Chapter Text
It’s beautiful the day half of Alastor dies.
The kind of day that rarely happens in Hell.
It’s late evening, the sky darkening from a dusty red to a deep, purple maroon. The pentagram alight in the sky is especially bright, and so long as you don't focus on it too much, Heaven’s orbiting sphere can be mistaken for a lovely, silver moon. The air is warm, not sweltering, and the breeze doesn’t carry the odor of sulfur and decay, but the sweet floral fumes from the flower bushes that recently begun to bloom in the hotel gardens.
Surprisingly, it was Vaggie who’d insisted they have their party outside. Normally, their celebrations are contained inside the hotel, in either the open lobby or the cozy parlor, safe from drive-by shootings and out of reach of hell-birds with their innate love of dive-bombing the food and leaving unwanted droppings on everything from the table to the decorations.
But the road to the hotel is blocked-off and Charlie’s strange relationship with the animals in Hell kept their bird problem at bay. One look from her big, imploring eyes sent every two-headed, sharp-toothed avian flying away with heavy, begrudging sighs.
Their party is small. Since the Hazbin Hotel’s reopening and the tentative, yet steady, progress it’s made for the last eight months, things have gone surprisingly well. While Heaven’s still uncertain about Charlie’s redemption plan, they’re more or less cooperating—the ascension of Sir Pentious helped in that regard. A trickle of residents have come through the hotel doors and fights only broke out occasionally as opposed of daily, and—who would’ve thunk!—they’re actually making progress!
There are always a few bumps and bruises, of course. Pesky reporters. Disgruntled Sinners with personal vendettas against anyone who dare give redemption a try. Smear campaigns. The fact that Charlie and Vaggie still make a song and dance about Alastor’s liver soup.
“You can’t just leave that on the table!” Vaggie say’s, gesturing at the steaming pot Alastor had graciously made the night before. “At least put a fucking label on it!”
“Didn’t Charlie just have a lesson about not labeling people?” Alastor retorts, ladling himself a generous bowl of soup. “For shame, Vaggie.”
“Yeah, for people, asshat! Not everyone wants to eat human liver!”
“Didn’t we also have a lesson about trying new things?”
“Not when it comes to eating people!”
“Why not? Everyone should expand their palette. It makes for way more interesting personalities, and besides, aren’t we supposed to celebrate individuality?”
“Oh my god, Alastor, I’m gonna—” she mimes choking him and he leans forward, tempting her with more access to his neck, then snickers when she doesn’t give in to his cajolery and merely swats him on the arm instead. “Stop being an ass!”
There was once a time he wouldn’t have allowed it. There was once a time Vaggie was too unnerved to even touch him, much less give his arm a slap. But now, she maintains her unhappy glower for appearances sake as he gives a heavy, dramatic sigh and with an equally dramatic wave of his arm, a pair of antlers replace the pot handles, vines curl around its edges, and sharp, green scraggly smiles decorate its surface. In front of it pops a blood-speckled card that reads: LIVER SOUP
“Now everyone will know it’s mine,” he says with a plaintive, victimized tone that breaks Vaggie’s mask into an eye-roll.
“Well, it’s something, at least,” she concedes, crossing her arms. “I guess that’s on me for making this a pot-luck.”
“Should’ve reconsidered that one,” Alastor agrees, “and I’m not talking about my delicious home-made soup that I took time out of my day to cook solely for this evening.”
“Yeah? Then who are you talking about?”
“Well, let’s just say, instead of worrying about my tastes, you should’ve been keeping an eye on Niffty. Haven’t you noticed a strange lack of bugs in the garden lately?”
Vaggie’s eyes widened. “No, she didn’t.”
“Her cookies have such a wonderful crunch, don’t they?”
“Alastor, you better be fucking with me, or I swear to god!” She’s just turning to scour the table for Niffty’s dish when Alastor laughs and bar’s her path with his cane.
“Oh, but you make it so easy. Come on, darling, do us all a favor and relax. This is supposed to be a celebration. Start celebrating!”
Vaggie wrings her fingers. “I know, I know,” she says, looking over the clothed tables, strung lights, banquet-style food, and her small gaggle of friends spread throughout. “It’s just, I-I want this to go well. I’ve never planned a party before, you know, and Charlie trusted me to get it all done, and I...I don’t want to…”
Alastor rolls his eyes. “When it’s less than ten people and they’re all your friends, it’s not a party, it’s a get-together, at best.” He sipped his soup and added brightly, “Besides! For however boring it is, Charlie’s far too sentimental to care.”
“So, you don’t think she’ll be disappointed?”
“Ha! I wish she would. It’d be way more entertaining than the boring drivel you’ve got playing.”
Vaggie looks back over the party and smiles. “Thanks, Alastor.”
“Your thanks will only be accepted under one condition.”
She purses her lips.
He holds the bowl out to her with a cheeky grin. “Give it a try.”
“No!”
“Come on, don’t be a party-pooper.”
“I’m not eating someone’s liver!”
“You can’t even tell the difference.”
“No, stop!”
Alastor cackles.
As predicted, Charlie isn’t disappointed. Alastor’s pretty sure she’s biologically incapable of anything but support and optimism, so long as a shred of effort is put into a project. He’s yet to figure out where the depths of her positivity ends—there has to be a bottom of the well eventually—but it soothes the anxious line between Vaggie’s brow and puts a genuine smile on her face.
Her needless fretting was entertaining, if pointless—honestly, if Charlie can overlook her past as an Exorcist, she can get away with being God in disguise—but Vaggie is exceptionally more fun when she’s in a good mood. Even responds to his barbs with surprisingly sharp wit hidden under all that glowering, so Alastor makes the gracious decision not to be a problem.
It is a nice party.
Cozy. Intimate. A rare get-together of the hotel’s founding inhabitants. Husk, Angel Dust, and Sir Pentious (who Heaven oh-so graciously allowed to join their little shindig) are busy shooting back shots, competing to see who’ll pass out first. Cherri Bomb, Niffty, and Baxter take bets on who they think will win.
Charlie probably would’ve been fretting about the alcohol poisoning racing to their liver, but she and Vaggie are deep in each other’s eyes, slow dancing to the soft, jazzy tune Alastor hijacked the speakers to play. His bet is on Husker winning, the alcoholic he is, and he can’t have Charlie’s concern for their well-being spoiling his fun.
He sits farther away, observing them all. The warmth fluttering in his chest still startles him at times, and more than once his knee-jerk reaction to squash the weed of fondness that’d grown in his ribcage lances through his core like the strike of a snake. Breathing deeply threw his nose, he calms the calamity twisted his in his heart.
Oh how far the mighty have fallen, he muses, taking a sip of the punch Angel and Niffy had spiked earlier that evening.
Growing attached to these silly buffoons hadn’t been a worry of his when he joined the hotel. Roo ordered him to keep an eye on Charlie, that’s all, and he still sends her reports, of course, but his place here had grown. Gone were the days he half-heartedly wore the title of Facilities Manager, not since Vox’s smear campaigns against Charlie and the hotel, and Alastor’s second near-death following the events. He’d called himself Charlie’s hotelier all those months ago only to make Lucifer mad, but goddamn had she swindled him into accepting the role.
It was for the best, anyway. Most days, she and Vaggie had their hands full with the rescuing and rehabilitating of their growing residents, they barely have time to sort through the nittier, grittier details that come with running a hotel.
Alastor’s always had a knack for sorting out nitty, gritty details. It’s what makes him such a fantastic deal-maker. The work keeps him busy, at the very least. Not a lot of time to reflect on the inevitability of Roo yanking him back into her schemes and sending him somewhere.
His shadow crawls up from the ground and curls around him.
That’s right. He’s not completely alone.
“Well,” he sighs, leaning toward his shadow with a cheeky grin, “what better company than my own?”
It snickers in agreement.
Lute attacks unexpectedly, when they’re at their softest and most vulnerable, truly an Exorcists through and through.
Charlie did end up noticing their drinking game, and to Alastor’s disappointment, put an end to their “shenanigans.” Shame. He was looking forward to watching them wobble and fall into the bushes, to say nothing about navigating the gardens to get back to the hotel.
The group had expressed their annoyance for the interruption, but it was purely for arguments sake, as they moved on pretty quickly.
As night descended and Hell’s poisonous cicada’s began strumming their tunes, the group naturally gravitated to a single table, where they laughed, ate, and told stories. Enjoying each others company.
Alastor stays where he is.
Despite his fondness, there are times he doesn’t feel as...close to the rest of them. When he imagines himself pulling a seat out at the table, the conversation gets a little stiffer. More guarded. His own fault, he supposes. He’d never been “one of the group.” Not really. He was more of an outside observer. A fixture in the corner they’d become comfortable with, but not one they invited to their table.
He usually invites himself, which he’d never minded before. But there’s a tenderness in these moments. A soft, communal comradery that his jagged edges don’t quite fit, and he’s not so foolish as to try squeezing himself into the mold. It’d be uncomfortable for everyone, and they’ve seen enough of his vulnerable moments to last him his after-life. The wound Adam gave him following the last Extermination hadn’t completely healed when he rejoined them, and it was humiliating enough when he’d lost the battle against Vox because of it.
No, let them have their companionship. He’s just fine watching from the outside. Always has been.
The pleasantness of the moment doesn’t last.
Lute doesn’t give them time to react. A snapping twig and rustling leaves pricks Alastor’s ears and he’s on his feet just as she stumbles into their small enclave, holding a long, glowing gold object that freezes him in place.
She’s breathing heavily, nose flaring, with wild eyes only produced by long-term exposure to Hell’s inherent derangement. Scratches scuff her face and stains litter her dirty, tattered Exorcist uniform. Anger thrums in the air around her, nestled in the wild tangles in her once razor-sharp haircut and vibrating in the tremble of her hand.
A hand clutching Adam’s guitar.
Rusty orange stains color its edges and fleck the surface of the blade.
My blood, Alastor realizes. It’s still covered in my blood. His mouth goes dry and his heart gives a single, solid punch against his ribcage. A wash of white light and searing heat flashes across his mind and the months of pain that followed echo throughout his chest. Suddenly it’s hard to breathe.
It’s right about now that Alastor would’ve leapt into action. Lute resembles a wild, cornered animal, and those are the most dangerous kind. Ones that need putting down immediately, if not for their sake, then her own. But the guitar, his blood, the memories, root him to the spot.
Charlie, Vaggie, and the rest of them surge to their feet, mouths moving in the periphery of Alastor’s vision, but he doesn’t hear them. At first, Lute says nothing. Then, with a single, strong jump, she catapults into the air, dirty wings furling outward.
She only says four words, “This is for Adam!” and swings the guitar with all her might. Alastor’s transported to the past as a wave of white light surges outward, in a long, curving arc, like the axe’s blade, cutting through the air. To the garden.
At the others.
Alastor doesn’t think, just reacts.
Despite the scar across his chest aching with ghost pains, every nerve in his body comes to life as the spell that’d get them out of its trajectory shoots through his mind.
He already prepared for this, figuring that at some point the group would bumble their way into the line of fire. They’re as unlucky as a box of black cats in a room of cracked mirrors. All he needed was a piece of their DNA, which wasn’t hard to get. A strand of hair, a glass still wet with their saliva. Blood is the best, but it doesn’t have to be that extreme.
He was only syncing them to the shadows, after all, not animating them.
Unlike his shadow, which is already on the move, streaking across the ground in the milliseconds it takes for the spell to come to mind. Times seems to slow as it races the beam, the both of them reaching for a group of people Alastor’s come to enjoy. Who he’s gotten attached to, despite his best efforts. All his shadow needs to do is reach their shadows and it’ll pull them into its dark void, able to spit them out of harms way, even if its only a few feet.
But his body flushes cold. Anguish squeezes his heart. A feeling of dread falls over him like a burial shroud, burrowing deep into his soul with the certainty that his shadow isn’t going to make it.
No.
NO!
He pours more of himself into the tether binding them, fueling it with magic and energy, willing it to move faster. The effort saps his strength, instantly putting a tremble in his legs that drops him to one knee, but he doesn’t stop. Keeps pouring more and more of himself into it, because at the end of the day, he’s a stubborn man and he does not let go of the things he likes.
He will make it to them before the beam.
He will.
And a second later…
He does.
Angel Dust doesn’t want to die.
A funny notion because he’s already dead, and even dead, there’s not much living in Hell. It’s constant survival, trudging through shit every day just to make it to tomorrow, only to do it all over again.
Send him back a year ago, before he was approached by two helpless broads looking to sucker a pathetic sleazebag into joining their rehab program, it’d be a different story. He might’ve looked at this arc of light streaking towards him like a comet falling to Earth, the exact same kind that’d disintegrated Penn and his entire warship, and happily let it put him out of the cycle of misery he’d strung himself in.
Cherri might’ve been the only person to make him hesitate. Maybe Arachniss too, if his brother still didn’t refuse to see or associate with him.
Back then, Angel Dust would’ve stared down this falling star and opened his arms, ready for his dreams to come true.
But he met people. A group of pathetic, random nobodies that he’d come to like and who liked him in return. Friends who hung out and shared drinks with him without the intention of getting lucky later on, or waiting for an opportunity to slip a pill in his drink. They liked him for him. One of the dirtiest, sluttiest hoes manufactured in Hell, and still didn’t think any less of him.
He doesn’t want to die.
But at least he won’t die alone.
It’s probably not good or righteous to want your friends to die with you, and maybe that’s why he’s not in Heaven yet. Because when certain death barrels towards him, he’s happy they're with him. Husk’s wings are around him. Niffty clings to his legs, and Baxter to her. Cherri’s on his right, clutching his arm and Penn’s on his left, body curled around them. Vaggie’s trying to shield them with her wings from behind, while Charlie’s braced in front, as if to take the strike head on.
He's surrounded by people who aren’t just his friends, but his family. A real one, not like the cruel, twisted imitation he’d grown up in. He won’t die on a ratty couch, in a cold room, by himself, holding an empty bag of pills. He’s going to die in the arms of people who’ve never judged him or saw him as lesser than, and in that moment he’s never felt so...loved. Cherished. Protected, even if their feeble human-shield won’t matter in the end.
Because, despite soaking in all of Charlie’s determination and hope for the last year, a manifestation of their love and friendship isn’t going to expel from their hearts and expand into a glowing shield that’d save them from their fate.
But it’s a nice feeling.
He should close his eyes and brace for the end, but he can’t. He won’t. Last time he closed his eyes, he woke up in a city of violence, pain, and unbearable loneliness. This time, he’s going to stare down the sun for daring to take his family away.
Love and friendship aren’t going to save them.
But something dark and smiling does.
It all happens so quick, almost too fast for Angel Dust to catch. One second he’s staring down death, and in the next, a shadow is in front of them, blotting out the sun. He has time to recognize a pair of hollow eyes, a wide, toothy smile, as it’s body enlarges, wrapping its arms around them, before the light hits.
Alastor’s shadow encases them, whole and intact, and then it bubbles and smokes. It’s face twists in agony and it’s mouth opens in a shriek that, despite always being mute, Angel Dust hears. One of pure and absolute agony. The type of scream that makes your entire body go cold just hearing it, knowing, deep down, that whoever it belongs to didn’t make it, and you don’t want to be next.
Then Alastor’s shadow is gone. Eaten away by jagged teeth of greedy light, piece by piece, consumed in a matter of seconds.
But the screaming doesn’t stop.
Because it didn’t come from the shadow at all.
Charlie only prayed once in her life.
She’d been younger, in her 200’s, sequestered underneath one of her high-schools benches doing homework when a gaggle of her classmates settled in the seats above. Any hope of ignoring them fled when she overheard their whispered plans to do a prayer circle that night. They’d moved along once they noticed her, probably because her father was the literal devil and praying was as close to blasphemy as it got in Hell. As the princess, well...not a lot of people talked openly about that kind of stuff with her.
She’d been deep in her studies on Earthly religions and their rituals at the time, laying out the foundations of what would become her redemption plans, and curiosity outweighed her superstition. That same night, after her mom and dad went to bed—finished with the nightly argument that’d weaseled into their bedtime routine—she snuck into the bathroom with a handful of printed Bible verses from her textbook (they didn’t get real Bibles, not since the schoolboard threw a fit about it 80 years ago), and followed the instructions she’d overheard.
With white chalk she drew a crooked cross on the floor and placed candles on each end. She didn’t have mortal wine, so snuck a fancy-looking bottle from the alcohol cabinet, and placed a goblet of it on one side of the cross, then a plate of bread on the other. With a rosary she’d hastily made, she knit her hands in front of her chest and awkwardly kneeled in front of the cross.
Her classmates hadn’t gone into detail about this next part, just that prayer was next, and if all the steps were done correctly, an angel would appear. She fidgeted on her knees, unsure what “praying” entailed. It was different across religions, and her books hadn’t gone deep into what she was supposed to say.
She cleared her throat and clumsily started, “Uh, dear Lord in Heaven...I, uh, am praying to you because...um...because I…” she faltered. What was she praying for? To sate her curiosity? To better understand humans and their customs?
That was what she’d told herself, but there was another reason. One she didn’t want to touch too closely, but maybe this was where you're supposed to bring it up. To say the hard things you don’t want to say to anyone else.
“There are a lot of human souls down here. More and more each day, and...it’s beginning to affect mom and dad, I think. It’s all they argue about and I, I don’t want it to get worse. I know Sinners aren’t that great, but all your teachings—er, well, the teachings in their books, say that to be forgiven of your sins, all you need to do is repent. I don’t know if that’s true. I tried asking dad once, but he has a hard time talking about you, and Heaven, and um, you know, all of the stuff that happened. I know Sinners earned damnation, but there has to be a way they can redeem themselves. I certain of it. If you have any advice or, I don’t know, want to callorborate of toss ideas around, I’d really appreciate it.” She hesitated again. “Heaven is supposed to be a good, holy place, and it’s not great for Sinners down here. I know if they only got the chance, they’d want to be better and join you guys up there. So, um...that’s all. Let me know what you think. Uh. Thank you for your time. Amen.”
She peeked one eye open but an angel hadn’t appeared to answer her question, nor did a disembodied voice emanates from the fake plant in the corner. She waited, figuring she’d give them a few minutes to get their thoughts together, but as the candlesticks melted lower and lower, her shoulders sank with them.
Sighing, and feeling the slightest bit embarrassed, she cleaned up the mess and went to bed, heart heavy with disappointment.
She hadn’t prayed since.
But now, as a glowing plume of white light barrels toward her and her friends, she prays again. Not to Heaven, specifically. Or Hell. But to anyone who’ll listen.
Save them, she pleads. Please, save them.
She’s the reason they’re all here. She strung them along in her plans for redemption. It's because of her they’re all going to die.
Please, I’ll do anything. Just keep them safe.
She prays to whoever, whatever, might be listening.
And to her astonishment, someone is.
A sudden darkness blots the light above. All she sees is a pair of hollow eyes, a smile, before it’s brutally ripped apart. It happens so quickly her mind reels to catch up, fumbling to figure out what happened, when a split-second later she registers the screaming. Now just one scream, but multiple. Polyphonic layers of them that echo through the air, a tide of pure, spine-chilling agony that shoots adrenaline through her body on an instinctive level.
The sound is all consuming, striking deep in her ears, her brain, her heart, like it’s trying desperately to transfer its pain.
Among it is a crackling pop. Static and feedback. Screams and shadows—
Her breath hitches. Dread floods her stomach as she lurches to her feet, scanning the overturned tables and scorched flower-bushes desperately. Panic grips her with cold, steely fingers when she spots him. Alastor, collapsed on the ground, clutching his chest so hard blood drips down his fingers. His face, his smile—what’s left of it—twists in so much pain it cleaves her heart in half.
The screams are coming from him.
Alastor is dying.
He’s never been so sure of something in his life.
He’s dying. The pain ripping through his body, his mind, his soul, is the type that can only result in death. Please, let it be death, every molecule in his body begs. Please, let me die.
He’s never felt pain like this before. It’s all he feels. His body, his mind, all of it disappears as he becomes an avatar of agony. Everything in him screams.
His power expels outward, though he’s in no mental stake to notice. Every megaphone, speaker, and conduit for sound erupts to life all at once and they scream too. Echoing his pain through Pentagram City with the force of an aftershock from a nuclear bomb. Headphones shoot his pain into the ears they’re nestled in. Microphones shriek. TV’s smoke, their screens cracking and breaking with static snow. The pitch builds and builds until every window in the Downtown District explodes in showers of glass. In the districts beside it, they become broken, spider-webs of cracks.
The radio waves around Alastor turn serrated. The static he naturally emits burns. The pressure, the pain, builds and all he can do is scream and scream and scream.
And when his energy depletes, when he’s left empty, hollowed inside and out in every conceivable way, the pain doesn’t leave.
But his consciousness does.
Not that it helps in the end, because even when his vision goes black, as his limbs give out, collapsing him onto scorched patches of grass and overturned dirt, the pain follows. Although the air stills, speakers die, and the haunting wailing that’d swept through the pentagram comes to a stop, trapped in darkness, deep in the recesses of what remains in his mind, he continues to scream.