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Loona had lived with a cage for a bedroom for fifteen years. If she'd ever been loved, it was so long ago that she couldn't even remember it. So she knew better than to trust that good things would happen to an orphan hellhound like her.
She'd been expecting her eighteenth birthday, planning for being out on the street, what she would need to do to get by, what she could steal, what she could sell, what she could part with about herself. She'd been ready for that. So when they came and got her out of her room, told her that she was being adopted, she was thrown. The littler kids got adopted, sure, but she'd long since passed the point where she was a kid someone wanted. The only possibility was that she was being "adopted" as free labor, which was annoying. She was still a month away from her eighteenth birthday, when she could run away from her new "parents" without anyone caring, and she would rather not have to be a strong back or a bodyguard for that time.
And if it wasn't either of those things, it was something she wanted a lot less. But she had teeth, and she wasn't afraid to use them. If there was one thing growing up in the group home had taught her, it was to snap first, ask questions later.
The floor warden watched her impassively as she packed the few things she owned into a shoulder bag. Then she led Loona into the main office, where the administrator of the home was waiting with, of all things, a tall-ish imp (tall being relative, imps were always tiny compared to her) in a tattered coat, a gun visible at his hip. Okay, so some kind of criminal, probably, or a hitman. Everyone knew that was what imps did, they killed people for money, if they weren't farming. For a second she entertained a thought of being trained as a hitman, learning to become the kind of person that no one would ever mess with. There were worse things.
She slumped her way over to stand in front of the administrator's desk, next to the imp, who kept glancing at her, almost nervously, out of the corner of his eyes. He looked like he was probably ten or so years older than her, but it was hard to tell with other kinds of demons. It wasn't as though she'd seen many other kinds of demons, except for when they were passing through, looking for their perfect little darling and/or perfect hard worker, and never pausing for more than a glance in Loona's direction.
"Loona, this is Blitzo. He's adopting you. Congratulations," the administrator said tonelessly, rifling through her paperwork and not looking up at Loona. "Looks like this is all in order, sir. Here's your adoption certificate, you can take her home with you now."
Loona could feel her lips drawing back from her teeth. You'd think that a lifetime of being talked about like she wasn't there would have made it easier to deal with, but somehow, it always made her want to snap and snarl.
Before she could, the imp practically bounced forward to take the certificate, talking so fast that Loona almost had trouble keeping up. "Oh, great, well, actually, the 'O' is silent, but whatever, that was quick, thanks. Here's my phone, do you think you could take a picture?"
Loona and the administrator both stared at the imp in confusion. He held his phone across the desk to the administrator, his eyes darting between them.
"A photo?" the administrator asked, tilting her head on one side. Her stupid floppy ears tilted and swayed with her movements. Oh, the number of times Loona had wanted to just bite one of those ears clean off.
"Yeah, you know, to commemorate the moment," the imp answered, pushing the phone toward the administrator a little more insistently. He glanced over at Loona and grinned, shifting from hoof to hoof with his tail lashing behind him.
What the fuck, Loona thought, glaring back. If this imp thought she was going to be won over by stupid little gestures, like he was going to make her think she was really going to be part of some kind of real family, she was going to put a stop to that right here and now. She wasn't a fucking sucker. She let her lips lift just enough to show the edges of her snarl, let this imp know that she wasn't about to be fucked with, no matter what the certificate said.
Far from being intimidated, the imp almost brightened, his smile widening into a genuine grin and his posture straightening. The administrator finally took his phone, looking bewildered, and gestured them over to the wall. The imp went cheerfully, Loona reluctantly.
Her new guardian held up the adoption certificate like it was a trophy or something, grinning ear to ear. Loona pinned her ears back and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, trying to make it abundantly clear that this was the stupidest thing she'd ever been a part of, and she had no interest in playing happy families with this idiot.
The administrator snapped the picture, then looked at the screen and wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Well, sir, we could try again," she began doubtfully, but the imp had already snatched the phone back at her and was actually beaming at the screen.
"No, no, that's perfect. Fuck, that's a good picture, that's going in the good folder. Okay, thanks! Come on, Loona, let's get out of here, you hungry?"
Loona... actually was pretty hungry. She stumbled after the imp, not even glancing back at the administrator, or at anything else. "Uh. Sure. I guess."
"Cool, cool, I'm feeling burgers and fries, how's that sound? There's a place on the way. Can't go wrong with burgers and fries, right?" His tail swished and he looked back over his shoulder at Loona, who kept her face expressionless. She wasn't going to smile back. She wasn't.
"Yeah, that's fine," she answered.
She didn't seem to need to do much to keep Blitzo talking a mile a minute, which was good, because she really didn't have much to say.
***
"Home" turned out to be a one-bedroom apartment in a run-down neighborhood in Pride. She'd never been anywhere but the main city in Gluttony. The kids in the group home had sometimes been taken on little outings to places in the city, but as they sat in the van in the vehicle section of the Hellevator, she realized that she was about to go further away than she'd ever been.
She wasn't sure why that surprised her. He was an imp, after all, and few people chose to live in Gluttony who weren't hellhounds.
"Do you live in Wrath?" she asked, as the Hellevator started to rise.
Blitzo snorted and shook his head. "No way. I'm not from there. I'm Pride born and raised."
"You live in Pentagram City?" Loona had heard tons of stories about the city, read news articles about all the crazy things sinners got up to up there, but she'd never imagined she'd go there.
"No, Imp City. It's about twenty minutes away on the highway. But we'll pass through Pentagram City, if there was anything you wanted to do...?" He glanced her way, his fingers tapping incessantly on the steering wheel.
She considered it, then shook her head. "No," she said shortly, and let the silence fall again.
They picked up the food from a drive-through in Imp City, then carted the bags and drinks up to the third floor, where Blitzo shouldered open the door with the kind of energy that made her think he'd be doing a flourish or something if his hands weren't full. The apartment was... not the group home. That was something.
"Okay," Blitzo said, setting his bag and drink down on the little two-seat kitchen table. "I moved my stuff out of the bedroom. I didn't really have much stuff to begin with, so it was easy enough." He gave a little self-deprecating laugh and gestured toward the one door on the left side of the main apartment. "So that'll be your room. It's got, you know, the basics. Bed, drawers, nightstand. Not much else. But we can get some more stuff for you, whatever you need. That's the bathroom, there," he said, and gestured to the door on the right side of the apartment. "The place is small, but it's got a decent balcony. And the laundromat is only two blocks away, so that's nice. Um. Yeah. Welcome home!" He clasped his hands behind his back in a way that absolutely did not make him look nonchalant, his tail lashing.
Loona stepped sideways to the bedroom door, not taking her eyes off Blitzo as she went. She opened the door and looked in. Everything he'd said was there, the bed with inoffensive off-white sheets and a soft-looking gray blanket, the nightstand empty except for a little, cheap ceramic lamp.
She slung her shoulder bag through the door and closed it again, as though she could claim it permanently by putting her stuff in there. Then what Blitzo had said fully caught up with her, and she looked around the apartment in confusion. "Where are you going to sleep?"
He grinned and jerked a thumb at the couch in the living room. She noticed that there was a folded blanket and a pillow in a little pile next to one of the arms. "That'll be me," he said, as if there was nothing strange about it.
She kept her face expressionless, but it took effort. She had no idea what kind of game he was playing. "You're giving me your room?"
He shook his head. "No. It's your room. I'm fine, I've slept in way weirder places. I grew up in a circus, I can pretty much sleep anywhere."
She stared at him for a long moment, her eyes narrowed, trying to figure it out. Then her stomach growled, and she decided, fuck it, she'd figure it out later. He'd bought her a combo meal, and she didn't want anything more than to absolutely inhale it.
He kept chattering about dumb, pointless shit all through the meal, telling her how to get to the nearest grocery store, offering to track down any other furniture she needed for her room. It was clear from the apartment that he had almost no money to be splashing around, but he was offering anyway. She didn't give more than one- or two-word responses.
It was only that night, when she went to bed, that it came home to her that, up until he had decided to adopt a hellhound, this had been his bed. She imagined how easy it would be for him to come up to her, in a couple weeks when she felt more comfortable, and make a show of how sleeping on the couch was so uncomfortable, and wouldn't it make more sense for them to just share the room, and the bed?
There had always been horror stories floating around the group home, about the other things hellhounds could be adopted for.
She considered what she could use to barricade the bedroom door in a pinch, then realized that the door had a lock on it. She was certain there hadn't been a keyhole on the other side. She turned the lock, which made a satisfying thunk sound, then pressed her ear to the door, waiting to see if Blitzo would complain about it, tell her she needed to keep her door unlocked.
He didn't. She heard him humming to himself as he bustled around the apartment, but he didn't come anywhere near her door. Eventually, after he'd been silent for a half hour or so, she went to bed herself.
She was surprised how well she slept, without the full weight of the group home pressing down on her.
***
Loona waited with increasing impatience and anxiety for the other shoe to drop. Any day now, Blitzo was finally going to tell her what he'd adopted her for. What he wanted from her. And if she needed to, she was going to bite his stupid face off.
The day after he brought her home, he asked her what her favorite foods were, then went to the store and bought most of them, plus a frame that he put her adoption certificate in and hung on the wall, right next to the door, where there were tons of other pictures. She didn't come out of her room except to get food and take it with her to eat on her bed, then to put her dishes in the sink. She very pointedly did not offer to do anything around the house. He didn't say anything about it.
The next day, he told her that he had to go back to work, but she was welcome to stay in the apartment. He left her her own key, so she could also go somewhere if she wanted to. She spent the day getting to know the neighborhood, figuring out if there was anything she could use or anywhere she could go if she needed to run away. He brought takeout home that night, and asked her how her day had been, and didn't seem put out when she gave him short, nothing answers.
On the third day, she overheard him call her his "daughter" while he was on the phone with someone. She didn't say anything to him the rest of that day, even when he asked her a direct question. He just rolled with that, too.
She locked her bedroom door every time she closed it behind her, and he never said anything about it.
After two weeks of this, she was starting to feel like she was losing her mind. In another two weeks, she would turn eighteen, and she'd be a legal adult by Hell's laws. He wouldn't be able to force her to do anything then, or at least it would be harder. If he wanted her to work for him for free, he was going to have to tell her soon.
And if he was taking so long getting her to feel at ease, getting her to let her guard down, then what he wanted her for must have been truly terrible.
One night, she lay awake for hours trying to imagine what it could be. Even weirder and worse sex shit? Organ harvesting? What could it be?
The only way she was able to get to sleep was by deciding that the next day, she'd run away.
The smart thing to do would be to just sit tight and let things run their course. But two weeks of wondering and waiting had left her feeling utterly fried. She just couldn't take it anymore. She couldn't wait. She had to get up and go.
She didn't come out of her room for breakfast the next morning, and didn't respond when Blitzo called goodbye to her on his way out the door. She waited for twenty minutes after he'd left, just in case he'd forgotten something and needed to come back. It happened surprisingly often; he was kind of a scatterbrain. When she was sure he was really gone, she got up, threw everything she owned straight back into her shoulder bag, and turned for the door.
She paused when her eyes fell on the little horse figurine on her bedside table. Blitzo had given it to her a few days before, saying he'd seen it in a store window and thought of her. It was a cheap plastic hellhorse, but it had a moon printed on its flank, and it had its head tilted back as though it was howling. Blitzo was weirdly obsessed with horses, there were pictures and figurines all over the house, but he'd given that one to her, and he hadn't seemed to mind when she'd taken it into her room, where he couldn't look at it anymore.
Part of her said she should just leave it there. This room would go back to being Blitzo's after she was gone, after all. But he'd given it to her. It was hers. And there were few enough things in the world that were hers.
She snatched up the little horse and shoved it into a side pocket of her bag. Then she slung it back over her shoulder and left the room for what could only be the last time.
***
She didn't have more than a few dollars. That, she had to admit, wasn't because Blitzo had been strict about sharing his money. He gave her pretty much everything she asked for. It was just that Blitzo was poor as shit, and so, by extension, Loona was poor as shit. She used the money to buy as many snacks as she could at the grocery store. She stashed them in several different pockets of her shoulder bag, plus a few packages in her pockets. Then she... walked.
She didn't have a destination in mind, but as long as she didn't think too hard about that, she could keep going.
When it started to get close to night, she realized she was going to have to decide where she'd sleep. Some quiet alley somewhere seemed like her best bet, and she found a place that looked promising, squishing herself between a wall and a dumpster in such a way that she couldn't be seen from the mouth of the alley.
Would she wake up if someone approached her? She had keen instincts honed by years of sharing rooms with bigger, angrier, fiercer kids. She was pretty sure that she'd wake up in time to sink her teeth into anyone who wanted to fuck with her.
She had to be. There wasn't really another option.
She curled herself against the wall, trying to ignore the way it smelled, and had almost gotten herself to sleep when she heard footsteps at the mouth of the alley. She snapped awake suddenly and let out a low warning growl. The footsteps stopped, and she waited, all her muscles tense.
Finally, a voice came from the alley. "Get the fuck out of here. This is our spot, bitch." The footsteps started up again, two sets, walking fast toward her. No time to hesitate.
She leaped out from behind the dumpster, and for the next minute, it was just a flurry of claws and teeth and horns and tails, two imps who were much smaller than her but tenacious, and they got on either side of her and it was all she could do to keep her feet and...
And then it was done, and the two imps were fleeing, black blood splattered on their shirts. One of them flipped her off as they went. She settled herself back down behind the dumpster and realized that she was shaking.
There was a sharp pain in her ear. She reached up and touched it, and had to yank her fingers away from the sticky, wet feeling of it. Her fingertips were bloody. She took a deep breath and reached up again, forcing herself to feel around, figure out what the damage was.
Her earrings were gone. Probably somewhere on the dirty ground in the alley, if she wanted to bother looking for them, but she didn't. She felt the squishy places where they'd been ripped out of her ear, then dropped her hand when her stomach turned over. It wasn't like she'd never been hit hard enough to bleed before, but somehow the idea of a piece of her getting ripped off was so much worse.
She pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, burying her face in the sleeves of her shirt and trying to pretend she wasn't crying.
***
Night had fallen completely, and she'd been drifting for a few hours through a paranoid half-asleep state that, honestly, kind of felt worse than just staying awake, when she heard a familiar voice, distantly shouting.
"Loona? Looney? Loona, can you hear me?"
"Shut the fuck up!" someone else yelled back. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"Hey, fuck off, asshole, or I'm gonna knock your fangs in and make you eat them!" Blitzo shouted back a little closer, and maybe it was that teeth-bared ferocity that Loona recognized, or maybe it was just that she was lonely and miserable and her ear ached terribly. Whatever made her do it, she opened her mouth and called, "Blitzo, I'm here." Then she snapped her jaw shut again, furious at herself.
There was a clop and skitter of running hooves, and a moment later, there he was, silhouetted against the mouth of the alley. "Looney?" he asked, sounding a bit out of breath. "You in there? I really hope you are, I've been looking for-fucking-ever." She didn't answer, and a moment later, he walked down the length of the alley to plunk himself down on the other side of the dumpster. She could see his booted hooves, legs stretched out in front of him, but nothing else. After a little while, he asked, "So. This where you're spending the night?"
She growled. "Yeah. What's it to you?"
He leaned around the dumpster to glance at her. She saw his eyes go to her ear, then away again just as fast. "Just curious. You fight for the spot?"
"Yeah." She felt stupid all of a sudden, and looked down at the ground, waiting. She didn't know if he was going to go the anger route or the disappointed-in-her route.
"Okay," Blitzo answered, and then nothing else. She could hear him shifting around on the other side of the dumpster, but she couldn't see enough to know what was going on.
"What are you doing?" she asked finally.
"Getting comfortable," he responded, casually.
"What? Why?"
"You need someone to watch your back if you're going to sleep here."
She snarled. "No I don't. I don't need you here."
"Listen, Looney, I've slept in alleys, okay? Best case, and I mean best case, you wake up to some perv trying to get a little closer than you want. So let me watch your back."
She considered objecting to the stupid nickname, but there were more pressing concerns. "You want me to believe that you're going to stay here the whole night? Stay awake the whole night?"
He snorted a laugh. "I can handle a sleepless night here or there. I've had a lot of 'em. So don't worry, okay? If this is where you want to sleep, go to sleep. I got ya."
Loona didn't say anything else, just huffed and curled into a more comfortable position against the wall. She heard him humming quietly to himself, but he didn't say anything else. She waited for him to break, tell her that this was stupid and he'd put up with her long enough, order her to go back to the apartment.
He didn't, though. She was still waiting when she dropped off, too exhausted to be alert any longer.
***
She blinked awake suddenly, dawn light starting to filter into the alley. Her ear was throbbing. For a second, she was confused about where she was, her heart in her throat. A faint sound startled her, and she whirled to see Blitzo's dumb boots sticking out from the other side of the dumpster. He muttered something to himself and tapped one heel against the ground.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the time. Just before six o'clock. It was morning.
He'd stayed there all night. Just like he'd said.
"Blitzo?" she asked softly.
"Morning, Looney," he said cheerfully. "Sleep alright?"
He had stayed. He'd kept his promise. He might have been the only adult she could remember to make a promise to her and then keep it.
"Yeah," she answered, truthfully. "Did you sleep at all?"
"Nah. Told you, I've got your back." He pushed himself to his feet, and her ears twitched as she heard several joints crack. "Ah, fuck." He pressed his hands to the small of his back and stretched. "Speaking of backs, mine isn't as limber as it used to be. Plus we really oughta put some peroxide on your ear. Ready to go back to the apartment?" He tilted his head and gave her a hopeful smile.
She blinked hard a couple of times to clear the sudden mistiness that fell over her eyes. Then she smiled back, small and hesitant. "Sure. Let's go home."