Chapter Text
Lucifer sits upon his gilded throne in an empty palace.
The click of Alastor’s heels on spotless floors rings loudly amid silence.
The throne room is cavernous, both in its enormity and dim lighting, as the brightness cast from excess numbers of candles mounted on walls cannot hope of even grazing the base of its vaulted ceilings.
The interior’s deific grandeur is reminiscent of a gothic Cathedral, juxtaposed against its mausoleum-like desolation, prepared well for an eternity of stillness and rot. There is nothing that would invite anyone living to stay here, neither church pews nor benches, just a long hallway lined with candles on both sides.
The aesthetic jars against the bright, circus-themed decor generously applied in Lucifer’s reconstruction of the hotel. So, the palace was not Lucifer’s design. Or, and Alastor’s brain can’t help but linger on this line of thinking, it is reflective of a much older version of him.
Because that is what Lucifer undeniably must be, underneath all the pompous showmanship, he is—ancient. Unknowable. Alastor shivers while keeping his pace walking among flickering flames.
A frankly ridiculous amount of gold climbs his throne’s plush filigree, woven into the fabric and winding around the devil’s form in tangled arcs. To some, the sight might be another imitable display of his beauty, his divinity, and his power.
To Alastor, with what he now knows about the King’s limitations, the gold bears an awful resemblance to thinly gilt chains, the threaded web of which ensnares Lucifer to immobility. He thinks he might now understand as to why Lucifer spent so many years away from the eyes of Sinners.
Just imagine—the King of Hell, in hiding.
The scenery improves Alastor’s mood beyond its already soaring heights. He advances to the short staircase in front of the throne with a spring in his step and a tune humming in the back of his mind.
Lucifer must be expecting Alastor to kill him, after all, and Alastor hasn’t gotten this far in life and death by standing on ceremony.
To his credit, in the ten thousand years of his reign of Hell wherein he surely must have faced just as many attempts on his life, Lucifer doesn’t bat an eye as the throne room doors lock shut behind Alastor. “You sure took your sweet time getting here, Bellhop. Old age might get me before you do!”
“Now, now, surely we can’t have that.” Alastor melts into the shadows, reforming himself on the short set of stairs below Lucifer. “I trust that you understand why I’m here, so soon after Charlie saved all of Hell and I put the Vees in their place.”
“You put those Sinners in their–HA! Geez, you really do like to talk yourself up, red guy. But yeah, okay, I know what you’re after. Same thing as what most Overlords must’ve started wanting the moment I stepped off the TV-head’s stage.” Lucifer grins sharply, pointing at his hat. “My power.”
Alastor takes three steps forward, and an applause track surrounds the both of them. “Ah, the King does have a brain!”
“Sure I do, but what about you?” Lucifer rolls his eyes. “I can’t harm Sinners, but I’ve been around for this long. It’s gotta be clear there are so, so many ways to prevent you guys from harming me.”
“Like running away to your little castle, warded with the strongest magic that Hell has to offer, and, well, what happens after that? Are you planning to hide in your chambers forever?” Alastor climbs the last step up to Lucifer and turns around, gesturing to the enormous throne room before them.
“Nah, this show is just getting started, bambi. I let you through my wards on purpose.” Lucifer has the gall to wink before he transforms.
The Sin’s body changes at once, horns and tail and wings enveloping his small frame. “Now, for my first order of business! Payback for mocking me while I was stuck in Box’s battery.”
With one flap of Lucifer’s wings, he’s breached the distance between them. A long blade of light is pointed at Alastor’s chest, the brilliance of Lucifer’s weapon vanquishing any nearby shadows for Alastor to travel through.
Lucifer Morningstar, the Light-Bringer, just might be a disadvantageous match for Alastor. Still, the radio demon has fought and won through worse circumstances.
Tentacles rapidly emerge from his back, a few throwing his whole body back from Lucifer while the rest surge towards his attacker, seeking to grab and bind and pierce. The devil easily dodges them, throwing points of light that vaporize one after the other.
Lucifer swoops and weaves around his attacks like the most agile bird Alastor has ever witnessed. It’s not beautiful, he reminds himself, but entertaining, and he keeps his interest as nothing more than appreciating the show.
Alastor’s tentacles are extensions made of magic, and destroying them doesn’t cause him any form of pain, merely depleting the magic it took to create them. He still has plenty of that at the moment, weaving and ducking under Lucifer’s next series of strikes with barely a cold sweat. But here is where the radio demon’s curiosity begins.
The idea, when fully fledged in his mind, won’t leave him, and his sense of self-preservation has always been oh, so conveniently non-existent.
Summoning a few of his demonic minions by his side just in case things get out of hand, he gradually decreases the frequency of his tentacle attacks, allowing Lucifer to cross the distance, getting closer, and closer, until—
Alastor is shoved to the floor, his breath knocked out of his chest, though again, not to the point of pain. The length of Lucifer’s sword hovers over his throat, while not touching it.
The radio demon bares the full length of his teeth in a grin.
Lucifer frowns, his lips starting to form the beginning of a phrase, some unconvincing threat for Alastor to stand the fuck down, and his wrist’s grip on the sword loosens.
So, of course, Alastor seizes control of the weapon and shoves it against his neck.
He is well-accustomed to the exact amount of force needed from a blade to split skin, to coerce an uncooperative captive into submission without wounding but still becoming, well, a great deal more talkative.
The radio demon has never done this while on the other end of the blade, but he needs to know. He needs to learn the limits of Lucifer’s punishment of being unable to harm Sinners to the letter. What would happen to Lucifer if he were forced to hurt a Sinner? What would happen to the Sinner?
Alastor’s skin splits, and blood drips, drips, black against the fabric of his suit. But pain isn’t what so utterly submerges Alastor’s mortal frame at this moment. Pain isn’t what causes tears to jump from the long, long unused ducts in his eyes. It’s—
Joy.
He is four years old and held in the arms of his mother. He has said nothing, is not doing anything worthy of getting her to laugh in and of by itself, but she does so anyway. She smiles and crows and kisses the top of his hair and plays with his tiny fingers while he stares in abject wonder.
He is twelve years old, playing hymns on the church piano after Mass and listening to her quietly sing in the pews.
He is twenty-one, lighting a cigar in a darkened shed, watching rain wash away the last traces of his first kill, manically rejoicing in a world rid of his father.
He is in Hell, dead, but for the first time feeling the joys he had once while living, and in large part because of the one-sided, head-over-heels admiration of a silly man with a TV for a head. The man’s name used to be Vi—
V̸͉̘̲̰̼͌̈̒̋͂Ō̷͇̪͊̊͗̉—
It all comes crashing down. A wendigo cries in radio static somewhere and somewhen in a far, far away space.
His mother is—gone, dead, in Heaven. Forever. Vincent as he once knew him is similarly irretrievable, stamped out by his own heel.
Both are facts, immutable. Alastor cannot change either, cannot better his current deficiencies, and his own lack of power in the wake of breaking Rosie’s deal. For the same reason he roasted Vox on a spit, Alastor now finds himself skewered from head to toe. Alastor does not have access to the same reserves as before, is relying purely on the number of souls he has managed to keep on his leash, but that has always been egotistically fewer than the typical overlord and—
Alastor cannot even fix his own staff. He won’t be able to, if Lucifer has managed to break it, and speaking of—
Dully, he can start to hear the Morningstar shouting in the background. His annoying voice is a lifeline, and Alastor has no choice but to cling to it for dear life as consciousness retakes him.
“Al, snap out of it!” Lucifer’s claws are wrapped tightly around his shoulders while he shakes him vigorously back and forth.
Alastor’s vision swims in the moments before setting onto the porcelain face in front of him. Lucifer is looking far too concerned for the entity that Alastor just tried to extinguish via potential loophole.
“Geez, okay, I still kind of hate you for attacking me out of the blue like that. But I could tell you were holding back for some reason and I wasn’t ready for you to just lose your mind like that. You’re… annoying, but fun to be around, typical Sinner selfishness and insanity notwithstanding.”
Alastor blinks, not quite understanding what caused Lucifer to essentially deliver him a compliment. He decides to ask the easier question out of the two.
“What… just happened to me?”
Lucifer drags a clawed hand over his face. “Okay, uh, how do I explain this? It’s an illusion, since I’m not supposed to cause harm and all, but it still needs to come from an actual place of power to seem convincing to Sinners, like… You’ve heard of the concept of divine ecstasy?”
“You wield a blade made of divine ecstasy?” Alastor blurts out.
He realizes belatedly that his radio filter hasn’t been on for this conversation.
Fuck.
“Usually, Sinners never get close enough for it to be a problem,” Lucifer groans. “I just needed a divine-something-or-other that’s shiny and pointy to threaten them. Divine retribution was always my brother’s thing, so ecstasy it was for me.”
Alastor steadies both hands on his (thankfully still-functioning) cane and rights himself. He taps his microphone, making certain to readd his radio filter when he says, “You could have tied me up while I was down, but you didn’t. Why?”
“Honestly, I don’t have the power to spare anymore.” Lucifer’s eyes dart to meet Alastor’s before shifting away into an unassuming corner, as if guilty. “And I wasn’t expecting you to recover so quickly. The comedown from the high is probably the worst thing a mortal can ever experience.“
“Don’t give yourself so much credit, I’ve felt worse,” Alastor lies.
“Sure thing, red guy,” Lucifer tilts his head at him, wearing a tired, crooked grin. He is still seated and half-curled in on himself on the steps beside him. All of a sudden, the King of Hell looks so small.
The Sin keeps talking, "Anyways, congrats—you’ve done it! Divine ecstasy takes a boatload of magic to fuel, especially when a Sinner actually engages with it, so. You’ve leeched away the last bit of power that the TV guy hadn’t managed to steal from me.”
Lucifer stands directly in front of Alastor, extending his arms widely out. He bends in a mockery of curtsy, his grin sharp underneath the drooping brim of his hat. “My palace wards are down.”
As if on cue, Alastor can hear the gates outside of Lucifer’s palace crumple into a creaking mess. Casting his awareness out, he picks out the voices of Zeezi and Prick and Hatchet, cheering and yelling as a hoard of Sinners come running inside.
The radio demon’s heart starts to trip itself into a frenzied beat it hasn’t hit in a long, long time. At least with Vox, he could reliably count on his overblown ego and the relentless need to prove himself to Alastor.
Here, he admittedly doesn’t know the first thing about Lucifer.
Things are escalating much faster than Alastor anticipated. He hadn’t planned to make a deal today, had only aimed for reconnaissance while provoking his favorite target. But Alastor has no choice but to go out on a limb with the paltry amount of knowledge he has now, and never let it be said that Alastor approaches his problems in half measures.
Meanwhile, the King prattles on, “You weren’t fighting like you wanted to win, bellhop. You weren’t striking to kill. So, tell me what you want from me.”
Alastor is ready to present what he knows so far. “Yes, well, I’ve managed to catch wind of a few stories about you. Rare and old tales spun by Hell’s most decrepit Sinners. They speak of the existence of a position of power—a role that some say is as ancient as Hell itself.”
Lucifer’s eyes turn red with surprise. “Hold on, you don’t mean—”
“Why, of course!” It’s Alastor’s turn for his grin to widen, stretching unnaturally to the crows feet by his eyes. “I am now so graciously volunteering myself to be the King’s Executioner!”
Lucifer’s horns erupt from his skull, and his tail stands in a jagged line behind him. A growl laces the edge of his voice. “Red guy, whatever you might’ve heard, there is no way you have a complete understanding of what that means.”
“Nonsense! It means I get unfettered access to the King of Hell’s power, whenever I want, with my free will intact as per your deeply ingrained moral code.”
“That’s the gist, but it’s also a soul bond,” Lucifer tries. “You will become mine in a way no other creature in Hell is.”
Alastor adjusts his monocle like it is the sight glass on his rifle and he lines up his shot.
“As long as the agreement’s mutual, I can’t find myself to particularly care. There’s no one in Hell that outclasses you in power, and thus there’s no one better for me to have a deal with. You’ll become mine, as I’ll become yours, yes?”
“Yeah, okay, but—”
An enormous amount of fine china and glass crashes a few rooms away. Alastor can start to pick up the sound of footsteps. A lot of them.
To speed negotiations along, he’ll simply have to compromise, but he can spin this to his advantage too, just in case this soul bond business is more than he wants to handle. That leaves the question of how much time…?
Ah, a week will do.
Alastor resumes talking, quickening his cadence because it sounds like they only have a few moments left alone. “Here’s the deal, Lu, I become your Executioner, and, I’m sure you’ll like this part—I’ll add a little back door. After one week, we will each get a chance to re-negotiate the terms of our deal. If you wish, you may null and void it altogether. For now, you can enjoy the benefit of not being torn to shreds by the incoming town mob.”
Underscoring Alastor’s point, the grand doors to the throne room burst open, shards of wood splintering from the impact of Zeezi ramming into it at full force. Alastor so loves it when dramatic timing aligns perfectly.
He predicts at least 20 seconds until the first Sinners can make it across the long hallway. Easily enough time for him to teleport the both of them away, but only if Lucifer agrees.
Lucifer’s eyes are scrunched shut while he deliberates, his wings flapping in agitation.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
“Oh, fuck it,” Lucifer whispers. He thrusts his hand out, grabbing Alastor’s hand and shaking it with full force.
The blast of their deal knocks back the first wave of Sinners that had been clambering up the steps to the throne. Their shrieks echo against the vaulted ceilings as they are knocked to the floor.
But dozens of Sinners are right behind them, easily taking their place. Alastor grips his staff, ready to conjure whatever manner of supercharged, angelic-powered magic he must now be capable of producing. He jabs his microphone forward, waiting for it.
And waiting.
And—
His veins turn ice cold. His magic isn’t working, not at all.
What’s worse, pain starts lacerating through his skin, like thousands of papercuts applied everywhere at once. Alastor staggers, unable to move as Lucifer takes his hand.
Lucifer’s eyes are warm and steady. His grip tightens on Alastor’s hand, and Alastor suddenly feels reassurance directed toward him.
It’s gonna be okay, Al.
What?
Uhuh. I know you heard me the first time.
Lucifer, what are you doing in mỶ̴͇̠͒̔̑̅̀ ̸̡̟͎͕̘̦̯̲̹̻͔͈̣̿͋͂̑͛̈͑͆͝͝͝M̵̧̼͚̼͈͂̀̓ͅI̴̡̼̱̙̙̣͂̓̈́͋͗̾̏͠Ṉ̷̞͇̖̗̞̯̟͇̘̦͕̤̠̮̊̅̊Ḋ̶̨̛͈̼̹̔̒̅̾͌̈̈́̄̕̚.
The King of Hell only smiles as he melds his soul with Alastor’s, finding the Sinner’s essence, reaching into the darkness upon darkness that is his own shadow.
Lucifer’s soul is bright and brilliant and burning, but there is no pain when it meets Alastor’s. Alastor finds himself faced with the vision of his shadow being embraced with the all-encompassing light, with the sight of a blinding Sun coexisting with his eldritch silhouette.
Lucifer pulls himself into Alastor’s essence, then through it. He teleports using the deer demon's shadow, bringing the both of them back to the safest place they know.
To the hotel.