 

“Do take care of him, Charlie,” Rosie said sweetly. Lovingly. 

“We will. My Dad’s coming down to help soon, so Al will be better in no time.” Charlie said, attempting to make her voice sound promising. 

Rosie nodded her head, thankful. 

“Then you guys can have your little… dates again.” She wiggled her eyebrows. Grinning up at the darling Lady . 

“What.” And then she laughed, descended into a fit of humourless giggles. “Oh my dearest girl, you are quite a riot!” 

“What?”

“What indeed.” Rosie brought a hand to cover her chuckles this time. She patted Charlie’s cheek once again. 

The two of them stood in a silence Charlie would later describe as pointedly dumb. 

“...Okay then…” Charlie dragged out. Eyes darting anywhere but Rosie. 

 “Now, off with you, I say.” She made a shooing motion with her hands, pushing Charlie and the box back out of the door. 

Before the door trilled shut Rosie said; “You’re very sweet, Princess, misguided, but sweet nonetheless.” and the door closed with a soft click.

Awaiting her dad's arrival had never been so tense in her life. Charlie thought it almost felt like being six again and her parents not speaking to each other. 

Slowly drifting apart like Jupiter's rings, splitting apart and fading from their lives. Slowly taking back the parts of themselves they’d lost. 

It was six in the morning. Charlie sat at the little cherry oak table in the kitchen. A glass of cool milk, clasped between her hands, fingers twinkling methodically over the glass. The kitchen door was sprung wide open, she’d spun the chair around to face the entranceway. The wet box sat in the fridge of the kitchen. taking up the majority of the room. Rosie had instructed them to give Alastor the contents only after he was better. 

So Charlie would be able to see anyone. For a split second, she wished she’d never found Alastor that night. Never learnt he was hurt. That way she could remain blissfully ignorant to the truth.

 None the wiser. Let him heal on his own. She's sure he’d be able to do it without angelic assistance. It might have taken longer but he’d done it. He always found a way. He was creepily resistant. 

Charlie blinked and Angel stood in the doorway, clad in a baby pink t-shirt and black sweats that came to a halt in the middle of his spindly shin. They weren't his. 

“Heya, Princess.” He said quietly as if the other residents would come running at the slightest of sounds. 

“Angel, hi.” 

“You doing, alright?” He asked, flicking the kettle’s switch and boiling the water. He grabbed a mug and tea bag. Leaning back on the counter to face the back of her head. 

“Not really, no,” Charlie admitted, voice small and closed. 

“Yeah, me too.” Angel sighed and poured the water into his frosted blue mug. A comfortable silence overtook them. 

“Waiting for Dad. He promised he’d be here early.” Charlie said, breaking the air like a twig. 

“I know,” Angel said coming around to sit across from her. His back facing the doorway. Forcing Charlie to take a break from her vigilant watch of the entranceway. 

She gripped at the glass, fingers sliding along the smoothness of it. “I’m worried, Angel. Like really worried.”

“I know, Toots. We all are. We may have our issues with Al but he’s been here since the start. And…” Angel said, voice getting quiet before trailing off and dissipating into the open air of the kitchen. 

Charlie pressed. “And?” 

“I don't know.” Angel shrugged, sipping his tea. “Just get the feeling he’s softening up, is all.”

“You really think that?” Charlie asked, nearly falling out of her chair to face the spider. 

“Well, yeah. He helped us with the angels of extermination day, don’t get me wrong it fucks me off that he threw a pissy fit and disappeared for days. But, he came back .” 

“He did.” She brightened up, as the sun had shone upon her and flowers were blooming under her feet. 

“Not just to get Husk and Niffty and then fuck off to fuckwhere fuckville, but he came back and stayed. Here. with us. ” 

Perking up and downing the glass in three quick gulps she slammed it down and rushed out of the room. 

Quickly backtracking to thank Angel, before she sped off to her and Vaggie’s room. Throwing open the door, Vaggie groaned at the intrusion. But, just this once, Charlie ignored her in favour of chucking her clothes on. Getting dressed at record speed.

“Charlie?” Vaggie mumbled into the quilt, “What’re you doing? ” She rolled over to take a look at the Princess. 

“Getting ready for my dad, he’s going to be here soon.” She said, kissing Vaggie on the forehead, mirroring earlier interactions. 

Sprinting down the hallway Charlie battled the stairs, legs only just complying with the speed of her feet and narrowly avoiding the potential embarrassing injury. 

She made it to the final set of stairs just as Husk opened the front door. She smoothed flyaway strands and calmed herself. 

“Charlie!” her dad said, arms open wide. He grasped at her, spinning her once, twice, thrice around. 

He let her drop back to her feet. He looked the exact same as the last time she’d seen him. 

The starched and pressed suit, too big top hat, little kitten heels he refused to admit to and white tailcoat. 

“Dad!” she yelled back with just as much enthusiasm. 

Giving into the urge she wrapped her arms around him, burning her face in the pad on his shoulder. He brought his arms around her and gave soothing, long strokes along her back. 

After a few moments, he moved back, letting his arms loosen. “Now, let's go fix your bellhop, Hm?” He grinned cheekily. This was the only time Charlie was glad Alastor couldn’t hear her dad. 

Lucifer and Husk made the climb to Alastor’s room.

Niffty must have removed the soiled bandages somewhen in the night because when they entered the bedroom Charlie could see Alastor’s bare, thin, scarred chest open to the sticky, heat of the air. 

Instead of immediately moving to the Radio Demon her dad froze at the sight of the otherness the Bayou emitted every time someone entered the room. Radio static was a dull buzz under the currents pulsing from the Bayou.

Her dad turned to her, his movements stilted and jagged. He looked from the Bayou to her. 

“Charlie.” Lucifer clicked his tongue.

 His form still trained on Alastor’s gurgling breaths. Slodge and clumps of ichor abandoned his body in favour of traversing the plains of his gargantuan emaciated physique. The Radio Demon let out a spluttering hiss as he quivered around each stilted wet breath. 

Dragging her eyes away from the deer, she gazed through glassy eyes up at Lucifer’s broad shoulders. 

He turned, a frown etched along his immaculate and unblemished face. “Charlie, was he human when he died?” 

“...What?” 

“Charlie, please, sweetling, I need to know if he died a human.”

Charlie shook her head gripping at the stray strands of hair that escaped its ties. Husk, patting her back soothingly, claws a gentle pressure through her suit. 

“He can’t remember.” The cat said, “He knows he died and ended up here but he can’t be sure.” Charlie’s eyes rolled back and forth between the two of them. 

Raising befuddled brows The King of Hell zoned in on the bartender. “How does he think he died?” He asked. 

“He was shot,” Husk said simply, Charlie felt the ghost of a whimper float away from her.  “In the head, it's what the cross is.” Husk pointed at Alastor's forehead, where the bright red ‘X’ glowed faintly throughout the room. Illuminating the air above him. 

Humming, her father turned back to his unwilling patient. “In the woods? Was he busy? ”

Husk sneered at Alastor grimly before replying. “...Yeah.”

“ I see. ” Lucifer crowded back over to Alastor, towering over him. The fallen angel studied his broken body with glowing golden eyes. 

 “Alright then.” He finalized before a look of loathing crossed his face before settling on simple pity. 

“Of course, he decided to make my job harder, prick.” 

He unbuttoned his coat, setting it over the bottom of the bed and working on crudely rolling up his shirt sleeves and loosening his collar. His hat was left forgotten on the floor. Charlie didn’t remember when it had fallen off.  

“Hold, his jaw open, would you, Husker.” The gruff cat complied and strode forward, setting his paws on either side of Alastor’s mouth, ready for his next command. 

“Huh, Dad, what’re you doing?” Charlie meant to go forward to the two men, but something stopped her, like an invisible string holding her back, away from the scene. 

“The sick fuck’s got a real nasty case of wendi- ” He stopped himself from continuing. 

It was the word again. Wendigo. Rosie had also said it before she gathered up Alastor and slipped him onto a sofa. Wendigo. 

“Wendigo?” Charlie whispered to the air. They turned simultaneously to her. 

“You heard of it?” Husk asked, paws still cradling Alastor’s jaw. 

“Rosie mentioned it when I went to see her for the first time .” Charlie fiddled with her hands, twirling her fingers again and again. “She said Alastor was like that.” their air became stale. Rotting under the weight. 

“He’s not like it, Princess. He is it. ” Husk grouched, not unkindly. 

“He was hungry and cold.” Her dad’s voice had become a ghost of its former self. Any animosity held evaporated as he eyed down at Alastor. 

 “The perfect target. A young, mixed race man in the Bayou of Louisiana.” Her dad said. His eyes held with Husk’s having some kind of long, nonverbal conversation. 

Finally, he burned back to her. “He was consumed by hunger and fear, Charlie. It took him in a moment of complete and utter weakness .” 

Alastor. Weak. No, that didn’t happen. He had moments when he faltered when he was not entirely behind his own eyes. When he switched off and relied on the most basic of basic instincts. 

But he always, always pulled it back. Forcing himself back in control. Alastor had always been so– 

Rosie’s gentle, parenting voice invaded her mind. “You didn’t think Alastor only dabbled in the occult and cannibalistic lifestyle down here did you?” 

Did he - Did Alastor turn himself into something inhuman when he was alive?

“It followed him here and now they’re thoroughly intertwined. I can’t tell where he ends and where it starts.” Lucifer’s voice snapped her back out of her head. 

Banishing the thoughts, a glimmer of hope sprouted in the pit of her stomach. 

“He’s not the wendigo?” She prayed sanguinely. A small froth of promise started etching up through her body, spilling from her lips sagely.  

“Well, he is now.” Lucifer voiced morosely. He brushed Alastor’s hand back with a slow-moving hand. “He must have been so very, very scared. ” He said gently. 

Taking a deep-seated breath her dad planted his feet and ground his face.

 “Husk. If you would.”  A complying nod and a minuscule snap opened Alastor’s jaw, unhinging it to a natural width. 

Lucifer brought a pale, unblemished, smooth arm up to Alastor’s mouth. Bursting forward, the invisible strings that froze her in place snapped, winding back into the Bayou. She made a scratch and grabbed her dad. Pulling his arm away from the awaiting arm. 

Closer now, she could see the thick, red tongue, spilling down Alastor’s throat waiting for its next meal. 

“Dad! What are you doing!” She squawked, “He-he Alastor would- Dad what are you doing are you, insane!” 

“ Charlie. External healing won't work on him. At least not with a wound like that. He made a pointed gesture at Alastor’s rotten, grotesque, spilling torso.  

“It’s okay, okay. ” Her dad patted her head, “Healing’s got to be internal this time, duckling.” 

He pushed her away, he’d never done that before. Not like this. He pushed her a few feet away, making her stumble like a newborn foal. 

Making her watch him be devoured, eaten, swallowed and consumed . It was a cruel torture befitting of the Devil. But not her dad. Never her dad. 

Bringing the arm back to Alastor’s drooling mouth. He let it very simply sit there. In the open jaws of a cannibal. Like the awaiting mouth was nothing more than a particularly interesting art piece that deserved a fine eye for critique. 

As soon as Alastor’s tongue lapped at the arm. The jaw clenched down. Husk jumped back. Letting go of the offending muscle and watching the scene with Charlie. 

Alastor’s eyes rolled back towards them, and the ichor black webs dissipated, fading back into grey skin that was darkening as the seconds passed. He bolted up, sitting up for the first time in days, clawed hands yanked and clenched at the skin of Lucifer’s arm. 

Thick, heavy sounds of gulps filled the room, bludgeoning around them and brimming throughout the room. Filling it from the floor to the ceiling with sounds of chewing, gnawing and feasting. 

It was different. This was different from when she saw him at Rosie’s. That was a pressing situation, where Alastor was tearing himself apart figuratively and literally. 

His lips curled around her dad's arm sucking in loud, noisy mouthfuls of golden glowing blood. She wondered if it would scar. She hoped, at the very least it didn’t. 

His blood was illuminating the room, overpowering the sickly red and green that had clung to the walls and clotted the atmosphere. It dribbled down onto the red sheets and Alastor’s legs. Spraying the dark room with flecks of gold. 

And slowly, so very slowly, the wound on Alastor’s chest began to knit itself back together. Like a zip and needle were webbing it back into its rightful place. 

The long tongue never allowed a stray droplet to go too far from its awaiting presence, rolling the muscle to catch any wandering juices. 

The centre of the wound started to stick together, webs of new skin and scar tissue adding to a wide collection of existing carnage. 

The heaves and gulps slowed too. Teeth almost gently gnawing at Lucifer’s arm. Alastor’s grip loosened and then only his teeth kept the King of Hell and Overlord connected.

Chapter Text

Only the sound of Alastor’s yellowed greasy teeth peeling back thin layers of her dad’s arm sounded throughout the room. 

His emaciated, skeletal arms flattened next to him and the ruby red and black Ombre ears were pulled back, relaxed. Eyes spinning in circular dials, rolling like pins around his head, switching back from being glued to Lucifer to Husk.

 He ignored her. Glowing pupils washed over her before fixating on Husk. The seedy gasps around mouthfuls of thick golden fluid mixed with the red and white of her dad’s layers of arm. 

The deer no longer resembled the complexion of freshly fallen snow, taking on his more ashen-tinged skin. 

Finally, after what felt like decades, his teeth unclenched from Lucifer’s arm, leaving behind a golden, bloodied gorge in Charlie’s father. 

Alastor’s lips and chin were painted gold, it contrasted harshly against his skin. The remains of the blood started to steam, evaporating warmly into the air. The presence of angelic energy dissipated and Lucifer remained the only Angelic entity in the room.  

He heaved in, large gasps of air, filling emaciated, shriveled lungs with the much-needed air. 

“Dad…” Charlie etched forward, “Are, you, are you alright?”

“I’m fine, Charlie. It’ll heal up in no time.” He hid his dripping arm behind his back. Out of her sight. 

“Are you sure?” It was Husk who asked this, surprising both of the Morningstar’s, “I know, Boss can be… messy.” Husk decided on.

“Yes. I’m sure.” Turning back to his daughter, Lucifer brightened. “Oh!” Everyone in the room jumped at the boom of his voice. 

“That remains me, Charlie!” With a simple snap of golden shimmer a red-wrapped box with a white ribbon appeared balancing on his free hand. “This is for you.” He grinned toothily, cheeks a flushed red. 

“Dad,” Charlie said. “You didn’t have to get me anything.” 

He laughed nervously, eyes flickering around the room before landing back at her. “I made them. I just - well I’ve y’know been gone a while and - um. Yeah. those are for you.” Lucifer shifted from foot to foot, anxiety spilled from him in waves. 

Clutching the package to her chest, Charlie felt the upcoming burn of tears welling up behind her eyes again. “Dad, thanks.” She said, softly. Her dad, visibly brightened at the acceptance of the gift. 

“Oh - yeah. No problemo, Char.” He continued to rock back and forth on his heels. 

“Well this is all very well and good, but would you all mind leaving my room?”  Alastor said, voice tight. 

Simultaneously they all turned to face the deer mimic, he was dressed in his usual clothes, his microphone leant against the bed frame. 

He looked at them as if nothing had happened like his teeth didn’t glisten an unearthly gold, like he hadn’t devoured the King of Hell’s arm like a starved child. Like he hadn't made them worry about him. 

“The man of the hour,” Lucifer sneered, flames built behind his eyes, “Finally awake.” 

“But of course, your highness. But of course.” Alastor swung his legs over the side of the bed, snapping his fingers and hiding his hooves with sleek black shoes. 

He stood, walking carefully, slowly towards the three of them. His legs wobbled only slightly like they were unused and new. He towered over Lucifer, looking down on him. 

Charlie clenched her fists ready to dismantle anything. Both of them stared into each other's eyes. A few seconds later Alastor crumbled, tired, drained, loose and soft. 

“Thank you.” He said. Next to her, Charlie saw Husk’s red brows raise beyond his forehead. “For… helping me, Charlie.” He shifted his gaze up to her. Lucifer scoffed but didn’t say a word, decidedly remaining silent 

Alastor perked up, mischief passing over his face. Husk sighed, rolling his eyes.

“And of course, our merciful King.” He licked his lips, fat tongue brushing over yellowed teeth. “You truly were… delicious. ” He bent at the waist and flicked Lucifer’s nose. 

“Fuck you, Alastor,” Lucifer growled. Eye twitching under the brim of his hat. 

“Ew. No.” 

“What?” Her dad raised a confused brow, flicking his eyes to look at her as if she knew. 

“What.” Alastor replied nonchalantly.  

Charlie shrugged, the package rustling as she did so. Who knew with Alastor.  Lucifer smiled, and with another golden sparkling snap, she dissolved into a wisp of sand and glitter.

 “Good luck, Charlie.” He said. It echoed around the room, getting caught on the Bayou’s branches and roots. 

Righting himself, Alastor stood up straight. He moved towards her. Now that she knew what was under all those layers Charlie couldn’t not see how his body was piled on top of each other, held together with rubber bands and silly string, interwoven with something other.

Alastor stood in front of her. Red pupils unblinking and large. “Charlotte. My deepest apologies.” 

Charlie flinched back as his finger brushed the edge of her collar, gently touching where the bruised ring painted her skin. 

A warm green overtook her neck and the pressure released. The bruises faded into nothing. Like they were never there. 

“I truly am…Sorry, Charlie.” He ground out, the words hitting the backs of his teeth. As if the sentence caused him physical pain. 

“I know.” She said, Deep down, Charlie knew she’d never be able to look at Alastor’s hands without feeling their frozen grip around her throat. 

“Are you?” Funnily enough, it was Husk who asked this, inserting him in between Charlie and his Owner. “Are you, really?” 

“Of course, Husker.” Alastor grinned widely. Charlie watched as his ears pushed back, the black tips folding back. Before Alastor forced them back up. “I…I shouldn’t have done what I did. And for that, I apologize.” 

Husk stepped back, tightly crossing his arms and huffing. The grouchy bartender had known Alastor for heaven knows how long. Charlie tried not to think about why Niffty and Husk were here. What brought them here. 

Her mind always swallowed the thoughts of why they sold their souls to Alastor. Angel Dust knew. Of that she was certain. Angel and Husk were close. Closer than most. As for Niffty, Charlie didn’t want to know what happened to her for a deal to be struck. 

Alastor stepped back from the both of them, once again creating the metaphysical wall between them. But now, Charlie knew. 

Alastor wasn’t like them. He couldn’t be. No matter how much he attempted to fit in with them. He wasn’t a Sinner, Alastor was an Overlord and he wasn't a demon, he was something else. 

While they all might be in hell, Alastor didn’t get the privilege to die as a human. To die whole, complete to die as himself. 

Alastor would always be on the outside. Stuck behind a wall he created as the consequence of his own actions. 

And that's when it hit her. Her foot slipped back, she stepped away from him. Alastor couldn’t go to heaven. He would never be able to repent, never able to redeem himself. Like a Hellborn, He wasn’t a human, not in the end. And like her, he would stay. 

“Anyway!” Alastor flourished, spinning his heels away from them.

“Shall we leave my room? I believe my Bayou is quite upset with all the visitors peering at it so frequently.” Alastor opened his door and gestured for them to leave. 

Following his lead, Charlie walked behind Husk and out the door, she got one last glimpse of the glowing Bayou, growing from the hotel wall, a distorted reality fraying thing before the door slammed shut and Alastor grinned down at her. 

“Shall we?” Alastor motioned to the grand elevator. They piled into it. Silence overtook them, Alastor humming along with the ever-present jazz that was coating  layers up layers of musical notes along the hotel’s foundations. 

The lift let out a quiet ding ding and the doors to the lobby opened. Nifty was bouncing around on one of the sofas gesturing with wide arms, in her little hands, two dead bugs were used as props. 

Rosie, the Cannibal Matriarch of the cannibal population sat opposite her, with rapt attention, head only flicking towards them before snapping back to pay attention to Niffty and her bug puppet show.  

“Rosie?” Charlie asked, looking at the large round hat adorned the woman's head.

“Oh, great,” Husk said, slumping past her and taking post behind the bar, pouring himself a drink. And taking a long sip. 

“Mister Alastor!” Nifty dropped the bugs, catapulting herself over to the deer. 

She latched onto his trouser leg and wormed her way up to his head, settling herself between his ears and antlers, which he grew outwards to allow her the room to settle. 

“Hello, Niffty, darling,” Alastor said, patting her on the head gently. The little cyclops grinned and started to distract herself with tufts of red around his ears. 

“All better then?” Rosie asked, once again taking small delicate sips from a fine china cup. The smell of Earl Grey tea wafted around the room, filling it with the homely smell and warmth of something distinctly motherly. 

“Well of course!” Alastor exclaimed as the two of them walked over to Rosie. Charlie settled on the sofa opposite them and Alastor sat himself down next to his fellow Overlord.

Rosie hummed, eyes scanning over him, the bitch black sclera and pupils unblinking as they followed Alastor's form. Seemingly checking for injury hidden by thick layers of cotton. 

She hummed again, “Good. very good.” 

Taking her empty hand Alastor planted a surprisingly gentle kiss to the back of it. “Have I ever disappointed you before, dear.” He asked. Stroking a thumb back and forth over her hand, soothingly. 

“No I suppose not.” Rosie said, shaking his hand from hers. The anger brimming under her hat broke through. “But you came close, Cher Coeur. ” She chastised, a language Charlie didn’t know spilt over her lips at the end. 

“Then I endeavour to repay you, Cher .” He said, lips curling around the words, smile gentle and loose around her. 

Rosie took a long, ladylike sip of her tea, she turned to face Alastor, crossing one leg over the other. “I suppose I can forgive you, I do have a favour to ask of you.” She grinned, full of teeth and tongue. 

“Oh, and whatever can I do for you, Rosie darling.” He leant forward, smile taking on a predatory look, completely ignoring Charlie. 

“Well…” Without taking her eyes off Alastor she removed the little cyclops cleaner and set her down on the carpet. 

He flickered an ear down to Rosie, allowing her to fiddle with the cartilage there and mess with the fluff. Rosie whispered in Alastor’s ear, both their smiles matching and bouncing off one another. 

They both let out mirroring giggles. “I see, I see.” Alastor finally said. “That sounds like a most satisfying event, Rosie, love.” 

“Indeed it does.” Rosie clawed over the edge of Alastor’s ear before letting the rapidly twitching appendage go.

Horror overtook Charlie’s features. “Al!” She choked out. 

They both turned to look at her, sitting back and relaxing in their chairs. Alastor looked relaxed for the first time in days, the tension released and his chest calm. 

“Yes, Charlotte?” Rosie asked, brows furrowed in annoyance. “What can we do for you?” 

“You - You can’t just say stuff like that here!” Charlie said lowly. “At least not in public!” 

They gave her matching timed blinks. “Excuse me?” Alastor asked. “And just what are you insinuating?” 

Charlie flashed back to the kitchen, when he’d questioned her the first time she said something like this. It simmered behind her eyes like a boiling pot. 

“Well, you know… stuff… like that…” She delicately skirted around the topic, careful not to startle either of them. 

“Stuff like what?” Behind them Husk let out a loud groan and his head thumped on the counter letting out another exasperated sigh. 

“Just…stuff… activities… relaxing… satisfying activities.” She waved her hands about, hoping he’d get it. 

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Charlie.”  He lied, smile broad and eyebrows raised above his hairline. 

“Alastor, I do believe our darling Princess is insinuating sex.” Rosie put a hand on his shoulder, tutted and shook her head.

“I beg your pardon.” 

Rosie shook her head again. “Just as I said, I do believe Charlie thinks we are in a romantic relationship.” 

Alastor shot around to look at Rosie, “Do I give off the impression of someone who would be interested in such … extracurriculars? ” He asked, eyes blinking owlishly at her. 

“No…” Charlie said, voice small. Like she was being scolded by a teacher. Alastor turned back to face her, once more leaning back and relaxing. 

“Exactly.” Now he looked particularly uncomfortable. He paused before continuing. Ears flicking roughly against static. 

“... I have no desire nor enjoyment from the activities you’re insinuating. Charlie. I never have. And I highly doubt I ever will.”

“It’s not because of… the other thing? ” She asked the Wendigo. 

“No, of course not, I’ve always been this way.”  He replied, catching where her mind had drifted off to.  “My relationship with Rosie has been and always will be a friendly one. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Guilt ate away at the bottom of her stomach. “Sorry.” she said, “I didn’t think.”

“It’s quite alright, dear,” Rosie said, leaning across to pat her hand. “Now,” She stood, as did Alastor, he offered her an arm and they linked together. “We have a thoroughly exhilarating dinner to get to.” 

And the two Overlords strode out of the front door. 

Charlie sank back in her chair groaning and covering her flushed face with her hands. “Have they always been like that?” She asked, wanting a response from the other inhabitants of the lobby.

“Yep!” Niffty said, a broom in hand, “Mister Alastor and Miss Rosie have always been really, really close! They’ve been friends for ages and ages!”

“Oh yeah, they ate the last person that asked Rosie what it was like fucking the Radio Demon.”  Husk inputted. “The one before that they fed him to his family.” 

“Oh,” Charlie said. “Charming.”

“Isn’t it just!” Niffty said scurrying after a hoard of bugs. 

“Niff.” Husk sighed into his bottle. 

Charlie, Princess of Hell and famed owner of the Hazbin Hotel twiddled her thumbs as she sat in one of the plush chairs in the lobby. The TV was off, black screen reflected her image back to her. 

She was dressed in silky red pyjamas, they had little ducks printed onto them. A gift from her father after the hotel was rebuilt. 

It was just past two in the morning, the clock mounted on the wall watched her, its round face, delicate and painted a forest green, the handles a shock of yellow against the face's darker complexion. 

She waited. And waited. The sound of  polished shoes tapping against the stairs perked her up. Charlie crossed her arms over her chest and forced a frown to grow over her face. 

The goal was to appear confident, demanding and powerful when facing down the Overlord. Angel called it an intervention , Vaggie, bless her soul, called it a take-down. Charlie supposed it could be seen as a mix of the two. 

Rosie and Alastor had spent a long, long while laughing at her expense, much to Charlie’s embarrassment. But, now Charlie Morningstar had to conjure that lost confidence back, for Alastor’s own sake. 

He may have been healed but that didn’t fix the crux of the problem. Alastor was a Wendigo. A never satisfied, malnourished, cavernous body howled with unfulfilled hunger that brimmed, spilling power. 

Alastor was gaunt, to the point where Charlie could count every rib, name every vertebrae and play his fingers like a particularly crude xylophone. His desiccated, ashen pale skin reflected death's own complexion, and it was pulled tightly over his bones, like the scars that painted along his limbs and torso held him together, like the stitches of his smile.

 Large eyes pushed back and around his sockets, the white sclera rustling back to reveal the true black of his eyes. 

Alastor took the complexion, the likeness of a gaunt skeleton, recently left out to rot in the woods. Perhaps freshly pulled from a shallow grave. What lips he had were bloody tatters, sewn up and stitched back in place, a permanent smile bracing his face for impact. Cool skin interwoven with the real Alastor. Well, what was left of him. 

It made Charlie wonder where Alastor’s mind started and where the Wendigo’s ended. Or, were they so intertwined with each other's beings, that neither of them truly existed anymore. It was instead coming together in a sort of stalemate Forever bound. 

A Wendigo body with Alastor’’s mind. Charlie didn’t know. Charlie didn’t want to know. But, she needed to. She had to.  

 Breathing deeply, Charlie filled her lungs with cool air tinged with jazz once again. It stuck to the walls and coated the floor thickly with its dated tune. The footsteps came to a slow stop in front of her. 

“Hello, Charlie,” Alastor said. It was the first time she’s heard his voice, his actual voice in days, layered with static and frequencies. Alastor.

  “My darling, what are you doing up at this hour, hm?” He asked. Spinning his microphone behind his back. 

“Al-” 

“Couldn’t sleep?” He cut her off, not unkindly. More impatient, “Well, I’ll have you know, I have just the trick for that!” He winked down at her. The Overlord started making his way over to the kitchen. 

Turning his neck 180 degrees he faced her with a simple snap. “Charlie, dear, come over here.” on top of his head, an ear twitched quickly.

 “There’s nothing to fear, dear. Nothing at all.” Alastor snapped his head back into its rightful place.  Another lung-filling breath later and Charlie stood, slipper-clad feet walking her to the kitchen, the light was turned on, the door ajar, and jazz floated around the room

Only this time, it welcomed her in, it wasn’t just for Alastor’s ears this time. She pushed the door open, on her own terms this time. 

Alastor has stripped off his overcoat and was left in a black button up pushed up to his knobby elbows, red suspenders and high waisted slacks with a hole for the freshly washed tail to poke out of. 

He hummed along to the gentle song. Charlie pulled out a chair, facing him, it scraped along the flooring. His ears twitched at the sound. “Milk and honey.” He said, swaying around to face her, placing a fine china cup on the table in front of her.

“I figured, our esteemed Princess could do with some biscuits as well.” He smiled carelessly, it didn’t reach his eyes. A faker grin than usual. He placed two crumbling biscuits wrapped in a napkin next to the steaming beverage. 

Charlie had yet to say a single word since he’d cut her off. She opened her mouth again only to shut it abruptly as she watched Alastor pull out the brown paper bag from its corner in the fridge.

He dropped it with a thump on the side of a chopping board. A pot was brought out of a cupboard and was filled, ready to boil water. Spices and herbs littered the counter, on the opposite side of the meat. 

The sound of a knife being pulled out a block brought the Princess back to the moment. “Did you want to ask me something, dear?” Alastor spoke up, watching the large pot boil and cut strips of meat off the bone with sharpened claws. 

“I believe you have had quite the exciting last few days!” He brushed off. The nonchalantly dismissal of his own situation boiled Charlie’s blood like the water in the pot. 

“Alastor!” She yelled. Not caring if it woke the others, there was no way they were sleeping no after the day they’d all had. 

“Alastor, please,” She said. “Stop. Just stop.” 

The Overlord put a lid over the pot. He pulled out a chair and sat facing her. His hands folded one over the other on the table. 

“Why?” She asked instead of waiting for the other to start. “Why didn’t you tell us?” 

“Why would I?” Alastor counted. 

Taken aback Charlie felt the words once again being stolen away from her.  “ What? ”

“Why should I have. I had it handled, darling. I would have been right as rain!” His mouth became a thin line pressed in the shape of a grin. “I am an Overlord, Charlie. I have hundreds of thousands of souls to draw from.”

His microphone cracked from where it was leant by the little table they sat at. “I would have healed myself eventually. Admittedly, I required Rosie’s skilled attention and assistance. However, I had it handled. ” 

“No.” She said instead. 

“Pardon?”

“I said no. You didn’t have it handled, Al.” Charlie said, “It was eating you alive. I get it you’re not like other Sinners, you’re an all powerful Overlord. I get it, okay . You and that thing are stuck together, you’re one person now.”

A silent small, tiny, nod. 

“Al… you can’t rely on your powers forever. It’s not sustainable, you saw what happened. You were dying, Alastor.”

This time he responded, leaning back in his chair and balancing a thin ankle upon his knee. “Charlie. Let us not argue. I would have been fine. I’ve done this before, dear. I would say I was in much worse condition that time.”

Charlie froze. “You’ve been hurt like this before.” a cold, spiky dread filled the pit of her recently sewn up stomach, like a dam about to burst. 

“Why of course!” He flourished, spinning around and standing to attend to the pot. “I was gone for seven years, you know!” He laughed, loose, fake and so, so hollow. 

“Seven years?” She asked, voice sceptical and slow. “You were hurt and it took you seven years to recover? ” Each word Charlie said was carefully picked out, like she was talking to a skittish animal. 

“One could say, yes.” Alastor stirred the pot with a ladle. With a snap a bowl appeared and he scooped a large portion of meaty soup into it. He collected a spoon and fork from the side and sat back down across from her. 

“What - what happened?”  She asked. 

He gave her no attention, instead focusing to stab a large chunk of meat and plop it in his mouth, juices oozed around his teeth as he took bite after bite of the strip. Ravenous.. 

Charlie blinked the image of her father being devoured from the forefront of her mind. Alastor ignored her as he ate, not even looking at her, rather looking right through her. Like she was nothing more than a fly on the wall. 

They were back to their stalemate, neither one speaking, breathing, looking at the other. Waiting, seeing who would crack first and talk. 

Alastor sighed. Pushed his bowl away and sat his cutlery down with a clink. He leaned back, swallowed audibly and sprung back to look right through her, like she was just particularly interesting dust.  

He sighed again. “I miscalculated, ” He said finally. 

Miscalculated, he miscalculated, Charlie didn’t believe one word of that. Her dad raised her to take no shit from other demons, or in this case others. She wouldn’t start now. 

“Miscalculated,” Charlie stated. “And it took seven years to recover from a miscalculation? ” 

“Indeed.” Alastor nodded, ears flopping with the bobbing of his head. “But you should have seen it, darling! Oh, the show it was!” His smile tensed. 

Charlie hung her head, letting her hair fall, obscuring her face from him. Not that he was even looking at her. She was nothing more than a bug on the wall to him right now. And she felt like it.

She looked up, straightened her posture and pushed her hair out of her face. 

“What did you do?”  Charlie demanded, mouth etched into a tin line, arms crossed over her chest and feet firmly planted on the floor. She wasn’t letting him get away from her, not this time. 

“Excuse me?” Alastor raised his eyebrows, a look of confusion played between his ears, not his face.

Charlie had learnt recently that the only real way to judge Alastor’s emotions was to listen  and look. As if on cue, a dim static flickered in and out with his ears, standing to attention and giving little twitches. 

“What did you do, Al, to have to disappear for almost a decade ?” Charlie demanded again, leaning forward on the table. “Weren't you worried?”

“About what, my dear?” He replied, coyly. Playing with his claws, as if this was the most boring conversation he’d ever had.  

“Anything, everything! ” Charlie brushed out, slamming her hands down with a thud. His ears pulled back a little, she imagined his tail would be tucked as far as it could go between his legs, like a startled deer. 

Charlie didn’t let up, not for this. “Your frie- Rosie, Cannibal Town, your broadcasts, hell yourself! Did you even care what going missing would do to others!” She yelled. 

Distantly she wondered if the others could hear her. If they were waiting at the top of the stairs, gathering like loyal soldiers. 

“Charlie-”  Alastor came around the table, hands motioning in a placating gesture, trying to sooth her, like her father would. The father that had willingly let himself be gnawed on like a chew toy. 

She flew up, backing away from him. “And what? You planned to do it again? Go missing? From here? From us?!” Her eyes stung. He stopped moving towards her as he realised she wasn’t going to let him calm her down. 

Her back hit the opposite end of the kitchen wall. Charlie pushed herself into it, almost hoping it would give way and she’d sink into it. Almost. 

“Don’t you get it. If you went missing, what would it do for the rest of us?” Charlie’s voice cracked, splitting her words in half  like a rotting fruit. 

Alastor stood still, arms limp by his sides, jacket gone, tie gone, microphone gone. Just him. Just Alastor. 

“Oh, I see, you’re the big bad Radio Demon and nothing can hurt you!”  The steps creaked as she screeched at Alastor.

The joints in her knees felt weak, as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to them, inverting them, turning them to nothing more than fragile replicas of what they once were.

Alastor stood, towing over her, his shadow loomed. But this time, this time. He had nothing to say. 

“Well, newsflash, asshole, you’re hurting us!” 

Alastor’s ears fully flattened. Pulled down to his head, it would look pitiful if Charlie could see through the salty tears obscuring her vision.

“Charlie.” His shoes sounded thunderous on the floor as he inched towards her. His shoes brushed her slippers. Alastor crouched, knees cracking distastefully as he did. 

“Charlie, my darling, Charlotte.” His cold, frozen hands gently cupped her face, bringing it up so she could look him in the eye. 

“I can’t tell you. I’m so sorry, dear. But I can't. ”  His voice was so soft, so quiet, so gentle, it took Charlie a moment to notice that there was no static fueled buzz behind his words, no radio bouncing in between breaths. Just Alastor. 

“Why not?” She blubbered, pushing up onto her knees so she was at his level. “W-why not? ”

“Because I made a mistake, Charlie. A terrible, terrible mistake. And now I'm paying the price.” He said, his claws gently scratched her face leaving no marks behind, a soothing pressure on her cheeks. 

“Just tell me, Alastor. Please, let me help you. Whatever you did that made you w eak , or sick or - or go missing. Just tell me, please.” 

Suddenly, and without warning Charlie was forced forward. Chilled arms wrapped around her in a bruising hold. Claws clutched at the back of her head.

 Her nose pressed into the sharp corners of his clavicle, he smelt like pine, smoke and something irrevocably gone.  

A clawed finger brushed the hair from her ear, he pulled her closer, as if they were being listened in on. Like he couldn’t say whatever it was without alerting someone, something.  

“I have gotten accustomed to this place.” He whispered in her ear, his other hand clawed at her shirt. “I believe I have become something of an-” 

He paused as if searching for the word. “ Altruist.” He admitted it like it was something so out of his control it scared him, static started to build again, filling the room and Alastor’s voice was drowned back in the radio once again. 

Charlie brought her limp arms to wrap around his hollowed ribs and sickeningly prominent spine. Sensing he wasn’t finished she nodded into his shoulder. 

“And, Charlie, oh Charlie, I have made a truly horrible decision.”

“What did you do, Al.” She whispered back, voice just as quiet and soft, muffled by his shirt. 

“I made a Deal .” 

Everything stopped.. The ticking clocks in the lobby froze with Charlie. She tensed with the static that coated her body. 

“You - You what? ” 

“I-I…” Alastor's voice choked off, becoming frazzled and weak. “Charlie,” Was all he said.

Alastor’s head snapped back with a sickening snap; it threw his back from her arms shot away from her like rubber bands. He landed on the cold tiles of the kitchen floor with a hollow sound. It was met with deaf ears.

Because all Charlie could focus on was th e binding, tight, pinching black chains that illuminated Alastor and the air around him.

The chains were clasped like locks around his neck, wrists and ankles, keeping him bound tightly to where he had slumped back against the table leg, in what must have been a truly uncomfortable position. 

“Alastor!” Charlie scurried forward only for his chained hand to hold her back.

He couldn’t speak, his voice robbed from him, the tightness of the chain forcing his oesophagus closed and cutting into his fragile skin. A mirror image of the trial of bruises that once painted Charlie’s own neck. 

The sound of her yell must have summoned the others because the doorway suddenly had an assortment of figures. But all Charlie could focus on was the image of Alastor pulled, forced, chained to the ground. 

The chains spilled from his body and transmitted through the walls and ceiling of the hotel. Never disrupting anything other than Alastor himself. 

“...Fuck me, Smiles,” Angel Dust said, socked feet closing in on the two of them. “The fuck did you do?”  

And there was that question again. The question Alastor refused to answer. The question he couldn't answer. Just the mention of a deal got him punished and Charlie dread to think what would've happened to him if he outright told her what he did. 

If this was the punishment bestowed on him for whispering so softly and quietly in her ear the simple word “deal” then Charlie well and truly thought Alastor would be torn apart.

Angel kneeled by Alastor, all eight eyes glistened with pity. And Alastor hated pity. “Shit, Al. The fuck did you do?” Angel asked again. 

“He can't tell you,” Husk said grimly, Nifty balanced on his head, setting his hat on her own head. “He ain’t ever been able to tell.” 

Alastor wheezed, breaths coming out in sharp stilted pants, each one getting caught and swallowed by the chains, red seeped from behind the thick metallic black chains, setting his skin alight in a bruising white and red. 

His teeth chattered, clanking together, grinding against one another so tightly they could have snapped. Ears pinned all the way back against his head, his eyes were wide, small and afraid. 

If Alastor hated pity he hated being seen as weak and fragile more. 

“But why not?” Vaggie too moved forward, crouching down by her girlfriend and wrapping warm, warm arms around her. Tucking Charlie under her chin. 

Husk let out a gruff scoff. “Boss.” He said, addressing Alastor, who pierced him with a look akin to horror. 

“I’m going to tell them.” 

The deer look alike pounced forward but Angel held him back, four long spindly arms wrapping around Alastor and grounding him. 

More harsh cutting breaths emitted from him in response. He went loose and limp in Angel’s arms, still conscious but tired, drained, and once again, weak. 

“He couldn’t take it anymore,” Husk said. Eyes laser-focused on Alastor. They all snapped to look at the cat demon. 

“Take what anymore?” Vaggie asked, she shifted to sit next to Charlie, both leaning against the kitchen wall, hands clasped together. 

“This.” Husk gestured to Alastor. “The pain, the cold, the hunger, the suffering. ” He said. “I was never really sure and I couldn't ask so. I guessed. Though he must have sold his soul to be like the resta’ us”

“The rest of us?” Angel asked, loosening his grip on Alastor as the chains once again yanked him backwards, he clattered against the floor, antlers growing and shrinking with each hesitant breath he took. 

“Like a real sinner, like a real Overlord.” Husk eyed his master. “Al didn’t die as a human so he sold his soul to make it so he did. ” 

“Guess it didn’t work,” Angel said numbly.

“No shit, Legs.” The cat grimaced behind a huffed laugh. 

Chapter Text

Alastor’s wheezing gurgled breaths let off, evening out as the pinch of the chains restraining the Radio Demon released. As soon as the last chain fragment slithered away, Alastor pitched forward, elbows creaking under the sudden weight pressing down on them. 

He coughed again, caressing the bruising skin with gentle touches. He heaved, ears sticking up as if bound by wire, a broken marionette. 

“Fuck, Smiles,” Angel said, moving along the floor to help Alastor up.

 His pink gloved hands brushed Alastor’s shoulders with the barest of touches, but the snap of his head spinning clockwise around to face the spider and sunken eyes warned Angel not to push it. 

“ Do not touch me ,” Alastor hissed, voice buried under layer upon layer of mindless static. 

His loose skull spun back around to lock on Husk. Eyes circling around deep groves, smile twitching against straining stitches. 

“ You. ” He snarled at the cat demon. “You had no right, Husker.”

 Slowly, so very slowly and carefully he stood. Charlie half wanted to jump forward and catch him at a breaths notice that his knees would fall out from under him. 

“Husky just wanted to help ya’, Al,” Angel said, a placating attempt falling on deaf ears. 

“Help,” Alastor began, “ Help? I do not recall asking for your help. I have not once indicated that I wanted nor needed help.” He roared, face twitching in and out like a camera lens had filtered over their eyes. Like they were not privy to look at him.  “But you all decided to interfere with my life, get involved in my business and exploit my weakened condition for your own gain.” 

His eyes struck cords as they landed on her. Charlie felt like he was pulling her intestines out from under her, unweaving her body, piece by piece. 

“You cannot fix everyone, Charlotte.” He added simply. Voice even, no infection, tone cold and low. 

“I may have revealed my situation to you, dear. But that does not give you the justification to try and fix me. ” He said. “I do not want to be fixed nor do I need it.” 

“Hey!” Vaggie growled, “What makes you think you can talk to her like that,  just because you opened up to her, huh!” Grey hair flared out, mimicking the wings she so sorely hid from them. 

Alastor growled behind his glowing teeth. Head splitting to the side. “I did what I did, Vaggie, dear. There is no fixing it. This is my punishment.”

Angel scoffed, crossing all for arms and scowling down at the other. “We’re all being punished down here, Smilies. You sold your soul, big deal! so did half of us here. It doesn’t make you special.” Angel said, leaning back on the cabinets behind him. 

“Angel. Do not pretend to know me.” Alastor grinned, “I may be on a leash just like you, but do not act as if we are the same.” 

“And what makes you so special, you fuckin’ strawberry-lookin’ pimpy assfuck?” 

Angel grinned back just as wide, brushing hair out of his face before taping Alastor’s chest with a pointed, painted nail to the beat of his words. 

“So what? You want to be like the rest of us? Boo fuckin’ hoo, shitlord! You got the power we can only dream of so don’t fuckin’ act like you’re below us!

“Angel!” Husk interjected, warning the spider demon. It was the loudest Charlie had ever heard the bartender talk. 

“Oh, yes, Angel, go running back behind Husker.” Alastor goaded. “Do not test me, Angel. I am decidedly not in the mood.” 

As if awoken from a deep slumber, the old tomcat seemed renewed. “Just fuckin’ say it, Al. We all know.” Husk pushed, taking measured steps towards his Owner. 

“Some of us been in the know for a while now.” He gestured between himself and Niffty. “You ain’t no deer and you ain’t no normal fuckin’ demon.”

Husk stood to his full height. “So, Just fuckin’ tell them. Tell them what you did to end up so fuckin’ screwed.” 

Angel waved crudely at Alastor. “ Fuck you, you don’t want our help, fine then.”

“Angel!” Charlie and Vaggie infiltrated, mirroring each other's pinched facial expressions. 

The pornstar ignored them easily. “Wasn’t finished, ladies.” He rolled his eyes, “But if you’re gonna fuck the rest of us over with you’re shit, then tell us so we can get the fuck outta here before it hits the fan! I ain’t exactly into that kinda sick play, Smiles.” 

Rapid blinking red eyes watched each of them, ticking back and forth as if calculating an idea and rolling it around his head. 

They all held their breaths. Charlie stumbled up. “Please. Alastor. We know you’re different from other sinners and I know okay, I get it you don’t want to be helped… but just tell us what you did to end up like this!” She demanded of her business partner. 

Her hair rose, standing on its ends, horns burning a pressure deep into her skull, like a particularly sharp pitchfork drilling into her head. 

A staring match fit for a merciful god overtook the kitchen, lights blinking in and out periodically. The static buzzed in her ears, and it felt like he was trying to force them to back down. 

But Charlie wasn’t taking his shit anymore. The emotional fuckfest he had put her and the others through the last few days was the final straw.

 Her grown-out nails clenched into her palms so harshly it drew blood from crescent-shaped imprints. 

Decisively Alastor seemed to deflate before them. The rigid line of tension seeping out of him, washing around and pooling at his feet. When he looked back up at them, he looked well. He looked tired. 

Energy seemed to evaporate from his body, and he sunk back into a chair. The whole picture was not Alastor. It unnerved her. Sharing a glance with Vaggie, told her it unnerved the rest of them as well. 

After a second, then another and then one more. Alastor started to speak. The static had been switched off as if it had been muted with the press of a button.

“Tell me, do you know how one becomes a wendigo, my dear?” He asked. Question open to any of them. 

Niffty raised a flailing hand. “Me! Me, Mister Alastor, I know!” She scurried over to him, little pointed feet tip-tapping against the kitchen floor. 

“Well, do tell them, darling.” He said, leaning his sharp chin on a closed fist.

“Mister Alastor was a bad boy!” Niffty grinned widely, “A very bad boy! He ate people!” 

“Yeah, Niff. We kinda knew that.” Angel huffed, still reeling from his previous confrontation with the other man.  

Niffty shook her head, singular large eyes spinning around to watch them wildly. “No, Mister Alastor ate lots and lots of people, he chopped them up and fed them to the pigs!” 

“What the fuck, Niffty? Why do you know that?” Vaggie said, single eye wide and small, being swallowed by her large sclera. Pointedly ignoring Alastor’s hum. 

“I heard all about it on the news!” Niffty said, rocking back and forth on her pointy heels. “When I was alive, Mister Alastor got rid of lots and lots of people.” 

“Mister Alastor was never found out though, he’s real careful like.” She admitted. “Husk knows too! But he died way, way after us!” 

“Niffty, dear,” Alastor said, stealing her attention back. “Stay on track, yes?” 

“Oh, oh right.” Niffty circled back. “Anyway a wendigo is what happens to humans when they become cannibals!” She cheered.

“I don’t get it.” Angel said. “I thought them things were spirits? You possessed, Al?” He quizzed. 

Alastor rolled his tired eyes, suitcases dragged under them. He seemingly had decided to explain himself rather than having the little Cyclops do his job for him. 

Charlie slinked into the chair across from him, Vaggie standing protectively over her shoulder. 

“I was found.” He said, slowly. A creek emitted from his antlers as they pushed out from his head. “They found me. I had… gotten…” He paused, searching for the words. 

“Sloppy, I suppose. They chased me. And there was barking. I–I think. I don’t quite remember, my dear!” He grinned, mouth pinned back into its ever-present toothy smile. 

“I was just… so hungry…” He trailed off. “Very hungry. That's all I could think about.” He chuckled to himself. 

His head spun on his axis. “But yes, my effeminate friend, you are correct. My… habit had drawn a spirit to me. Those last few weeks of my life were… blurry, I suppose!” 

Alastor laughed, his head thrown back like he’d made the joke of the century. His voice was the only sound in the kitchen. Dead silence was emitted from the rest of them. 

Charlie didn’t know what to say. “You were shot though?” She pointed to her own forehead.

“I was indeed.”  Alastor’s face twitched around the syllables. 

He took another cloying sigh. It sounded sticky, like flem had coated his throat and was sliding slowly down it. 

“In most versions of the story humans get twisted into wendigos when their soul is corrupted by greed, or weakened by…” He thought for a moment, “Famine for example or cold!” 

Charlie and Vaggie simultaneously leaned forward, waiting with bated breaths.  From the corner of her eye she could see Niffty climbing up onto an empty chair, Angel and Husk huddled together behind Alastor, a safe distance away. 

“In other stories… humans become wendigos when they're possessed, the prowling spirit circles around its victim waiting until a moment of complete and utter weakness to possess them.”

“I was dying, Charlotte, dear. That's what happened. My unique diet drew the creature to me and I dragged it here with me in return for its undesired company. ”

Deep down, Charlie wanted to pity him. But the look on his face showed no regrets. Her dad muttered that Alastor must have been scared. But Charlie didn’t think so, not anymore. She didn’t think he regretted a single moment of his human existence.

 No, Charlie could picture a human Alastor, impeccably dressed, not a single curl out of place, wire-framed glasses perched on an upturned nose. Smile just as yellowed and rigid as the one she was looking at now. 

As for his deal. His ears had shook and fluffed up at Husk’s guess and he hadn't corrected nor said a single word about it since. So, Charlie took that as a decidedly forced confessional. Ripped out of him by his own contractee. 

As if he was a mind reader, Angel came forward, leaning over the table and looming over the deer.  

“Okay, Al, so you fucked around and found out. Yeah okay fine, but what about this deal, huh?”

Alastor hummed, lazily glancing at the spider. “What about it?”

“You sold your damm soul to be a regular old demon? If you’re so calm about being fuckin’ glued together with a wendigo, then why make a deal in the first place?” He raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow, revealing his pink eyeshadow. 

“Why I may enjoy reaping the benefits of my unique situation, Angel I do not particularly enjoy being constantly, endlessly, unfathomably, starving all the time. ” He enunciated.

Chest thinning and neck twisting around in wide loops, stitches springing forth and spindly, long fingers scratching at the table edge. 

“And I highly doubt you would enjoy it either, Angel. So, as I said before; do not test me . I am pointedly not in the mood.”

Angel stepped back, swallowing before brushing invisible dirt from his blazer. “Sheesh. Okay, Al. Calm yourself. We just fixed you up.”

“Angel,” Husk said, sandwiching himself between the lot of them and his boss. Niffty had once again made herself at home on his shoulder.  

“Thank you, Husker. It’s much appreciated, my friend.”

“Ain’t your fuckin’ friend,” Husk said before physically dragging Angel out of the kitchen. “It’s late and we’re going back to fuckin’ bed. I can’t deal with this shit.” Angel let out a wine but followed the cat obediently. 

Alastor stood, grabbing his microphone cane and tucking the now cold pot of meat, under one arm, keeping the lid on with a snap of green electric mist. 

“And on that note. I, too, am off. Goodnight, Charlie.” He said. “And Vaggie too, of course.” He added. Vaggie sneered, lips peeling back from her face. 

Then he left, sinking into the shadows. Charlie would never admit it but she was almost glad to see Alastor using his powers again. In the recent weeks since Extermination Day, his flourish of snaps and clicks had been void throughout the hotel. His looming shadow firmly stuck to the floor. 

It was silent again. She and Vaggie were the only inhabitants of the kitchen. It smelt rich and warm. 

“That was… enlightening,” Vaggie said. Her voice echoed in the spacious kitchen. 

Standing suddenly Charlie clutched at her girlfriend's shoulders, black nails digging into grey, angelic skin. 

“We have to go to the library.” She said just as suddenly after Vaggie broke the intense eye contact fusing them together. 

Taken aback. “Wait, why?” Vaggie asked, blinking the surprise out of her eyes and looking up and the starry look in Charlie’s eyes. They glowed with an undying passion, the signal of an idea brimming. 

“To find a way to break his contract, duh!” Charlie said, marching out of the kitchen, slippered feet rushing her ahead of Vaggie and to the library of the hotel. 

Vaggie caught up to the blonde, yanking her back with force only privy to angelic beings. Vaggie clutched Charlie’s wrist firmly in her small hand, not enough to hurt but enough to still the ball of energy. 

“Charlie, babe. He doesn’t want help. He just threw a fit over us fixing him up!”

“And?” Charlie threw back. 

“What do you mean ‘and’ Alastor doesn’t want our help. He very clearly doesn't want us getting all up in his business.” Vaggie countered. Her face was the picture of worry, etched onto her beautiful, delicate features. Charlie loved her so much. 

She twitched in Vaggie’s grip and wove their hands together, holding them to her chest, squeezing periodically. 

“But he needs help. And so does Angel, and Husk and Niffty and thousands of other demons!” She said, voice painfully young. 

“Charlie!” Vaggie argued. 

 “You can’t fix everything. You don't have to fix everything. Sometimes… sometimes people are beyond helping.”  She continued further. 

As she spoke she used her free hand to stroke soft, gentle touches up and down Charlie’s arm. The pressure is warm and easy. 

“But they’re not!” Charlie’s eyes brimmed with tears, the sting a harsh contrast between the soothing of Vaggie’s touch. 

“Sure they sold their souls but that doesn’t mean their contracts can’t be broken!” Charlie whispered, her voice was solid and determined but held the undeniable presence of someone young and so, so willing to help. 

“Maybe the others but not Alastor. He just told us, Sweetie. He wasn’t really a human when he died and he still ended up in hell. Think about it.” Vaggie prompted. 

“He didn’t end up somewhere else he ended up here.” Vaggie’s own voice sounded strained.

Charlie wondered what Vaggie thought about this. The concept of a human soul being corrupted and tainted so much before death that it pulled the thing down with them. 

Did the angels in heaven know about this? Those human souls didn’t always leave the mortal world whole, complete and human. Charlie doubted the majority of the heavens population knew, but the Seraphim, Charlie would bet a pretty penny that the higher-ups knew perfectly well. 

To live as a human was something Charlie would never get to experience but her mother would tell her about humanity about how man could be so beautifully twisted. Was there a place for the souls that got intertwined in a web of other? 

Based on how long Alastor had been in hell, probably not.

 Charlie wondered if he was scared. 

Just a little bit. The idea of being prowled and haunted by something that didn’t belong, being followed and tarnished, slowly losing himself the longer it attached itself to him. Until all he could do was eat? 

Was he tired? Was that why he sold his soul? Was he tired of everything? Or just the unclenching hunger, as he’d said. Charlie hoped, deep down, that Alastor didn’t beg . Didn’t beg a merciless being for freedom. For his suffering to end. To just be normal. To be like every other sinner thrown into the pit. 

“Just because Al got all weird and fucked up when he died doesn’t mean he can’t be redeemed!” Charlie said, her body taunt, like a string about to snap. 

“He doesn’t want to be redeemed, Charlie!” Vaggie almost whimpered. And Vaggie never did that never. 

“You don’t know that!” The Princess fumed. “Just because he says that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to be stuck here forever!”

“Does that sick chuckle fuck look like the type of guy that's pawing at the door to be redeemed?” She pushed, crossing her arms over her chest, releasing Charlie and letting the cold seep back in. 

“People don’t just have spirits following them around for the hell of it, Charlie. He did some really fucked up shit when he was alive to draw it to him. He didn’t summon it, babe, it found him. ”

“I know!” Charlie yelled. “I know okay! But he’s one of my people!” Vaggie stuttered back. 

“He’s one of my people and he’s suffering! They’re all suffering and I can’t sit back and let them suffer, not anymore!”

Vaggie looked at her, eyes scanning over her heaving body, she relaxed, sighing and slumping back. “Okay.” She said at last. 

“Okay?”

“Let's find a way to save your people.” Vaggie strode forward and linked their hands together. 

“Our people,” Charlie said. Kissing Vaggie on the cheek. “They’re our people.”

“R-right,” Vaggie said, a little breathlessly. Rather than let the former exorcist stutter more, Charlie pulled her off to the hotel’s expansive library. 

Flicking the switch of the library revealed the thousands of books that were shelved floor to ceiling in the room. It stretched back seemingly for miles, ladders railed over the shelves, and old and new spines filled the shelves. 

The shelves were a cherry oak wood, primed and shone, it reflected the artificial light of the golden, teardrop chandeliers. Candles wavered alight, small flames bounced off the walls, the hooks absorbing the light and heat simultaneously. 

In the centre of the room were rich, long tables, lights made of emerald green vines and wood stretched out and hummed. The chairs around the tables had thick plush, sinking, inviting cushions on the seat and back, they were high and could easily be slept in.

The books were ordered alphabetically, Charlie released Vaggie’s hand, attempting to briskly make it over to the hoard of books under the letter ‘D’ hoping some would pertain to deal-making. 

Her movements matched that of a sprint rather than a brisk walk Vaggie would tell her later. At last, she tried. 

Her hands skimmed the titles of books in rapid flicks of her eyes, next to her Vaggie did the same. Both of them periodically moving up and down the ladders searching for something, anything that could be of use. 

Charlie’s eyes dropped every once in a while, but she firmly fought the sleep and continued to go through book after book. 

Slowly but surely the table closest to the angel and Princess of hell became stacked with book after book. Vaggie had firmly planted herself in a chair, scanning over chapters in books that could have some form of answer for them.

Only the sound of pages turning and books being added to the ever-growing stack could be heard in the library, it echoed, getting caught between pages and sinking into spines. 

Charlie paused when the sound of pages no longer rustled in her ears. The hellish sun had started to peek through the open window, painting Vaggie in an angelic gold. 

“Vaggie?” Charlie asked, sliding down the ladder and stretching her neck to look over Vaggie’s shoulders. 

“Vaggie, you found something?” She asked again. 

The angel shook her head before dragging the lit lamp further over the book to examine the pages in more depth. “I don’t know. Maybe?”

“What is it?” Charlie raised a quizzical brow.

“‘ Demon deals are made when a person of high power or status offers a weaker or lesser being something they desperately want or need. Signed in the blood of the recipient and held by the owner, typically a soul is given in return for this, but not necessarily .’” Vaggie read out loud. 

“Well, that's obvious.” Charlie spat. 

“Shh ‘ The owner then has the jurisdiction to summon, feed off or use the person under their control in any way they desire. As long as it is within the bounds of the contract signed, the lesser being is under the control of the higher being. In return for the soul the recipient has the added protection and connection to the other .’”

“‘ A soul contract cannot be broken through outside forces, the recipient does not have access to their contract unless the owner allows them .’”

“‘ Overlords generally have the most souls under their control due to their mass amounts of power. While it is rare for overlords to be under a contract of their own, they can sign their own soul over in return for power, fame or favour. It is advised to be cautious about signing a soul over to an Overlord, (see chapter 17 for more information on Overlords) ’”

“‘ Those who have sold their souls to higher or more powerful beings cannot regain their souls through outside forces. A loophole can be found, however there is no guarantee an owner will allow for this and accept the loophole. The owner may destroy the demon in their possession and eradicate their soul. If a loophole in a soul contract is found it must be treated and trusted with a grain of salt. ’”

“ ‘If the contracted soul wishes to, they can negotiate the terms of their deal, this is not a profitable road, however. While there is no definite way to break a Deal, there is no definite answer to whether or not they can be broken.’ ”  Vaggie finished with a downtrodden sigh.

“Well, that wasn’t really helpful.” She stated bluntly.

“No..” Charlie agreed, “But! We can ask Alastor about Niffty and Husk’s contracts. He might be willing to renegotiate?”

“Oh yeah, and that’ll go down like a lead balloon, babe.” Vaggie summed up, casting her eyes away from the ivory pages. 

“But at least he’d know, I guess. Maybe.” Charlie slumped, “I don’t know.” She sighed, dragging a hand through thick, greasy hair. 

“Well,” Vaggie changed the subject, “We know Angel’s contract only extends to the studio. As for Alastor-” 

“Who would he make a deal with?” Charlie finished for her. They sat in silence. 

“On the upside no one really knows if a deal can be broken, so that's good?” Vaggie strained, attempting to cheer Charlie up. 

“I guess?” She muttered. “But how? A soul gets traded for something the recipient needs or wants desperately, right?”

Vaggie perked up humming. “It’s what the book says.” She tapped the page and gestured to the book. 

“So it has to be honest right? Like the deal has to be fulfilled on a technicality?” Charlie said, peering at the open pages once more. 

“You mean like it has to seem like both ends of the contract are being upheld?” Vaggie looked at the same page, hoping something would magically appear and give them an answer.

“Yeah! So, say a deal wasn’t fulfilled? What would happen?” Charlie questioned, picking up the book and flicking through pages at rapid speed. 

“I guess it would be faithful? But Charlie, that soul is still owned by whoever has it. At the end of the day, a soul is a payment, it doesn't matter if both ends of the deal are true to their word, it’s a hope, not a guarantee.” Vaggie said, falling back in her chair, sinking into the plush cushions. 

Charlie, borderline, threw the offending book back onto the table. Pulling at her hair, stress lines had wormed their way onto her face. She whined, falling across Vaggie’s open lap and burning her head under the other's chin. 

“How do we help them, Vaggie?” Charlie asked, her voice muffled by Vaggie’s shirt, her voice was small, childlike and pleading. 

“I don’t know.” Vaggie ran gentle nails through blond hair. “I… Just don't know.” She soothed. 

The angel could only grasp at straws as Charlie clutched her, running soft hands up and down the Princesses back and through her hair, whispering sweet nothings in her ears. Quieting the muffled sobs and blubbers. 

“What’s up, Vagasorous-” Angel burst in. “Oh. Um. Oops.” He toned down, creeping into the havoc of the library. The sun was high in the red-tinted sky. 

“You guys alright?” He uttered, voice cushioned by sleep. Vaggie nodded up at the spider when he came close.

“Just. we were looking for a way to break a deal…” Vaggie said, leaning back further in the chair. 

“Break a deal..?” Angel puzzled, “That ain’t how it works, toots.” He perched himself easily on the table edge, casting a wry look over the stack of books. 

“Trust me we are well aware.” Vaggie sneered. “Fuck, sorry.” She picked the dust gathering in the corners of her eyes away. 

“It’s fine. Don’t worry.” He brushed it off. “You asked Your Mom?” He smiled down at them. 

“What?” Charlie sniffed, unwinding herself from the fallen angel.

Looking up at the spider demon, he was dressed in his usual blazer, tie and black shorts ensemble, but his eyes dragged under him, all eight had matching deep purple smudges under them. Looks like he didn’t sleep either. 

“Actually, try the small King,” Angel rephrased, “Well, Your mom was the sin right? And good ol’ Lucifer basically rules all of hell, he’d probably know a freaky little trick.” 

“Angel.” 

“Yeah, toots?” He lifted a manicured hand in a ‘ go on ’ gesture. 

“I love you,” Charlie said, voice dull. 

“As you should, obviously.” But he grinned through wide teeth, patting Charlie on the head. 

Charlie sprung up, untwisting from Vaggie and pushing down the flyaway hairs. “Okay, now tell me everything about your deals.”

She spun around to face the rest of the residents. She had dragged Vaggie and herself up to their room, forced herself into clothes and summoned the hotel patron and staff. 

She had a crazed look in her eyes, pencil and notepad in hand, already scribbling notes down rapid fire. 

“Excuse me?” Husk said, spitting out his coffee, it dribbled down his chair and clumped in his fur. “That ain’t exactly something you go around askin’, Princess.”

“As Husker so graciously said. A deal is a highly private contract. Asking such things is considered rude, dear.” Alastor commented from his armchair, a newspaper laid out over his lap. 

Charlie turned down to look at Niffty. “Niff, would you like to start?” she prompted the hotel’s single cleaner. 

Nifty became bashful, hands clasped behind her back, she awkwardly rocked back and forth, eye flinching back to Alastor and back to Charlie. 

“Um… well, it’s…” She blinked up at Alastor. 

The man in question used his cane to tilt her chin upwards, “If you feel you must let Charlie be privileged to the know-how of our contract, then you may.” He said softly, a toothy smile relaxing just the slightest.

“Um… I … I asked Mister Alastor to help me.” She admitted sagely, “I wanted a bad, bad man gone and Mister Alastor made that happen.” 

“Oh.” Charlie wrote it down. Pencilling in a little doodle of Niffty next to it. “Is that it? ”

Niffty seemed to brighten as her interrogation came to a close. “Yep! That's all!”

“Um. Cool.” She said, dumbly. “Alrighty, who’s next?” She looked around the room for volunteers. 

“It ain’t none of your business, Princess,” Husk answered her begging look. 

“Would you look at that! I am once again in agreement with our resident bartender!” Alastor cheered, raising his ‘oh deer’ mug in solidarity only to be met with a gruff noise. 

“Well, we already know that you’re contracted to Alastor and Angel to Valentino…” Charlie slowly turned to Alastor expectantly. 

“It is none of your business, Charlotte.” Alastor replied without looking up from his paper. “You may know me to be contracted under someone but that doesn't mean you have to kn-”

He paused at the blubbering fat tears threatening to spill over Charlie’s round eyes. “ Please? ” That was all she said.

And just like that he seemingly crumbled. “Well,” He started, “I suppose if you must.” He gave a great sigh and made a fuss about uncrossing his legs and standing up and going over to her.

He made a colluding motion with his finger. “The one who owns my soul… I’d say you know her very well. Very well indeed.” 

He seemingly examined Charlie before he continued, much to Vaggie’s impatience. “Why, you’re even of similar heights!” 

Behind them, Husk choked on his coffee again.

“You fucking didn’t.”

“Oh, I did.” His smile almost reached his eyes, she could see the crude red stitches along the corners. Almost. 

If Charlie didn’t know better, she’d think Alastor was boasting. Boasting about how he fucking sold his fucking soul. But luckily, Charlie did know better and she could see the tension that weighed him down.

Tight shoulders and ramrod straight ears, unblinking eyes and hands clenching his cane behind his back in a grip Charlie guaranteed was so ruthless his skin would bleed white at the knuckles.

“You’re either the stupidest motherfucker-” Alastor’s ears twitched, eyes tightening.

He continued,  “-I’ve had the displeasure of knowing, or one of the actually no it’s just dumb.” Husk finished. He was scratching at his ear. 

“What? What?” Niffty bounced up and down. “Was Mister Alastor really bad?”

“Nah, just stupid.”

“I can hear the both of you,” Alastor’s neck twisted with a snap. “And I do not appreciate being talked about as if I am invisible.”

“Alastor.” Vaggie hissed, “The fuck have you done now?” 

“Why, Vaggie darling, I simply sold my soul to our dear Charlie’s mother of course.”

A pin could drop. Hell, a wall could explode right now and Charlie wouldn’t be able to hear it let alone move. A cold sweat broke out along her skin, pimples prickled and the fine hair on her arms stood on end. 

Her mother. Her mother, Lilith. 

Alastor made a deal with her mother and never said anything. 

“ You what? ” A spear tinkered under the taller man's chin. He didn’t flinch. 

Charlie couldn’t get the words out, luckily the love of her life could read her like the back of an angelic hand and filled in for her, albeit a little more demanding. 

“Holy shit, Smiles what the actual fuck.” Angel had fallen back over the side of the sofa, he’d scrambled to throw his torso back over the arm and watch the unfolding chaos as quickly as he'd slipped. 

“How long were you missing, Al.” Finally, her voice started to work again. It sounded hollow even to her own ears. She hated to think how it sounded to the others. 

“Why seven years!” Alastor grinned, he twirled his cane around as if this revelation was nothing more than a speck of dirt on his coat. A particularly stubborn clot of blood under his nail. Like it meant nothing to him.  

“Why?” Charlie felt Vaggie guide her to the loveseat, letting her knees fumble back. 

“I do believe I’ve said it took me seven years to recover from my miscalculation. ” Alastor reiterated, following Charlie’s movement with two peering eyes. 

“You never mentioned that. You said you’d been hurt before. That it took you seven years to heal.”

“And it did.” He nodded, agreeing. 

“Al. What happened seven years ago? ” Charlie, for the second time that day, was brought to tears by the Radio Demon.

Chapter Text

It was silent, more silent than Charlie had ever heard the hotel be. Charlie thought it was the quietest hell had been in eons. No static, there was no distant yell, nor scream, no sound of squelching or grinding, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

Her tears stained and scarred her doll-like, porcelain cheeks. Running down them and softly landing between her fingers interconnected with the angel’s. In fact, Charlie wasn’t sure what sounds reached her ears. 

Seemingly, the silence plummeted throughout her body leaving her open, the salt of her tears filling her with the sting of salt, like an empty gorge after a rainstorm. 

And oh, how Charlotte Morningstar wept. To have that sweet, warm trust striped back like rotting back on a tree hurt more than she cared to describe. It would be something she would forever have wrapped around her mind. 

And she knew. She knew Alastor was someone to be taken with the utmost caution, she knew she did, but she thought at the very least, his growing accustomed to them all meant that he trusted them, just a little, just the slightest amount to tell her, to explain to her why he would hide something as soul rottenly significant as what happened to her missing mother. 

“Alastor, what happened seven years ago,” Vaggie demanded, piercing the Radio Demon with a cold, singular eye, the cross branded to the other seemingly pulsing with her rage. 

Vaggie didn’t bother to summon her spear, defeatedly, she watched him, as if all the pent-up anger and mistrust towards him had come true, as if she at one point, hoped he wasn’t what she thought he was. 

“Well, my dear,” Alastor began, his smug grin and loose tone prickled in Charlie’s ears. “You see it was quite some time ago wh-” He stopped.

The radio placed on the mantle chimed twice, clicking on and the melodic, soft, gentle, uplifting piano graced the residents of the Hazbin hotel. It overtook Alastor’s forgotten static, crashing over them like waves. 

It washed over her, soothing Charlie like a mother's warm touch soothing a crying child. Because that's what she was, it was what she felt like she’d always be. A crying child begging her parents to step up and save her people. She was always that crying little girl. 

The melody surged, knocking the radio flat off the mantle and onto the carpet. 

“The fuck.” Angel pushed himself back into the sofa’s back, eyes cautiously moving slowly back and forth between the resident deal maker and the radio. “Al, this really ain’t the time for some fucked up shit stirring.” He hissed, locking his mismatched eyes onto the shaking radio. 

The little radio shook and shook and shook. Rattling like something was trapped within its casing. Alastor had not turned to look. 

Black cracks grew, pushing from the wooden cage and sparking across the red-carpeted flooring, statically jumping towards Alastor. 

And then the cracks stopped. The retreated and disappeared. The radio stopped shaking. It stopped rocking. It froze. There was no slowing of its movement, it just stopped.

Sound came back, and her breathing felt like a static old piano riff, jumping between breaths, she wanted it to stop she just wanted it to stop. 

From the corner of her bowed head, she could see Husk make a grab for Niffty, wrapped around burly-furred arms around the little cleaner. “Fuck.” He said eloquently, looking at the fallen, forgotten radio. 

“Alastor!” Vaggie yelled, “You shitlord, why can’t you ever just let us in!” Both of them seemed taken aback by her words. Although Alastor made no outward indicator of shock, his ears quickly shot back before being stitched back up. 

“Why can’t you make this easy, fuckface!” Vaggie gripped around Charlie’s hands tighter. “Why have you got to-” 

He choked. 

Alastor choked again. And again, and again and again. His ears pinned back fully this time, those smoky, inky black chains illuminated the hotel’s lobby, one more biting into fragile grey skin.

Only, this time, Charlie could see the chains falling and sprawling from the speaker of the radio. It sat, watching them. Watching them all. 

Alastor growled, a deep, cloying sound, it stuck to her skin like velcro scratching her skin. It pinned him. Only Alastor wasn’t having it. Not this time.

“Al!” Husk shouted, pulling Niffty and Angel behind him protectively, dragging them away from his master. Charlie felt herself being similarly pulled away. 

But she couldn’t rip her eyes away. No, she couldn’t stop. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion. If she thought what she saw in Rosie’s feeding room was bad, something was wrong and cruel. 

This was worse. Because she had to watch this time. 

Alastor snapped his head back, it cracked with a stomach-churning crunch to accompany the way his neck stretched out, thinning, skin being sucked into the groves and caverns of his oesophagus, vacuum formed to his skeleton, wrapped tightly around his misshapen form. The weight of Alastor’s skull dragged him back.

 Angel squealed squeamishly as Alastor’s head thunked onto the floor, his feet still firmly planted where he stood. Suddenly his neck twisted to look at them the group in the hotel. 

His teeth bit into his lip, peeling back a layer of skin, blood pooled and that fat, thick tongue wormed out from between them to lap at the sticky substance. Antlers scraped and tore into the floor, gouging canyons into the delicate carpet. Eight spikes along the rack of his antlers stuck to the floor, further dragging the engorged head to the lower rings. 

Charlie’s mouth felt as dry as the Wrath ring as she watched his red eyes roll around, playing a game of pool with his pupils, becoming dials, matching the one on the radio, flicking in time with each other. 

Finally, they tore. The stitches. The stitches plying Alastor's mouth back in a permanent grin tore open, and the skin on the two sides of his mouth fell away, loose and flabby, jiggling against his incessant struggle. Rows upon rows of teeth were revealed, the grin swallowing up any and all shock or fear that seeped into the lobby. A predator hiding behind an animal of prey. The limp strings got curled in his gums wrapping around a row of molars, cutting into the fleshy area. 

His spine was contorted, stretching out from his legs, his legs which still stood firm on the carpet, they were still Alastor’s legs, his lower half yet to succumb to the mutilated swollen transformation that seemingly coursed through every cell in his body.

The upper half of his back arched, chest splaying upwards towards a heaven he would never reach, elbows sharp and webbed with thick ropes of scar tissue, pushed outwards, the sound of stitches popping and tearing had nothing on the sickening sound of gurgling, it stuck to the wall, it stuck to the floor and worst of all it stuck to them. Coating them all in a thick sloppy layer of sound. 

His joints pushed into the floorboards, which creaked under the added weight, his spindly, stretched arms made a trying effort to hold his swollen, engorged body up, his hands clutched at the buttons of his overcoat, trying to save it from its inevitable damnation.

Charlie thought, that just a little bit, Alastor made a crude imitation of a prayer. Hands collapsed together pointing towards the heavens, and a beg and cry fell on silent ears. Because no one was listening. No one listens to those who beg. 

But, Alastor wasn’t praying, his craws gouged and scraped at the opposite hands and arms no doubt painting his body in new scars, the sticky red of his ichored blood drenched his grey skin staining it once again. And Alastor wasn’t an angel. Alastor was a demon. And no one was coming to save him.

His stomach and intestines gurgled, empty and begging, worshipping their owner for something, anything to fill it. Alastor’s eyes rolled again. Falling to the group. 

“Mister Alastor!” Niffty squirmed, biting and scratching at Husk’s arms fighting the cat demon to go to Alastor. “Mister Alastor!” She cried out. 

Spinning dials found her single eye. It pinned her, unblinking, swimming with an inky black. His jaw unhinged, the ripped seams of his cheeks let it fall wide open, his tongue slumped out searchingly. Looking for anything to ta tangle and suck on. 

“Should be glad he ain’t able to move like that,” Husk said, trying to calm Niffty down unsuccessfully. 

“The fuck is that?” Angel whispered a hand clutching Husk’s intertwined despise Niffty’s flailing. 

“That’s Al,” Husk replied blankly. “Just Al.” 

Alastor groaned again, trying to move his bloated body, his ribs flared out, his hips nothing more than sharp mountains leading to the empty cavern of his stomach. Between the rips and tears of his suit, Charlie could see how visible and stretched each and every organ was. Pressing against his skin, begging to be used. 

Finally, finally his legs gave out, from his waist down Alastor looked normal, or as normal as he could be. The chain around his neck pinched again, further thinning out and twisting Alastor’s neck, in turn rocking his oozing head from side to side. 

As soon as he gave out his legs they followed the rest of his body’s mutated form, knees knocking against one another, too many joints clacking and snapping together. Hooves being exposed to the sticky static air. 

“It’s still playing,” Vaggie said, head whipping around to look at the radio. “It’s still playing!” She shouted again, tugging Charlie to look away. 

Vaggie was right, she and Angel turned to look at the sodden, soaked radio, it was playing that turn again. The piano tinkled and expanded across the room. It was still playing. 

“Fuck me,” Angel whispered, the words caught onto the sticky walls. 

The chains around his wrists surged once more, pulling him up, only for him to immediately fall back. His form unstable and so, so wrong.

Alastor changed his form all the time. They all knew this. He would grow and shrink and change and show his power whenever he deemed it necessary. But this wasn’t that. Alastor wasn’t making his body change, it was doing it against his will, uncontrollably and forced. His body wasn’t his own. Charlie wondered how long his body hadn’t been his own. 

His ankles snapped, pulling outwards, knocking into sofas and lamps, glass splintered into his skin, and blood dotted his skin. Angel snapped out of it first surprisingly, ripping himself from Husk and the wall he made a dash away them to the radio. 

Alastor’s whine sounded out as his dial-like eyes snapped away to watch Angel. His teeth ground and scraped along each other. His tongue was too large and fat to sink back into his mouth, it dragged along the floor, first and grime stuck to it. 

Angel dived, and all six arms made a grab for the radio, he gathered it up and slammed it onto the floor. Again and again, and again, and again, and again.

Until it broke. 

Wires and springs exploded from the little radio the chains hit and wrapped around Angel trying to force him away, Angel slammed it against the floor hard one more time before the chains threw him away.

Husk, quick as a cat, caught the spider, Niffty collapsed to the floor, puddled in a mess of her own tears, pouring from a single, large eye. 

Alastor went limp immediately as the chains around his limbs slunk back away from him. Each breath was still clogged with a gurgling sound of blood coating his throat. Enlarged, skeletal body creaks with each stilted breath. Not enough air reaching all appendages. 

“Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy motherfucking shitballs-” Husk curled around the spider to quiet him, letting his shake and tremble into his shirtless chest. 

“Mister Alastor!” Niffty dashed the engorged deer only to be stopped by Husk’s foot, this time she didn’t fight him. He shook his head. 

“Give him a second, Niff.” He answered her pleading eye, “Boss gotta reform himself real quick before he can be your personal pedestal.” 

“Right, I knew that,” Niffty mumbled, sitting on her knees and watching Alastor. 

“Princess, you still with us?” The bartender asked, eyes zoning in on her. One paw was combing through Angel’s fluffy head the other running soothing claws on circles on the spider's back. 

“Babe?” Vaggie shook her shoulders. “Charlie? You okay?” She asked, but Charlie couldn’t take her eyes off Alastor, the dripping sounds, like a faulty tap, leaking and staining. She peeled her eyes away from him like he peeled the skin from her dad’s arm. Looking at Vaggie, she spoke calmly, simply and plainly. 

“He’s not changing.” She announced again. 

“What?” Angel said, turning his head from Husk’s head to look at her, raising a perfectly plucked brow. 

“He’s not changing back. He always changes back.” Charlie finished simply. 

Alastor contorted himself, his chest and ribs folding over and over, looping his spine twisted in tight, paradoxical loops. 

The last chain, the largest and snugest of the shackles, still choked Alastor, wrapped around his throat like a dog collar, it tightened and released in time with his bubbling breath and xylophone ribs, his eyes rolled, falling back into his skull, his pupils shrinking back to circular pools of ink night. 

The collar , because that's what it was. Rustked and crackled again, surging up in a riff and pulling Alastor’s bulging head closer to the door, his tongue sticking to his oozing cheek, antlers creating craters into the floorboards, ripping it like bark on a particularly old tree. 

“Because he does not need to as of yet.” She said. 

The woman was tall, with a pointed downturned nose on rosy peach skin, her eyes shone a golden hue, decorated with jewels and glitter, bright against her skin. Her lips were painted a matte, simple black, it matched the twisting curled horns that grew from her head, they curved around her head much like ram or sheep. 

She wore a long floor-length velvet dress, the colour was a deep plum, it shone and twinkled with each of her steps, the heels were tall, the straps wrapped around her ankles and shins like the vines on a tree, the heel itself was thin, long and sharp, much like the woman herself. 

The sound of her steps echoed, louder than the static, louder than the gurgling gooey wheeze of Alastor. Her hands were thin, much like the rest of her. They were wrapped delicately around the end of the black chain, it illuminated her skin, spreading across her arms and hands like she’d dipped them into a lagoon. 

“Alastor, Alastor, Alastor.” The woman tutted, tongue clicking in time with her heels. “What have I told you, sweetie?” She hummed, tapping his swollen cheek, scratching the red-tipped nails of her empty hand along his face.

Alastor stayed still, his whole form seemed to curl into her touch. The woman, Charlie refused to say her name and tugged on the collar.

“Oh, Alastor, you’ve been quite a disappointment!” She grinned, curling her fingers around strands of red hair. “We’ve talked about this, sweetie.” She tutted again. 

“Do use you’re words, Alastor, use that lovely voice that’s been given to you.” Alastor snapped his jaw closed again, flaps of unbound skin torn and stuck to dry skin. 

Alastor huffed, relaxing the whole of his frozen body and sinking back into the carpet as if it were the softest thing he’d ever lay on. 

“Miss Morningstar, a pleasure to see you again, quite a pleasure.” He grinned, although his voice was tinged with blood, his mouth drooling once again. 

She yanked on his chain again, “Don’t be snide, Alastor, it doesn’t suit you.” 

Charlie was paused, the entirety of her body as still as a statue. “Mum?” She whispered, but it seemed to travel across the lobby because the woman, Lilith, her mother turned her head towards her. 

“Mum?” She whispered again, while she knew, theoretically and fundamentally understood that Alastor was under a soul contract with her mother, after seven years. For seven years she’d been missing, gone, abandoning her daughter and husband and being off to heavens know where. 

But for this, for this , inconsequential , complete nothingness of a situation, her mother had come out of her new home and showed herself, for Alastor she had come at a moment's notice of his insubordination.

But for her, for Charlie? Who had begged and pleaded, prayed for her mother to come home, for the three of them to be a family again? Her mother, Lilith had made an effort to respond, no response, no phone call, no letter to explain a single, simple thing. 

Her mother had done nothing. Nothing. For her. But for Alastor, a demon Charlie and Vaggie hadn’t met until six months ago, Lilith had come as soon as he mentioned her, however indirectly he did so. 

And it hurt. It really, really hurt. 

“Ah, Charlotte,” Lilith said, voice bland. “How have you been keeping?” She turned back to Alastor, barely a second glance, an acknowledgement, an apology? No, just nothing. 

“Oh. I’ve been fine.” Charlie caught her breath. “Where've you been?” She asked. 

Lilith did not respond for a moment, “Well I had business to attend to, Charlotte.” 

The answer seemed to snap Charlie out of her stupor. “That’s it? That’s all you have to say to me?” 

“Charlotte, as you can see I am utterly flummoxed at the moment,” Lilith said, snapping her immaculately painted nails and releasing the chain constricting Alastor’s neck.

As soon as the chain vanished, Alastor heaved, body rocking and spasaming, cracking and creaking, pulling itself back together, a crude imitation of a puzzle. The snapping and cracking and plopping of his joints as they shrunk, loose skin vacuuming itself to thin arms and even thinner legs

“Seven years?” Charlie wallowed. Taking a useless step forward, Vaggie and Angel latched onto each of her arms. Holding her back from taking any more silent steps. 

“Yes? What about them?” Lilith didn’t turn to face Charlie, instead, she examined Alastor’s deflating body with an almost exited malice. 

“You were gone for seven fucking years!” Charlie flared, eyes blazing and hair standing on end. Horns bleeding through her forehead and her eyes dripping with ruby tears. 

Lilith stood, grimacing with disgust at Alastor. “I was busy, Charlotte.”

“With what? What could have possibly been more important than our family, Dad, me? ” Her voice wobbled, tone fracturing around the edges. 

“Well someone asked a rather large favour of me.” Finally, Lilith turned to face them. Eyes tracking over Husker and Niffty before scoffing at them and eyeing Vaggie before flicking a forked tongue at her. 

“Alastor? You abandoned me because of Alastor?” Only the hands wrapped around her arms kept her knees from falling out from under her. The sound of static was null and void to the sound of the piano. The sickly sweet honey pot tune of the piano. Charlie hated it. 

“To a degree. Yes.” Lilith’s hands folded over one another in front of her. 

“...You convoluted…bitch,” Alastor panted, coughing a clot out of his throat, it splat on the floor, blending in with the red of the carpet. 

“How rude, Alastor, how very rude of you,” Lilith said. Alastor rolled onto his front, pulling himself into his knees, and knelt at the feet of the Queen of Hell like he was nothing more than prey, ears standing on end as if to please their body’s owner. 

“You bitch!” He growled, snapping his mouth in her direction, teeth spiking against each other, squeaking and grinding against themselves as he clutched at the carpet, bringing long, cracking knees up from under him and yanking his body to a stand. The incessant shaking never ceases. 

“Alastor!” Vaggie screeched, voice gaining a new pitch. While her feet stayed planted, her upper body lunged, only an angelic will kept her from summoning her spear. 

“That’s… not what happened - and you know that very well.” Alastor groaned, choosing each and every word carefully. Using his cane to lean on, holding his torn body up. His suit turned to shreds, red fabric meeting the red of his innards, blending together in a bloodied painting. 

“I’m not wrong, sweetie. You did allow me to leave. And I've enjoyed my life thoroughly since. You, however, just had to invoice my name didn’t you?”

 “You were only able to leave hell because of me, your Highness .” Alastor coughed, straightening up and grinning, the flaps around his mouth getting caught on his teeth every time he spoke. If he wasn’t careful he’d be swallowing around the skin. 

“Oh, how your inflated ego struggles to fit in that little head of yours.” Lilith combed through long blonde hair with her spindly hands. Not caring for the torment and carnage scattering around her. 

“You used my soul to get into heaven! You already lost yours and you needed an huma-” Lilith cut him off with a hand to his mouth. Charlie would be more surprised if Alastor responded with her hands so close to his body. He kept still and silent, eyes trained in on Lilith’s red and gold mixing together, a cocktail of iris pools. Waiting, watching. 

“Truly that ego of yours must be bursting against your…” She fingered the loose flaps of skin around his mouth. “Seems.” 

“...You left because you got a chance to go to heaven?” Charlie stuttered. “That’s why you left? Because you found a better deal?” Vaggie tightened her grip on her arms. 

“Well, I didn’t want to stay down here for the rest of eternity. It’s quiet… red. I simply did as Alastor here asked in exchange for his soul. While I may not have been able to fulfil the request our deal never specified if I had to.” 

Lilith tugged on an ear, it took Charlie back to when Rosie did this exact gesture, only that time Alastor leaned into the touch, he only let Rosie, the matriarch of Cannibal Town touch him without flinching back and snapping at the instigator. But this time, he didn’t move, refused to make a sound. The breath sucked out of him like a tide going out. 

“You didn’t even do what he wanted?” Angel unraveled himself, “You took his soul and didn’t even try to hold up your end of the bargain, that's fucking cold, Queenie.” Despite Angel’s flippant tone, Charlie could see his eyes flickering between Husk and Alastor, he didn’t make eye contact with Lilith, the first demon. 

“Our deal never asked me to.” Lilith repeated, “Only that I make an attempt to split him and the Wendigo apart. Of course, splitting a corrupt sinner soul from a mortal world spirit is quite the challenge and unfortunately…”

 She grinned, “It didn’t work. Clearly.”

Chapter Text

Lilith stood. But Charlie didn’t think she looked like a demon, the first demon, her mother, Lilith Morningstar. No, she had that same apathetic, distant, hollow look the angels had. After seven years, Lilith must have grown used to the divinity and purity that oozed from heaven's air.  

Did she realise? Did she notice? The stain divinity leaves behind? The Seraphim and Higher Authority will stain fingers and lips like the juice of an apple, that taste will chew you up and swallow you whole, leaving no room to disagree, no chance to acknowledge or understand. 

Oh, how Charlie understood the desire to be closer to divinity wanting to reach for her father again and again, wanting to see what he could do, what he could create . But divinity should be touched with the utmost caution.

It will stain your lips and fingers a red, the divine will reach for you again and again, twisting around your outstretched hand, curling through the delicate veins of your arms and take. It will consume you, and it will not leave quietly. Charlie felt divinity in her bones, aching and chilling her like a cold hearth. 

But unlike her mother, Charlie did not need to touch heaven to see divinity, the people of hell, their love, their hate, their thoughts and feelings, every word, every breath, that felt like divinity to her, the ability to have a soul. 

“You used him.” Charlie muttered. “You used a human soul to get into heaven.”

“Despite…it’s,” Lilith paused, lips twitching, “rather unsightly appearance, it had its uses.” Lilith let out a small laugh, it was empty. 

“In the end, a human soul is still a human soul. The Seraphim assumed my being In hell, and around my…cruel, cruel husband, being manipulated and twisted had torn my soul to bits!” She laughed, only this time it split her black-painted lips into a grin. “They let me past the pearly gates as soon as I asked for redemption. ” 

“How could you.” Charlie stepped forward, Vaggie’s grip had fallen some time ago, forgotten and lost like a grain of sand, singular and small. “How could you.” She repeated. 

“Charlotte dear,” Her mother said, voice childing and condescending, “A deal is a deal. In the end, we were using each other. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“You didn't keep your end!” She shouted. Charlie had never shouted at her mother before. She never wanted to again. 

“To split a human and something other is quite a feat, Charlotte. In the end, even I wasn’t able to relieve our Alastor from his… predicament. His soul was still usable enough for me, besides, that thing was with his body not his soul .” Her voice was snide again, above them, above Alastor and most of all, above hell. 

“But-”  Charlie stuttered out. 

“He never asked me to definitely split them apart. Only that I try. After all, he came to me, he found me , he initiated the deal.” Lilith leaned back on her heels, biting her lip and sighing. “ He chose this.”

“Of course, the little thing didn’t quite appreciate being messed with and well… Sweetie had a little trouble turning back. So I bound him to an ash tree just outside of the city and melted his heart down. Only way to deal with things like him, these days.”

Lilith made a small gesture to Alastor, “And as you can see our Alastor took a while to collect himself.” She patted him on the cheek. 

Charlie’s steps sounded much like an echo chamber, hitting off the walls and traversing to her ears only to get stuck there. Seven years.

  Alastor was stuck in a body that wasn’t his own for seven years. Was he praying? During those cold, empty years, were his knees rubbed raw from his cage?  How often did he repent? How often did he beg to go back and change it all?

Charlie hoped at the very least he was warm. Did he smell his mother's cooking during that time, did he hear her voice and wonder where she was? Was he warm like she had her arms wrapped around him? 

Niffty tugged on her sleeve, pulling Charlie from her thoughts and pointing blatantly to where Alastor was leaning as casually as he could on his cane, minimizing his breaths to create an aura of put-togetherness. 

“Mister Alastor?” Niffty said, voice small and sounding so, so young. “Are you okay?” She shuffled up to him. 

“Alastor turned his sharp chin downwards for her. “Of course, darling! Don’t you wonder that twisted little mind of yours about me.” He grinned, toothily and wide, flaps of skin almost relaxing into their pinned-back position with invisible stitches. 

“Do you want me to stitch you up later then?” She blinked owlishly up at him. “I can fix you up real good! No one will ever know you were a bad boy.” She clapped little hands together. 

“That would be marvellous darling. Thank you.” He patted her on the head, her hair shook gently. “I endeavour to watch you work.” 

Niffty relaxed, arms falling to her side and too small pupil growing large and fond. 

“And who is this little lady?” Lilith crouched down to look the Cyclops in the eye. 

Niffty straightened, turning to the Queen of Hell and crossing hands behind her back. “I’m Niffty, Ma’am.” She said all previous loose limbs came alight with a rigid tension that could rival the structural support of the hotel. 

“It’s a pressure to meet you, Niffty.” Lilith cooed, hand outstretched to shake, but Niffty, ever so small and smart Niffty took two steps back. 

“You too, Ma’am.”  Another step back, until she stood behind Charlie. 

Lilith blinked easily, tilting her head to the side as if analysing Niffty and her stature, finally, Lilith was back to standing at her full height, she towered above Niffty as she would Lucifer, absentmindedly Charlie wondered if he could feel the presence of his long-lost wife. Charlie hoped he didn’t. For his sake. 

“Now.” She turned to face Alastor again. His body hadn’t relaxed. Frozen still a statue amongst statues, skin ashen it almost bled a pure white. 

Charlie wanted to be pure so badly. She wanted her people to reach heaven's gates, not because they were evil or wrong or bad or twisted but because she didn’t want them to hurt anymore, to be living in a constant incessant fear of Extermination. Charlie just wanted her people to get their second chances. 

She examined the pale, doll-like skin that stretched over her bones, rosy red cheeks and wide, large eyes. She looked pure, skin as white as snow, untouched and clean. But the pink on her cheeks and in her eyes didn’t wash away the sin of her birth.

 Was her mother was so disgusted with the creation of her daughter that she fled to the only place purer than their home, filled with warmth and love? 

“Alastor. I thought better of you. Invoking my name in such a troublesome way.” She shook her head. “But I suppose it is in a sinner’s nature to disobey .” She smiled, it looked warm and motherly, but Charlie knew better. Her mother had waded through rich-honey-filled fields for the past seven years, while Alastor starved. 

Again, dead silence oozed throughout the lobby. Was that it? She just wanted to make him look small? To make Alastor question himself and his power? To make him look pitiful and weak against them? Was it working?

“Well then, I suppose if that's all.” She stepped back.

The frozen feeling left. From the corner of her eye, Charlie could see Vaggie trembling, her hands shaking by her sides. Further still, Charlie caught a glimpse of Husk and Angel’s hands intertwined, ground one another to the floor of the hotel, Husk’s wings twitching and shivering against the cool melodic tune of the piano. 

And Alastor. Alastor had yet to say a word to Lilith. Like he knew better. Maybe he did. Charlie wondered if Alastor could feel his soul, if he knew it was up there, wrapped in divinity like a swaddled child. 

It was silent. So very silent in the lobby. 

“ Lilith? ” It was said so quietly that if Charlie didn’t recognise the voice she would have jumped. 

“Lilypad? Cautious, slow steps were taken forward by her father, the King of Hell, Lucifer, the Lightbringer. He looked so tiny in comparison to her mother's tall, intimidating stature.

“I thought – well I felt – felt you.” Lucifer stretched out a pale, doll-like hand, reaching for his wife.  “I didn’t think – I was so worried.” He brushed a hand through his hair, messing it out of his perfect style. His eyes were wide, pupils so small they almost disappeared. 

He was trembling, Charlie realised suddenly. “Lilypad – hell I thought you were hurt! Ha ha, no no you’d’ve told me if you were hurt? Right?” Her dad pleaded, still taking those small, small steps towards Lilith. 

He stood in front of her, barely reaching her chest, he brought a shaking, fragile hand up towards her, reaching to touch that soft skin, begging for that warm comforting embrace. 

And she stepped back. Lilith stepped back. 

“Lilith?” He called after her, Charlie had never heard her father sound so lost, so small, so confused, so scared. “Lilypad, are y-”

“Don’t.” Her mother clicked her tongue. “Do not call me that. Use my name.” 

“Um.. ha ha… what? Lilith? What’s happening?” Her dad looked helplessly toward Charlie. Large eyes flicked across all of them as if they could pierce an answer out of them. 

“Right,” He turned back to Lilith, “Lilith… I was – I was so worried! I had no idea what happened…” He trailed off, mouth twisting around unsaid words. He let out a little hollow laugh. “I couldn't find you at all! And I looked! Looked everywhere, no stone unturned, no circle left behind… I… I couldn’t find you.” He ended on, voice quiet and soft. 

“I know.” She didn’t look at him. Refused to give him the satisfaction of acknowledgement. 

“Anyway!” He clapped, “Charlie!” He walked over to her, patting her on the head. Charlie didn’t know she’d been craving her father’s warm contact until she was starving for it.

“What’s cracking! Not the eggs because…” He laughed awkwardly, eyes darting away to the picture frame, “Anyway. yeah. What’s up?” He repeated. 

“Dad.” Charlie greeted him properly, “Not a great time.” Guilt welled up at the crestfallen look and brushed his face before it snapped away and was replaced with a smile.

“Oh. Um. right.” He shifted.

He took a breath, seemingly gathering himself, picking up the stilted cracked pieces of himself and glueing them back together for her. Charlie wondered how many times he’d done that without her noticing. How long had her dad been plagued with this sadness that seeped into every inch of his body. How long had we been looking for the missing pieces of himself?

“You’re looking much better, Al.” He said, eyes travelling over the Radio Demon. Lucifer grinned but it didn’t reach his eyes, he hadn't moved from his spot by his daughter, pointedly keeping his eyes away from Lilith. “All you needed was a little angelic TLC, huh.”

“So it would seem, Sire,” Alastor spoke, voice caked with a static that seemed to get stuck in his throat, contorting his words, mirroring how his body would. A never-extending escaping twist. 

“Cool. Cool. Cool.” Lucifer fizzed, rocking back and forth. “So,” He dragged out in the silence, “What’s happening?”

“I was just leaving.” Lilith said, voice dominating the room like a snake ready to strike its prey. 

“...What?” Her dad made to step forward again, but something made him stop. He stilled. And waited. Just waiting. Like he always was. Waiting for a phone call, waiting for his wife. Always waiting. 

“I said I was leaving, Lucifer.” Lilith sighed as if it was a great pain to speak to him. She rolled her eyes. Turning her head over her shoulder, swept her long blond hair out of her face with a delicate hand. 

“But-” He stuttered, it sounded so much like Charlie herself she wondered if it was her voice that spoke, only her mouth didn’t move. “But you just got here.”

“And now I’m leaving,” Lilith said. That small cynical smile on her lips. 

“ Why? ” Lucifer pleaded, eyes wide, if Charlie wasn’t his daughter she wouldn’t have noticed the crack in his voice. But she was and she did. She bet his eyes stung. Salt building up in a seven-year-long wound. 

“Why wouldn’t I,” Lilith questioned. Blinking at him. Just blinking. 

“Well, we’re here? Your family?” He huffed a laugh like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. As if this was the least predictable outcome he’d planned for. But Charlie knew her father. And he never would have planned for this. Never. He loved Lilith more than the stars themselves. But all stars fall. He did.  

“And?” Lilith raised a brow, the glitter around her eyes twinkled.

“Did you think I’d stay?” She chuckled, turning and moving over to Lucifer and cupping his cheek. “Did you really think you’d ever be enough for me? You may be an angel, Lucifer. But in the end, all you are is a failure .” she said so, so softly. 

She stroked the skin along his face, he leaned into it. Like he couldn’t help himself. “You’re dirty, Lucifer. ” She cooed, bending forward to kiss his forehead and tip his hat. “ Dirty. ” 

And with that, she stood up. Stroked along her dad’s face once more. And she walked out of the open doors in the lobby. 

And then she was gone. Just as quickly as she’d appeared, chained Alastor and greeted Niffty and called her dad dirty. She was gone. Just gone. 

“Dad?”  Charlie sprang into action the moment the door of the hotel thudded closed. Turning to him quickly and looking him up and down. He was still. Eyes blinking rapid fire and breathing slowly. He didn’t respond.   

Angel unhooked himself from Husk, “Holy shit is he good?” He asked her from his place by the wall, each step he took was unsteady and stilted. 

“Fuck he ain’t lookin’ sharp,” Husk said, hands twitching like he didn’t know what to do with them after Angel had let them go. Fur standing on end and cold without the spider’s warm, comforting touch. 

Vaggie moved forward with the group, they circled the King of Hell, “Um… Sir?” She said, hands floating in the air, too afraid to touch the delicate look on his face. 

“Dad..? Are you…okay?” Charlie asked, taking the initiative and gently shaking his arm. He moved with her gentle pressure. 

Angel crossed both sets of arms and scoffed, “Does he fuckin’ look okay Toots? He’d white as a fuckin’ ghost.” He asked. 

“Yeah, babe he really doesn’t look good.” Vaggie appeared by her side, prying her fingers from his arm, like unhooking talons. 

“Mister Lucifer?” Niffty tugged on his sleeve, his hat in her other hand. “Do you want your hat back? I brushed it off of any dirt!” 

“Sire?” Alastor spoke up, for the first time in a while. “Sire, can you hear us?” Alastor flicked Lucifer’s nose twice. 

“Alastor!” Charlie groaned. 

Whipping around to face the resident cannibal. It seemed the moment Lilith left he’d regained at least some of his confidence. Only just , his voice was still loaded with an abundance of static and there was a chill to his steps, unsteady and unsure. Like he didn’t know how to act around them after he was so completely picked apart. 

Ignoring her Alastor tilted his head, bending at the waist to look at her dad's eye to eye. He frowned, mouth pulling into a line. “It would seem our little King is in shock.” He concluded plainly. 

“Shock? He’s in shock?” Charlie grabbed her dad’s hand, he felt cold to the touch. As if all the blood in his body had been drained out of him, leaving him nothing more than a pretty corpse. 

“I believe he’ll be quite alright, dear.” Alastor said, “Why don’t we get him settled.” 

With a snap of his fingers, the lobby returned to its previous immaculate state. Surprisingly it was Alastor that wrapped a hand around Lucifer’s bicep and gently pulled him towards the sofas, pushing him down into one and letting him go. 

The piano was gone and the radio was once again mounted, playing soft, tinny jazz. Charlie had never been so happy to hear it. Charlie sat herself next to her dad. Not too close but not too far away either. Just enough so he’d know she was there. Blank eyes only stared forward. Charlie wondered if he’d cry. No, he wouldn't cry, he was too prideful. But maybe, deep down, he’d feel empty. So very, very empty. Like an endless, unfulfilled hunger. 

That's when she realised. She never asked. She never even thought to ask Lilith, not her mother, Lilith, to reconsider the deal with Alastor. She was so distracted by the image of her mother after seven years and then her dad… she’d completely forgotten about Alastor. 

Would he resent her for it? Would Alastor look at her with the same disdain Lilith looked at Lucifer with? Would he wait for her to apologise? The freedom he’d been so sorely missing the freedom he craved more than life itself? 

She looked over, just a quick glance, but Alastor had pulled a book out, leaned back and relaxed in his chair, tension void as if it never existed, completely at ease. All limbs were where they should be, he was tall, long and thin, but under his skin was something else. He was a tangled collection of almosts. 

“Charlie.” All heads snapped towards Lucifer with simultaneous cracks, she wondered how Alastor was all the time. She caught his eye, he too, was watching Lucifer.

His voice was small, hollow, empty, void of any and all emotion. Anything that made him, him. “Am I dirty?” He whispered, so quiet she could barely pick it up. But she did. Oh, she did. 

“Is that why she left? Because I’m dirty?” His head slowly turned to face hers, a tremble in his voice. “Did she leave us because of me? Did I drive her away?” 

“Dad? What? No, of course not.” Charlie said, shaking her head. 

“You don’t know that!” He yelled. The windows rattled. Alastor put his book down with a sigh.

“I-I was too much right? I must have done something! Lilith - Lilith never would have left without reason, right? Was it me? It must have been me? I got too much. I was too dirty .” 

“No, no, dad, no…” Charlie rushed out, words tripping over one another at the speed she spoke. 

“Listen, Short King,” Angel announced his presence. Charlie had forgotten she wasn’t alone with Lucifer. “You ain’t to blame, got it? Vintage Fuck over there ain’t to blame either, not really…” Angel sighed, brushing hair out of his face, “Sometimes things don’t turn out how ya wanted. And that’s okay. Okay?” Charlie would be more surprised at Angel’s words if Alastor hadn’t moved. 

“Lucifer.” Alastor stood at her dad’s feet. Her dad tilted his head up. Alastor was holding his hat. The white clashed horribly with Alastor’s pallet.

Carefully and more gently than Charlie ever expected Alastor to be with her dad. He put the hat back in its place upon Lucifer’s head. “You dropped this.” He said stepping back and returning to his claimed chair. 

“It’s quite alright to not be holier than thou,” He said, picking his book back up, crossing his legs and not looking at any of them.

“Lilith may own me , she may have my soul to do with what she pleases.” His grin stretched bloodied flaps of skin oozing green.

“But in the end, I am at peace with my place in hell, clearly she was not. ” Charlie held her breath as he turned the page. 

“You didn’t turn her away, Sire, she was simply… undeserving of you.” Another page turn. “Clearly she realised it.” Alastor went back to his book. As if he hadn’t said a single, singular world. 

“Alastor,” Lucifer spoke, calm and soft, quiet and so young, far younger than he actually was. “Thank you.”

“Whatever for?” Alastor hummed, ears twitching. 

“Don’t start being a prick now.” He groaned, thumping into Charlie’s side, upending the hat recently perched back on his head. 

“I’m sorry, Charlie.”

“Huh? Why?” 

“That she doesn't care.”

It was silent again. “I’m sorry we weren't enough.”

“I’m sorry too.” Charlie leaned into him, Vaggie falling with her, like dominos. “That I didn’t see how much it was hurting you.”

“It’s not a child’s job to fix their parents, duckling. No child chooses their parents, they don’t ask for any of it.” He kissed her forehead, a mirror of Lilith’s final gesture. “You just wanted us to be a family. And that’s okay. ”

“And I am, so so proud of you, Charlotte.” Her full name didn’t sound like tar in his mouth. He just sounded like dad, her dad. His arms wrapped around her head tucking her under his shin, despite the height difference, and uncomfortable position, she’d never felt safer.

He was warm and soft against her. She felt three feet tall and just as young, being cradled by her father, watching him create such marvellous creatures and stars. 

Stars he would never see again, stars that shone and twinkled just as bright as he did. They fell just like he did too, and they were warm and kind like he was. A Morningstar. Nothing more, nothing less. A fallen star. Begging to a cruel god and words falling on deaf ears to stay a little longer. 

And it was okay that no one was listening. It was okay that no one cared. Because not everyone wants to listen and not everyone can be heard. 

On the mantle, the clock chimed seven. The sun in hell was setting. They hadn’t had dinner but she doubted anyone would want to eat right now.

Like the mind reader, he claimed not to be, Husk was the first one to suggest it. “Fuck this I’m leaving. Been one long fuckin’ day and I need my four fuckin’ hours to deal with tomorrow. Come on, Legs.” And without another word, he held out a hand for Angel to take. The spider did.

“Yeah, gotta agree with Whiskers over here. Been a long day and I need my beauty sleep, can’t look this good without a little shut-eye.” Angel followed Husk, their hands linked together gently. Charlie didn’t think much of it. 

Angel turned just before they made the trek up the stairs, “Get Short King over there a room, yeah?” 

“I’ll get a room set up right away, Miss Angel!” Niffty jumped into action, scurrying past them all to book it up the stairs. 

“Not a Mi- and she’s gone,” Angel sighed, shrugging and letting Husk pull him the rest of the way up the stairs to one of their rooms, Charlie didn’t know which one. “Anyway, night Toots, Vagina, Shorty and McCreepy.” He waved.

And just like that he and Husker were gone. The room was listless, her dad leaning against her on one side, Vaggie on the other, also leaning, their hands linked together. 

“All done!” Niffty’s voice called a few minutes later. She was an excellent housekeeper if you ignored the cockroaches that Charlie and Vaggie were almost sure she was bringing in to kill. Anyway.

“Come on, dad. I’ll show you the way.” She and Vaggie made their way with a silent, but much less shaken Lucifer on their heels. 

Turning, Charlie could see Alastor still sitting in his chair, book in his lap, he didn’t say a word when their eyes met. But she knew. Maybe she’d always known. 

Charlie was still away a few hours later. Cosy in her bed, her dad down the hall and her girlfriend wrapped around her. But, she couldn’t sleep. The gentle press of Vaggie’s arm around her couldn’t dull the wash of anxiety that fizzled across her body. It sat like seaweed wrapped around her body, a tangle of salt, brimming wounds and leaving a stinging aftertaste. 

The lamp hummed and flickered with the buzz of static, the hum of an eternal sound, it filled the room and every room. Charlie hoped it would always stay in the hotel. With her. After everyone left. She hoped, at the very least, one irredeemable soul would manage the hotel with her.

Slipping out of the bed and opening her porcelain skin up to the bite of the night's air, Charlie shrugged on a fluffy gown, brushing her ankles when she walked. The click of the door opening and closing echoed, it joined the static and bloomed like daffodils in the air before sounding off. But the static didn’t. 

She took the stairs. Bare feet softly padding down the grand staircase. She went past Angel Dust’s room, she imagined him curled around Nuggets, extra limbs contorting them together. She thought, that if Husk was there, his wings would act as a soft, feathered blanket, a crude imitation of an angel. But an angel nonetheless. 

Her hand slid across the bannister, following her descent down. She knew, before she even touched the main floor of the hotel, that the light of the kitchen would be on.

And it was.

The warm, soft glow of the kitchen light illuminated the hallway, it flooded the area with warmth, comfort and something distinctly familiar. 

This time, Charlie didn’t bother peeking through the crack in the door. She just pushed it open. The smell of dough and the hum that accompanied the tinny radio greeted her. An almost, hello , of sorts.

And there he was. 

Alastor stood at the counter, jacket gone, crisp red sleeves pushed up to bony scarred elbows. Wrinkling at the creases. Black slacks, sleek and pristine, the tail pocket let her see the black and red fur sway gently along with the music. His face, she hoped, had been stitched back up, back in that permanent grin. That smile with so many different emotions licked behind it 

This time, his ears didn’t spike with oncoming alertness, no, this time, they stayed relaxed, still pointed up, but relaxed. He didn’t turn. The music didn’t stop, he continued kneading the dough. 

“Charlie!” He greeted, without turning to her. “I had a feeling I’d be seeing you tonight, my dear.” 

Charlie slinked further into the kitchen, pulling out a chair. It scraped along the floor, she wondered how long it would be before there were deep scars along it.

 Sitting down she watched as Alastor let a quick, quiet snap of his fingers, as she expected, a steaming mug of warm milk and honey wafted into her face. Still silent, she wrapped her hands around the warmth of the mug. Still too hot to take a sip yet. 

 Alastor resumed his work. Bread, he was making bread again. 

“Alastor, why are you up so early?” 

“Just making a loaf for tomorrow, Charlotte dear, Niffty requested it, the little darling has been so relentless with her fight against the bugs recently.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” Charlie said, bringing the sweet drink to her lips and taking stilted sips, gauging the temperature. She must have sounded distracted because an ear twitched in her direction. 

“Something weighing on your mind, dear?” He asked, still not turning towards her. Charlie didn’t know if it was out of malice or simply Alastor being well, Alastor. The jazz had quietened, the volume dipping a few notches as he spoke. 

“I guess,” Charlie replied, setting the mig back on the table with a soft thud. Her hands stayed wrapped around it, fingers overlapping and intertwining.

 “Al, you’d tell us if something was wrong right?” She asked, brushing stray strands out of her face and drawing her gaze to the back of his head, trying to get him to spin around and face her. 

“You know very well that I wouldn’t, Charlie.” He said with a sigh like the question was something he’d answered thousands of times like it was a question he answered like a broken record. 

“I know.” She huffed a laugh, relieved.

 Both his ears twitched and his tail stopped its mistranslations, gentle swaying with the music stilted and forgotten in favour of tuning into her voice, a new melody to fixate on. 

“Then whyever ask?” This time, his sharp face turned ever so slightly towards her, she could see a ruby red eye-locking onto her, waiting for her next move. Maybe he was expecting an argument, a battle of words, for Charlie to fight him on it. But she didn’t. Not anymore. Because she figured it out. She knew now. 

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay?” She said, crossing her arms and slouching back in the chair, it creaked and scraped slightly. 

“By asking me if I was not?” He quizzed, if he was facing her she was sure she’d be greeted with raised thin brows and a pointy nose, upturned, a mouth forever etched into a sneering, smug grin. 

“How else am I supposed to get an actual answer out of you and not some cryptic voodoo bullshit.” Charlie countered, finally, Alastor huffed a crude laugh. Like a puzzle had been completed. 

“Ah, I suppose you are valid in that assessment.” It was silent between them again. Alastor kneaded his dough, splitting it and rolling it in between his flour-stained hands. 

“Al?” Charlie started, a new air filled the kitchen as if that simple word had sucked and gouged out the peaceful honey-sweet air. Stripping it and replacing it with cool, drying stale air. 

He hummed, Alastor had yet to turn to face her. Either out of spite or simply being unbothered, which one, Charlie couldn’t say. 

“I’m sorry.” She said, voice blunt. She left no room for misunderstanding, misconstruing or twisting her words. She swallowed around the words she wanted to say to him. 

She wanted to apologise for dragging it out, for ripping him apart at the seams, watching how he worked like he was nothing more than a pet. Like her mother. 

She had never thought of him as one, but she knew, he felt like one. A dog on a leash, a deer in the woods, the prey being chased, pinned down and torn apart. Shot and devoured. Nothing more than a soulless, mindless monster, intertwined with another spirit. Forever bound in a solitude stalemate. 

Twisted around each other like snakes, teeth bared and eyes wide, but never being able to escape each other, in a way, Alastor had trapped the Wendigo , it would be with him until his last breath, and while it had Alastor caught in its cloying web, it could never go back to the mortal world and claim another. Not as long as Alastor stayed. 

Finally,  Alastor turned to her to speak. “Now, now Charlie. There is nothing for you to apologise for.” His ears pinned up, unmoving at ramrod straight, his tail a matching pair. 

“But-” She countered, sitting up in her chair. 

“I said nothing, Charlie. I do not hold any ill will against you.” He interrupted smoothly, not reacting to her previous attempted rebuttal. 

“But, it didn’t work an-”

“Charlie.” His voice was clipped. “Do not make me repeat myself. I did not ask for your help. While I appreciate the sentiment and effort, there was no need.” He said, turning back to the counter, his back loose, rather than tense, his ears and tail relaxed again and the music picked back up. 

“Alastor.” Once again, static-filled her ears, knocking her back in the chair. Only slightly pressing her down. Like parental hands forcing her to stay put and relax. 

“Some people simply do not get second chances.” He finished. Ending their brief talk. 

Charlie knew. Deep down, she believed that she always knew. From the very first time, she came into the kitchen. 

After seven months, Charlie had grown used to the constant static that stuck to the wall of the hotel and clung to their skin, the way it followed them. It drifted calmly around, a gentle presence, a blanket of safety for the residents of the hotel. A guarantee. 

The smell of freshly baked bread, the feeling of warmth and comfort, the sensation of peace. After everything, everyone, Alastor would stay. 

Sinner being redeemed and entering heaven, that was her plan to begin with, that's what she wanted. And she still did, god she did. But Charlie was a hell-born. 

She had no soul, nothing to be redeemed, just like the imps and the hellhounds and the other hell-borns,  the Ars Goetia, the Seven Sins, and her dad, Vaggie. And the others.

Forever bound to hell. Stuck in an endless cycle, those damned to be something else, something different, something more. Not a sinner and not a hellborn. And Alastor was well and truly something other. 

Charlie knew now, maybe she’d always known. Alastor would never be redeemed, never be split from the other thing that lurked just under his greying pale skin. He would stay in this hotel with her. 

Because not everyone can be saved, not everyone can be redeemed. Not everyone wants to be saved. Not everyone wants to be redeemed. Not everyone deserves to be saved. Not everyone thinks they can be saved. And Alastor didn’t believe he could be saved. 

Charlie knew Alastor was drowning and he knew it as well,  everyone around them knew. But none of them can swim, not where he was. None of them can reach him. None of them can do a single minuscule thing. 

After seven months of living with Alastor Charlie had grown used to the sound of static, the chill and blanket of jazz that filtered throughout the empty halls and oozed into the wall. 

After seven hours Charlie Morningstar had grown used to the understanding that not everyone can be changed. 

And that. That's okay .