Chapter Text
It was a warzone.
Technically, at least some of Hell was always a warzone. Charlie couldn’t remember a time she’d been outside when she hadn’t seen a bombed-out building or a street of cars on fire or a pile of dismembered limbs, even if it had only been a glimpse before a parent’s hand on hers tugged her off. Violence was a fundamental part of Hell – she’d known that before she’d known that there was anything other than Hell to compare it to. So it shouldn’t have been all that shocking.
But this wasn’t some random part of Hell. It was her Hotel. Her home.
Intellectually, she knew that they were lucky: Pentious was dead, to say nothing of the casualties among their cannibal allies. But everyone else had made it. Heck, everyone dead had been an actual combatant. That was not only unheard-of by Extermination standards, but probably by regular street brawl standards. This might well have been the most peaceful day in Hell in the last century or two. Even KeeKee and Fat Nuggets had made it out.
Looking around at her friends, her allies, her father (and wasn’t that something to marvel at?), all eagerly lining up to repurpose rubble and redesign the building from the ground up, she was doing her best to count her blessings. Put on a smile. After all, it was a valuable tool…
Her blood turned to ice. Somehow, she’d forgotten the other missing face.
Without much of a plan, she ran over to Husk, who was trying to rig up some kind of pulley for lifting materials to the new second floor (already?) so he didn’t have to fly multiple trips.
“Husk! Um, hi!” He swooped down towards her. “Um, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, princess. What’s up?” He looked tired, and his usual mask of irritation was sliding back into place, but the remnants of adrenaline and satisfaction in victory were still visible in his languid movements and neutrally positioned ears.
She paused. ‘Alastor’s his… owner? Overlord? Boss? Whatever. This is probably complicated for him. Lots of feelings. I can do feelings! Just have to be careful about it –‘ “Alastor’s missing!” 'Great. Very smooth.'
He looked around, making a show of checking the barren landscape for a red figure that would definitely stand out. “So he is.”
“Yeah.” She tapped her fingers, starting to grow claws in anxiousness, together. “Do you… know where he is? Or, um…”
“You wanna know if he’s dead.” There was no judgment in the tone, but she felt ashamed regardless.
“I know it sounds horrible, but we were really counting on him, and the shield was great! But then it went down, and I think something happened with Adam, and I have this bad feeling…” She stopped as he held up a fuzzy paw.
“He’s alive.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Trust me.” The lines on his face seemed to suddenly deepen as his habitual tiredness and cynicism reasserted themselves. “If he was dead, I’d know.”
Silently, she nodded. She’d wondered before what it felt like to not have your own soul anymore. Now she wondered what it’d be like to get it back.
“Anything else you wanted?”
“Um, no. Thank you.”
“Anytime.” He moved the paw, still hanging awkwardly in midair, to clap her casually on the shoulder. He looked as though he wanted to say something for a second, but instead withdrew, taking again to the scorched air.
‘He’s not dead…’ She turned that over as she went back to join Vaggie, who’d somehow scrounged up a wheelbarrow for them to use. ‘He’s not dead, and he’s not here.’
What did that mean? The most obvious interpretation was that he was avoiding work, but she’d spent the last six months watching him uncomplainingly taking on everything from their finances to whatever housekeeping was too much for Nifty, so that was out. Other obligations and/or boredom now that the fighting was over? No. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly why – after all, he had no trouble with being inconsistent, rude, and deceitful – but she got the sense that he’d want to stick this out. (Maybe it was a pride thing? Not backing down? If so, he was a lot less clever and mysterious than he wanted to be.) Waiting for a good moment to make his grand entrance? More plausible, but if so, it probably wouldn’t be until they reopened.
Privately, even as she lugged tools and cheered on her dad’s conjuring that afternoon, she knew that her real concern was that he was injured – maybe badly – and he’d gone off to lick his wounds and/or die. It made her want to drop everything to help him, yet she… didn’t.
She looked for him, to be sure. As soon as the thought made its way to her conscious mind, she was off to the spot where he’d been stationed, now mostly buried under what had been a block of empty rooms. No trace of Alastor, even in the emptier spots. She kept her ears pricked all day for his voice and tried to stay alert for the crackle of static in her fingers. Every flash of red (usually blood) or flutter of cloth (usually a corpse or the remains of someone’s room) had her scrambling through wreckage. But there was nothing – not even his staff.
Maybe it was how Husk didn’t just seem blasé, but hopeless. Maybe it was that he’d been uninjured enough to vanish from the rubble. Maybe she just didn’t believe, deep down, that someone who presented himself as indestructible could die. But she was pretty sure he’d be back.
And that thought turned her speculation in a completely different direction. It only took a casual glance to see that his radio tower was unsalvageable. If she hadn’t known what it was, she’d have assumed it was some kind of silo or shed that had collapsed in on itself and gotten tangled up with an unrelated series of telephone poles. No one went near it, partially out of a fear of electrocution and partially out of an unspoken eerie sense that it didn’t quite fit in with the landscape – the Radio Demon’s magic still emanated from it in low, disturbing pulses. ‘More evidence that he’s fine.’ Logically, she should have hunted for him there, too. It’d probably be the first place he’d think to flee. But her brain had already switched gears to the future.
If he wasn’t dead, and he wasn’t badly injured, and he hadn’t said goodbye, he was probably going to be back.
And if he was coming back, the least they could do was remember him with the new building. After all, he’d worked hard this past half year to make a home for them! They should do the same!
By the time she’d had the actual thought, it’d been hours. Thanks to hard work and magic (mostly magic), the building looked… well, not ready, but at least not like it’d been razed to the ground this morning. Looking its broad outline, complete with a small west wing for her father, over, the germ of an idea turned into something more practical.
She took off running for him, scanning the skies. As a result, she completely missed him on the ground surveying his handiwork, wings still out, and collided into a mass of red feathers and dusty clothes on the ground.
He recovered first, astonishingly, poking his head (now sans hat) up to look her over. “Charlie? What’s wrong?”
“Dad! I was just looking for you! I know we don’t have too much more to do, but could we add something to the design?”