Chapter Text
It was finally a happy day in Hell, pretty much solely because there was no one in it.
Well, there was you. You guessed you counted as a person, even if you didn't check all the boxes that made a person, you know, a person, or at least someone capable of contributing to the higher power that was capitalism, which was all people up there seemed to actually care about when it came to having rights. (It baffled you that you were the guy that came to everyone's minds when the phrases ultimate evil, father of sin, the devil were uttered, because the descendants of that Adam fuckwad had been the ones to do some truly reprehensible shit, when your worst crime was approaching a mindless zombie with no free will and being, like, hey, this is kind of fucked up, maybe; let me help you.)
(And then that same mindless zombie had repaid you by fucking off to eternal paradise and then, much later, trying to kill your daughter.)
(Whatever happened to sending someone a fucking fruit basket?)
(Well, maybe fruit was a sore spot for Adam, on account of your motif and consequently what happened to him all those millennia ago. But still, not even a chocolate-themed Edible Arrangement?)
But it had always been just you down here, at least until Cain bit it and woke up here. You remembered that moment precisely because it was so heartbreaking, the way he hit the ground and his eyes opened to an eternal nightmare, and the way he dissolved into tears the second the explanation of where he was left your lips. You remember that you had maneuvered his head into your lap, and you had stroked his hair as he cried into you, and you remember feeling so selfish for being grateful that finally there was someone else, that finally your unending solitude had ended.
You knew what had happened to everyone else, but it didn't make being here all by yourself any less depressing.
"Man, Charlie, I'll tell ya," you said, sitting on the edge of the chasm with your legs dangling over the side, the finger of one black glove tracing aimless loops and curlicues into the dirt beside you. Your eyes were cast downward, the way they always were nowadays, because they felt too heavy to lift up, especially when you knew there was nothing really worth lifting them up to see. "It sure was a lot nicer to live here when your hotel was the big thing on campus."
It had still been Hell, obviously. But it had been alive.
You lifted your eyes from the dark, yawning pit below your feet. The sky was a dingy, anemic brown, and the streets, which had never been in the best of condition, were nevertheless frozen in the state they’d been when the vast majority of people who had used to call this place home had begun disappearing. Even though they’d been like this for time immemorial, there was something insidious about seeing them without all the activity happening on top of them. It was so much sadder.
The silence was oppressive, too. You found yourself continuing to speak just to ward it off, because it felt thick and heavy on top of you, and you were having trouble breathing. You didn’t need to, of course — you weren’t dead, but you were a cousin to death, a stepbrother or a cousin once-removed — but it still made you panic not to be able to bring any air into your lungs when you wanted to, even if it was just for the hell of it.
“I don’t know what to do,” you told her, honestly, because if there was one person you were going to be honest with, it was your daughter. You palmed the ground and raised your other fist to hide your mouth, so that every word thereafter was muffled. It didn’t really matter if you were articulate at this point. You were grateful for the incoherence. You didn’t think you could be coherent right now if Adam came down and demanded you speak on your daughter’s behalf. God, you hadn’t felt this stupid and helpless since before you’d gotten that fateful call from her, culminating in your stupid, idiotic, Heyyyy, bitch!~ that you wished more than anything you could take back because damn it, she deserved more than your shitty attempt at looking like someone worth anything in front of her.
“I really thought I was something. I got my confidence back, I started making plans again, I had a purpose…” You said this to her like she was your therapist, or something equally inane. It was easy to do when she couldn’t talk back. You heaved a sigh and said, “You made me give a crap, y’know? Because at least if I was helping you with the hotel, it meant I was doing something worthwhile, even if I didn’t really…” And here, it was difficult, because you wanted to say get it, but that wasn’t it. You got it. You got it more than anyone in this entire universe could get it. The two of you had the same ambitions, the same dreams — dreams you had tried so desperately to shield her from chasing, because you knew how improbable it was that they would pay off.
So instead, you said, “…even if I didn’t really believe. In myself.”
From somewhere in that deep, dark chasm, glowing faintly with what you assumed was lava but had never really had any interest in going and checking, especially since you were kind of claustrophobic, something rumbled. Less like an earthquake and more like the deep and depthless sound of a whale’s keening lament as it drifted through the ocean.
You tried to laugh, but of course it came out as a broken sob.
“Okay,” you said, after you had dragged your hand across your face and smeared the tears not quite away but at least spread thin enough so that they kind of seemed that way. “Okay. That’s it. I’m talking to them.”
Because you could just lay here next to the chasm and wallow in misery for the next sixteen million years.
But your daughter deserved more than that.
You got to your knees — hesitated — pressed your lips against the ground and held them there, your eyes fluttering closed — and then you whispered against the ground:
“I’ll be back soon, Charlie.”
Beneath your lips, the ground trembled.