Chapter Text
╔═════ ೋღ {Ꮚˊ•⌔•ˋᏊ} ღೋ ═════╗
To say that returning to an empty house never got easier wouldn't be entirely true.
To be fair, calling it a house wouldn't be entirely true either, since you lived in an apartment. Which, by the way, was kind of a miracle of its own since you weren't sure what to expect when you were thrown back into reality after being kidnapped by demonic beings to attend their student exchange program (God, now that you thought about it, like really thought about it, that sounded like the most Twilight-esque plot thought up by an adolescent female posted on some obscure Episodes app that you could think of) but it certainly wasn't that you'd still have a place to live. In fact, you'd fully expected to be out on the streets by the time you returned.
You'd debated on wether your infernal friends may have had something to do with it, but it was probably more likely that the (very religiously devout) old lady that happened to be your landlord had completely forgotten about you (and conveniently, your rent), since you distinctly remember how she was slowly beginning to succumb to what you assumed was alzheimerz. Actually, she probably should have been in a care home at this point. She.. also probably wasn't really equipped to be your landlord.
In fact, the only reason she was your landlady was because her grandson used to be the landlord, but he got busted for being a small time dealer and using his own apartment complex as a hub to house all of his druggie associates and peddle his drugs (which luckily weren't also made on the premises or else there probably wouldn't be a premises anymore) more efficiently. Which explained why your neighbours behaved like.. your neighbours.
Anyway, her grandson had basically been her only family from what you knew– her husband died sometime before you moved in, you'd been around whilst she'd been living with her (adult) grandson (who only had her move in with him to have access to all her finances, you later learned through the news that covered his arrest), even met him a few times (if purposefully going out of your way to avoid him because you saw him going in vaguely the same direction as you counted as 'meeting' him), you were there after he got arrested and had been on the recieving end of her lament about how lonely she felt one day when she'd caught you in the hall and you hadn't had the heart to turn her away when she started talking to you out of the blue. She didn't remember the conversation the next time you met, but she did invite you to tea. You saw it as her cry for help and it became a routine.
All of that to say– one: when your time in the Devildom came to a close, you hadn't thought too hard about what you'd be returning to
two: you'd evidently not been paying attention to how bat-shit your life had actually been
three: you were either simultaneously karmically lucky and cursed, or someone (or someones) down below was still looking out for you given how seamlessly you'd been slotted back into the human world (or maybe that was just because the world is cruel and doesn't bother to keep track of its inhabitants)
And finally, Four:
You really fucking missed the Devildom. Or more specifically, you missed it's people.
Well, not all the people. Most of them, in fact, were complete and utter bastards because, well, they literal demons and the Devildom was, from what you'd gathered, literally Hell... Or existed on an adjacent plane to it, anyway. You remember hearing that there were layers to the Devildom. A piece of trivia you hadn't payed much attention to before, but now.. you'd almost give anything to be able to go back and investigate dumb shit like that (dumb, because even if you found out there were other layers to the Devildom Lucifer would probably never let you go, likely for the best, and because you didn't even care yourself, you'd just take anything to be able to skulk around with your Avatars again)
And there goes your mind, running off with you again. You.. may have ADHD. It's a shame nobody in your life had ever cared enough to get you a diagnosis, and you weren't going to be the bitch who 'self diagnosed'. Ugh. Your problems might've been easier to handle if you had a label. Unfortunately for you, the system (the system that sucked you in when you were young and separated you from the only little one you'd be willing to call family, chewed you up and spit you out all alone) isn't just flawed its broken and because it's broken it hates other broken things- like you -because if it didn't shun people like you it would be forced to confront its own flaws, it would be forced to act like it cares and it doesn't. It would be forced to give you the help you deserve, the things you are owed because you have been robbed your entire life of the things you need to cope with the hell that is living when you never asked to be born and you don't know how to navigate life yet so why does the world act like you owe it something when it should be the other way around?
...
Wow, you just threw the vibe in your entire apartment building way off.
And you think you're scaring your neighbour, because he's staring at you with this wide eyed stare and stiff muscles, and his mouth is pulled back like he's just walked in on you doing his mom and it's probably because you've been staring into space with that 'scary' look on your face (or so you've been told– you just call it resting bitch face, but you guess the normies God you miss Leviathan can choose to freak themselves out if they want to) and you're gripping the handle so tight that your knuckles are white(ha ha that rhymed) and your other balled hand is on the verge of bleeding from how tight you're digging your nails in.
Or, judging from the way his pupils are blown out, maybe that's the crack doing the.. staring. Yeah, actually, he's.. probably hallucinating...
...
Nah, you'll choose to believe that you're just scary enough to just make a habit of scaring the shit out of middle aged men with the aesthetic of.. uh... a homeless person.
.....
Your feet ache as you pry off the pumps, that ones you thought looked cute with your work uniform when you set off, but ended up killing your heels in the long run, which was very ineffective when your work kept you on your toes (in a very literal sense) as much as it did.
You spare a glance at the digital clock you have on your kitchen counter and, upon seeing the bright red digits that read [5:00AM] burn your retinas with just a glance, promptly collapse onto the couch.
It's always extremely late when you get home, or more accurately, extremely early since you exclusively work night shifts. They give you such a feeling of nostalgia.. they remind you of home. Of how the real home in your heart isn't this dinky little apartment, in fact it isn't a place at all- it's a people. It reminds you of when Lucifer, back in the early stages of your stay in the Devildom, made you all join that career program thing that you all simultaneously bemoaned and enjoyed.
The brothers had all bowed out the moment they were let off for doing so, but you'd worked your way up through all of the career trial options that you could until you even scored a waitressing and prep job in Ristorante Six. You'd been trying to be useful to learn as many career-focused life skills as you could since you were given the opportunity for sanctioned hands-on experience on a silver platter. It was something you never would have been able to experience in your early life. It just wasn't something that people like you would have been afforded.
The world taught you how to grow up quick– but not for your sake, for theirs.
Because the sooner you grew up, the sooner you were out of their hair. The sooner you didn't have to be the states problem anymore.
You learned early in life that to be worth something, you had to be useful. If you wanted to keep what you held dear close to you, then you had to work your ass off and prove that you deserved it, that you were capable of caring and being a provider.
You know now that it was a lot to ask- to demand, to expect, to ransom of a child. You didn't think you could consider yourself a child anymore.
You lived alone (on benefits). You had a job. You looked after yourself (you had no choice).
You were only seventeen.
You're seventeen (early seventeen? late? You.. can't remember anymore. When was your birthday again? You were sure you celebrated back at RAD. When was your next birthday?) and have more horrible life experience than is expected for most your age. More life experience than a lot of people in their late twenties even. Older.
At sweet sixteen you were basically left to fend for yourself. You were considered legally old enough to do so, and since the law (or the people practicing it) apparently has no fair concept of context, that's when you were forced into true independence.
But you had really became what you could consider as a young lady at none other than The Royal Academy of Diavolo. It was then that you'd learned growing up could be a good thing.
You'd learned to enjoy becoming a woman.
Your body, however, was another story, and it's this very notion that has you moaning into the stiff 'pillow' (it should be illegal to call it that) of your couch. Your body, at this very moment, feeling the bane joy of womanhood. Pre-period cramps. The ones you get days in advance to warn you of the oncoming slaughter party in your uterus. The reverse baby shower that was about to happen in your womb, if you will.
It's this wonderful new development that gets you up moving. You're exhausted, but you manage to make it to the bathroom where you keep your pill bottle, and down your gullet goes the norethisterone [¹] . The norethisterone that you had acquired.. completely legally. Yes, completely legally, because it wasn't a bitch to get your hands on for a seventeen year old girl who'd been missing from the system for a whole year who didn't have a guardian or anyone to walk her through the process of figuring out your own medical needs and how to go about addressing them.
if you had a mother, or anyone who was around to generally care about your wellbeing, maybe they would've told you it probably wasn't a good idea to try and halt your body's natural functions based on no medical grounds– but you're tired. You're tired of work, of life, of everything, and you just want to not feel like you're being brutally stabbed in the guy thirteen times for a little while longer.
And in a life where you try not to think about consequences or tomorrow, it doesn't seem like too much to ask, or anything worthy of the universes retribution.
And thence cometh the second wave of exhaustion that tries to take you out for the count. This time it succeeds.
You manage to get to your mangy mattress before collapsing. Your head swims and you barley manage to strip yourself of your other layers before darkness envelops you. You ponder whimsically wether the pills were secretly laced with sedatives, but you know you're actually just overworked.
As you drift, you stretch forward and feel your hand hit cold metal. Your eyes are still blearily, and barely, open as you look into the body-length mirror that you forgot you'd crammed into your room for lack of space elsewhere. The one you'd put at the foot of your bed like a psychopath. (Subconsciously you realise this must mean you got onto the mattress the wrong way around since you just fucking fisted the mirror that's meant to be at the foot of your bed)
However you swiftly decide you don't care because it's fucking five in the morning, the birds outside are chirping and that means it's time for you to sleep. So you close your eyes.
You reconsider falling into the welcoming pit of the void, however, when you hear a voice ricocheting around you.
“Ah, my esteemed benefactor,
The noble and beautiful flower of evil,
You are the most beautiful, number one in this world.”
But it's already too late.
Maybe if you were fully in control of your factions at this moment in time, you'd have a better response. But for now...
“You fuckin' wot m8??”
You try your worst, perverted spin of a Great British accent thinking that maybe, if you just try hard enough to be an absolute pain in the ass, if you make this.. entity's stay in your cursed mind as absolutely fucking unbearable as possible, if you make it realise what an absolute walnut it's stuck in here with, it'll just leave you the fuck alone. Maybe then it'll realise you're not whatever dumbass thought reaching out to make a contract with a demon (or whatever this entity is) was a good idea.
“Follow thy heart and take the hand of the one reflected in the mirror.
Flames that turn even stars into ashes,
Ice that imprison even time,
Great tree that swallow even the sky,
Don’t be afraid of the power of darkness,
Come now, show your power.
Mine, theirs, and yours,
There’s only little time left for us.
Do not let go of that hand, at all costs.”
Oh well. A girl can dream.
And apparently a girl can disappear when she dreams, too.
Because while you never reached out to grab the floating hand, it certainly reached for you, and apparently that was enough.
How silly of you to think you actually had a choice. Oh right, you forgot. Women don't have rights. Sucks to be you, I guess.
What wise words did you use to bid your world adieu?
“Motherfucking. Cocksucker, ass.. I did your mom you reflective mirror fuck. ”
╚═════ ೋღ {Ꮚˊ•⌔•ˋᏊ} ღೋ ═════╝
[1] — Norethisterone is a pill that you take: ‘starting 3 to 4 days before you expect your period to begin.
Your period should arrive 2 to 3 days after you stop taking the medication.’
Basically it's a pill you can get prescribed to halt periods (not forever, obviously)