Chapter Text
Alastor couldn’t stand the screaming.
It dragged into him like a jagged blade, catching and tearing on the ridges of his mind as it corkscrewed down into the heart of him.
Bloodcurdling screams were obviously something that Alastor was familiar with and he generally enjoyed the undulating sound. He’d cultivated the screams of those he had snuffed out to broadcast through his radio program; because he loved it.
Those screams had been a wild cacophony that he’d happily played over the air on his whim as if they were music. Which, to him, they were: a creative outlet that he could call upon and control as if he were conducting an orchestra, flooding the airwaves with his victorious songs.
But these screams… Lucifer’s screams… were an entirely different animal.
These were not something that he had purposefully collected.
They were artless.
Unwanted.
Forced upon him.
Alastor could not stand things being forced upon him.
The screams ate into him like a cancer, as if another piece of him was splintered and consumed with each and every ragged cry that erupted from Lucifer's throat.
Bound and tortured within Vox’s weapon, Lucifer screamed out into the fathomless dark. The sound was cosmic, like the sound a star might make in the final moments before it twisted and collapsed into a black hole. It was a sound that was not supposed to be heard by any living creature. It was obscene. Wrong.
It made Alastor feel sick.
Lucifer’s entire body glowed with electric bolts of power, controlled by an outer force that focused his magic upward. Toward Heaven.
“No! No! Please!” Lucifer begged, thrashing against his restraints in his fishbowl of a prison.
He screamed.
A dying star, calling out to the void.
The blinking lights of several camera-drones were floating around the room, recording everything and broadcasting to the Voxtek livestream.
Vox was above them at the controls of the weapon, standing upon a cold metal catwalk in the rafters of the building. It was dark up there and Alastor could see little more than the cold glow of his screen, the bluish light giving only a hint of his broad shoulders and leaving the rest of him shrouded in black.
One of the camera-drones circled around Vox, taking in his menacing stance as if to show his power to the denizens of Hell. The other drones were pointed toward Alastor and Lucifer. The one closest to Alastor buzzed and he lifted his head to look into the mounted camera. The black aperture in the lens fluttered as it came in for a close-up.
Alastor hated being on camera and knew that his natural defenses would scramble the video-feed, so it didn’t bother him much.
He gave the drone a broad, dangerously stitched smile.
The drone wavered under his silent power, bright sparks emitting from the crevices between its joints. The wretched thing began to smoke as Alastor stared at it, then it veered off before crashing into a wall and tumbling to the floor. Its lights went black and it stopped moving.
Alastor huffed at it, then turned his eyes upward to more important matters.
Vox flipped a switch at his control center and the ceiling began to slide open with a whir of gears. The celestial body of Heaven’s winged orb was slowly revealed by the widening skylight hatches. He turned his machine, just slightly, to focus more directly on it.
Still tied to his chair, Alastor dismissed Vox and watched Lucifer’s terror with growing fascination. He did his best to sit calmly and calculatedly as if all of this were boring to him, in spite of how his mind was spiraling. He simply could not look away from the suffering King, nor could he block out his cries for mercy.
It was like witnessing a man seeing his loved ones slaughtered before him; parents, children, friends… All of them subjugated to split flesh and gushing wounds. This once-Angelic man had been banished from his home, stripped bare of every thread that had connected him to them, and yet he was still so desperate to protect them from the war that Vox was threatening.
It was a devastating, mind-reeling kind of love that Alastor’s mind simply could not quantify. Heaven had wronged Lucifer, yet he still begged for their lives to be spared.
As much as he hated Lucifer, he hated seeing him like this even more.
That puzzled him. Shouldn’t he be ecstatic to watch him suffer so nakedly? Shouldn’t it be a satisfying catharsis to hear Lucifer scream and beg?
No. Alastor didn’t want this. His heart was hammering so hard that the edges of his vision pulsed black.
Alastor raised his voice over the noise of both the weapon and its prisoner, quickly trying to think of how to best sway their captor to back off from this impending war.
“Oh, Vox!” he called, latching onto the disintegrating threads of his calm composure. “You can’t really be serious about doing this now, right? Give it time. You’ll have more support from the Sinners if you wait just a little longer and gather more attention to your cause! Aren’t you being a little too hasty, even for you? It makes you look a little desperate, don’t you think?”
The blue glow of Vox’s screen slowly tilted down to look at Alastor. His red eyes were manic and piercing as he stared down at him.
“Too late,” Vox breathed after several long, uncomfortable seconds. His wide, smiling mouth took up every corner of his rectangular face. “It’s already begun! We’ve already committed and I couldn’t stop it now even if I wanted to. The program is running and there is no failsafe. We are tunneling into Heaven, Al! This first blast will probably only kill a few thousand of them, but then we’ll have a pathway to march in and take them over.”
Lucifer’s body flickered to a blinding gold and his back arched as the power of destruction coursed its way through him.
“No!” the Devil wept, “Please don’t make me do thi–”
A whitehot pinpoint of light gathered in Lucifer’s chest, cutting off his words. Lucifer gasped, his eyes shut tight as he tried to hold back the destructive power being forced through him. The light was so bright that it hurt Alastor’s eyes.
Despite Lucifer’s cries of mercy, Vox’s winding cables dug deeper into his flesh and twisted. Lucifer’s torso bucked and his eyes flew open wide to stare up at the Heavenly sphere above them. Bright tears caught the light and glittered as they streamed down his face.
Alastor had only a split second to decide what he was going to do.
After much schmoozing and gossiping about Vox, Velvette had slid Alastor one of Valentino’s many guns loaded with Angelic bullets. He’d kept it hidden behind his back for days. He hadn’t intended to ever use it, because it would absolutely ruin everything that he’d been working for here. He’d kept it as a tidy Plan B if things went sideways… and things were certainly tilted now.
Fuck.
This was all happening far more quickly than Alastor had anticipated and if he had any hope of breaking his bonds, he had to stop this now.
While it completely threw Alastor’s cunning plan for his own freedom out the window, there was no time like the present.
Alastor sighed to himself. Ugh. And his plan had been going so well…
His deal with Vox stated that he was his prisoner, but none of that meant that he couldn’t break free of his physical tethers within the Vee Tower. He had stayed in his chair only to further boost Vox’s burgeoning ego, waiting for him to present Alastor with the perfect opportunity to strike… but the time for that was over.
Alastor tore off the cables tying him to the chair and hefted the gun toward Vox, a tight grin splitting his face.
“Vox, STOP!”
Vox looked down at him.
And he smiled.
“Kill me if you want!” Vox cackled as the harsh light from Lucifer’s chest climbed to blinding heights. “It doesn’t matter! The path has been set! Hell will conquer Heaven! Even if you kill me, I will be a martyr that all of the Sinners will worship! I will be immortalized! Canonized! I will be a Saint to them! A GOD!”
Vox’s voice deepened and his eyes spun with his hypnotic power:
“Within them, I will live… forever.”
Alastor looked over at Lucifer and their eyes met through the white-hot haze.
That one, quick glance said so much, yet also lamented all the things that hadn’t been said.
The Radio Demon turned the gun toward the King of Hell.
“DO IT!” Lucifer shrieked, tears spilling down his face. “PLEASE!”
Without hesitation—without even thinking—Alastor obeyed.
It only took a quick press of his finger. Even as he did it, it seemed too easy.
The fishbowl shattered as Alastor shot Lucifer right between the eyes.
Lucifer’s head rocked back with a spray of golden blood. It splashed against the cracked shards of the glass. His white, wide-brimmed hat was knocked from his head and tumbled to the floor.
He went limp, his body sagging forward but unable to fall since his arms were still held up by the bonds of his prison. He went still and hung from the contraption like an ironic parody of a crucifixion.
The room darkened, suddenly bereft of his light.
The whirring machine chugged to a stop as the life it was sucking energy from was abruptly halted. In the dimness, Alastor could hear the golden blood rushing from the dead man’s mouth as it rained to the floor in a heavy torrent.
Without emotion, Alastor turned the gun back on Vox and fired again.
Vox looked surprised as the bullet pierced the edge of his screen. He went down, clattering against the metal of the catwalk and went still.
It hadn’t been a killing shot. Alastor had made sure of that. Velvette had asked him not to kill him and he was a man of his word. Vox was unconscious, but he wasn’t dead.
Still, Alastor’s deal with Vox was effectively on hiatus while he was knocked out and he knew that both Velvette and Valentino would convince him to break the deal entirely once he awoke. Not that it mattered to Alastor anyway. His entire plan was ruined; might as well break the deal. Husk and Niffty were safe at the Hotel now and his scheme for Charlie’s part of the agreement was effectively moot.
It didn’t matter.
None of it mattered.
The remaining drones turned to focus their soulless cameras onto him, all of them unsteadily spitting out sparks as the footage was corrupted by his image. For those watching the livestream the feed would be grainy and disjointed, but they all still saw what had happened.
Entertainment of the highest degree.
Alastor turned back to Lucifer’s body and sharp pain stabbed into his head. He winced against it and put a hand to his brow.
He dropped the gun to the floor. The loud clatter echoed in the otherwise-silent room.
After all the drama, the warehouse felt too dark and too empty now. It was utterly silent other than the hollow beat of Alastor’s footsteps as he approached the broken machine.
Alastor carried the body home.
No one tried to stop him as he left the Vee tower. Both Velvette and Valentino watched him leave.
Valentino gave him a curt nod and turned to go collect Vox.
Velvette barely even looked up from her phone, but as he passed by her she said:
“The next Overlord meeting is going to be an absolute shitshow.”
An unexpected laugh cracked from Alastor’s mouth. “Haha! You can say that again. See you there, doll.”
“Mm-hm.”
He held Lucifer’s limp form against his chest as he travelled through the winding streets of Hell.
Alastor had taken off his striped coat to cover him up. Gold leaked through the red fabric, but soiling his coat was still better than leaving the corpse exposed. He didn’t want to look at it. He was tired and he had a very bad headache. He just wanted to get this over with and go to sleep in his own room for the first time in days.
On his journey back to the Hotel, some of the Sinners littering the streets were bold enough to shout and swear at him, livid that he had stopped Vox’s televised ambitions. Alastor ignored them and kept walking in an increasingly numb daze.
He didn’t feel well and it was getting worse with every step he took.
When he got back to the Hotel, he opened the door and strode inside. He passed by the lobby where Charlie and Vaggie seemed to be deep in heated conversation. Husk, Angel, and Cherri were at the far end of the room at the bar. The television was switched off and none of them seemed to know about the catastrophic event that had just occurred.
Well, fuck.
Alastor had honestly assumed that they would already know about what had happened. The rest of Pride seemed to. He hadn’t thought that this would come as a surprise to them. Nothing could ever be easy, could it?
Charlie looked up as he entered and her innocent eyes went wide.
“Alastor!” Charlie squeaked, vaulting herself over the couch to run up to him. “Oh my GOD! We were so worried! How did you get away from–”
But then she stopped, spying the coat-shrouded body in Alastor’s embrace. Lucifer’s very recognizable arms and legs dangled out from beneath the pinstriped fabric of his coat.
Charlie stared down at Lucifer’s limp arm. She reached over and took his cold hand in hers. She touched his wedding ring.
“...Dad?” she breathed.
Not wanting to delay the moment any further, Alastor shifted his burden and pulled the bloodsoaked coat away from Lucifer’s face.
Alastor felt sick. His head pounded so hard that his vision blurred.
“DAD?” Charlie asked again, louder, her voice rising and fracturing. The sudden, shrill panic in her voice was like frozen needles stabbing into Alastor’s brain.
Alastor pressed the body into Charlie’s arms and she took it. He did it as gently as he could. There was no purpose in making this harder than it had to be. Charlie glanced up at Alastor, then back down to her father, still not fully understanding.
“I did what I had to,” Alastor mumbled as she gathered her father’s body against her. Alastor felt nothing other than the pain in his head and a strange, growing nausea in his stomach.
There was a beat of silence before Charlie hugged her father closer and started screaming.
She hit her knees and curled around him, screaming.
Just wordlessly screaming.
Screaming.
Alastor turned away, the pain in his head reaching new heights. The desperate, unwavering agony in Charlie’s scream sounded so much like Lucifer’s final cries. He didn’t want to hear it again.
He stumbled and caught himself on the back wall of the lobby. He rested his brow against his arm as he leaned on the stability of the Hotel and squeezed his eyes shut against the sound of her grief. He felt icy cold sweat forming at his hairline.
“What happened? I-I don’t… Alastor, what happened?!” he heard Charlie cry out from behind him.
Alastor clenched his eyes shut tighter and furrowed his brow. His headache sharpened further at the sound of her woeful voice and he clenched his jaw.
His ears roared.
Husker came up beside him and said something, but Alastor couldn’t quite hear him over the roaring.
Alastor spared him a watery glance over his shoulder, but then the pain in his head and the twisting of his stomach became too much to bear and his eyes dimmed.
A deep, pervasive cold ran through him. His mind went fuzzy. His limbs numbed.
He tried to fight against the inevitable, but it happened anyway.
Alastor’s knees buckled and he pitched sideways.
“Husk, catch him!” he heard Cherri shout from the darkness.
And then he couldn’t hear the screaming anymore as he plummeted into nothing.
Husk and Cherri carried Alastor’s unconscious form out of the lobby. They wanted to give Charlie privacy in her grieving as they all tried to figure out what the actual fuck was going on.
Angel stayed behind with Charlie and Vaggie to offer any support he could.
Husk and Cherri dumped Alastor onto a low couch in one of the side-rooms. He didn’t even move. He was out cold, his cheek leaning on the arm of the couch.
“Hey! Alastor!” Husk said, shaking his shoulder.
The Radio Demon did not respond.
“Oi, cunt! Wake the fuck up!” Cherri snapped. She grabbed Alastor by one antler to lift his head up and gave his face a sharp smack with her other hand.
Husk cringed, very aware of how angry Alastor would be at being woken up in such a manner. “Yeah, but maybe don’t do that…”
“Why the fuck not?” Cherri demanded. “This guy just shows up with the sovereign of Hell dead in his arms, without any information, and we’re just supposed to be cool about it? The FUCK?!”
She slapped Alastor again, harder. “Wake UP! You’ve got some shit to explain!”
Still, Alastor remained unconscious.
Husk heard steps behind him and looked over to see Niffty and Baxter approaching from the other end of the hall.
Niffty looked at Alastor and a very strange, uncomfortable expression ghosted over her face. “He’s so sleepy. Why is he so sleepy? What’s wrong with him?”
“Dunno,” Husk said, shoving Cherri’s hands away and settling Alastor back onto the couch. “We don’t know what happened to him while he was with the Vees. Maybe Vox did something to him.”
“Hm. Perhaps I can be of assistance,” Baxter said with a lofty smirk. He dug around in his coat pockets, then produced a squat little glass bottle and came near the couch. He turned his head to send a quick, confident wink toward Niffty, then uncorked the bottle and wafted it under Alastor’s nose.
Husk caught the piercing scent of ammonia-heavy smelling salts.
Alastor gasped and sat up with a jolt, his dim, confused eyes flying open. Black tentacles shot out of his back and grabbed Baxter. The little fish demon squeaked as the tentacles squeezed the breath out of him and pulled him up into the air.
Husk dove back to Alastor’s side and gripped his shoulders. “Calm down, Boss! He’s just trying to help!”
Alastor dazedly looked at Husk, then slowly looked up at the pitiful form of Baxter wound up in his tentacles. He blinked, his brow furrowing, and then dropped his power. His tentacles dissipated and Baxter fell back down to the carpet with a cartoonish flail of limbs.
Baxter grunted and rubbed his tailbone. “Ummm, you’re welcome…”
Niffty scrambled to Baxter’s side as Alastor closed his eyes again and raised a hand to dig his claws into his scalp. He mumbled, “What…? Where…? I… I don’t… Ugh, my head…”
Cherri looked at Baxter over her shoulder and raised her brow. “Do you really just walk around with smelling-salts in your pocket? Is that just, like, normal for you…?”
Baxter stood and brushed himself off. “Well, when I’m working I sometimes forget to eat and I’m prone to having low blood-sugar. A quick huff of the salts is just enough to keep me going. It’s not weird.”
“No, it’s definitely weird, my guy.”
“I like weird!” Niffty piped up.
Husk heaved out a deep sigh and massaged his temples in annoyance. “Can we please just focus on the current issue?”
He turned back to Alastor, who had curled up on the couch cushions, cradling his head in both hands. He was breathing hard as if he were in a great deal of pain. Husk knew that Alastor had a very high pain tolerance and a masterful poker-face; the fact that both were failing him now was alarming.
“What in Hell happened to you?” Husk asked.
Alastor managed to pry open one over-wet eye just enough to look at him. He didn’t answer but something wary, something foreign stirred behind his red gaze.
As if he didn’t know, either.
Once Alastor had been conscious enough to move, Husker had helped him to his room and Alastor had immediately gone to the wingbacked chair in front of his fireplace to rest. Even in the dark and the silence his head still hurt terribly. It took him a long time to fall asleep, but when he did he slept deeply until the following afternoon.
Even after over twelve hours of sleep, his head was still throbbing when he finally awoke.
He cracked open his eyes, caught a stab of light from his rekindled fireplace, and immediately shut them again with a groan. Niffty must have been in here while he was sleeping. She was always very attentive to his hearth and he appreciated that; she knew he didn’t like to be cold. Still, it bothered him a little that he’d been so knocked-out that he hadn’t noticed her presence.
He turned his head and buried his face into the plush fabric of his chair and tried to find sleep again. He felt absolutely dreadful.
Hey, you awake?
Alastor raised his heavy head at the voice.
Less than a second later Husker opened his door and tentatively peeked in.
“Oh. You’re finally up. Good morning.”
Alastor glared at him.
“Good for whom, exactly? Because it certainly isn’t for me.”
Husker winced. “Ah. So I take it you’re still feelin’ bad?”
“And I take it that you’re still the master of asking stupid questions,” Alastor hissed as he sat forward in his chair. “Why are you bothering me? Get to the point.”
Husker hesitated. He looked ready to turn tail and flee from the doorway—which Alastor would have found very welcome—but then he worked his jaw and said, “Charlie asked me to come get you. She wants to talk to you.”
A strange, writhing feeling sank itself into the depths of Alastor’s stomach. His heartrate went up a few tempos. He already knew what she wanted to talk about.
He almost considered refusing. Other people took off from work duties when they didn’t feel well, didn’t they? He had never once taken a sick-day during his employment at the Hotel… but maybe his profound exhaustion warranted one.
But no. That would just be delaying the inevitable.
“...Fine,” Alastor rasped. “Just… give me a few minutes to make myself presentable.”
“Take your time,” Husker grunted. “She specifically said not to rush you. I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee. You want whiskey in it?”
Alastor raised a tired eyebrow. “Again, just a master of stupid questions. Well done. I am in awe. Bravo.”
“Alright, alright. Got it, asshole. I’ll make sure it’s extra boozy.”
“Fantastic. Now go away.”
“Already gone,” Husker said and quickly shut the door.
Relieved to be alone again, Alastor sighed. He let himself relax in his chair for just a few moments longer, then unsteadily hauled himself to his feet.
He had been in Vox’s capture for days and he had some things to take care of now that he was finally back in his own room. He needed to change his clothes, for one. Vox had run his disgusting fingers all over him and Alastor could practically still feel his unwanted touches. He craved a shower, but understood that he didn’t have the time or energy for that right now.
He took off his dirty shirt and trousers and threw them into his swamp, not wanting them anymore. He pulled clean replicates from a drawer to put on. He only had the one coat and he didn’t know where it was right now, since he had left it with Charlie wrapped around her father’s corpse. He knew that Niffty would give it a deep cleaning before giving it back to him.
For now, he’d just have to go to the meeting underdressed.
With his fresh shirt still unbuttoned, he sat in the stool in front of his vanity and stared into the mirror stationed above it.
He looked awful. Even worse than his usual unsightliness. He ignored how tired and sick his face looked and moved his eyes down to the wound in his chest.
That looked worse, too. Far worse.
Damn it.
He’d been working so hard this past month to heal it and just those few days of inattention had lost him weeks of progress. He had assumed that this might happen when he’d made his deal with Vox, but at the time he’d also wholeheartedly thought that it would be worth it. But his plan had been disrupted. His hopes of freedom had been crushed once again and now he was stuck dealing with the aftermath.
He’d replaced the stitching that Vox had ripped out but he had done it so quickly—in the middle of a deal negotiation—and hadn’t had time to make sure that it was sufficient to hold the wound together.
Looking at it now, his slapdash stitching was a lot worse than ‘insufficient.’
He gritted his teeth at the reflection of his injury. The edges of the wound were swollen and red. There was a mottled purple tone to his skin around the upper half of the gash, a sign of the rot that Angelic weapons were prone to gift Sinners.
Alastor had been very careful to keep the wound sanitized in order to keep such an infection at bay, but that boat had apparently sailed.
He swore under his breath.
With a grimace, he undid all of the haphazard stitches. He pulled a humble medical kit from a drawer and went in for a deep, debriding clean, scrubbing at the wound with alcohol-soaked gauze.
It took a good twenty minutes of agony before he felt that the wound was good enough to close up again. He’d nearly blacked out twice from the pain, but it needed to be done. Hopefully it would start healing better now.
Satisfied, he willed his hands to stop shaking and put the stitches back in.
Correctly, this time.
Alastor buttoned his shirt up and pulled his tie into a stately bow.
He conjured up his broken cane, brushed himself off, and—with a deep breath—left his room.