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Alastor held in the wince as another spasm of pain went down his back, smile fixed and eye twitching slightly.
He was quite good at hiding his pain – if you showed your vulnerabilities in New Orleans as black man or in Hell as an Overlord, the result would be roughly the same level of pain and destruction after all – but somehow Lucifer, who was strolling next to him through the streets as they headed back to the manor, noticed.
Lucifer was going out into the city more often now – he was going out into Hell more often, both the other places sinners gathered in this circle, the small villages and towns that often escaped Exorcists eyes when they were focused on the large city of Pentagram, the other circles in Pride, and the other rings, seeing how Hell had changed while he’d been hiding away and learning his people from the ground up. He was now, as he often was in those trips, in disguise as an imp, and when Alastor had first seen the disguise his eyes had lit up as he vibrated with the opportunity to make so many puns about Lucifer’s height. Lucifer had looked at the expression on his face, sighed, and smiled and told him to let it out. Alastor had commented on how he hadn’t needed to change his height for the disguise, on how he was bright orange to prevent anyone running into him, on how he should wear high heels or people might accidentally trip over him, and on and on – and the man who had once reacted to Alastor commenting that he was shorter then he would have expected by insulting and demeaning him, had simply smiled, looking amused. He’d almost seemed happy that Alastor was having so much fun.
“You alright?” Lucifer murmured, keeping his voice blessedly low so as to not draw attention.
“Quite,” Alastor responded, hoping Lucifer would drop it.
But this was hell, where prayers were useless and hopes died, so of course it was at that moment that another pulse of pain came, worse than before, worse then any of the ones before, and as his spine protested existing and his muscles felt like they were pulsing and moving and pain radiated out enough to catch his breath and steal his voice, Lucifer noticed, concern shrouding his face.
“Alastor –”
“Not here!” he snapped, hand clenching tighter around his microphone and using it more as a walking stick then he normally did.
“We need to get home.” Alastor darted his eyes around, keeping his ears upright by sheer force of will and knowing that the damned tail was trying to get out of its bindings and flip upwards to display danger to a non-existent herd.
He wasn’t the radio demon, in this world, this dimension, this time – he wasn’t even an overlord yet. But he was known, he was recognisable, and with his work with the Exterminations and his radio studio he was thought of as soft, as kind, as weak and easy pickings and he normally enjoyed that, enjoyed turning it around on those who thought they could hunt this deer – but that was when he wasn’t weak and easy pickings. All it would take was one spasm, and an easy fight could turn on him, and if the sinners walking the streets and arguing and fighting and, in one case, being set on fire, noticed him, recognised him, and saw he wasn’t at his best…
He wasn’t an Overlord, but he had money and souls, and if sinners saw him as easy pickings, they’d try and take them, and it would spiral and he wouldn’t be seen as a safe person to give your soul to anymore!
“How about a disguise?” Lucifer asked, breaking Alastor out of his spiralling thoughts and snapping his fingers.
A puff of red sparkles flashed around Alastor and when he looked down he saw a form that wasn’t his.
There were a pair of rather lovely breasts dressed in a rather skimpy outfit, a tail with a heart shaped club at the end of it, small batlike wings and his skin was a bright pink, while his long hair fell around him in copper waves.
It…wasn’t an illusion? He could feel the change in gravity, the way his hips swayed as he walked, the weight of the breasts on his chest and the long tail and wings – and he had feet in his high heels, not hooves. He scrunched up his toes in them before giving them a small wiggle.
Alastor reached down to pull the short (very short) skirt down a little, smile fixed, and Lucifer winced next to him and snapped his fingers again. When he second puff of sparkles disappeared, Alastor was wearing instead a flapper dress, very similar to the one he’d worn when he’d first met this Lucifer, and that was much looser and knee length rather then halfway up his thigh.
“Better?”
“Much, thank you sire,” Alastor said, and did a little twirl. “This isn’t an illusion, is it? It’s a full transformation, like yours.”
“Yeah,” Lucifer shrugged it off, seeming not to understand how impressive that was. The King of Hell was the oddest mixture of arrogant and humble Alastor had ever seen – or rather, he somehow had both inferiority and superiority complexes in one, feeling better and more powerful than everyone around him, while also feeling like he was trash and a failure and everything was his fault. It was an odd showing of Pride in that he took everything on himself, good and bad, and it was annoying because it really did take away people’s autonomy. Sure, he’d just done a spell no one else in Hell could do – the most the majority of hellborn could manage was a spell that disguised them as human, but was an illusion that could fail when pushed against – but it was normal for him, who shapeshifted as casually as breathing. A small reminder that the form Alastor knew him by wasn’t his first one.
“Should I be going by female pronouns right now?” Alastor asked idly as they walked. Lucifer’s tail, as prehensile as his normal one, entwined with his own new one, and it was…nice. Like holding hands. Alastor gave it a little swing.
Lucifer cocked his head to the side, black and white striped horns that were the same shape as his normal horns gleaming in the red light.
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t care either way, but since this is a full transformation – when I was alive it always seemed very obvious to me. Men wore men’s clothes and women wore women’s clothes, most of the time – and even in cases like wearing work pants it was for very specific times and places, and the hair and makeup was usually enough to let me know if they were a man or a woman! If I saw someone wearing men’s clothes during the day and women’s clothes at night, that meant he was a ‘he’ during the day and she was a ‘she’ at night, and I should treat them as such, regardless of whether, say, he had breasts or she had a beard. But things changed when I got to Hell.”
And they had changed even more in the times that hadn’t passed yet in this timeline.
“Women wear men’s clothes but are women, men can wear skirts but are men, and so I don’t know how they want me to refer to them, and I can’t be rude, my mother would be so disappointed!” Alastor raised his other hand to gesture, paused and winced as the motion pulled at his sore back, and lowered his arm instead. Angel Dust, for instance, might be effeminate and prefer men for sex, but he was distinctly a man, as Alastor had learned when he had quietly enquired the day they’d met, after cleaning up the Jambalaya he’d cooked the group.
“What pronouns do you want to have?” Lucifer asked, concerned but willing to go along with the conversation, and thankfully not bringing up the slowed pace as Alastor allowed the mask of not being in pain to fall.
“Does it matter?” Alastor asked, genuinely confused.
“It does.”
Alastor shrugged. “I have a woman’s body right now, so being a woman is fine,” she said. “I’m really not fussed.”
Lucifer grinned at her. “You know, genders are a pretty new thing to me – as new as having a body. I get how they can be confusing. Just use whatever feels right Al – lie?”
This was as unimportant and vaguely confusing as that conversation they’d had when Alastor had been in the bath, but it was a distraction from her back.
“Allie works.”
They kept walking.
When a passing sinner catcalled Allie, making a vulgur gesture to his crotch and suggesting she leave the ‘shortstack’ next to her for a ‘real man’, Lucifer shot the man a grin and pointed a gun at him – one that gleamed the bright silver of Angelic Steel. The sinner paled and ran, and the crowds that had started to gather at the sight of a succubus alone except for a ‘measly imp’ scattered.
Allie raised an eyebrow at him, and he shot her a roguish grin as the ‘gun’ disappeared. “An illusion?”
“Yup,” he popped his lips. “If I actually want to wipe a soul from existence I don’t bother using Angelic Steel –”
He stopped as they stopped in the middle of the path, Allie bending over as another flash of pain ran through her back.
When she opened her eyes, and brushed some of her sweat damp hair from her face, Lucifer was looking at her with open concern, an expression that was still odd to see on that face directed at her.
“Okay, I’m sorry, I know you don’t like fussing but – what’s with the back pain? Are you injured?”
Allie couldn’t help but let out a snort of laughter at that. “On my back? Hardly.”
The only time she’d ever been hurt had been to her front thank you.
“It’s some sort of disease that seems to be going around, at least in the studio,” Allie admitted. “It involves muscle aches and pains, like the flu – this is the worst it’s gotten or I wouldn’t have gone to work today, I would have taken care of it. I’m lucky it’s just my back, poor Bunny has been having the most awful headaches, Marshall too!”
Lucifer looked oddly horrified, and then frowned at where Allie was clutching his shoulder.
“A disease – shit, wait, yeah, sinners get sick! Muscle pain – is walking making it worse?”
“Walking is…not making it better,” Allie allowed, delicately.
Lucifer responded to that by clicking his fingers and directing them to a narrow alley that now held a golden portal.
They stepped through into the manner, and Lilith was there, sitting on a couch and reading a book, and she froze as they walked in, giving Allie a long, slow once over.
Allie had a moment of worrying Lilith wouldn’t recognise her and would think she was – was some succubus one night stand her ex-husband was bringing home before Lilith looked eyes with her, expression faintly lasvicious.
Ah, or perhaps she would think he was bringing her home for them to share, this was awkward, Allie needed to let her know immediately –
“Alastor?” Lilith asked, before turning her gaze to Lucifer. “Are we playing that game now? Should I put on a succubus disguise too?”
Lucifer clicked his fingers and swiftly he was once more the King of Hell, and Allie the Succubus was Alastor the Radio Demon.
“Sorry Lils, but no time, Alastor’s sick.”
Lilith eyes widened, and then she closed them, an expression that suggested she was cursing herself internally crossing her face. “Of course. Sinners get sick.”
“Do you not get sick?”
“I don’t,” Lilith said, “I never ate the apple. Does it hurt much? Do you have a fever?” she came forward and placed one cool hand on Alastor’s head and oh, now that she mentioned it, that did feel wonderful. He leaned into it slightly.
“You feel overly warm,” Lilith frowned, but her normal poise was strangely absent.
She’d never gotten sick, Lucifer as a Fallen Angel presumably never got sick…
“Does Charlie get sick?” Alastor asked.
“No, she’s part angel part first human, she doesn’t even get hellborn diseases.”
Ah, so it was because she wasn’t used to this.
“It’s fine, sickness is perfectly normal!” he waved them off. “I lived through the Spanish Flu you know!” Alastor straightened, pulling the mask back on and not wincing even as his movement sent another surge of pain.
“And it’s not as if it’s new in Hell either, I’ll just deal with it the way I normally do!”
Although…considering it was his back…reformation might be better than regeneration, unlike Siobhan and Marshall who could just grab a gun and take care of their heads.
Lucifer and Lilith were both frantically nodding their heads. “Yes, of course, you’re used to being sick, you know what to do…Alastor what do we do?”
“Soup? Humans like soup when they’re sick right?”
“Yes! Lots of soup and also water because they can die from dehydration!”
That got a distressed noise from one or both of them.
They were talking to themselves as they hustled him along, bringing him to – a bedroom? It wasn’t his, or Charlie’s. When he walked in it was all tacky circus décor, red and white and gold, with piles of yellow rubber ducks everywhere and – was that a bed?
WHY WAS IT SHAPED LIKE A DUCK?!
Was this why all his attempts to get the two to get back together had failed? He’d been trying to get them to at least share a bedroom again, but if it meant sleeping in that bed he’d refuse too –
Wait.
Lilith was smiling at the abomination of a bed.
“Do you remember, in Eden – I was crying and you offered me a duck to cheer me up?” she said softly, looking over at Lucifer with bright eyes.
He smiled back.
They were leaning closer.
Really?
REALLY?!
In front of THAT BED?
Alastor cleared his throat, and when they startled and turned, blushing, to face him, he smiled at them. “I am not going on that eyesore, your majesties. I’d rather die. In fact, why don’t you just snap me back to my room and I can deal with this illness myself quick smart!”
“How will you do that?” Lilith asked.
“I’ll shoot myself in the head, call Rosie and have her and some of her people come over and eat me, and force a reformation. It’s easier with my body parts being digested then burning myself, and will provide a good meal, I know Rosie will cook me excellently! I’ll just drop down here again and make my way back to the manor, though I might have to rob someone for some clothes again…”
They looked oddly horrified for some reason.
~
Wearing a new set of red silk pyjamas Lucifer had snapped up for him and ensconced in Lilith’s bed – a compromise to Alastor’s wish for his own room and Lucifer’s wish for that ridiculous thing he had the audacity to call a bed – Alastor sulked and tried to squirm his way out. Unfortunately, not only were the sheets tucked in securely around him, Lucifer and Lilith had brought in the big guns to keep him down – Charlie was lying on top of him, determinedly starfishing and looking up with big sad eyes every time he tried to get away. Lucifer and Lilith, meanwhile, had left to call Belphegor in a panic about what to do with illnesses, (he could heal injuries not illnesses he wasn’t Raphael Bel!) and attempt to make chicken noodle soup, respectively.
“Does it hurt a lot?” Charlie asked in a small, wavering voice.
Alastor would have patted her on the head to reassure her, but he couldn’t currently move his arms.
“Of course not, do you think I haven’t dealt with being sick before? It’s some mild aches and pains, your parents are over exaggerating because they’ve never been sick before. You remember when some of your friends in cannibal town caught a cold yes! And when chicken pox went through the orphanage?”
He’d kept her away from them both times…in hindsight, if he’d known she was immune he would have let her stay with them.
“There was so much scratching, before you sealed the orphanage. I remember – William was crying. And he’d scratched himself raw and the other cannibals didn’t even look hungry…”
She seemed vaguely traumatized at the memory, actually. This was not helping.
So instead, he went for a different method of manipulation. Manipulating the truth, making honesty a weapon was far more fun than simply lying!
“Charlie…lying on my back is really not helping.”
It really wasn’t.
Charlie got off him and helped him move to his side.
“Thank you dear. I don’t suppose I could convince you to let me go, or give me some whiskey?” The best medicine for dealing with pain. Well, that and morphine, which Alastor had no intention of allowing himself to become addicted to. Addictions were a weakness after all.
“No! Drinking is bad!”
Alastor couldn’t be bothered with dealing with that right now his back was spasming – he hadn’t been in this much pain since he’d been cleaved in two by Adam’s axe, and even than the shock had muted it somehow, allowing him to escape with his shadows help. He’d spent decades without being hurt, this was – this was –
He couldn’t help the squeal of static and the shattering of glass as green light flickered around him, shadows whirling. He writhed. He didn’t scream but the radios in the room did it for him, his shadow stretched up over the ceiling, its mouth in a grimace and then opening in a scream as it let out what he couldn’t.
“Alastor?!”
Charlie sounded scared but he couldn’t move to help her, protect her, his charge, his ward, (his child, his FAWN) because he was too busy ripping his way from the sheets and contorting and twisting and clawing at his back. Which was bulging, he could see with his head turned to look down at it.
“Mom, Dad, help!”
Something was trying to get out – he ripped. He clawed. He tore. Flesh hung in ribbons from his claws as the shadows whirled around him and Lucifer and Lilith both burst into the room, wings and horns and fire and claws and full demon forms released.
The wings burst from his back in a spray of flesh and viscera and blood and Alastor collapsed down on the bloodstained sheets panting.
The shadows calmed, the light faded, the radios stopped screeching.
Darkness was creeping in from the sides of his vision as he watched all three Morningstar’s gape at him. Ah, so they were as surprised as he was then. Good.
Distantly, his last thought before he fell into the depths of unconsciousness, was wondering if this was what giving birth felt like.
