Chapter Text
Alastor turns up moments after the finishing touches have been put on the new hotel. It’s a bit garish for his tastes — unsurprising, given who was in charge of conjuring up the materials, but he didn’t come here to kick up a fuss.
Charlie kicks up plenty in his stead, of course, throwing her arms around him the instant he returns and wasting no time getting right back to business. She’s overflowing with such eagerness to usher him inside that she can’t seem to stop twirling and jumping in place until he finally allows her to drag him by the sleeve into the hotel’s new foyer. It’s grand and airy and bright, lit with a functioning, properly hung chandelier that glitters high above them. On the wall hangs a massive portrait of the slippery dunce who tore Alastor’s coat, staring regally into the middle distance and surrounded by those dimwitted eggs. A memorial, then, for their sacrifice, and an ostentatious one at that. Alastor has hardly glanced at it before he’s steered toward a different room entirely.
All the while as they walk, Charlie is babbling: “We are so happy you finally made it. Where were you? Oh my gosh, I’m so glad you’re here, you showed up at the perfect time, we’re gonna be opening back up soon and of course we couldn’t do that without you because every hotel needs a manager and —”
“Babe.” Vaggie steps in front of them, halting the group in its tracks. “Breathe.”
“Right. Breathing. Sorry.”
Vaggie raises a brow. “Slowly,” she says.
“Slowly! I am breathing so slowly right now.” Charlie sucks in a long, deep breath, then blows it out directly into Vaggie’s face for emphasis. She laughs when Vaggie disgruntledly nudges her bangs back into place, hooking an arm around her shoulders and resuming the crusade through the foyer. “It’s just so exciting to have everybody back together!”
The people who make up “everybody” seem to be experiencing vastly different levels of excitement at the moment: Niffty is vibrating at a frequency that could shatter glass, Husk and Lucifer sport grimaces that would put storm clouds to shame, Angel seems cautiously optimistic, Vaggie looks… like Vaggie. As they all hurry ahead, Alastor slows his pace to drop behind the herd, absorbing the sight of the space before him as they fan out and find spots to settle.
The sitting room is the gaudiest part of the place yet. A grand marble hearth stands nearly as tall as Alastor against the far wall with serpents and apples and eyes all carved into the stone. A smattering of inviting velvet sofas and plush red cushions populate the space before it. Light pours in through sparkling windows; sconces glow gently at the room’s edges. It’s all terribly welcoming — and none of its walls have been repeatedly exploded as far as Alastor can ascertain, which is a point in the place’s favor.
“We’re almost ready for our official grand re-opening,” Charlie is saying, “but we’ve still got some preparations to do. We’re working on another commercial, and a newspaper ad for anybody who still actually reads those, and maybe a ribbon-cutting ceremony if we can get anyone to come. Plus, now that you’re back, we can have a radio broadcast about it, too!” She drops onto a loveseat with her feet tucked beneath her; Vaggie perches on its arm.
Behind them both, Lucifer stands with his arms folded, his hat barely brushing the mantle of the fireplace, clearly waiting for Alastor to sit down so that he can choose a spot as far away from him as possible. Naturally, Alastor sits on Charlie’s other side, driving a quietly fuming Lucifer off to sit on one of the little round poufs right by the fire. Niffty lays on her stomach in the warmth of the flames, kicking her legs up behind her as she plucks bits of dirt from the carpet fibers.
“We’re also gonna hang up posters around the city,” Charlie says, “once we find someone who can make them — not that we didn’t totally love yours, Niffty, we’re just aiming for something a little less…”
“Horrifying?” Vaggie supplies.
“Yeah, that. And Alastor, you could help us hang them once they’re done, or you could even help make them if you —”
“Maybe give him a sec before we start spoutin’ logistics, Charlie,” Angel says as he sinks into the cushions of one of the sofas. He nods toward Alastor without looking his way. “It’s been a minute, ain’t it? Let him catch up.”
Husk settles himself on the next cushion over, wearing a frown that’s part suspicious, part irritated, all exhausted. “What,” he says, addressing Angel but staring at Alastor, “you think he needs a recap? I’m sure his ass knows what happened down to the number of dead Exorcists we had to clean up. Hell, I bet he memorized our kill counts.”
This assumption is entirely correct. Alastor has heard the news, of course. He knows the course of the battle forwards and back. But if playing clueless will grant him a few more moments with his thoughts, why not indulge them? “I’ve heard plenty of your bravery,” he says to the group at large, “but I would so love to hear the story first hand. Would anyone care to regale me?” Charlie’s hand shoots into the air, and he gestures toward her like a schoolteacher.
“Oh my gosh, so much happened. So the shield went down, you know that part, and we really held our own for a while. I felt kind of awful at first about the whole shoot-to-kill thing, but it was pretty badass once I remembered that those Angels were trying to kill everybody I’ve ever cared about…”
Though Alastor arranges his expression into one of rapt interest, Charlie’s words are beginning to bleed together and fade away, slowly being overtaken by the dull humming of static in Alastor’s head. The reality of seeing all these misfits face-to-face once again is catching up to him far faster than he anticipated it might; as it does, he feels himself being filled with a thoroughly disorienting cocktail of sensations, each carrying their own unique unpleasantness to contend with. There’s a cold fury that settles in his chest, a warm familiarity that pools in his gut, a sparking anticipation fizzling under his skin. Oil and water dance around each other in his mind, refusing to settle on any one reaction. He nearly died for these people. He nearly died for these people.
“And then I stabbed him!” Niffty exclaims, waving both arms in a frantic bid for attention that snaps Alastor’s focus back into the room. “Everyone was just standing there talking, and I’m really quiet on account of how I have to sneak up on the bugs all the time, so I stabbed him like Charlie said.” There’s a mad glint in her eye, the sort that appears when she manages to skewer enough roaches in a row to fill the whole length of her needle. “There was so much blood, Alastor, you should’ve seen it! And I didn’t even have to clean it up once we were done because —”
Now sounds like a good time to interject. “Like Charlie said?” Alastor repeats. He looks to his left to find Charlie waving, too — just her hands, but equally frantic.
“Noooo no no,” she says, “I definitely didn’t tell anyone to kill Adam! I just told Niffty to stab any Angels she saw, and, um. You know.”
Oh, he knows. Giving Niffty free rein to stab as she pleases is a risky game; it’s why Alastor has set her loose specifically upon the roaches and the rats.
“I was going to explode his face into a thousand pieces,” Lucifer pipes up from his silly little cushion, “but I got beaten to the punch. Or to the… the stab, I guess. Little critter is sneakier than we thought.” He reaches over to pat Niffty’s head. Alastor’s jaw tightens.
“She got him at least twenty times,” Angel adds. He regards her with respect that he seems almost surprised by. He’s stretched out on the sofa now, his legs kicked over Husk’s lap, and Husk is playing absently with the zipper on one of his boots. “Kept on goin’ way after we knew he was done for. It was kinda terrifyin’, actually. You shoulda been there.” Yes. Yes, he should have.
“That’s my girl,” Alastor says, and Niffty beams. “While I would have loved to deal the finishing blow myself, I take solace in its being dealt by such a worthy lady.”
“Yeah, about that —” Charlie begins, but Niffty cuts in before she can finish the thought.
“He was way easier to kill than a bug, because he was just kind of sitting there instead of running around. I didn’t even have to squish him! He just fell right on his face, and then he died. It was so much fun. Can we kill more Angels soon?” She looks up at Charlie with a frightening blend of hope and bloodlust.
Charlie’s encouraging smile becomes a little more strained. “We’re not, um, planning on it?” she says. Then, when Niffty’s eye wells up with disappointed tears: “But if that ever winds up back on the docket, we’ll make super sure to give you back your knife.” She seems to regret this promise a tad when Niffty breaks into a maniacal, sharp-toothed grin.
“Stab,” she murmurs, opening and closing her tiny hands as if grasping at invisible daggers. “Stab, stab, stab…” She’s still giggling when Lucifer raises his own hand. He speaks without waiting to be called on.
“You might have missed me saying it before, but that finishing blow you mentioned, I was almost the one who rained it down on him.” Lucifer attempts to sit up straighter on his pouf and only sinks deeper into it, folding in on himself like the thing is attempting to eat him.
“I did, in fact, hear you the first time,” Alastor says, smiling pleasantly at him as he struggles to escape the cushion’s grasp. “Words could never describe how utterly thrilling I find that information to be. How riveting it must have been to almost destroy him. That’s surely why they didn’t bother to interview you after the battle — it was too astonishing to air!”
Alastor watches with barely suppressed glee as Lucifer Morningstar, ruler of Hell, fallen Angel and most powerful being in the pentagram, crosses his arms and pouts. “Great to have you back,” he grumbles.
“It is, isn’t it?” Alastor stands with a flourish of his staff and turns to face the group at large. “As much as I would love to stay and chat, I’m just itching to show myself around the place. I’d better make tracks before it gets too late.”
“Oh, I can —!”
“Terribly thoughtful of you to offer, Charlie, but I’m sure I can manage,” Alastor says. “You’ve got so much planning to get underway — I couldn’t possibly pull you from your work! I’m sure I’ll be seeing you all in a jiffy.” He dissipates into darkness and slips out of the room long before anyone can attempt to call him back.
He solidifies once he reaches the hall, electing to take the scenic route up to his tower for the sake of getting a proper lay of the land. (If he happens to organize his whirling thoughts with the extra time, well, that’s just a bonus.) Alastor gives each of his sleeves a sharp tug, then smooths the lapels of his coat, exhaling shortly in a muted bid to shake off these cursed jitters. One more wrong move the day of the battle, and there would be a painting of himself up on that wall. A monument to his heroism. He nearly gags at the thought.
The erratic pitter-patter of tiny feet on plush carpet pricks at his ears before he’s even made it halfway down the first corridor, and he turns to find Niffty zipping up the hall in his direction.
“Is there something I can do for you, my friend?” Alastor asks.
Niffty smooths out her apron, hopping from foot to foot like she can’t contain herself. “I have some stuff I’ve been waiting to give you. Are you busy right now? I can just leave them upstairs if you —”
“I’m not busy in the slightest.” His tour can wait; he’s in no rush.
“Oh, thank goodness.” Niffty wheezes out a sigh in apparent relief. “It’s been taking up space in my room, and it’s way stressing me out.”
“It?”
“Yeah, it’s this box full of — I went to check on your radio station before we rebuilt it. There was blood all over the place, it was super gross. Then I realized it was probably yours and I thought that maybe Husk was wrong and you really did die, but it turned out you’re fine so that’s really good.”
She seems to have answered a question Alastor didn’t realize he’d been searching for a chance to ask. He phrases it like a statement instead. “You came looking for me.”
Niffty nods vigorously. “Husk said you were probably alive and so we all focused on rebuilding the hotel, but I checked just in case before we made you a new tower. Wait right here, okay?” She scuttles off down the hall without giving him time to reply, so he patiently awaits her return —
Which comes twenty seconds later, when she speeds toward him holding something nearly too big for her to carry and screeches to a halt just before crashing into his legs. Now that she’s stationary, he can see that it’s a bright pink vintage hat box, trimmed with fine white lace. Niffty thrusts it toward him on her tiptoes; once Alastor takes it from her, she skitters up his leg and comes to stand on his shoulder. “Open it up!” she says, bouncing in place as he lifts away the lid.
There’s a moment of difficulty processing the items laid out before him. A bit of static sputters from his microphone, the sound of a dial fiddling between stations and struggling to find one with reception. Alastor settles the lid carefully underneath the box, then lowers himself onto one of the velvet benches that line the walls at generous intervals. Niffty hops down from his back and sits by his side, peering into the box with him expectantly.
These are his things. A handful of fountain pens that once sat in a mug on his desk. The scarf he never wore but kept on his coat rack anyway, just to give the old thing a sense of purpose. A few sheets of paper all covered in scribbled notes and smudges of rubble, pockmarked with rips but still legible enough. The box is modestly filled with trinkets and tools, things he hadn’t even considered needing but which he now realizes he’s missed quite dearly.
“A lot of the stuff was broken on account of the tower falling over, but I cleaned up what I could,” Niffty says, her little legs swinging over the carpet. “Even though Charlie’s dad was super nice about helping to build a new one, he looked like he wanted to die the whole time and it sorta felt like he hated having to do it, so I grabbed whatever wasn’t totally broken in case he decided to explode all of it or something.”
“That is terribly thoughtful of you, Niffty,” Alastor says. An image comes to him unbidden of a pink whirlwind tearing through the rubble of his radio station, having seen his blood smeared about the place and gathering up all the items she could salvage anyway. A physical image appears, too — a small piece of paper nearly untouched by the wreckage that sits neatly at the bottom of the box. It’s a crude drawing (mixed media, insect blood and bug guts) of Alastor, seated at his desk with his microphone in hand. Niffty has taken the liberty of drawing a little party hat on his head. He’d kept this tucked away in a drawer; it had amused him whenever he’d fished around inside for a notepad or a pen. Now, it makes something in his chest shift rather uncomfortably.
If that blade had come down an inch closer, there would be nobody for Niffty to pass this box off to. If Adam had aimed his hideous holy beam just a bit to the left, this all would have been decimated. If Alastor hadn’t failed so spectacularly at fighting him, Adam would never have had the chance to destroy the hotel at all. If, if, if.
“I didn’t miss anything important, did I?” Niffty asks, her eye wide and imploring.
Alastor shakes his head. “Oh, not at all, dear girl,” he tells her. He’d taken all the essentials with him when he first abandoned the tower, of course, but Niffty has gathered up things that are far more important. “You’ve done beautifully.”
Pride shines on Niffty’s face. If there’s one thing she loves more than anything else, it’s a job well done. There’s but a moment of contented silence before she rattles back into speech. “Well, I’m really glad you like it, but I should probably go. There are still bugs here somehow which doesn’t make sense since the whole building got cut in half and a ton of them were probably exploded, but I’ve been doing a really good job of stabbing as many as I can. I should get back to it before there’s another baby boom.”
“I’d hate to keep you from your work,” Alastor says, settling the lid back atop the box and snapping it away to his tower. “Go fight the good fight, valiant soldier.”
Niffty salutes him with her needle, then takes off like a shot, brandishing the thing like a cavalier’s sword. Her dedication to the crusade is admirable. Alastor smiles fondly as she goes.
Off to the next floor, then. There’s nothing too remarkable on this one, just doors upon doors with no residents behind them. He truly is curious to see whether or not they ever fill. He turns a corner, running a claw along the wallpaper to inspect its design.
Vaggie is upon him the instant he reaches the landing. She’s three steps up the next flight of stairs and still not quite at his eye level, but she finds a way to look down her nose at him all the same. “We didn’t see each other before the battle,” she says, her hands planted firmly on her hips and her wings spread wide across the stairs. It’s almost comical, seeing such a tiny whelp behave as though she could do a thing to stop him if he were in a less fair mood. “We’re overdue for a talk.”
“It was a rather busy day, wasn’t it?” Alastor says. “What with all the rallying of troops and the acquisition of weapons. Oh! And the several hours of drinking, chatting, and general merriment, followed by a good night’s sleep, during which you could have stepped away at any point to come speak to me.”
To her credit, Vaggie doesn’t make any outward indication of humiliation, but her glare does sharpen significantly. “You and Charlie,” she says.
“Cutting right to the chase, I see.” He’s been wondering how long it would take her to ambush him; she’s made excellent time so far. He’s hardly been back an hour.
“You made a deal,” Vaggie says, and it’s not a question — of course it’s not. They both know what happened. Well, she knows the gist of it, at least.
“Indeed we did.” Alastor speaks to his microphone now, polishing it a touch with his sleeve. “She was in quite a pinch, you see. She hardly gave my offer any thought before she took it. Desperate times and all that, you know how it is.”
Vaggie glowers at him. “Alright, let’s get one thing straight. I know you’re going to spend this whole conversation trying to piss me off —”
Oh, I already am. It’s working, I hope? “I would do no such thing! I’ll be nothing but civil, as always.”
“What was the deal?”
“You truly aren’t one for pleasantries, are you?” Alastor asks. When Vaggie’s scowl only intensifies, he adds, “Or pleasantness in general, I suppose.”
The brimstone in her eye could melt glass. It’s a uniquely hellish look on her; she must have learned it down here. It suits her well. “Your definition of civility is pretty shit. Answer the question.”
“Listen, darling, it truly isn’t as serious as you’ve assuredly made it out to be.”
“Right. No. Of course not.” Vaggie sounds very much like she wishes she had her spear in her hands right now. “Your freaky green demon magic crawling down the walls of the hotel while your stupid antlers grow ten times their normal size isn’t serious. Just a little deal. I’m totally buying it.”
“It’s like I told you,” Alastor says with a noncommittal shrug, pointedly ignoring the comment about his antlers. “She still owns her soul. The terms were incredibly simple, all things considered. It was quite a good deal.”
Vaggie leans toward him like she thinks it might make him hear her better, and he lifts his chin to meet her glare. “What were the terms, you douche fuck?”
“Language!” Alastor exclaims, touching his chest in an utterly affronted fashion. Vaggie’s battle-weary groan is a delightful reward.
“You’re making this impossible.” Her fury gives way in an instant to exhaustion; her words are muffled by her palms and the curtain of her hair as she buries her face in her hands.
“I have been told that I’m a somewhat challenging conversation partner,” Alastor concedes.
“Not the conversation. This,” Vaggie says, gesturing all around them.
Alastor cocks his head. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“This!” Vaggie repeats. “The hotel. Charlie. All of it. I just want to make it work, to make her happy, and you — I don’t know what the fuck you want. Ever. But I know it’s nothing good.” Her attention has shifted to the window beside her and the distant lights of Pentagram City beyond it. “You waltzed in here for shits and giggles one day, and Charlie was desperate enough for help that she took you right on board, no questions asked. And I just let it happen. Now you go and make a deal with her, specifically when she’s feeling alone and vulnerable, and she won’t tell me any of the details, which makes me think there’s something really bad going on here — which, of course there is, because it’s you, but still.”
That’s quite a lot to be stewing on. While her worry isn’t exactly misplaced, it’s still a bit off-base. “Darling —”
“Darling me one more time and you’re losing your tongue, cabrón.”
Respectfully, Alastor does not have the patience for this. Vaggie seems to be the only person in this hotel not under his control who bothers to give him a second thought, and those second thoughts could be thoroughly detrimental to his position here. He may as well assuage her worries now to avoid any hiccups down the road. “My dear Vaggie,” he tries, and when she doesn’t bristle, he continues. “Charlie owes me a favor. That’s all there is to it.”
“Wh— No. That’s the same as what she told me. There’s got to be more to it than that.”
“There isn’t.” And isn’t that just beautiful?
Vaggie looks utterly horrified. She’s visibly deflating, shrinking away, shaking her head microscopically to either side. She reaches out blindly for the railing.
“At some point in the future, however near or far away it may be, Charlie owes me one favor.” Alastor’s shadow bleeds up the wallpaper behind him, grinning wickedly while Vaggie’s head is turned. “She will not be asked to harm anyone. Those are the terms.”
“But that — You could ask her for anything.” Vaggie’s skin has practically gone white. Her eye darts this way and that as the realization sets in that her partner has made a very big, very un-take-backable choice. “That’s so vague.”
“It is, isn’t it? You’d be surprised what people will agree to in times of desperation. But I assure you,” Alastor adds in a hurry, his shadow returning to a more proper shape, “this was not a malicious bargain.”
Her scowl carves itself even deeper into her features; holy fire flickers in her stare. “You knew she was in a bad place and you preyed on it.”
“Such cruel accusations! I merely offered her assistance in her time of need, in exchange for —”
“That isn’t how this shit’s supposed to work!” Vaggie reached the end of her rope quite a while ago; now, she’s grasping furiously at empty air. The way she seethes is just entertaining enough to keep Alastor from wandering off to find another route upstairs. “You see someone suffering, you help them. You help however you can, because it’s the decent thing to do. And this wasn’t just about Charlie — it was about all of Hell. Extermination affects you, too, even if you think you’re too powerful for it to touch you. If you hadn’t told her about Carmine, we’d all be dead right now.”
“Hm.” Alastor could waste his time trying to deescalate this conversation, or he could break it off cleanly and allow Vaggie to think her terrible thoughts about him. Terrible thoughts that are all correct, of course, but so long as she’s unsuccessful in infecting the rest of the staff with them, they’re of little concern to Alastor.
“Charlie didn’t owe you anything in exchange for that information,” Vaggie says decisively.
“Maybe not. But she does now.” Alastor dissipates into shadow, then snakes under one of her outstretched wings and reconstitutes himself behind her, several steps up and grinning down as she whips around to face him. “One teensy favor in exchange for the safety of her people. That sounds like a perfectly respectable deal to me.”
Vaggie’s wings snap inward and disappear behind her back. “And to me, it sounds like you’re going to ask her to do something awful,” she says. The bite in her voice falters, just barely, letting a sliver of resignation slip in through the cracks.
“I can assure you there’s no need to worry.” Alastor would almost find her concern endearing if it didn’t stand so entirely at odds with his every action within the walls of this hotel.
“Wow,” Vaggie deadpans. “I feel so much better.”
“So glad to hear it,” says Alastor, a jolly trill of music floating from his microphone. “Good talk!” He dissolves once more and zips away up the stairs far too quickly to be followed, rematerializing at the railing that looks out over the entryway.
You’d be surprised what people will agree to in times of desperation, he’d said to her.
You’d be equally surprised what people will ask for.
Husk is chuckling as he slides Niffty a shot-sized Shirley Temple. She grabs it and skitters past Alastor, whom she ignores entirely in favor of her glass full of grenadine, taking off into the lounge. Husk watches her go; his laid-back expression drops into its usual grimace as soon as he lays eyes on Alastor. Angel, who sits across from him — not even drinking, mind you, just staring, with a full, forgotten glass by his hand — follows Husk’s gaze.
“Hey, Al. Nice of you ta finally grace us with your presence,” Angel says. “This place hasn’t been the same without your creepy mug lurkin’ around every corner. You come for a drink? Niff says this guy makes a mean Shirley Temple.”
“Give us a minute, Angel,” Husk says, and a series of expressions pass over Angel’s face too quickly for Alastor to read them.
“I was kinda enjoyin’ my drink,” he says, reaching for his previously untouched glass in a defensive sort of way.
“Enjoy it to go,” Husk says. “With that much sugar in her cup, I’m sure Niffty could use a babysitter.”
Angel groans theatrically, then tosses his drink back in one gulp. “I’ll be back for another one o’ those,” he says to Husk. “You two have fun catchin’ up.” He gives the bar a solid tap with a closed fist and struts off to monitor the hot pink motion blur that is Niffty vacuuming under the sofa cushions.
“Heya, boss,” Husk grumbles once Angel is out of earshot. He reaches beneath the bar for a drink of his own. “What fresh hell are you lookin’ to subject me to today?”
“You seem disappointed to see me, dear friend!” Alastor says, strolling up to the bar and propping an elbow on the counter. “Did you really believe I’d been bested by that pitiful oaf?”
“Nah,” says Husk, pausing to take a pull off whatever bottle he’s been nursing this evening. “I knew you’d be comin’ back around eventually. Just thought maybe it’d take a little longer for you to get back on your feet.”
Alastor’s eyes narrow just a sliver. “Who says I was ever off them?”
“You want the honest answer?”
“They do say honesty is the best policy.” Alastor says this in a way that makes it abundantly clear silence would in fact be a far better policy, but really, there’s nothing Husk can or cannot say that will end this interaction amicably.
“Huh.” The five seconds Husk spends taking another long sip of his drink span a decade at least. He’s unbothered by the drumming of Alastor’s claws on the head of his staff; he takes his sweet time. When he sets the bottle down on the bartop, he does it with more force than is strictly necessary. “Nobody owes shit to a dead man, and I felt the strings on our deal tuggin’ loose. Whatever you did on that rooftop, it almost got you killed.” Alastor opens his mouth; Husk has the utter audacity to speak over him. “You don’t gotta worry, I ain’t tellin’ anybody. All I’m sayin’ is I know you got pretty hurt.”
For a fraction of a second, Alastor can almost feel the mind-numbing gash tearing across his chest once again. The ghost of that pain crystallizes into a shard of fury and finds a home between his ribs. “If you think something so insubstantial will serve you well as blackmail, I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken,” he says, his voice polluted with crackling static. The way his tone darkens is merely for the sake of presentation, of course. No other reason.
“Blackm— You’re a piece o’ work, you know that?” Husk’s usual grouchy monotone has given way to something akin to incredulity. His grip tightens on his drink, but he doesn’t bring it back to his lips. “I know you won’t pull all your intimidation shit on me while everybody’s around, and you’ll probably kick my ass for it later, but somebody’s gotta give it to you straight.”
Husk is entirely correct — he will without question be seeing the repercussions of this blatant disregard for his place within the next handful of business days. “I would strongly advise you to keep whatever you’re about to say next to yourself,” Alastor tells him, dimming the lights around the bar and letting his eyes flicker to drive the point home. He watches the bottle return to its rightful place and has already begun to turn smugly on his heel when Husk slams it back down and brazenly prattles on.
“I was gonna tell you I’m here if you need a bartender to talk to, asshole. Someone as powerful as you probably doesn’t run around thinkin’ about how easy it’d be for them to get squashed like a bug under a bigger man’s boot, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say you got a taste of what that’s like. So if you ever pull that stick outta your ass and feel like having a normal fuckin’ conversation for once, you know where to find me.”
Alastor does not turn back around. The distortion in his voice grows thicker. “I always know where to find you, Husker.”
There’s hardly a reaction aside from what sounds like a scoff. “Yeah, whatever. Welcome back.”
Insolence. Pure, unadulterated insolence. Alastor snaps his fingers, and Husk’s bottle is now inexplicably empty. “Thank you for your input. It will be disregarded,” Alastor says icily. He can tell that Husk has flipped him the bird as he stalks away. In all his endless mercy, he elects to ignore it.
The new radio tower has Lucifer’s presence embedded in its woodwork. It looks similar enough to the one that came before it, but it’s so… shiny. The floor is polished; the desk is bare; it’s meticulous, unlived in, sparkling. That cannot stand. Alastor gets to work immediately. (The first things to go are the rubber ducks hidden inside the desk drawers. Their deaths are quick and unceremonious. Rubber has a far lower melting point than you’d expect.)
He’s just about completed the finishing touches when there’s a knock on the trapdoor. Alastor swivels toward it, intrigued; no one has ever attempted to visit him in his tower before. They’ve shouted up from the platform below to tell him to come downstairs, sure, but nobody has actually made an effort to come inside. He crosses over to the door with mild interest. “Hello?” he calls.
“Hello! Is it okay if I come in?”
Ah. Of all the potential options, that would be the most sensical visitor. He allows his shadow to heave the door open with a gentlemanly bow, and in pops the head of one Charlotte Morningstar, looking equal parts windswept and intrigued.
“Good afternoon,” he says to her. He offers her a hand, and she takes it, climbing up into the studio with a sheepish smile. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Hey,” she says as the hatch swings shut. She starts to drum her hands against her thighs almost nervously, as though she’s just now realized where exactly it is that she’s standing. “I just thought I’d drop by since you left so fast earlier. Sorry for the surprise visit. If now’s a bad time, I can go —”
“Oh, nonsense! You’re always more than welcome here.” Alastor shoos her worries away like a cloud of gnats and guides her toward the pane of glass that swings outward onto the metal catwalk, thinking that perhaps the hellish skyline might be a pleasant backdrop to whatever sappy heart-to-heart Charlie intends on organizing here.
She turns in a slow circle as she follows him, drinking in the space just as he did earlier in the foyer. “You redecorated,” she observes, eyeing the skeletons and assorted dead things that now populate the station. “Don’t tell my dad, but I kind of like this better than what he put together. It feels more like it’s yours.”
He will most certainly be telling her dad. “Yes, well, had I been around during the reconstruction, I would have saved dear old dad the effort and furnished the place myself.” He can sense Charlie’s question coming before he’s even finished his sentence but allows her to ask it anyway.
“Any chance you’ll tell me where you were?”
Avoiding having to contribute, mostly. Healing, some. Vanishing into the shadows just long enough for people to get comfortable, then preparing to return and throw a wrench into everybody’s plans. “I’m afraid I had other matters to attend to,” he says, rapping his cane against the glass to open the door. “I was temporarily indisposed.”
“We missed you,” Charlie says, and she laughs at Alastor’s doubtful blink. She obliges when he gestures for her to step outside with him, admiring the view for a moment before sitting on the edge of the walkway. “Well, I missed you. And Niffty. I think everybody did, in their own ways. It’s been weird around here without you being creepy and mysterious all over the place.”
What an interesting reputation he’s built for himself on these premises — not just with Charlie, but with everyone. The streets far below them are full of wretched little sinners who would sooner hack off their own limbs than spend a minute in line behind Alastor at the butcher’s shop; people who fear the very ground upon which he treads. The hotel beside them is populated by people who missed him while he was gone. He chuckles lightly as he gets seated but remains otherwise silent.
“I’m really glad you’re back, Alastor,” Charlie says, and it is sickening how much she means it.
“Glad to be back, darling.”
Charlie’s legs kick rhythmically over the edge of the platform; she stares out toward the distant Heaven Embassy with an odd sort of look playing across her face. She wraps a slender hand around the guard rail and says, “Any chance I could ask you a favor?”
There comes the faint sound of a record scratch, followed by a garbled bit of static. She can’t be looking to make another deal, can she? That would be absurd. “In exchange for what, exactly?”
“Um… nothing? I guess? Or — wait.” She shrugs off her suit jacket and begins to rifle through the pockets, emptying their contents onto the latticed metal. “I’ve got three fun sized lollipops that I was saving for later, and I’m willing to give up the cherry one if you super want it, plus… a postcard from Greed that’s kind of bent in the corner, and — no, that’s just lint, hang on —”
“Charlie.” Alastor is split between irritation and confoundment, but both halves of him have agreed that he needs her to get to the point. “What is it that you want from me?”
The tips of her ears flush pink as she realizes what a ridiculous variety of garbage she’s piled between them. She snatches up one of the lollipops — the blue one, he notes, she nudges the red one toward him — and busies herself with undoing the wrapper as she searches for the words. “I want to know what happened on Extermination Day.”
Another blip of static. He’d anticipated the surprise of his return to outweigh the curiosity toward his absence for a good while longer than this — for Heaven’s sake, it hasn’t even been a day! Alastor clears his throat, giving his microphone a little shake and sending a pleasant whisper of jazz sailing out over the skyline. “Why, you won, darling,” he deflects, but it’s more than evident that she’s not buying it.
“No, I mean — I want to know where you went. We shouldn’t have left you alone with such a big responsibility, I get that now. I mean, we didn’t even have a contingency plan for if the shield went down beyond you taking Adam on. I was just so sure that you’d be able to kick his ass, you know? When the shield failed, I thought, Okay, this sucks, but Alastor’s going to beat that guy’s smug idiot face into the ground. It’s gonna be okay. And then it… it wasn’t.”
Unsure where she’s leading, Alastor simply says, “Your blind and unwavering faith in my ability is quite admirable.”
“It’s stupid,” Charlie corrects him. Her words are coming out thicker now, like her throat is constricting around them. “You were Plan A and Plan B, and we didn’t think to come up with anything past that, because of course you were going to win, right? You’d win, and then you’d come join us and kick even more ass once you were done.” She seems to sense Alastor’s impending interjection and shakes her head, silencing him. “You vanished, Alastor, and now Sir Pentious is gone.”
Oh. Oh, dear.
“So if you don’t want to tell me what happened to, like, protect your pride, or something,” Charlie goes on, growing bolder with every word, “whatever. I’d let you know that I won’t tell anybody what you tell me up here, and that I would never judge you for anything — I mean, you eat people, Al, and no one here gives a shit, least of all me. But if that’s not enough for you, then I deserve to know for Pentious. He’s worth more than some candy and a postcard, and he’s dead because he made himself Plan C, and you owe me an explanation.”
The temptation to melt into a puddle of shadow and slither off to some dark corner of the hotel is incredibly enticing at the moment. He should do it, really. No matter how haughtily this girl holds up her chin, no matter how determinedly she sets her jaw, he is the Radio Demon, and he has no intention of answering to the likes of her. She talks of him owing her, but he owes her nothing.
For some ineffable, inexplicable reason, he answers her anyway.
“Adam nearly killed me,” he says, and Charlie’s determination crumbles faster than he can blink.
“He what?”
“What happened to that blind faith we were discussing?” Alastor jokes. (Charlie doesn’t seem to find it very funny.) “You didn’t think I’d turn tail and run at the first sign of danger, did you? No no no, that wouldn’t do at all. I made a valiant stand. Loosened the lid for you, as it were. When he caught me with an unanticipated blow, I was wounded and forced to forfeit the fight to avoid further injury.” He had prepared this response the instant he began planning his return to the hotel. Minimal detail, minimal emotional investment. Just facts, pared down as far as possible and with ample space for conjecture.
“But…” Charlie’s eyes are wide as moons. “How? Why didn’t —? Where —? What did you —?”
“One question at a time, dear girl.”
Charlie sticks the lollipop in her mouth and presses her forehead against the guard rail, brow wrinkled in thought. It’s a long minute before she removes the candy and begins to speak. “Why didn’t you come to us for help?”
His microphone goes silent. This question was not on his mental list of prospective interrogations. Thankfully, the answer to it is rather obvious. “I was grievously injured, so I retreated to my radio station. I would have been of very little assistance to the battle in such a state.”
“You still could have — What if you hadn’t been able to heal yourself?” Charlie’s tone is at once admonishing and terrified, and Alastor has no clue what to make of it. She takes advantage of the silence and plows on. “You should’ve come back so one of us could try to heal you up! What if you bled out in your radio station, and somebody had to find your corpse hours after the fight?”
Even the canned laughter Alastor summons around them sounds forced. “I’m not so easily bested, my dear,” he says, but he nearly falters at the sudden anger that blooms across Charlie’s face.
“You just said you almost were!” she exclaims. She’s twisted around to fully face him, leaning far closer than he would like. “You listen to me right now, Alastor, I mean it. If you ever get hurt like that again, you come straight to me, or to someone in the hotel who can help. I’m not asking you. This is an official order from the princess of Hell. You don’t get to curl up in some corner and die just to save your dignity.”
“Dignity had nothing to do with it.” Lie. “I was of no further service to the fight, and so I withdrew. There were no complications when it came to healing myself.” Complications only arose when he had a damn breakdown that sent him spiraling, and he had no interest in sharing that with the peons on the battlefield.
“I don’t care. Next time, you come straight to one of us. Got it?”
He wants very badly to scoff. Instead, he says, “Heard loud and clear, your highness.”
“Good.” Charlie picks up her jacket and slides it back on, making sure that the button is neatly fastened before getting to her feet. “You have fun being ominous up here,” she says, stepping back into the station. “I’ve got some events to plan.”
With that, he’s left alone, staring out from above over the vast expanse of Pride.