Chapter Text
Of all the people Charlie Morningstar expected to show up on the Hazbin Hotel doorsteps right before the grand reopening, the last person she ever anticipated was her mother.
There have already been loads of visitors showing interest since the battle against the Exorcists just a week ago. Sinners are intrigued, rather than mocking, now that the Hazbin Hotel has proven it can give as good as it gets and repel even the worst of the angels that everyone fears. The gawkers and gossipers that gather around its gates don’t seem to have much interest in redemption, but they are fascinated and already calculating the strength and worth of the Hotel as a new political faction.
There are a few that seem genuinely interested in staying at the Hotel, at least. They’ve found their way to the doors of the hotel itself to ask about staying. Most don’t seem interested in redemption or going to Heaven even now; they don’t seem to believe Charlie’s enthusiastic speeches when she gives them. But they do seem interested in finding a safe place to stay, and a few cautiously willing to give the redemption exercises a shot if it’s the only payment needed for free, safe room and board.
Charlie finds it a little manipulative to let them in on those merits, but Angel Dust shoots her down with a laugh when she voices her concerns about taking advantage of Sinners. “Let’em come, Toots!” he hollers. “It’s what got me in the door, and look at me now!”
“He’s not wrong, hun,” Vaggie says. “Hell is all about give and take. They’re choosing to stay here willingly and give it a shot, even if it’s mostly for the room. That’s the important part. The rest will come with time.”
It still feels a little tricky, but Charlie agrees to go through with it anyway.
So when she opens the door, already taking her deep breath to begin her speech about how they’re not open yet but if they give her their contact information she’ll reach out when they’re ready, she’s expecting another Sinner knocking on their doors for safety. She does not expect to look up and see her own mother looking down at her, hands clenched almost nervously.
The deep breath Charlie had taken escapes with a wheezing hiss. She stares. Her mother stares back.
After a moment she squeaks in disbelief, “Mom?”
“Charlie,” her mother says in nearly a whisper. “Oh, Sweetheart. It’s so good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you too!” Charlie says, but she can’t keep the bewildered shock from her voice. “I don’t understand...why are you here? I called you so many times...I left you so many messages…”
Her mother’s face falls. “Oh, Sweetheart,” she says again, and she sounds so helpless. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t have my phone. If you’ve been trying to reach me, I’m...I’m afraid I didn’t get those messages.”
Charlie is stunned. Didn’t have her phone? But that didn’t make sense. “I don’t understand,” she repeats meekly. She’s so happy her mother is back, but it’s so out of nowhere that it’s taking her mind time to catch up with what she’s seeing.
In fact, now that she thinks about it, her mother looks just as off as she feels. Mom’s clothing isn’t as rich as usual, and there’s no jewelry or ornamentation. Her clothes are decent, but look disheveled and a little worn. Her horns look chipped and damaged, like they haven’t been cared for recently, and her nails are short and broken. In short, she doesn’t look like the Queen of Hell; she looks like an ordinary Sinner that’s had a rough day in the Pentagram.
“It’s a long story,” her mother says with a sigh. And now that Charlie’s looking for it, she can see how exhausted her mother looks too. She’s not wearing makeup, so the dark lines under her eyes from fatigue are obvious. She looks like she could use a hot meal and a comfortable bed.
“Mom,” Charlie whispers, reaching out to take her hand slowly and carefully. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“It’s a long story,” her mother repeats. “Is it...is it okay if I come in? I’d like to sit for a bit. I know you’re probably wondering where I’ve been, and it sounds like I’ve been gone longer than I realized, so I can understand if you don’t want to see me. But…”
“Yes! Yes, of course, come on in!” Charlie says hastily, stepping back from the door to give her mom room to enter. Mom enters gratefully, and Charlie shuts and locks the door behind her, definitely unwilling to attend to any hopeful hangers on at the moment. If something happened to her mother—if something is wrong, if there’s something she needs to know about—she’ll do anything she can to help.
At this time in the afternoon, most of the staff and residents are hanging about in the new parlor, or at the new bar. Husk serves drinks to Angel and Cherri Bomb, the last of whom hasn’t quite settled on redemption yet but has stuck around to help with the last of the building and repairs. Niffty is vigorously sweeping the new parlor, even though the building is still brand new and hasn’t had much time to accumulate dust. Vaggie is also sitting in the parlor, doing some maintenance on her angelic spear and occasionally lifting it out of the way so that Niffty doesn’t accidentally behead herself when she speeds past with her broom. KeeKee is curled up on one of the sofas, Razzle is hanging new photographs and portraits donated by everyone, and Frank—the lone Egg Boi that had survived—is holding Vaggie’s maintenance kit while sitting next to her.
For all that it feels full of life again, the absences are still woefully obvious to Charlie. It’s only been two weeks since they lost Sir Pentious, and his loss is still bitterly felt. His memorial is on the wall in the lobby when one enters, and Charlie leads her mother past it while giving the portrait a soft nod. It’s a shame to not see him here with the others, arguing with Angel Dust or trying his best to flirt with Cherri Bomb.
The other absence is subtle, but worries Charlie even more, if it were possible. She knows Pentious didn’t survive the battle, after all; she had seen Adam blast his ship into nothing. She has no idea what happened to Alastor, and the fact that she doesn’t know if he’s still alive or died in the fight is worrisome. They’d found blood on the rubble from the roof, blood that wasn’t hers, and Alastor had disappeared so suddenly…
Husk and Niffty both say he’s alive. The chains to their souls are still going somewhere, and they hadn’t felt anything snap or transfer. But Alastor hadn’t come back. And they hadn’t found his body, wounded or dead, in the rubble when they cleared it away. There had been blood in the shattered remains of the radio tower that had once been his, but no sign of Alastor himself, or where he’d gone.
Charlie hopes he’s okay. She doesn’t know how else to find him. The Radio Demon had disappeared so thoroughly for seven years that no one had known where he’d gone. If Alastor doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be. She just has to hope he comes back.
She really hopes he comes back.
She shakes her head fretfully as she takes her eyes away from Pentious’ portrait and back to her mother. She can’t do anything for Alastor right now. She can help Mom, who is right here and obviously needs her.
“Mom, welcome to the Hazbin Hotel,” Charlie says, leading her over to the bar. Her mother sits gratefully, and Charlie points around to her newfound family. “Um, let me introduce you to everyone! This is Vaggie, my girlfriend. Angel is one of our residents. Cherri is his friend, she’s been helping us with repairs. Husk is our bartender, and Niffty is our housekeeper.”
Everyone waves or says their hellos with polite interest.
“Everyone,” Charlie adds, gesturing towards her mother. “This is my Mom—”
“Lilith,” a voice gasps, and there’s a sound of shattering dishware from the direction of the kitchen.
Charlie whips around in surprise. And then immediately wants to swear. Crap. Not now—!
Dad is standing in the doorway leading to the kitchen. His arms are still open wide, like he’d been holding onto a tray—one that’s shattered at his feet now, with snacks scattered everywhere. He had mentioned pulling baked goods out of the oven right before the knock at the door.
There’s a long, pregnant silence as Dad and Mom stare across the room at each other, with equally wide eyes. Everyone else looks around awkwardly, glancing at Charlie as if to ask, should we be doing something?
In all honestly, Charlie has no idea. She knows her parents are divorced. She’d been a teenager when they’d split. But they’d always tried to keep her involvement as gentle as possible, and never fought in front of her if they could prevent it. And then she hadn’t heard from Dad in years, because he rarely reached out to her—and then Mom had disappeared for more than seven years—and she just has no idea if this is going to turn into a shouting match, a loving reunion, or something ice cold.
Angel Dust finally coughs and breaks the silence, saying, “Y’okay there, Short King? Didn’t hurt yerself, did ya?”
That seems to break Dad out of his reverie for a moment. “What? Huh? Oh!” He looks around wildly, then down at his feet, spotting the broken tray and the scattered, squished pastries and cookies. “Shit. I didn’t mean to do that—sorry.”
He snaps his fingers, and time seems to reverse, the shattered tray collecting itself back together and the sweets leaping back onto its surface before the whole thing flips itself neatly upright and into Dad’s hands again. He hastily scurries over to place it on the bar counter top, letting it go like it might burn him. The action also gets him closer to Lilith, and he immediately looks awkward and unsure about if he should move or not.
“Lucifer,” Mom says after a moment. “It’s been a while. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Dad flinches like he’d been struck. He starts to fiddle with the wedding band on his finger, a nervous tic that always seems to come up whenever Mom is the point of discussion. “Yes, well—I—that is, Charlie—”
“Dad’s been helping with the hotel, Mom,” Charlie interjects, wanting to smooth things over as much as possible. “He helped me arrange things with Heaven, and he protected me from Adam, and now he’s helping rebuild the hotel so we can open to Sinners again.”
Mom’s lips are pressed together, thin, but her eyes widen as Charlie speaks. “Protected you from—what did Adam do to you, Sweetheart?”
“He tried to break the First Deal,” Dad says with a low growl. “One of his lieutenants already did. I’m sure you saw the memorial to Dazzle out front.”
Charlie can’t help but flinch at that, but she tries to maintain her composure. An arm slides around her back, and she starts as she realizes Vaggie had come over from the parlor to stand next to her. Charlie leans against her slightly, grateful for the support.
Mom’s eyes narrow. “Did he now,” she says, sounding angry and disgusted, before sighing and shaking her head. “Despite our differences, I’m glad you were there when it counted, Lucifer.”
Charlie frowns a little at that, and several of the others wince. It sounded more like a backhanded compliment more than anything else, and there’s thinly veiled bitterness in her mother’s words. But Lucifer seems to take it in stride, perking up a little.
“Of course I would,” Lucifer says. “She’s our daughter. Charlie is the most important thing in the world. And she’s really doing something good here! I want to support her.” He’s vibrating a little in place, like he wants so badly to gush about Charlie to her mom, and is only managing to hold himself back because of the present company.
Even so, Charlie can’t help but flush a little with embarrassment, but also a little pride. Dad hadn’t believed in her cause at all just a few months ago. Now he was on her side, and wanted to support her dream of rehabilitating Sinners. She wishes he’d been around more often in her life, but the fact that he’s here now, doing his best to support her, still means a great deal to her.
Mom regards Lucifer with a look Charlie can’t quite place. It’s something analyzing, like she’s trying to figure Dad out, but Charlie can’t begin to imagine what for. They’d been together for so long...but then, with the recent divorce, maybe both of them had realized neither one knew each other nearly so well as they thought.
Dad seems to recognize it too, at least somewhat. He squirms a little under Mom’s scrutiny, before saying, “I hope you’ve been well, Lily?”
“Lilith,” her mother corrects immediately, which causes Dad to flinch a little again. “And...yes, you too.”
The silence grows even more awkward and uncomfortable. Husk studiously begins cleaning behind the bar on the opposite side of Mom and Dad. Angel and Cherri make a show of looking at their phones and pretending to not pay attention. Vaggie squeezes Charlie a little around the waist. The only one who seems indifferent to the whole affair is Niffty, who’s now vigorously dusting things in the parlor without a shred of care about the conversation.
Charlie doesn’t know what to say either. Dad is twisting the ring on his finger again, awkward and unsure, not quite able to meet Mom’s eyes. Mom is treating him politely, but there’s something cold and distant in it, and Charlie’s starting to get the impression that maybe Mom hadn’t expected Dad to be here at all. They’re keeping it civil, but not especially friendly.
Angel Dust finally coughs, loudly and obviously, and says, “Hey, Short King, been meaning to ask you for help with that thing.”
Dad’s head snaps up in surprise, and away from Mom. “Thing? What thing?”
“Remember?” Angel says, gesturing vaguely in the air. “I wanted to renovate my room some. Move some things around and get some stuff set up. With all the structural stuff you said I gotta take some extra precautions, remember? You gotta reinforce wall stuff, or somethin’. I dunno, I’m not the builder here.”
“Oh. That.” Dad glances at Mom again, shifting from foot to foot. He looks like he wants to stay and also like he desperately wants to run at the same time. “I—is now really the best time?”
“Why not? The lady just got in, let her get a drink and get settled,” Angel says. “We’re a lot to adjust to all at once, remember how you were when ya came to visit that one time?”
“Oh,” Dad says. “I...guess. That’s true. I, uh—you don’t mind, Lily—Lilith? Don’t want to be rude, after all—”
“It’s fine with me,” Mom says curtly. She bites the words out like she’s trying hard to stay patient and polite, but really doesn’t have the energy to deal with Dad. Charlie can’t help but wilt a little at that, and clutches at Vaggie’s hand. She knows her parents split up for a reason, and it was probably even healthy for them, but it still hurts to see them struggling to get along like this. Like even being in each others’ presence is difficult.
“Right. Right! Okay then! Let’s...let’s get those things set up in your room! Renovations, so good at those!”
“Sure thing, Short King,” Angel says. He neatly slips off the bar stool and slips one of his lower arms around Dad’s shoulders to discreetly steer him for the main staircase. Once Dad is being led away, still fiddling with his ring, Angel glances over one shoulder and throws a thumbs-up with a second set of hands. You’re Welcome, he mouths, before turning back to Dad. “Now let me tell ya what I got in mind. Ever seen a sex swing before, ‘cause I’m gonna need this thing sturdy—”
They disappear up the stairs. After a moment, Cherri Bomb says, “Y’know what, I’m gonna go with’em. I think I need a couple pics of the King outfittin’ all of Angel’s gear. Gonna be good no matter what.” And she hops off her own bar stool, hastily scurrying after the others and escaping the awkward vibes of the room.
Charlie breathes a sigh of relief. Even if she does not want to see any photos of her Dad helping with Angel’s bedroom reconstruction and the dubious equipment there, she still says, “I’m gonna have to thank him later.”
“Your friend is clever,” Mom notes. “I’ll need to thank him as well. In all honesty, I had...not expected your father to be here when I arrived. I wasn’t quite prepared.”
“He’s living here right now,” Charlie says. “So he’ll be around a lot, but, um...the hotel is really big! I could give you a room on the opposite side—we could have a talk about boundaries—or, um—”
“How about we start with a drink,” Husk interrupts. “Can I get you anything, Your Majesty?”
“Nothing alcoholic, please,” Lilith says, glancing at the bottles behind Husk. “It’s been a difficult time, and I’d rather have my wits about me.”
“Mocktail fine?”
“Certainly. Surprise me.”
Husk nods, setting to work collecting ingredients to mix the drink. Charlie and Vaggie take the chance to sit at the bar, taking the stools Angel and Cherri had vacated.
“What do you mean by it being a difficult time, Mom?” Charlie asks, putting a hand on her mother’s arm. “Is everything okay? Are you safe?”
“I am now, I’m sure,” Mom says. “It’s just been difficult to get away.”
“Get away? Get away from who?”
“Are you being followed?” Vaggie asks, more practically. “Do I need to set up perimeter defenses or a watch?”
“I don’t believe that will be necessary,” Mom says. “I’m fairly certain I’ve shaken the tail. Though I certainly appreciate the precautions.” She smiles, tired but genuine, at Vaggie. “Charlie introduced you as her girlfriend? If you’re this alert protecting her, then I think you’re quite a fine match.”
“Always,” Vaggie says firmly. Even now, she looks a little distracted from the converation, and Charlie can tell that she’s running through precautionary measures in her head anyway.
Charlie can’t exactly blame her. Vaggie is the primary defender of the hotel now, with Alastor gone. Dad can step in and intervene if he needs to, but he says he does have to be careful or risk major political scandals and upheavals. It’s a lot of pressure on poor Vaggie, and Charlie knows it’s been bothering her a lot recently.
“Thank you,” Mom says sincerely. “It makes me feel better than you probably realize to know someone is protecting and caring for my daughter so well. My Charlie has such enthusiasm, but as you’ve probably seen, it does make her a target in Hellish society…it’s nice to know someone has her back, even if her father and I aren’t around.”
Vaggie flushes a little. “Um. Thank you, ma’am. Your Majesty?”
“You can just call me Lilith,” Mom says. “Someone so important to Charlie need not stand on ceremony.”
Husk sets the drinks in front of them—a mocktail for Mom, and Vaggie’s and Charlie’s preferred drinks as well. He also puts the tray of baked snacks Dad made closer, before helping himself to his own drink. Apparently decorum wins out with Charlie’s mom, because he actually takes the time to pour his drink into a glass, rather than chugging directly from the bottle today.
“Mom, I’d be happy to catch up in a minute, and trust me I really want to introduce you to my friends better and show you around the Hotel and tell you all about my dream—but first, are you okay? Are you safe? Who was chasing you?”
Lilith grimaces. “It’s...complicated.” She glances cautiously at Husk, then Vaggie, like she’s not sure if she can speak.
“They’re family,” Charlie says firmly. “It’s safe to speak in front of them. They might even be able to help.”
Lilith hesitates for a moment, but then nods. “Alright, Sweetheart,” she says slowly. “If you trust them, then so do I.”
She’s silent for a moment, like she’s gathering her thoughts. Charlie lets her, even if she’s anxious enough to nervously tap on the sides of her glass. Vaggie reaches over to still her hand, and Charlie grips it reflexively for support.
Finally, Lilith presses her lips together and says curtly, “I suppose I can start by answering your question. I was being followed by the Exorcists, specifically.”
Vaggie’s hand immediately tightens on Charlie’s, and Charlie looks up in surprise. Even Husk chokes mid-sip on his drink.
“How?” Charlie asks after a moment. “Why? I don’t understand...why would they be after you?”
“How could they be after you?” Vaggie adds, frowning. “Lucifer’s entire family was exempt from the exterminations. They wouldn’t have been after you.”
“That would be true in normal circumstances,” Mom agrees tiredly. “Unfortunately, these were anything but normal circumstances.”
“Does...does it have to do with your missing phone?” Charlie asks slowly. “Or where you’ve been for the past seven years?”
Lilith nods grimly. “I’m sorry, Sweetheart,” she says. “I didn’t mean to be away. The truth of the matter is that I was kidnapped...by my ex-husband. Adam.”
Charlie breathes in sharply, and Vaggie’s eye widens in surprise.
“I’m not sure how he learned about my divorce with Lucifer,” Mom says bitterly. “But he never did like your father, Charlie...and he was always the type to want to prove a point and show he was better than anyone else. He took advantage of the situation, once I was outside the palace and your father’s immediate protection. And he’s never been restricted when it comes to traveling to Hell. He came for me when I was distracted and dragged me up to Heaven. I’ve been his prisoner for years.”
“What?” Charlie is outraged. She already knew Adam was an asshole, but if he’d been responsible for kidnapping her mother and keeping her away for seven years...it makes her almost glad Niffty had stabbed him in the back. And Mom wasn’t wrong. He was the type to always prove he was the best. It sounds like something he’d do.
But Vaggie frowns, cautiously exchanging glances with Husk. Husk’s ear twitches, and he says after a moment, “Didn’t he lead all them Exorcists? Wouldn’t they have known if he had the Queen of Hell captive?”
“It does seem weird,” Vaggie agrees carefully. “You’d think they’d have thrown a fit about someone from Hell being in Heaven.”
It’s almost strange to hear Vaggie talking about the Exorcists like some kind of other, but after a moment, Charlie understands why. She’s not comfortable letting Mom know she was one of those Exorcists, or even an angel, just yet.
But...Vaggie had been an Exorcist seven years ago. She’d kept her secret about it very recently, but Charlie and Vaggie had a long, difficult talk after that visit to Heaven. Vaggie had admitted why she’d been afraid to talk, and how she’d been ashamed of what she’d done. How she didn’t feel safe telling most people in Hell she was one of the same beings that had slaughtered them mercilessly. But Vaggie had promised to no longer keep secrets from Charlie, especially not about her time in Heaven or her former occupation.
If Vaggie had know that Charlie’s own mother was being held captive by her former boss, she knows Vaggie would have told her then. Or at some point shortly thereafter. Vaggie knows how long Charlie’s been missing her mother. She’s listened to her call that phone number and leave voicemails, over and over and over. If she knew how to fix that, she would have said.
But Mom shakes her head, toying with the little umbrella in her drink. “I don’t think most of them knew,” she says. “The only one I ever saw besides Adam was his second in command. I think her name was Flute, or Lute, or something like that. Adam kept me at a little ocean-side villa of his. It was private property, so I don’t think it was part of his…” She searches carefully for a word, and settles on, “...job.”
Charlie bites her lip, and tries to give Vaggie a subtle glance. Vaggie gives a halfhearted shrug, still frowning. She isn’t reacting angrily, or trying to call Mom out on a lie, so maybe it’s possible that Adam has some beach house that Vaggie wouldn’t have known about. Charlie doesn’t know enough about how Heaven works to know for sure, herself.
Charlie wishes she could ask directly. She’s certain her mom wouldn’t hold it against Vaggie for being a former Exorcist. But it’s not her secret to tell, and Charlie doesn’t want to reveal it by asking directly if any of that sounds reasonable. If her mother really could have been a captive in Heaven for so long.
Mom doesn’t seem to notice. “He seemed to think I belonged to him, since I was his ex-wife and ‘made’ for him.” She wrinkles her nose in disgust, but her eyes are furious. “I wasn’t able to get away. He had strong Heavenly wards on the whole house that prevented me leaving. He’d taken my phone, so I couldn’t call for help. And it was Heaven—I had no friends to rely on. Even your father wouldn’t have been able to reach me.
“But about two weeks ago, something happened. The wards just...stopped. For the first time since he’d taken me, I was able to leave the villa. I didn’t hesitate. I ran. I found a way to escape. Getting a portal to Hell took some doing, but I eventually found a way. And here I am.”
“And the Exorcists weren’t a fan of you breaking out, I’m guessing,” Husk notes.
“They weren’t. That second in command of Adam’s...she must have gone to the villa, and found I’d run. She sent her people after me. Getting away from them has been a nightmare...but I think it’s safe now.”
Charlie exchanges glances with Vaggie and Husk. “Adam was killed two weeks ago,” she says slowly. “When he attacked our Hotel during an accelerated Extermination.”
Mom’s eyebrows raise. “I’d heard rumors, but I wasn’t certain,” she says slowly. “They’re trying to keep it quiet in Heaven, I imagine. That would explain that second in command’s anger, though. She never did like me much.” She scoffs. “Jealousy, I think. I suspect she wanted Adam to notice her, not me.”
Vaggie snorts, but she doesn’t sound amused. “Sounds right,” she says. “And if he died, any magic he was maintaining probably went with him, which explains those wards vanishing.”
“Would they come here again?” Charlie asks anxiously. “So soon after we beat them?”
“They’d be fuckin’ stupid if they did try it,” Husk says. “The King’s here now. He could kick any of’em out, no problem.”
Vaggie bites her lip. “They might still try it if they were angry enough,” Vaggie says. “It’s not an extermination, just a prisoner recovery. It wouldn’t be an all out fight. And they’d know Her Majesty wasn’t in His Majesty’s favor anymore, so they might think they could get away with it.”
“I don’t need Lucifer’s protection,” Mom says shortly. “Besides—I’m quite sure I’ve shaken their tail by now. They lost me once I dropped into Hell. They couldn’t get to me now without difficulty.”
But Charlie isn’t so sure about that. “They know you’re my mom, though,” Charlie says. “And they know Dad’s here—he showed up during the battle and kicked them out. He even beat up Adam first, and he told Lute to get out directly. They could probably guess that you’d come here, right?”
“Wouldn’t be a stupid guess to make,” Husk says.
“Perhaps,” her mother concedes. “But it may still take them a while to realize I escaped Heaven at all. There should be time. And Lucifer and I may have our disagreements, but I’m sure he isn’t cruel enough to give me back to that...that bitch.” Mom scowls.
“Well, you’ll definitely be safe here!” Charlie promises, reaching out to put her hand on Mom’s arm reassuringly. “We made the Exorcists turn back once before. We definitely won’t hand you over to them again!”
“Though I’m gonna look into setting up defenses anyway,” Vaggie says, frowning. “I don’t like the sound of this. I’d rather be ready for them.”
“I can’t fault you for the caution,” Mom says. “You seem like the prepared sort. Once I’ve had a chance to rest and recover, I can help you, if you like. It is partly my fault that they might come here again...but now that I’m back in Hell, I’m not without my skills.”
“Rest first,” Vaggie says. “Then we’ll talk, once you’re feeling better.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through all this, Mom,” Charlie adds. “It sounds awful. I wish I’d known where you were...if I did, I would have found a way to help a long time ago.”
“There’s no way you could have known, Sweetheart,” Mom says. “This isn’t your fault.”
But Charlie can’t help but hug herself, clenching at her arms. “But I should have been able to do something,” she says. “Or known something was wrong. You’ve never just gone missing like that before. And for seven years! I should have known something was up.” She bites her lip. “And to think! I was in Heaven a little over a month ago, and I never knew you were right there! I feel so bad.”
“Babe, you couldn’t have known,” Vaggie says, putting a hand on her shoulder. “And you saw how big Heaven was. It’s not like we would have passed your mom on the street.”
“Vaggie is right,” Mom says, placing her hand on Charlie’s other shoulder. “I wasn’t held in an obvious location. There isn’t a way you could have known I’d even been taken from Hell. Not even your father knew, and this was his domain.” She frowns. “Though...I am curious as to how you ended up in Heaven. You weren’t taken…?”
“Wh...no, no! Nothing like that, I promise.” Charlie waves off Mom’s concern. “I was there by invitation, actually! Dad got me a meeting with the high seraphim. It was only a day trip, and we were sent back safe and sound afterwards.”
Vaggie gives her a look. And Charlie does have to admit, it is a tiny white lie. Adam had violently ejected them from the Heavenly courtroom after their appeal for the redemption of souls in Hell had been dismissed.
And after revealing to the Heavenborn that Exterminations happened on a yearly basis.
And after Adam had threatened to come for them directly.
Everything before that had been nice, though. And Emily had been really sweet. She doubts Emily had ever known that Charlie’s mother was being held captive, with everything else Sera and Adam had hid from her, or she’s sure Emily would never have stood for it.
Mom frowns. “And why is your father getting you meetings with the high seraphim of Heaven?” Her tone is familiar—the same undertone of mostly-hidden frustration that Mom would have in the past, when Dad let her have cookies before dinner or promised her they could get a new pet.
“For my project here at the hotel!” Charlie says excitedly. “I told you all about it in my voicemails—oh, but if you didn’t have your phone, I guess you never got any of those. It took a little bit to get Dad on board with the idea, but he’s really been helping with the cause.” Charlie gasps. “Maybe you can help too! I know you always cared so much about our people...it’s what taught me and inspired me to start this project to begin with. I’m sure you have some great ideas for how to improve it!”
“And what is that project, Sweetheart?” Mom asks patiently.
“Oh! Right! That would probably help.” Charlie takes a deep breath. “Well, I started this hotel—the Hazbin Hotel—to help redeem Sinners so they can go to Heaven!”
Mom stares at her in surprise. “Redemption? Heaven?”
“Yes! See, the excuse for killing all of our people was that Hell is overpopulated, right?” Charlie says. “So I thought, if we could teach people how to be better, we could rehabilitate those souls and eventually they would be cleansed enough to go to Heaven! Then no exterminations are needed, Sinners get a better afterlife, and Hell isn’t overpopulated. Everyone wins!”
Charlie opens her arms wide in excitement as she finishes. She really wishes she had some of her drawings, but Adam had destroyed those, and she hadn’t made more.
Mom blinks slowly. “And...has this been proven? Can a soul really redeem itself and escape Hell?”
“Well, we haven’t proven it yet,” Charlie says, a little flustered. “That’s part of the reason we had the meeting with Heaven, actually, although it got a little...complicated.” Which is the understatement of the century, but Charlie doesn’t think it’s quite the time to go into the details. “But! I still believe it’s possible. And our residents have shown real progress! Angel Dust passed all the evaluations Heaven set for a good soul. And Sir Pentious…”
Thinking of Pent causes her voice to stutter into silence. It’s only been two weeks since they lost him, and the thought of him missing still hurts.
He’d been doing so well with the hotel and the program. He’d made real progress cutting back on making weapons, at least until they’d actually needed them for the battle...and even then, he’d asked Vaggie if he could make them first! He’d been less maniacal and more open with his emotions, he’d been more willing to help the hotel members without needing something in return. He’d fixed their appliances and participated in redemption exercises. He’d even been surprisingly protective of Niffty, dragging her out of danger or keeping an eye on her on more than one account.
Mom tilts her head. “Sir Pentious?”
“We lost one of our residents in the Exorcist attack on the hotel two weeks ago,” Vaggie says, a little stiffly. “Until then, he’d been doing a good job in the program.”
“He was an alright guy,” Husk mutters, abandoning the glass to swig from the bottle instead. “Didn’t deserve to go out that way.”
“What way?”
“Adam.” Charlie swallows. “Our...another member of the hotel had been fighting Adam. Something must have happened, and when he wasn’t distracted Adam attacked the rest of us. Pentious tried to take him on to protect us.” She rubs her eyes. “It...didn’t go so good.”
Mom sets down her drink to give Charlie a hug. “I’m so sorry, Sweetheart. I can imagine how. Adam was a monster, but he was quite strong, unfortunately. I’m sorry that happened.”
Charlie returns the hug, before wiping her eyes again. “But! Before that, Pent was doing so good,” Charlie says. “So I know it’s possible for Sinners to be better. It doesn’t have to be like this, in Pentagram City. We just need to give them a chance, and then figure out what it takes to let them get into Heaven. I really believe in this, Mom.”
“I can see you do,” Mom says. “You always were a dreamer, Honey. This is the biggest dream I’ve heard from you yet, but I can see how much it means to you.” She smiles. “I’ll need some time to rest after the time I’ve had, but maybe I can start thinking on ways to help your hotel. Seeing how much you care about our people...it really is beautiful.”
And Charlie can’t help but notice the stark difference there, between her dad and her mom. Mom has always wanted the best for Sinners and demons. She took making this kingdom thrive so seriously, and Charlie had watched that in awe and developed the same compassion for those wretched souls her Mom always had. Compared to Dad’s first reaction…
I love that you want to see the best in people, but these Sinners? Y’know they’re just the worst.
Our people, Charlie, are awful! They got gifted free will and look what they did with it, everything’s terrible!
...Charlie won’t deny, it’s nice to have Mom so willing to be on her side from the get-go. Dad’s turned his view around, and Charlie knows why he was so opposed, but it’s nice to have one family member she doesn’t have to fight to convince of her dream so hard.
“That would be really nice,” Charlie says, relieved. “Being able to work on my project with your help would mean the world to me, Mom.”
“I’m delighted to hear it,” Mom says, finishing her drink and gently pushing the glass towards Husk. He collects it silently, raises it to ask if a refill is needed. Mom shakes her head.
“I can give you a tour of the hotel, if you like!” Charlie offers excitedly. “We had to rebuild it after Adam destroyed the last one, so everything is new. But we’ve got some state of the art facilities—there’s an arts and crafts room now, and a music room, and a theater—oh, and we have a big ballroom like we had in the palace, I want to host special events and dances there soon—”
“That all sounds very nice, Sweetheart,” Mom says. “But for now, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like a chance to rest. Escaping Heaven isn’t exactly easy, and I’m a little tired.”
“Oh! Right. Of course. Stupid of me, obviously after escaping Heaven after being kidnapped for seven years you’d want a rest,” Charlie says, slapping herself on the forehead. “We can save the tour for later! For now, I can set up a room for you? We have plenty of spares, and they’re all well cared for. Niffty is really good at cleaning things.”
“That would be lovely, Sweetheart.”
“Do you want me to come with you, Hun?” Vaggie asks. “I want to get started checking our perimeters and getting defenses ready in case those idiots come back, but if you need my help—”
“It’s not a tour,” Charlie says. Although the fact that Vaggie is willing to leave her alone with her mother at all is definitely a point in Mom’s favor. Vaggie doesn’t trust nearly as much as Charlie does, but the fact that she seems genuinely concerned about setting up protections against infiltration from Heaven means it’s probably a real threat. “I’ll just get Mom set up in a room first. I can go get Dad after to help with protection stuff, if you want?”
“That’d be great,” Vaggie says. She gives Charlie a peck on the cheek before sliding off her stool and nodding to Lilith. “It’s great to finally meet you. Don’t worry, this place will be more than safe by the time we’re done.”
“You’re very dedicated, Vaggie,” Mom says. “I appreciate it.” Vaggie looks sheepish but pleased as she heads off, collecting her spear from against one of the couches as she does.
“If you’re all set, I can take you to your room?” Charlie offers.
“More than ready,” Mom says. She nods to Husk. “The drink was delightful, thank you.”
Husk shrugs in answer, but the way his ears twitch slightly up suggests he’s pleased with the compliment, even if his grumpy expression never changes.
In truth, Charlie’s glad this isn’t a tour, because with just her mother present, it already feels a bit empty. Last time she’d had Vaggie and Alastor with her while escorting Dad around and explaining the features of the hotel and their plans for redemption exercises. By herself, a tour would be a lot more...forlorn.
Even so, she does take the time to point out the most important necessary features for day-to-day use on the way to the elevators and the upper rooms. The kitchens (“you’d count as staff, of course, so you can use them whenever you like!”). The hall to the laundry rooms (“Niffty takes care of everything and she bites if you don’t let her, so don’t worry too much about doing it yourself”). The office and staff quarters (“if you ever need me and you can’t find me, I’ll probably be there!”). Mom seems appreciative, at least, although she does look quite tired, so Charlie keeps the stories to a minimum for now. There’ll be plenty of time to share those later, anyway.
Charlie chooses one of the suites on a higher floor, on the left side of the building. “How’s this?” she asks, as she unlocks the door with the room key she’d grabbed at the front desk.
“Quite cozy,” Mom notes, looking around. Besides the main room, the suite has two bedrooms, a kitchenette, and a private bathroom. For now it’s decorated in the hotel’s style, largely done up in reds, whites and blacks. There’s a nice view from a large window that overlooks the city, and plenty of plush chairs and couches. Everything is absolutely spotless, because Niffty is an extremely thorough housekeeper.
“Great! Of course, you can personalize it however you want,” Charlie says. “Especially if you want to stay for a while. You’re welcome as long as you like!”
“I appreciate the offer, although it might be a bit awkward if your father is also staying,” Mom says, as she walks around the room and examines it.
“I put you on the opposite side of the building from him, if that helps,” Charlie says. “This is Al—”
She stops. Bites her lip. She’d been about to say this is Alastor’s side without even thinking about it. When they’d first put the building together and made the initial designs, and Dad said he’d wanted to stay, it seemed prudent to make sure he and Al stayed far apart wherever possible. They bickered terribly otherwise—they even had a whole duet duel about who was better—and Charlie hadn’t wanted to exacerbate things until they learned to get along better.
But Alastor hasn’t come back. He doesn’t even know they made him a new radio tower, modeled off the one in the rubble. Or created a side dedicated to him, so that he didn’t have to be pressured to interact with Dad if he didn’t want to. He might not even now they’ve been thinking of him, or looked for him.
Charlie still doesn’t know if he’s even okay. She’s had no closure, and it’s so easy to slip and mention him like he’s still here without knowing if he ever will be again.
Mom turns around at her abrupt silence. “I’m sorry, Sweetheart?”
“Nothing,” Charlie says quickly. “Um, Dad’s on the right side. You can’t miss it, he has a whole tower to himself. It’s the apple shaped one.”
“Of course it is,” Mom says, with a roll of her eyes. “Him and his apples.”
“If you want to stay for longer, we can have a talk about boundaries and what’s okay between you guys,” Charlie offers. She wishes they could get along better—they’re her parents—but she understands if it’s not a realistic thing to ask for. They’d split up for a reason, and maybe it had been better for them both in the end.
“That might be a good idea. For now, I’ll be fine as long as he’s respectful about keeping his distance,” Mom says.
Charlie nods. “I can let him know when I go ask him to help with the defenses,” she promises. “And I’ll fill him in on all the other stuff too, so you won’t have to. If that’s okay?”
“That’s more than fine,” Mom says. “And for what it’s worth, I don’t blame him for what Adam did, either. Your father and I have our differences, but I know he wouldn’t have let Adam do what he did if he’d known. He does have some decorum and respect.”
Charlie winces a little. She’s sure Dad probably will feel a bit guilty when he learns Mom had been kidnapped, probably for the same reasons she had. But even so, that had still felt a bit like a backhanded compliment.
“Well, I can leave you to rest then, unless you need anything else? There should be bathrobes in one of the closets—I can ask Dad for a portal to the palace to get you some of your old clothes for later. Or if you ring the bell there Niffty will clean your current clothes for you while you rest, and they’ll be back really fast.”
“That sounds lovely, Sweetheart,” Mom says, but she sounds distracted. “I did want to talk about one more thing before you go, though.”
“Oh? Is something wrong?” Charlie gives her mother a worried look. “Are you hurt? Do you need help besides protection from the Exorcists?”
“I’m not hurt, but this is a delicate matter,” Mom says. “Can you close the door, Sweetheart?”
Charlie does so obligingly, before crossing over to her mother by the bed. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
“Not exactly,” Mom says. She takes both of Charlie’s hands gently. “I haven’t been entirely truthful with you about why I came here first, Sweetheart.”
A cold tingle runs down Charlie’s spine. Mom can’t be lying, she insists to herself. After all, Vaggie wouldn’t have left her alone with Mom if she’d thought something was strange about her story. And Dad wouldn’t have left Charlie alone with Mom at all if he’d thought something was wrong. He was so protective of her, and so desperate to help her with her dream.
And Mom looks as sweet and kind as ever. Her expression is tired but gentle as she holds Charlie’s hands, and squeezes them softly, and looks her in the eye. She can’t be lying. She’s too kind for that.
“I don’t understand,” Charlie says slowly. “You...weren’t in Heaven?”
“Oh, no, Sweetheart,” Mom says. “I was in Heaven. I was Adam’s captive. I wasn’t lying about that. But being there...well, it gave me access to information that you wouldn’t have here. Adam wasn’t shy about bragging, and he talked to Lute all the time about his plans. And when I was running...well, they’ve tried to keep everything very quiet, but the rumors circulate in Heaven just as fast as they do in Hell.”
“What rumors?”
“That Hell is destabilizing the very foundation of Heaven,” Mom says softly, squeezing Charlie’s hands again. “That things are changing.”
Charlie presses her lips together for a moment, but then she smiles. “But that’s a good thing, Mom!” she says excitedly. “It means the hotel is working! At least a little bit!”
“You still have no proof that your Sinners can be redeemed,” Mom reminds her.
“But if Heaven thinks so—”
“Heaven’s rumors don’t say they believe in redemption,” Mom stresses. “They say that Hell is destabilizing what makes Heaven. That isn’t a sign of positivity, Charlie. Those words are practically a declaration of war.”
“But it doesn’t have to be,” Charlie insists. “I’ll talk to Dad! I’m sure he can get me another meeting with Sera and Emily. We can talk things through again—”
“After what, Charlie?” Mom says, leaning over her. “After you killed their soldiers? Do you think killing angels will put you in Heaven’s good graces?”
“They were going to kill us first!” Charlie protests. “We were just protecting ourselves. And Dad sent them home as soon as we were able. We spared as many as we could.”
“Too little, too late, Charlie,” Mom says urgently. “Heaven doesn’t like change. It’s set in its ways, it has its rules, and it won’t permit otherwise.”
And Charlie can’t say Mom is wrong, exactly. Her meeting with Sera and the court of Heaven had certainly proven they were stubborn and didn’t want to budge without absolute proof.
But Charlie can’t give up so easily. “I know this is possible, Mom,” Charlie says, twisting her hands to clasp her mother’s in turn. “I know we can do this. Angel Dust and Sir Pentious showed such promise. Angel still is. I know Sinners can be better, and I know once we figure out how souls make it to Heaven, we can help Sinners be redeemed.”
“And even if you’re right, do you think Heaven will honestly accept that?”
Charlie’s eyes widen in shock. “Why wouldn’t they?” she says, aghast. “I know Adam liked to say that Hell is forever, but Emily agreed with me that it isn’t, and it’s not fair!”
“Maybe it isn’t,” Mom says. “I’m not saying it’s reasonable, Sweetheart. I’m saying, think of how Heaven, with all its rules, works. I’ve been there. I can promise you, the outcry from those souls, those upper echelons, will be loud and angry. Nobody will want to accept the Damned into their golden city.”
“Why not?” Charlie cries angrily. She tries to pull her hands away, but her mother grips her wrists, refusing to let her escape.
“Because they’ll think it isn’t fair,” Mom insists. “Imagine spending your entire life being a good little God-fearing human, turning aside temptation, and succeeding by finally being rewarded the right to walk through the pearly gates with your comfortable afterlife guaranteed. And then imagine your terrible, cruel neighbor that indulged in all the Great Sins gets to walk through those same gates fifty years later, because he went to Hell, discovered it hurt, and decided to be better after seeing there were actual repercussions for what he did. Wouldn’t your own efforts be completely invalidated?”
“No!” Charlie says. “No, it wouldn’t! Because he still went to Hell and suffered for it! I know we always had it easy, and the Hellborn live here, but those are human souls. No matter what kinds of things Pentagram City has to offer, they live in fear and in pain and alone constantly!”
Charlie finally manages to tear her hands way from her mother’s, pacing and gesturing wildly. “I’ve seen what Angel and Pent had to put up with, here,” Charlie says. “And maybe they deserved to come here for the things they did when they were alive. But Hell makes it worse! Angel gets hurt every day by his boss and I can’t do anything about it even as the princess of fucking Hell! And Pent was alone for so long he didn’t even know there was another way besides conquering territory! But even despite all of the things in Hell that make them suffer, and make it easy to just keep sinning, they both still tried to be better! And if they can do that in this kind of place, then they deserve the right to go to Heaven!”
Mom regards her sternly. Despite the exhaustion lines under her eyes, her bearing and her expression are regal, and she is undeniably the Queen of Hell. “You’re quite set on this, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” Charlie says. “I know souls can be better. I’ve seen that souls can improve. I’ve proven it to the high seraphim of Heaven.” She gives her mother a helpless look. “What I don’t understand is why you aren’t agreeing with me. You’ve always loved our people, Mom! Don’t you want things to be better for them?”
“Certainly,” Mom says. “Better for them here. It’s not worth risking a war with Heaven, Charlie.” She shakes her head firmly. “Sweetheart...you need to shut down this project.”
“What? No!”
“I must insist,” Mom says quietly, but firmly. “It’s for everyone’s sakes, Charlie. It isn’t a light thing, to destabilize the very foundation of Heaven and its rules. To do that breaks Hell as well.”
“Things need to change! The system is broken!” Charlie slashes her hand angrily. “They don’t even know what sends a soul to Heaven or Hell! People could be deserving but fall into Hell because of a mistake! Or they could be like Adam, murdering thousands and calling it entertainment and still allowed to fly in Heaven! It shouldn’t be a one-and-done thing!”
“Charlie. You don’t understand what you’re messing with.”
“I think I do!” Charlie says hotly. “I can tell when something is or isn’t right. I’m going to stand up for what’s right. And I know I’m not the only one.”
She thinks of Emily’s hopefulness, the way she’d fought for Charlie in the debate, her horrified expression when she learned about the Exterminations. She thinks of her Dad, so opposed to the idea but so willing to believe in it now. About Vaggie, who turned her entire life around to help Sinners instead of killing them when she saw the other side. And about the Sinners that had come to her to try, the ones who were even now thinking about trying, willing to fight temptation and sin in a place designed for it in order to be better.
Those people believe in her, and her dream. She’s not going to give up on them so easily.
Even if it means arguing with her mother. Even if it hurts, to yell at Mom like this. Her and Mom...they’d always gotten along so well. Charlie shared her mother’s passions, her love for their people. She’d inspired the Hazbin Hotel. It makes her feel sick, to think Mom wants her to stop it.
Mom sighs. “I was afraid of this,” she says softly. “Oh, Sweetheart. I love you so much. You’ve been our little miracle since the day you were born. You have your father’s idealism and my love for our people, and it’s so inspiring to see.”
Charlie frowns. Her mother is smiling, and the words should be kind and loving. But there’s something cold in her voice, in her expression. She’s never heard her like this before.
“Mom? Is...something wrong?”
“Yes,” Mom sighs. “I love you so much, Honey. Which is why it hurts me that I’m going to have to do this. But I will protect you however I can. Even from the wrath of Heaven itself.”
“Mom, what are you—”
An explosion rocks the room as the exterior wall smashes inward. Rubble and broken glass cascades past Charlie, who shrieks and throws her hands over her head to protect herself. Everything is awash in brilliant golden light, blinding and bright enough to make spots dance before her vision. The air smells like dust, smoke, iron, and sickly-sweet incense.
Charlie coughs, trying to blink dust and smoke out of her eyes. “Mom!” she howls. “Mom, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Sweetheart,” Mom says, from right in front of her. Charlie’s eyes widen in shock as her mother steps out of the debris and dust and smoke, crunching over glass and broken foundation and shattered decor and shredded curtains. She doesn’t look injured, but that cold expression on her face doesn’t go away.
“What’s happening?” Charlie coughs again. “We have to get out of here—”
“You will be, Sweetheart,” Mom says. “Until you see sense, I’ll need to put you somewhere safe. I can’t risk you challenging Heaven, Charlie. I can’t risk losing you—and oh, you don’t understand how badly they want you dead.”
For one moment, her hand reaches out, gently swiping an out of place strand of hair away from Charlie’s face, stroking it back behind her ear, like when she was five. Charlie trembles in bewilderment, because the gentleness and care in that single hand movement doesn’t match the cold sternness in her mother’s expression. This isn’t the same person. It can’t be the same person—
But then Charlie knows without a doubt it is, when her mother shoves her backwards, hard. Charlie trips on a shattered bedpost, and throws her hands out in a panic, reaching for her mom to catch her—but her mother doesn’t. She watches that hand outstretch towards her, pleading, helpless, and she looks back to Charlie’s eyes, and she lets Charlie fall.
And Charlie falls. Not just to the floor of the hotel suite. She falls through the air, through the world, past thin walls in existence and into darkness, darkness, darkness. She falls and falls, screaming, and hits ground she can’t see with a yelp of pain.
“Mom?” Charlie howls, frightened and confused.
She looks up, back towards where she’d fallen. Just in time to see, ten feet above her, a hole in the air closing. Her mother’s cold eyes meet hers, and then the hole in the air melds together, and Mom is gone.
Gone, and left her alone and in the dark and the unknown, and Charlie doesn’t understand why, and she’s never felt so betrayed or scared in her life.
“Mom!” Charlie yells again, frantic. “Mom, wait—come back—Mom, help me—please!”
But no matter how frantically she looks around the spot the hole in the air had existed in, Mom doesn’t respond to her cries, and the strange door in the air doesn’t come back.
“Mom! Please!” Charlie begs again.
She tries to scramble to her feet. It’s difficult. She can’t see anything in here, wherever here is; it’s pitch black and absolutely lightless. Not even her eyes, which always glow faintly and can see in the dark, can penetrate this level of sheer emptiness and blackness. She’s never seen anything like it before, and it’s terrifying.
It also makes it difficult to see what she’s doing. But she does manage to feel around. The floor seems smooth and level, and she’s able to pull herself shakily to her feet. It hurts, doing that; she must have twisted an ankle when she fell, because putting weight on it feels awful. She definitely aches all over from other things, too, possibly from the explosion.
But she’s on her feet, at least. She feels around frantically for something—a wall, a staircase, a window, something that she can use to reach that little hole in the air. Or at least, where it had been. Maybe if she can find it—if she can find it, she can—she can—
“Mom,” Charlie whimpers, pleading. “Mom, please. Come back. We can talk. It doesn’t have to be like this. Mom, please. Help me.”
And in a very tiny voice, so tiny she feels like she’s five again, she adds, “I’m scared. Please.”
Mom doesn’t answer. No matter how much she screams or pleads. Maybe she can’t hear her.
Maybe she’s just not listening.
But someone else does answer. In a voice that’s familiar, and terribly unexpected, and sounds just as shocked as she feels. “Charlie?”
Charlie whirls around to face behind her, and meets the strained smile and astonished eyes of Alastor, the Radio Demon.
Chapter 2
Notes:
It's time to confess an additional reason and personal challenge for this project: can I convincingly explain the shift of Alastor's personality and behavior from pilot to season 1? The answer is yes...in certain conditions. :)
Chapter Text
Charlie stares in shock. Blinks, rubs her eyes, and blinks again.
But Alastor’s gleaming smile and glowing red eyes don’t go away. If anything, they bob slightly closer, and now the natural illumination of his eyes casts a red light on more of his face, glitters on the edges of his monocle, frames the fringes of his red and black hair.
“Al...Alastor?” Charlie whispers.
“The one and only, my dear,” Alastor answers. It sounds automatic, almost routine, because his voice is full of his usual static and flash but his eyes over his smile still look bewildered. “Charlie, how in the Seven Rings did you—”
Whatever he’s going to ask, he doesn’t have the chance. Charlie throws herself at him with a sob, because he’s Alastor and he’s here and he’s real and he’s alive and she’s never been so relieved and happy to see a familiar face. Even one as scary as Alastor’s.
Or at least, she tries to throw herself at him.
In her shock and relief, she’d forgotten about her twisted ankle. Her leap turns into more of an awkward stumble, and she hisses in pain as she puts weight on it. What had been intended to be an enthusiastic leap to put her arms around his shoulders turns into more of an awkward thump into his chest as she falls against him.
He staggers with a crackle of static and a jangle of metal, and hisses at the contact. Somehow, neither of them go down, and Alastor manages to keep her upright when his fingers dig into her shoulders. But the crackling of static gets more intense, more deafening, as he says, “Gently, if you please, my dear!”
“I’m sorry!” Charlie squeaks. She’d forgotten that he wasn’t fond of contact he didn’t initiate, and she was just so happy to see him alive, and to see anyone at all in wherever-this-was. She pulls herself upright with his help, balancing on her better foot, and clings desperately to his arm. “I’m just—I’m just so, so, so happy you’re alive and okay and I missed you and where have you been Alastor we were all so worried and—and—”
Her rambling dissolves into tears. She can’t help it. So much has happened in just a few minutes, and it’s so much to take in, and her mother—but then Alastor—and where even is this place, and what’s happening—
It’s all so, so much. She sobs, wobbling upright and balancing awkwardly on one foot, trying hard not to knock Alastor over while holding onto his arm because she’s so scared that if she lets go he’ll dissolve into shadow and vanish and leave her behind again and she can’t do that, not right now.
“There there, my dear,” Alastor says. “There’s no need to cry. What have I told you about smiling?”
Charlie sniffles. “I don’t feel like smiling at all right now, Al,” she tells him bluntly.
He clucks at her. “I suppose we shall have to remedy that. I’m afraid I haven’t a handkerchief to offer you, my dear, but there are better places to be more comfortable here. We shouldn’t stay out here too long.”
Charlie sniffles again, and looks around. Everything is still the pitchest black she’s ever seen, and she’s aware of how pressing the emptiness is. Like it’s going to eat her up the moment she’s not watching. She used to be scared of the dark when she was a child, and Dad would create motes of light to chase the shadows away and make her more comfortable...but she has the strange feeling that Dad’s light wouldn’t do much even here, in this place.
She shudders. “Where...is here? Where are we?”
Alastor’s gleaming yellow smile widens, just a fraction. “Don’t you know your bible verse, my dear? Seems rather prudent for the daughter of the Devil Himself to know, don’t you think?”
Charlie looks around in confusion, and then back to Alastor, eyes wide in bewilderment.
“No? Well, I can’t say I was much of a church-going man, but my mother did have me attend every Sunday as a child, and the holidays besides,” Alastor says. “Allow me to share the relevant verse.”
His voice drops in pitch, and he intones, “In the Beginning, there was Nothing.” Charlie can’t see very well, but Alastor’s eyes alongside her own cast just enough light for her to catch the grand, sweeping gesture of one of his arms as he waves it out at everything around him.
Charlie waits. Alastor doesn’t continue. After a moment she whispers, “What?”
“You heard me, my dear. It’s not a complicated verse.”
“I...I don’t understand,” Charlie says meekly.
“Ah, well now, if you wanted understanding perhaps a different question would have been a better choice,” Alastor says. He sounds almost cheerful. “But understanding can be saved for safer places, I think. Shall we be moving along, then?”
“Is...is there anything here? If this is...nothing?” Charlie asks, looking around anxiously at the darkness.
“As it happens, there is but one place that exists here, and I’m capable of finding my way to it precisely,” Alastor says. “And out here is no place for a young lady! I’d rather exist somewhere that there is something than somewhere that is nothing, and not exist somewhere there is nothing or risk not existing at all, don’t you agree?”
Charlie stares at him in confusion. Alastor’s eyes are bright, almost lamp-like. There’s something oddly familiar about the way he’s talking, but Charlie can’t quite place it. Nor can she really follow it. “I don’t under—”
“Understand, yes, yes, you seem to be misunderstanding a lot,” Alastor says. “We’ll remedy that of course, Charlie dear, once we get moving. Shall we?”
That, at least, she does understand. Unfortunately, she’s not sure she’ll have an easy time of it. “I, um, I fell kind of far,” she admits. “My ankle—I think I fell on it wrong, I can’t really put weight on it.”
Alastor tuts. “Never mind,” he says. “The place we’re going has a remedy for that. In the meantime, take my arm, if you please.”
He turns beside her and offers his forearm. She takes it gratefully, and takes an experimental step while leaning on him. It helps when he takes some of her weight, and she finds she can maintain a little more than a hobble with his help. “Thanks, Al.”
“Of course! Now, let’s be off, shall we?”
Charlie’s not entirely sure about wandering off into nothing, but at least Alastor seems to know where they are. Even if he’s being a little bit cagey about it. Well, Alastor is always cagey, she supposes, but she’s not sure what to make of this answer. What does he mean, by this place being nothing? How did he get here? Where is here really? How had Mom put her here?
Why had Mom put her here?
That causes tears to prickle at her eyes again, but she blinks hastily and wipes them away with her free hand. She’s not alone. She has Alastor with her. Alastor, the Radio Demon, who was smart and dangerous and resourceful and her friend. If she had to be trapped in a strange, confusing place with anyone—well she’d pick Vaggie first, but Al was for sure a close second.
He’d said there were better places for understanding. Maybe he’ll try to answer her questions when they get there. Maybe he won’t talk in riddles.
(Why is he talking in riddles?)
She decides there’s time for one question, at least, in between her leaning on him awkwardly and limping on her bad leg. “How...how far are we going?”
“Oh, not far, my dear, don’t you worry. Can’t you see it?”
Charlie wants to scream, because she can’t see anything here, anything at all, it’s the pitchest black she’s ever seen in her life. Except Alastor gestures forward with the arm she’s leaning on, and Charlie looks ahead instead of down at his arm and her feet while trying to balance right, and ahead she sees—
—a glow.
A very, very faint glow, a single light in the infinite darkness, but a glow nonetheless. She can’t make out what’s making it quite yet, but there’s a clear bubble ahead of light, and Alastor seems to be heading for it unerringly.
“Oh,” Charlie says softly. “What...what is it?”
“You’ll see, my dear. Given it’s the one surprise this place offers, I hardly want to spoil it for you.”
Charlie grits her teeth. She could do without surprises, honestly. She wants answers and clarity more than anything. But Alastor is humming idly now, and seems perfectly content to not answer anything at all, and she has a funny feeling he’s not going to ruin this ‘surprise’ for anything.
But the bubble of light isn’t too far away. Her foot hurts, but Alastor is helping very nicely in that regard at least. She thinks she can make it.
Just need to make it to the light, Charlie tells herself. Just need to make it to the...the something in the nothing.
Whatever it is.
She puts her head down and she puts herself into moving as best as she can, staring at the pitch blackness beneath her feet she can’t see and trying hard not to trip on anything. There’s something beneath her, but she can’t see what it is, so she has to make due with everything else. The click of her heels. The different click-clack of Alastor’s shoes that sound more like hooves, if she pays attention. Their breathing. The rustle of cloth and the clink of metal. Alastor humming his tune, an aimless thing without music that sounds vaguely familiar.
(So where is your hotel staff?)
Charlie frowns.
But eventually, as they get closer to the soft bubble of light and it’s less ‘in the distance,’ Charlie can start to make out more things with her eyes. Her own feet, even if she still can’t make out what she’s standing on, because it’s solid but there’s nothing there. Alastor’s sleeve underneath her hand, and the red cloth of his favorite coat. His face, his upright ears, his hair.
The strange metal collar around his neck.
She stares at it in shock. It’s the oddest metal she’s ever seen, so deeply violet it’s nearly black, fitted tightly around his throat over his high shirt collar. But there’s a faint gleam in it, like veins that pulse and vanish, just barely visible to demon eyes.
The collar is connected to a chain made of the same material, which runs down over Alastor’s shoulder to the not-quite-ground, and there’s more links of the same material running to the faint light. As Alastor takes a step, the faint clink of metal sounds again, and the slack hits the not-ground and drags behind them as they walk.
Charlie breathes in sharply. “Oh,” she whispers. “Al—Alastor, I didn’t see that before—are you okay? Are you—what is this—”
She reaches for the collar around his neck. Alastor turns to her in confusion, but his eyes flick to radio dials when she tries to touch the collar. In a flash his free hand snaps up and slaps her own hand away, and there’s an angry crackle of static as he does.
“I wouldn’t recommend touching that, my dear,” he growls, low and guttural and warning.
Charlie swallows, rubbing her hand against her arm. The slap had startled her, but it hadn’t really hurt. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to, I—I won’t do that again.”
She doesn’t have to, anyway. Her fingers had gotten close enough to feel the power in that thing, the magic coursing through it, the life energy it’s made of. It isn’t metal at all.
It’s a soul. A soul bound elsewhere, tethering Alastor.
A soul that’s probably his, but not his to own, if she understood even a little of the soul trade.
“Good,” Alastor growls again, before he blinks, and his eyes are back to normal. “Only a little further now, my dear!”
Charlie swallows. Bites her lip. Clings to Alastor’s arm as he helps her forward, as gentlemanly as ever. And wonders what was happening, to find Alastor bound in the middle of nothing by his own soul.
Nothing has been right since she arrived here. Nothing has been right since Mom arrived at the Hotel. She wishes she understood what was going on.
She wonders what’s happening in the Hazbin Hotel now. What had caused that explosion? Was everyone else okay? Would they be able to find her here? Was anyone even looking?
Dad would be, she decides. The moment Dad knew she was missing, he would be relentless in his mission to find her. And if anyone could find her here, it would be her Dad.
But if Mom had put her here...would Mom try to keep her hidden? Because if anyone could stall Dad for a while, or put him on the wrong trail...well, it would probably be Mom.
She squeezes her eyes shut, and wills herself not to cry. Not now. She has to keep it together now. She has to get answers, so she can get out of here and go home and...and find out what’s happening.
“Look, Charlie, dear. You can see it now. Quite a view, wouldn’t you say?”
Charlie opens her eyes with a sniff. Looks up in front of her. And spots—
—a tree.
Not just any tree. It’s maybe the most beautiful tree Charlie’s ever seen, and Emily had taken her to a park in Heaven that had gorgeous trees and plants of all kinds. None of them could hold a candle to this tree. It’s white, or at least it looks like it at first. When Charlie looks closer, she can make out dozens of colors in its bark and leaves, like a prism splitting and combining color all at once. It’s tall, at least four stories tall, with wide branches that stretched out to provide shelter in every direction and a thick trunk that it would take all the Hotel residents holding hands to circle. The branches look sturdy enough to climb and comfortable enough to rest in, and Charlie would have begged to play in it when she was younger. It’s piled high on a mountain of thick roots, swirling and twisting in an almost sculpted way.
The entire tree glows. It’s the source of the light, a soft, comfortable glow that doesn’t hurt one’s eyes even in this pitch-black nothingness. It is an ever present source of light, never fading, never growing brighter, always perfect, always the same.
“What is it?” Charlie asks, awed. “I’ve never seen a tree like that before in Hell. There weren’t any like it in Heaven’s parks, either.”
“Nor have I ever seen or heard of one like it on Earth,” Alastor says. “Quite a sight, isn’t it? Aren’t you glad I didn’t spoil the surprise?”
Charlie still would have preferred answers, but she does have to admit, it’s a pretty sight. A bit of a relief, after all the nothing all around them.
“It’s quite a comfortable and safe place to rest, too,” Alastor says. “The best and only place to stay around here, you know. Nothing else is acceptable. Give us a moment or two more and you’ll be able to rest that injury until we can care for it properly.”
“How?” Charlie asks, but she does try to hobble faster at the idea of sitting. “I don’t have a first aid kit with me...do you?”
“Hah! No,” Alastor says. “The fruit, my dear! A lovely thing, it is. Accelerates healing. No need to drink or eat. Could live on it forever. No need to even use the restroom!”
Charlie hadn’t considered that, but she’s relieved to hear it. She doesn’t even want to think about trying to use the bathroom here. She’s fairly certain the tree doesn’t have modern plumbing.
As they get closer, Charlie starts to spot the fruit in question. She’s never seen anything like it before, and she’s an expert on fruits, given how much her father loves them. This fruit is just as white as the tree, and glows faintly. It’s vaguely star-shaped, five rounded points, thick and fat, and looks like it might be juicy. There are hundreds of them hanging from the boughs.
The roots are more difficult to navigate with a bad foot. Charlie’s not even sure what the tree is burrowing into. The smooth, glowing white roots suddenly vanish into nothing, like they don’t exist, but the tree looks sturdy and is clearly supported by something. It makes Charlie’s head hurt to look at it too long, because it’s an impossible thing, and her brain can’t quite make sense of it.
Alastor seems to know exactly what’s going on, because he says almost cheerfully, “Don’t look too hard at where the something meets the nothing, my dear. It’s impossible. You’ll get quite a headache.” His free hand reaches over to tilt her chin up, and he smiles. “Look at something! Much more bearable, since we’re something ourselves.”
(After all, the world is a stage, and the stage is a world of entertainment!)
Charlie swallows, but tries to follow his instructions. It does help to focus on the tree, and not what it’s growing out of. It’s...well, it’s something, like Alastor says, and she can comprehend it because it’s like her, even if it’s a tree and she’s a demon. It works in her head.
They get closer still, and Alastor helps her navigate the root network without looking too hard at where they disappear into. This close, Charlie can make out the details of the bark itself, the swirling patterns and textures that look natural but beautiful. The branches stretch out protectively overhead, and although there’s no wind, the leaves shiver and chime with the faintest hint of music anyway.
It’s a beautiful thing. In fact, the only thing that mars it’s beauty is the thick, midnight-violet chain wrapped around its trunk and over one of the lowest branches, bound tight with an unearthly padlock covered in several gleaming red eyes. The chain snakes down the trunk, twists over the roots, and slithers its way over to Alastor and the collar bound snugly around his neck.
It only makes that soul chain that much uglier, to think someone had left Alastor bound to such a beautiful thing in the middle of absolutely nothing.
“Alastor,” Charlie says, swallowing a little as she leans on his arm to avoid tripping over a thick, pristine white root at her foot. “Why...why are you here like this? Who put you here?”
Do you need help? Is there a way I can help you?
“Questions for later, my dear!” Alastor says immediately. And Charlie knows he’s deflecting, because he’s always been a secretive sort. But she doesn’t push, because everything is so confusing, and it’s taking half her concentration to navigate over the roots, and because...because…
...because a very tiny, buried part of her can maybe guess who put Alastor here, and she really, really doesn’t want to think about it just yet.
Whatever the reason Alastor is here, it’s clear he’s not unfamiliar with navigating it, and that makes Charlie both uncomfortable and deeply concerned. The chain around his neck is gathering in slithering ropes at their feet, trailing after him as he helps them move. Like someone had left their pet outside, bound to a post but with enough length to give them some room to move. But he navigates with it deftly enough, keeping it from getting hooked on the root systems and stepping over it lightly to keep from choking himself or tripping Charlie. It looks like old habit by now, something worked into his muscle memory, a nuisance at best he has to deal with.
Charlie wonders how long he has had to deal with it. Has he been here since he vanished? Has this been his life for two whole weeks?
She wishes she’d known. She’s not sure what difference she could have made; she’s still not sure where here is. But if she’d known Alastor was in a place like this...maybe she could have found a way to help. Maybe Dad could have found this place. Maybe...maybe…
She doesn’t know, but her guilt about Alastor missing is getting worse by the minute.
“Here we are,” Alastor says, cutting through her thoughts. He’s managed to navigate them to the base of the tree, where the roots and trunk bend and swirl in ways that make natural divots in the shape of the tree itself. “It’s quite comfortable here. A fine place to rest, and quite safe! Let’s get you settled down then, my dear, and attend to that injury of yours, shall we?”
He helps her sit. Charlie is surprised to find it is actually quite comfortable. The divots in the roots and at the base of the tree make what are almost natural benches or seats. The bark isn’t rock-hard, like the petrified trees in the Pride Ring. It’s soft and almost spongy, and she could probably sleep against it if she needed to. She can stretch out her legs and take her weight off her poor ankle, and she sighs in relief.
Alastor grins down at her. He’s always smiling, of course, but there’s still something strange about his smile. Familiar, but distant, like she’s experienced it but not in a while. That grin doesn’t quite meet his eyes right, not even for his usual knowing smirks or dark amusement.
Something is wrong. Charlie knows it in her gut, in her heart, even if she can’t figure it out in her head yet.
Of course something’s wrong, she can’t help but chastise herself. He’s bound to a strange tree in the middle of some bizarre place where nothing exists. He’s obviously been left here long enough to at least get used to moving around. What part of that is right?
She wishes she had answers, and at the same time, she’s so scared she’s going to get them.
“Can we talk now?” Charlie asks, staring up at him.
“Not quite yet, my dear!” Alastor answers. “We haven’t dealt with you, after all.”
She’s not sure what that means, until he reaches up above them into the boughs of the tree. His arm rummages around for a bit, until he finds one of the strange white star fruits. He plucks it deftly, with a practiced twist and tug that suggests familiarity. Plucks a second, just as easily as the first. And then settles down in the divot next to her, on his own bench of glowing tree roots, ignoring the jangle of chains as they settle in a neat pile next to him from the slack.
“Here you are,” he says, handing her the larger of the fruits. “I’m afraid I’ve no equipment to prepare it in a more enticing way, or even peel or cut it for you, so I apologize for the lack of decorum. But it’s quite delicious as is, so I’m sure you’ll enjoy it all the same.”
Charlie takes it cautiously, and rolls it around in her hand to examine it further. It’s star-shaped, just like she’d seen from farther away, and glows faintly. The texture is soft and a little fuzzy, like a peach, and the smell is sweet but not overpowering.
She glances up at Alastor. He raises an eyebrow at her, before taking a very deliberate bite out of his own fruit. His sharp teeth tear through the fruit flesh with ease, but he doesn’t seem at all concerned by what he’s eating.
That’s probably enough to indicate it’s safe to eat. Though then again, Alastor has been known to eat carrion and people, so he might not be the best judge of food safety. He probably has a cast-iron stomach and immunity to rot.
It’s probably not poisoned, though, so Charlie takes a hesitant bite.
To her surprise, it’s actually really good. The fruit flesh is juicy, and a little spills down her chin. It’s hard to pin down the taste, exactly, because it seems to change as it dances over her tongue; first sweet, then bitter, then savory, then back again, but always full of flavor. It’s not quite like anything she’s ever eaten before, but it’s delicious all the same.
That first bite makes her realize she’s ravenous, even though she’d just picked at snacks and had drinks at the bar not even an hour ago. This is more filling. More fulfilling. She wolfs down the fruit, letting the scent and taste envelope her, taking her back to memories long past like they called to her. The first clothes and toys she ever picked out for herself, with Dad’s delighted encouragement. Her silly goth phase, and how she’d been so certain she’d figured out who she was. Deciding to go out into the streets after the Exterminations to save as many of her people as she could, no matter how awful they’d been. Asking Vaggie to be her girlfriend. Setting up the Hazbin Hotel.
Refusing to give up on it.
By the time she finishes the fruit, she feels oddly...refreshed. Fulfilled. All that’s left is a small star-shaped pit in the center, which she tucks into a pocket for lack of anything better to do with it. The fruit hadn’t been that big, but she feels full and content. Even her ankle feels better, no longer throbbing when she turns it experimentally.
“Feeling better, my dear?” Alastor asks.
Charlie blinks, looking over at him. His fruit is gone as well, not even the pit in sight. She wonders vaguely if he pocketed his as well, or ate it. Probably the latter, given everything else he devours. Those razor-sharp teeth can cut through bone, so a pit probably wouldn’t cause much of a problem for him.
He’s sitting comfortably with his back against the trunk of the strange tree, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles ahead of himself. He looks a little bit better too, now that she thinks about it. His complexion is always rather gray, but she hadn’t realized how pale he’d been until now. Granted, it had been difficult to really tell in the pitch blackness of...of out there, and everything looked pale in the cast light of the tree, but still.
Like this, she can make out other details about him as well. Like the way his bow-tie is pushed askew thanks to the midnight-violet collar around his neck. The way his always-ragged coat looks more ragged than usual. It’s buttoned shut like always, but the lapel on the left side of his jacket is torn, a tear that runs down towards his right side, and repaired hastily and messily with poorly-fitting materials. It’s difficult to tell, with his predominant color being red, but there are rusty stains along the tearing that look like they could be dried blood.
Charlie swallows. “I’m better,” she says. “Are you okay? Alastor, what happened?”
“I’m quite fine, my dear.”
“You’re not fine!” Charlie says, pointing at his chest. “You got hurt! Did that happen here? Is something wrong? Can I help you somehow?”
Alastor brushes aside her finger easily. “No need to fret, my dear! An old injury. By now, it’s nearly healed, so there’s no need to have any concerns for me. Why, this fruit does quite a number on wounded things!”
He fingers the torn lapels of his jacket. “Sadly, only living things. I apologize for the disappointing state of my appearance. I’m sure I look quite an unkempt mess, which is hardly appropriate for an Overlord or a hotelier. Unfortunately, most of the contents of my pocket sewing kit had to go to sewing up myself, and not my clothing, ha-ha!”
He laughs like it’s a fine joke, but his laughter seems...off. Forced. Weird.
“Alastor.” Charlie grabs his gesticulating hand, and his strange laughter cuts off mid-note. He glances down at his hand with surprise, and then at her. “I don’t care about how messy your clothes are, okay? I care about you. Are you okay? Did something here hurt you? Is there any way I can help you?”
Alastor stares down at his hand again, the one captured by her own hands. He still seems a bit befuddled by the grip, and flexes his claws almost experimentally, like he’s testing if he can return it. “I’m—fine, my dear,” he says, after a long moment. “As I said, an old wound. Nearly healed! More time with these fruits ought to do the trick. There’s no need to be concerned.”
This doesn’t really answer a lot of Charlie’s questions. And there’s certainly a need to be concerned, because Alastor doesn’t feel right. But for the immediate moment, at least, Charlie thinks he might not be lying—at least about the injury on his chest. He’s acting strange, but he’s not acting injured, at least not in an obvious way. There’s no difficult breathing or signs of fever or infection, and he was helping her walk just fine earlier.
In fact, the only discomfort he’s shown was, in retrospect, when she threw herself into his injury shortly after arriving. Which, shit. That couldn’t have helped him any. Not that she could have known! But she doesn’t seem to have hurt him or broken open any stitches or anything.
I’ll keep an eye on him, she decides. Just in case he’s lying. He seemed the type to hide that he was hurting. But if they’re going to be stuck here together, then they need to be a team to find a way out.
Because Charlie is not letting them stay here. Not if she can help it.
“Well, as long as you’re okay and not hurting,” Charlie says slowly. “Can we talk now, then?”
“Ah, for that understanding you desire?” Alastor says, gesticulating grandly all around them. “I suppose we can talk, but whether or not I have answers is entirely up to the questions you ask, ha-ha!”
Strange and unsettling. Alastor can be, and often is, cagey and secretive with the answers he gives. But he usually has an air of far more...control than this. This doesn’t sound like Alastor’s silver tongue or cleverly worded deals. This sounds like…
like…
Insanity, Charlie’s mind supplies. And she doesn’t want to say that, or even think it, because it’s such a mean thing to think, but…
...but it might be true, just a little bit.
Focus, she tells herself. Try to get answers. Maybe he knows enough that you can help get you both out of here.
“Well, all I can do is ask, right?” Charlie says. “If you don’t have the answers, that’s okay.”
“Fortunate indeed, because if I have no answers, you have no understanding,” Alastor nearly sing-songs. “A real pity, given how invested you are in it. But I’ll do my best, my dear.”
Charlie presses her lips together. “Okay. Well. How about this. Where...are we?”
Alastor raises an eyebrow at her. “I believe I already answered that one, my dear. ‘In the Beginning, there was Nothing.’”
“But what does that mean?” Charlie asks, frustrated. The way he pronounces the words is a little strange, and she swears she can hear the capital letters. But she doesn’t understand why.
“It means precisely what it says. This is The Beginning, and there is Nothing. Really, Charlie, try to keep up when I do have answers, won’t you?”
Charlie huffs, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “I don’t understand.”
“So you said. I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed, because there’s quite a lot of that here,” Alastor drawls. “Perhaps other questions, my dear?”
Charlie sighs. But she has a feeling she’s not going to get anything more straightforward out of Alastor like this, so she grudgingly moves on. “Do you know what this tree is?”
“Not at all! Other than Something, of course, which is why I’ve rather taken a liking to it.”
Charlie bites her lip. “Do you know how long it’s been here in the...the Nothing?”
“Longer than I have, certainly. It’s been here as long as I can remember.”
“And how long has that been?” Charlie asks. “How long have you been here, Alastor?”
“Oh, goodness, now there’s a question.”
Alastor fiddles around with his coat until he withdraws a pocket-watch, which he clicks open. He adjusts his monocle carefully and studies the face, although Charlie can see herself sitting next to him that it’s pointless. The hands on the watch are moving erratically; sometimes they stop, sometimes they whip ahead too fast, sometimes they run backwards.
Alastor clucks his tongue in disappointment and says, “I’m afraid Nothing exists here, my dear, and that means Time doesn’t. I suppose you’ll have to answer that question yourself. When did you last see me?”
Charlie stares at him in shock, then at the erratic pocket-watch as he clicks it closed and puts it back in his pocket, and then back to him again. “You...you’ve been here since the battle against the Exorcists?”
“Well, not precisely since,” Alastor says idly. “Perhaps an hour after. I’m not quite sure on the details. I was rather distracted, putting myself back together after I left.”
And Charlie is stunned at that revelation, for multiple reasons. First, because Alastor had so casually let slip that he’d been injured then, which isn’t like him at all when he’s so calculating and careful with anything he gives away. Second, because it means he’d gotten hurt in the battle, which means—when he disappeared, and Adam had attacked the army—if that was why—oh, if Charlie had gotten him badly wounded by ordering him to fight against Adam, she’ll never forgive herself.
But mostly, because of the realization that the reason Alastor’s been missing for two weeks is because he’s been here for nearly that entire time. Locked away in the middle of—of Nothing, bound by his soul to an impossible tree, and apparently losing the edge of his sanity in the process.
What would being in a place like this, empty and pressing and dark and alone, for two weeks do to someone? Charlie shudders at the thought, and starts to gain a glimmer of understanding as to why Alastor is so...off.
“Well, my dear?” Alastor asks. “I think with all the answers I’ve agreed to, I’m entitled to one of my own. Or perhaps you’d like to Deal for them instead?” His eyes flick to radio dials, and his gleaming yellow grin grows sharp. Hungry. Starved in a way Charlie doesn’t think the fruits here can account for.
“N-no!” Charlie says hastily. “No Deals. No need. I’m happy to answer that. The battle was two weeks ago, Alastor. It’s—you’ve been missing since. We’ve been worried about you, but we couldn’t find you.”
“Obviously not, since I was here,” Alastor says idly, with an odd sort of tone that resonates with both sensibility and madness all at once. His eyes change back to normal as he thumps his head back against the glowing tree he’s sitting back against, ignoring the way his antlers dig into the spongy bark. “Two weeks...two weeks...so long already? Or no time at all. It feels like longer, but Time isn’t, so maybe I’m just imagining it…”
Charlie reaches out to hesitantly take his hand again. Alastor starts, and once again, looks down at his hand in hers like he’s shocked she’s able to even touch him.
“I’m sorry you’ve been here so long,” she says. “And I’m sorry things have been so...confusing for you.”
“Oh, it’s all quite straightforward, my dear,” Alastor says. He still stares at her hand like it’s a puzzle, and after a moment, plucks his away from hers like he doesn’t want to try solving it. “Very, very, very simple.”
Charlie doesn’t agree with that at all.
But she has a feeling she’s not going to convince him of that, so she asks instead, “But Alastor...how did you get here?”
He blinks at her, eyes wide and lamp-like in a way that’s once again hauntingly familiar in a way she can’t really place.
“This place is really dark,” Charlie tries, when he doesn’t answer her question. “Did you...is this...you use shadows and void-stuff all the time when you move around. Is this where you go when you use it?”
Alastor stares at her for a long moment, his eyes still unnervingly wide and staring. Then he barks out a laugh. One of those weird, too-loud manic ones he often uses when he’s trying to laugh harder than someone else.
“Oh, Charlie,” he drawls, and for a moment that sounds comfortingly familiar, the same inflection he’d used when he came to her in her bedroom to make a Deal and convince her to fight. But it’s dashed a moment later when he rambles, “It might not seem like it to you, but shadows are still Something. Void is still an essence of Something, too. Cousins to light, cast by and enveloping, but they’re all a part of existing, my dear. How many times must I tell you? This is a place of Nothing. Not even shadows.”
Charlie’s not sure she understands him. She is fairly certain all that is a rambling, roundabout way to say he hadn’t gotten himself here, though.
“Then how did you get here, Alastor?” Charlie asks, trying hard to be patient. It’s difficult, when the darkness and emptiness out there presses heavy and hard against the thin barrier made by the glow of the tree, like it’s encroaching. Like despite time not being here, somehow, they don’t have much of it anyway.
“Why, I could ask you the very same, Charlie, my dear. How did you find your way here?”
He fixes her with a stare. Charlie swallows, and turns her head away.
“I...I don’t know.”
Alastor tuts. “Now, now, Charlie. You’ve never been very good at lying. I don’t advise trying to start now.”
Charlie flushes. “I don’t,” she says insistently. “At least...not the details for getting here, at least. I still don’t know where here is. No matter how many times you call it Nothing.”
“Technicalities, my dear. I think you know what brought you here, even if you don’t know how it was done.” She can feel him staring at her. See the red light of his eyes glowing on her blazer sleeves and her hands when she wraps them around her knees again. “Or perhaps what isn’t appropriate so much as who, hmm?”
Charlie squeezes her eyes shut. “It can’t be that,” Charlie says helplessly. “It can’t be. It couldn’t—Mom wouldn’t—”
But she can’t shake that final memory all the same. Of her mother staring down from a whole in Nothing, her eyes colder than she’s ever seen.
The Mom she knows would never hurt her. But that person...that person might…
Charlie presses her face into her knees, trying hard to stifle a sob.
“Ah,” Alastor hums. “As I thought. This isn’t a place one falls into by accident, Charlie, my dear. There is intent to be had here, and denying it won’t make the truths go away. Not even the Nothing all around us can make a truth that exists vanish.”
“Stop talking like that,” Charlie mumbles into her knees. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“If you don’t want me to talk, consider talking yourself, then,” Alastor says. “Tell us the truth, my dear. Tell us what happened. Perhaps it will shed light on the truth and give you some of that understanding you crave so badly.”
“I don’t know! I don’t know anything. I don’t understand anything,” Charlie says, and this time she can’t stop her sob from escaping her. “I don’t know anything about this place or why I’m here or how to fix it or how to help you. I don’t know anything.”
“Untrue,” Alastor says, almost sing-song. “If you didn’t know anything, you’d be nothing. But you hardly fit in here, so you do know some things. Perhaps begin by telling us the things you do know, hmm?”
Charlie sniffles. Alastor’s riddle-filled rambling is confusing, but he seems to be pressing her to talk about what had happened. And Vaggie always encourages her to talk about things when they bother her. Maybe...maybe talking about it would help. She’s not sure it will help her understand, but maybe she’ll at least feel a little calmer.
So she tries. “I’m not...sure what happened, really,” she says slowly. “It’s—I—my mom showed up, at the Hazbin Hotel. Um, you’d know her as Queen Lilith. I haven’t seen her in seven years, you know. Almost eight.”
Alastor breathes in sharply, and bark cracks nearby. Charlie looks up to find he’s sunk his claws into one of the roots around them. His smile is strained, and his lamp-like eyes focus on her with more intensity than before.
“Did she, now?” he asks. For the first time, his voice seems a little sharper. Less sing-song, less insane. More like his old self. “And then?”
“She knocked at the door, asked if she could come in. Vaggie and Husk were both there when she told us her story. She said Adam had kidnapped her, and took her to Heaven. When he died in the attack against the hotel, Mom was able to escape...first the place he kept her, and then Heaven itself. She wanted a place to be safe. Obviously, I was more than happy to help. I offered her a room, and the Hazbin Hotel’s protection. But when I brought Mom to a room…”
She squeezes her knees, hugging them closer. Alastor waits a moment before asking, “What happened?”
“She...she told me to stop the redemption project. She said the rumors in Heaven were...bad. That what we were doing was ‘destabilizing’ it, and that I had to stop.”
“And what did you say?” Alastor leans forward, the glow of his eyes bright, like red spotlights focused on her. Despite the intensity, he seems more sane than he has since she first found him here. Like talking about things that are real, that really happened outside of this place, is letting him crawl out of his own head.
Charlie wishes she could help him in ways that weren’t hurting herself. But she answers the question anyway. “I said no, obviously! Helping our people...that’s my dream. It’s been my dream since I was little. I’m finally making a difference, enough that even Heaven is paying attention. I’m going to help people.”
“And I imagine…she...did not take kindly to that,” Alastor notes. There’s caution in his voice, like he’s testing every word.
“No,” Charlie whispers. “She ordered me to stop, and when I refused…”
That coldness in her mother’s voice, in her eyes. The way her demeanor changed completely, until the person standing in front of her looked like Mom but wasn’t Mom in any way that mattered. The shove. The way she fell, and reached out for her mother, and her mother didn’t reach out in turn.
Looking up from a world of nothing, as her mother’s face vanishes.
Charlie buries her face in her knees. Her voice is muffled, like she could smother the truth when she says it if she just tries hard enough.
It doesn’t work anyway. “My mother...put me here. Mom is the reason I’m here.”
Silence, for a long moment. Long enough that Charlie wonders if maybe, even if she heard the truth she spoke, Alastor hadn’t. She almost hopes that’s the case.
But Al’s ears are sharp, and he’d been focused on her so intensely. And after a long beat of silence, he finally says, “It seems you have understanding aplenty, after all.”
“It’s...it’s not funny, Al,” Charlie says, pulling her face from her knees to glare at him. “Now’s not the time for stupid riddles and jokes.”
“I never said it was,” Alastor says. To her surprise, his expression is actually quite solemn—at least, as solemn as it can get over his eternal smile. His gleaming teeth are tucked away, and his grin is thinner than usual. “Only making an observation, my dear.”
Charlie sighs, resting her chin on her knees instead, but not hiding her face this time. “I don’t understand all that much,” she says bitterly. “I still don’t understand why. Why...why would Mom put me here? In a place like this? Why would she do this to me? I’m…I’m her daughter. I love her. I thought she loved me…”
Her eyes burn, but she squeezes them shut. She wants to cry, but she doesn’t, too. All she’s done is cry since she got here, and it all feels so useless when she doesn’t know how to feel. Why would her mother do this to her? Hurt her like this? Put her here? This place is terrifying, even with Alastor here to protect her if something happens.
Alastor tuts, but it’s a quiet thing. “Now now, Charlie,” he says. His tone is lecturing, but still solemn. “There’s no use lying to yourself. You do have the answers. I think you just don’t want to acknowledge them.”
And Charlie wants to be angry at him. So angry, for making her sound stupid and naive and useless and cowardly.
Angry at him for not letting her hide from herself, most of all.
But Alastor never does anything out of the kindness of his heart, and he doesn’t hold back from pointing out the obvious. No matter how much it hurts. He’d done it when he first showed up at the hotel and pointed out how much of a mess it all was. He’d done it that day they returned from Heaven, pointing out just how much she’d fucked up and dragging her out of her miserable display of self-loathing.
And as much as it hurts, he’s doing it now, forcing her to face truths she’d rather hide from.
“She said...she can’t risk me challenging Heaven,” Charlie says miserably, as the tears start coming again, rolling down her face. “She said she had to ‘put me somewhere safe.’ But this place…” She looks around at the emptiness outside the safety of the tree through blurry tears. “This place doesn’t feel safe.”
Alastor doesn’t say anything. Nothing to comfort her. But nothing to keep her from avoiding truths, either.
“Why would she want me to stop, Alastor?” Charlie asks helplessly. “Why order me to stop the hotel? That’s the part I don’t understand. Why couldn’t we talk it through instead? Come up with a different solution?”
“As to that,” Alastor says, “I haven’t the faintest, my dear. I’m afraid understanding that is something you wouldn’t have.”
At least she’s not deceiving herself there. Even if she wished she did know the answers. Maybe it’d be easier. Knowing her mother would do this to her...not knowing why…
Oh, it hurts so badly.
“I don’t understand, Al,” Charlie sobs. “I thought Mom would be proud of me for all of this. Mom inspired the Hazbin Hotel. She loved our people so much, she cared about all of you so much, she wanted to make things so much better. So I grew up wanting that for all of you, too.”
Alastor laughs at that. It’s a manic, ugly thing, a wicked cackle with no humor at all in it. “What a pretty little lie,” he says.
“It’s not a lie, Alastor,” Charlie says, sniffling and wiping at her eyes. “I care. I’ve always cared. I want things to be better for you all. I know you don’t believe in redemption and you think it’s pointless, but I do, and I won’t give up on any of you as long as you want my help.”
“Oh, Charlie, I’ve known for a long time you believe those pretty little lies you spin for yourself,” Alastor says, with another ugly laugh. “You weave so many! A clever, sweet little thing you are. But that’s hardly the lie I’m talking about.”
Charlie doesn’t know what he means, and she’s too tired and emotional to try and pick apart this latest mad rambling. “I just don’t understand what changed,” she sniffles. “I wanted Mom to see what I was doing so badly ever since I started the Hotel project. There’s so many moments I thought she’d be proud of...and for her to show up and tell me to stop, that it’s stupid and pointless, it just…hurts.”
It hurts most of all because it’s Mom. Alastor can tell her redemption is pointless every single day, and it won’t dampen her enthusiasm. Katie Killjoy and Tom Trench told her it was stupid on air, and it made her feel a little bad, but it hadn’t stopped her from trying. Angel Dust told her to her face more than once that he thought redemption was fake, and he was just using the hotel as a rent-free place to stay. Every time she tried to recruit new residents they laughed in her face and told her she was naive and innocent and dumb, but she never stopped trying to save them.
So many people haven’t believed in her dream. So many people told her to stop, for so many reasons. And it would hurt, sometimes, but Charlie never gave up. She believed in her dream, and in what her mother taught her and showed her. She believed in that love for her people, for these Sinners. These human souls made mistakes, but they could be better if they just had the right help.
Of anyone, of everyone, alive or dead, Heaven or Hell, Charlie had known without question that her Mom would believe in her and support her the way no one else did. To have her Mom tear her down so thoroughly about the dream she had inspired…
From Mom, more than anything else, those words—those actions—are like knives in her back.
And the way she’d done it… “I don’t understand what changed, Al,” she repeats. “It’s like...it’s like a switch was flipped, and Mom was just...different. The way she talked to me—the way she looked at me—she’s never done that before. She’s never been like that before. It was like she wasn’t the same person.”
Alastor is silent. Verbally, at least. His static crackles and pops, a shockingly loud hiss in the silence of Nothing.
“I just...what could have happened? To make her so different?” Charlie hiccups, wiping at her face again. Stupid tears. “I haven’t seen her in seven years. Could something have happened to her to make her like this? Does...does she need help, maybe?”
Alastor laughs again, that humorless, manic, ugly thing. “So quick to make excuses. So quick to see the best in people. To offer help, to even the lowest of the low. A curse and a boon, when it comes to Hell.”
“My Mom’s not the lowest of the low,” Charlie says hotly, despite herself. “She’s kind! And caring! She’d love everyone at the hotel. She’d love you—”
But Alastor cuts her off with a harsh bark of mad laughter, and another sharp screech of static. His eyes are wide, the red glow of them intense. He sounds insane again. “What a thought! Oh, what a grand jest, Charlie. I didn’t know you had such blackened humor in you, my dear.”
“It’s not—I don’t—that’s not what I meant at all,” Charlie says. But Alastor only snickers, the sounds growing more quiet, the static slowly receding.
Alastor’s response frustrates her, because she doesn’t know how to feel. Not about any of it. She wants to be able to defend her mother to him, as a knee-jerk reaction. Her mother had been so kind to her. So patient. She’d taught her so much. Charlie looked up to her mother more than anything, more than anyone. Even her father. Before today, she never would have thought her mother capable of anything like cruelty.
But after today…
After today, Charlie can’t help but bitterly wonder if she’d missed seeing things all these years.
It wouldn’t be the first time. She knows she’s easy to fool. Stupidly easy to fool, because she wants to trust so badly. She’d trusted Sir Pentious, even when he’d been sent as a spy. She’d believed blindly in Valentino, stupidly under the impression that he could be trusted to be talked to reasonably, even when it got Angel hurt. Fucking Hell, Vaggie had kept her status as an angel secret for three years.
Charlie had said it herself, stupidly, that day they did Trusting 101. She trusted everybody. She didn’t know how to build it properly. It meant anyone could fool her.
And why, until now, would she ever have had any reason to doubt her mother?
She wonders if Mom’s story is even real. Was she in Heaven? Had she been kidnapped by Adam? Did she actually escape? Was she concerned that the Hazbin Hotel would destabilize Heaven?
Charlie doesn’t know what to believe anymore.
And yet despite that, despite everything, the worst of all of it is she still loves her mother. It hurts, to think she might have been taken advantage of. That her mother tricked her. Hurt her on purpose. Put her here.
But she still worries. Mom had said she couldn’t risk losing Charlie, that she’d done this to protect her. Was there any truth to that? There had been that explosion—was Mom okay? She had looked exhausted and unkempt—was she healthy? Did she need help? If any part of her story was true, how could Charlie make a difference?
A curse and a boon, Alastor called it. Caring and trusting so strongly, so unconditionally. Wanting, even now, to know if the person who hurt her was okay. If there was something wrong. If there was a way to fix it. Even as she sat here suffering, cut off from everyone.
It’s the first time Alastor’s mad rambling has made any sense.
“What do I do, Alastor?” Charlie asks. Her voice comes out as a soft whimper. Pleading. Helpless. “I don’t know what to do. I know what Mom did. I don’t know why. I know I probably shouldn’t trust her, but I can’t help but worry. I don’t want to be here, and I don’t know how to fix it. What do I do?”
“Nothing to be done,” Alastor says. His crazed laughter has stopped. So has his irritated buzzing of static. He’s solemn again, calm, but there’s a trace of bitterness to his voice. “Nothing by us, at any rate. All we can do now is wait.”
Chapter 3
Notes:
Many of you commented about the Alice in Wonderland vibes, and Alastor's Cheshire Cat or Mad Hatter energy. Awesome job! It is a big vibe influence on Alastor especially. Here's a little mood song to go with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yie3tTMFxBQ
If I leave my grin behind remind me, that we're all mad here, and it's okay :)
Chapter Text
Charlie had honestly expected a more...active answer from Alastor. For him to advise doing anything but comes as a shock.
“That’s...it? Just...wait here?”
“If you’ve other ideas, my dear, I’d be delighted to hear them.”
“But can’t we find a way to leave?” Charlie asks. “We got in...so there has to be a way out, right?”
“Only one person knows the way in, to my knowledge,” Alastor says. “And thus, only one person knows the way out.”
Charlie can translate this part easily enough. “My mom.”
“Correct! Now, there is another in the ranks of Hell that may have the strength to find his way in here, if he’s as powerful as the scriptures say,” Alastor drawls. “One close enough to The Beginning that he could slither his way in through the cracks and crevices of Something into Nothing, if he knew where to look.”
This one takes a little bit more effort, but Charlie thinks she’s got it. “My dad?”
“If the Devil is even remotely as good as he thinks he is, then perhaps,” Alastor says. He doesn’t sound thrilled about the idea of being rescued by Dad, and his voice is grudging.
“I don’t know if Dad knows about a place like this,” Charlie says, glancing uneasily around at the emptiness outside the protective glow of their tree. “He never told me any stories about it.”
“Well, then unless the Father of Lies is capable of identifying the lie right underneath his nose, I’m afraid we’re rather out of luck, my dear,” Alastor says. “He’d need to know what to look for, and it’s rather hard to identify Nothing in the middle of all the Something out there that’s far more obvious. After all, how does one identify the absence of Nothing? One doesn’t, not if one doesn’t know where it isn’t to begin with.”
“But I could call him!” Charlie says excitedly. She pats her pockets, and yes, her phone had survived the explosion in the guest suite. She pulls it out of her pocket and taps it hastily to wake it up, navigating to Dad’s contact information as fast as she can.
But when she tries to call, nothing happens. No ringtone, no dial tone, no reaction at all. She tries again, and again, and still nothing. She tries texting Dad, texting Vaggie, texting anyone on the outside, but nothing sends.
She checks her connection, and there isn’t one. No data, no WiFi, no hotspots, nothing. Even the clock and calendar functions are just as broken as Alastor’s pocket-watch, flipping frantically from months ago to hours from now without ever settling.
Alastor chuckles, but it’s a bitter noise. “Oh, Charlie, even I could have told you that wouldn’t work, and I don’t even have one of those ridiculous portable telephones.”
“It was worth trying!”
“Not particularly,” he drawls. “There’s no radio waves here, my dear. There’s no waves at all. Those are Something. Haven’t you been listening?” He laughs again. “Do you honestly think I, the Radio Demon, wouldn’t have already tried to reach an outside device if it was at all possible? No, no, Charlie, we are well and truly alone here.”
Charlie bites her lip. The way Alastor says alone actually frightens her, because there’s something truly painful in the way he says it. Like he knows all too well what it’s like to be isolated in a terrifying place of nothing at all like this. And maybe he does, if he’s been here for two weeks without even Charlie for company.
“What about your shadows?” she asks helplessly. “Could you shadow-travel your way out?”
“Do you think I would still be here if I could, Charlie?” Alastor asks, and now he just sounds disappointed in her. “Did you not hear what I said just a little bit ago? Shadows are Something. This place has Nothing. There’s nothing to travel through. Have you seen my shadow even once?”
Charlie blinks. Now that she thinks about it…
She looks Alastor over again. He’s sitting comfortably enough in the crook of the tree, resting against the trunk, settled on its bench-like roots. Haggard and ruffled and a little manic, obviously recovering from an injury now that she knows what to look for, but solid. Bound to the tree itself by that midnight-violet soul chain, but only restrained by it, not hurt. The tree glows faintly, and because of that, it casts a tiny shadow for both herself and Alastor.
But that shadow doesn’t move. Has no life to it, outside of what his own movement grants. The living, grinning thing she’s seen trailing him all around the hotel isn’t here. Even that faint cast shadow is too thin and weak to be much of a shadow at all, probably not enough to hide in or make use of with his magic.
“Oh,” Charlie says faintly. “What happened to it?”
“It isn’t permitted,” Alastor says, like it’s obvious. “Trust me, my dear. If there was a way out of this place that a mere mortal could find, I would have found it ages ago. For little Somethings like us, there is no entering or leaving that is not granted by my mistress.”
“Your...mistress?”
For the first time, Alastor actually flinches, and his ears flick down and back up almost too quickly to catch. If Charlie hadn’t been looking at him, studying him for his shadow, she might never have seen it.
But she had. She’d seen his ears, and she’d seen, for a fraction of a second, wild fear in his eyes before he’d covered it up with his usual smile.
“I misspoke,” Alastor says, so casually that Charlie might almost have believed it, or attributed it to his crazed ramblings, if she hadn’t seen what she’d seen.
“You didn’t,” Charlie says, very firmly. “You didn’t misspeak, Al.”
Alastor says nothing at all. But that silence is so loud, now, in the wake of his insane monologues, that Charlie hears it like a scream. And it makes her really pay attention, now, putting two and two together, thinking back to her own cautious guesses that she really hadn’t wanted to acknowledge.
She can practically hear Al in her own head when she tries to shy away from the conclusion. No sense in lying to yourself, my dear. You never were very good at it.
“Alastor,” Charlie says softly. “That soul-chain. Your mistress. The person who owns you...it’s my mother, isn’t it?”
Alastor doesn’t say anything at all, but he doesn’t have to. The silence is the loudest answer of all.
“You’re here because my mom put you here,” Charlie concludes, still whispering. “You said it was after the battle...only about an hour. She found you, and she put you in here, and she tied you to this tree with your own soul-chain so you couldn’t go far. That’s why you never came back, after the battle. That’s why we couldn’t find you.”
Silence. Loud and screaming and painful.
“Is that true, Alastor?” Charlie asks. Because she can’t imagine it, not really. Her mother had so many things to say about the soul trade and soul ownership, most of it bad. That it was an unsightly and cruel practice, that treated her people unfairly. That Dad should have had the nerve to snuff it out centuries ago, or figured out who was responsible for teaching Sinners how to capture and trade souls to begin with and punished them for it. That all it did was cause problems and suffering.
She can’t imagine the Mom she knew ever owning any souls. But the person with the cold eyes and cold demeanor that threw her into this pit of nothing…
...maybe that person did.
Alastor is silent for a very long time. When he finally does answer, he’s not even looking at Charlie; he’s staring out into the blackness of nothing around them, eyes vacant and exhausted. He bites his single-word answer out like it catches in his throat and burns on his tongue. “Yes.”
Charlie’s breath catches in her throat. She’d known it was coming; she wasn’t stupid. But it hurts all the same, to have it acknowledged. To know it’s true. “How...how long?”
“Decades.”
And that just doesn’t make sense to Charlie. Because that means Mom would have been arguing with Dad about the soul trade and telling Charlie about these awful practices she hoped to snuff out, while having Alastor’s own soul in her hands. And if she could own Alastor’s soul while arguing like that—
—how much of Charlie’s mom, what she knows of her, is a lie? What’s real, and what isn’t?
Charlie sniffles. “I’m sorry.”
“What for, my dear? I’m not your slave.”
Charlie flinches at the word. It’s accurate, but it still hurts. “It’s not fair.”
“Where in the world did you ever get the idea that Hell was supposed to be fair, Charlie?” Alastor laughs. It’s that same bitter noise from before.
And Charlie wants to say my Mom, except it feels like such a stupid, foolish lie that she fell for. To think she’d ever been so naive as to think that she could fix Hell when her mother owned souls and her father didn’t even care about their people. To think she’d believed in that righteousness and those lofty dreams, and the ability to change the world.
What an idiotic, helpless little girl she’s always been.
“I was paid for it,” Alastor says dully. “It was a Deal like any other. I got what I wanted out of it.”
“Was...was it worth it?” Charlie asks. Because she can’t imagine anything in the afterlife that her mother could possibly give Alastor that would be worth putting him on a leash for the rest of his existence.
“Yes,” Alastor snarls. There’s something warning and defensive there, and Charlie’s afraid to get too close. “It was. It always will be.”
“Even for this?” Charlie asks, gesturing around them. At the nothing. At the tree. At the chain binding him to this bitter isolation, this place that was almost certainly driving him mad by the non-existent hour.
“Even for this,” Alastor says. “One wretched soul is a cheap payment for what I gained.”
And Charlie wants to ask, what did you get that was so worth it, then? Power? Money? Fame? What drives a human soul to surrender itself?
But there’s still warning and danger in that tone, and Charlie is afraid to venture further. Not when Alastor is so off-kilter, and not with something so private. For the first time, she’s uncomfortably aware that Alastor is not right in the head, and he is a killer, and she’s alone with him in a place where nobody could ever find them. If he wanted to kill her here, he could, and nobody would ever be able to stop him.
For the first time since the day he showed up on her doorstep, she’s a little bit afraid of him.
So she doesn’t ask that question. Instead she veers towards one more relevant. “But why?” Charlie asks. “Why...why would Mom put you here after the fight? What’s the point?”
Alastor blinks at her. Wide-eyed and staring like before, the glow of his eyes lamp-like and luminous. “Why, because this is a convenient little hiding-place, of course. No place is safer to hide things than a place with a secret door only you have the key to, don’t you think?”
“But...why would my mom want to hide you here?” Charlie asks, struggling to understand Alastor’s rambling.
“Why not? It’s as good a place as any for my mistress to store her tools when she has no need of them. Or to put them away in when they’re broken and useless, and she hasn’t the time to repair or dispose of them.”
Charlie sits up straight immediately. “You’re not broken, and you’re not useless, Alastor!”
He only raises an eyebrow at her. “Did you not point out yourself the extent of my injury earlier, my dear? I can’t fight or flee as I am, so the point of me is lost.”
“You’re a person, Alastor! You’re my friend. There isn’t a ‘point’ to a person, there never is.”
“Perhaps for souls that own themselves, that’s true.”
“It’s true for everyone!” Charlie says. She tries to take Alastor’s hand, to hold it and try to make him understand, but he draws it away from her deftly before she can try. “It’s true for everyone. It doesn’t matter if my mom owns your soul, you’re still a person. You’re still here and you.”
“Oh, Charlie, if only it was as easy for the rest of us to believe your sweet little lies,” Alastor says, with another one of those ugly, manic little laughs.
“It isn’t a lie,” Charlie says. “It isn’t. I know I’ve...I’ve been naive, and stupid, and I haven’t seen things right. I know. But this? This is true. You’re not a broken tool. You’re not even a tool. You’re a person, and you’re my friend, and you needed help, not to be stuffed away in a place like this. And I wish I’d known, so I could help you.”
“If wishes were horses, beggers would ride,” Alastor sing-songs. “And for all Time here isn’t, out there its hands never turn back, and you will never change what happened.”
That feels like an accusation, and it stabs deep. But Alastor isn’t aggressive or accusing, and Charlie knows he’s clever enough to get under anyone’s skin and to wield words like daggers if he wants to. He isn’t now. He’s still snickering those ugly little laughs, like he thinks she’s stupid, and maybe he’s got the right to. But he’s not lashing out. Just stating facts, and not being soft about it.
Charlie hates it anyway.
“I can’t,” she agrees. “I wish I could, but you’re right. I can’t. I wish I’d known you were hurt against the exorcists. If you came here barely an hour after that battle, and I remember Adam attacking us suddenly—I’m guessing he hurt you badly. At the time, I’d thought you’d died.”
“Hardly lucky enough for that, my dear,” Alastor cackles.
“Don’t say that,” Charlie says sharply. “Don’t ever say that! You’re my friend, Alastor, I don’t ever want to wish death on you, and I don’t want to hear you say that for yourself.”
Alastor only sniffs in response, annoyance in his eyes over his ever-present smile.
Charlie sighs. She can’t turn back the clock, just like Alastor said. She can only get answers, get understanding, now. “If mom put you in here shortly after the fight against Adam...was it supposed to help you in some way?”
Alastor gives her an incredulous look. “This? Here? Charlie, have you seen the place?”
“Right, but the tree’s fruits heal, right?” Charlie points up, then at his chest. “Your wound doesn’t look life threatening anymore. I don’t think Mom has healing magic. Was this a way to keep you alive?”
“No,” Alastor says.
There’s too much certainty in his voice, too much bitterness, for that to be anything but truth. The last dashes of hope in Charlie’s heart that her mother isn’t a cruel monster are slowly blown away. “Then if it wasn’t to help...it had to be to hurt. Right?”
“I told you already, Charlie,” Alastor says. “I don’t like repeating myself, and I’m quite tired of you not listening to me.”
Charlie wants to yell, you keep talking in riddles, it’s hard even when I do listen! But she has a feeling Alastor’s not going to answer directly. Maybe he can’t even answer directly. And she needs answers now. She has to know how naive and stupid she’s been, how much she hasn’t seen. What she’s been blind to.
She thinks back to Alastor’s words. A place to put tools away when they’re broken and useless, until they could be repaired or thrown away. She hates thinking of Alastor like a tool, but if she’s going to understand, she has to try and think like her mother.
What would Charlie do, if she was repairing the Hazbin Hotel, and the drill broke? Well, she wouldn’t know how to fix it right away. She might put it back in the toolbox so it didn’t accidentally hurt anyone. She might ask someone to fix it—Pentious before the extermination, maybe Dad now. If it couldn’t be fixed, it’d be thrown away, and a new one would be purchased.
Why?
Because the tool broke doing its job. Because it can’t do the job anymore.
Charlie tries to translate that to a person, and it makes her stomach roil with nausea, threatening to bring up the strange something-fruit from earlier.
“Alastor,” Charlie nearly whispers. “Did you get in trouble for not beating Adam?”
Silence for a long moment. Then Alastor says curtly, “In a manner of speaking.”
“But that...that doesn’t make sense,” Charlie says. “You couldn’t have been expected to defeat Adam.”
“And why not? Our very own battle plans to defend the hotel required that I first provide a shield, and then take on Adam directly,” Alastor points out. “You yourself expected me to defeat Adam.”
Charlie flinches at that, because it is true. They’d stationed Alastor at the top of the Hazbin Hotel for precisely that reason. His shield was the most important part, cutting the exorcist forces in half and giving Charlie’s ragtag army of cannibals and Sinners time to take down the forces trapped inside with them. But Vaggie had warned that Adam, for all his hubris, was no slouch when it came to holy magic, and he’d manage to break it in time. So Charlie had asked Alastor, their most dangerous fighter, if he’d be able to take on Adam himself.
Alastor had said yes. He’d grinned when he’d said yes, and not in his always-smiling sort of way. It had been genuine and a little spooky, and Charlie had been confident it hadn’t been for show. The Radio Demon was death incarnate in the Pride Ring. They’d all believed he could do it.
Charlie had been a fool. She hadn’t realized just how strong Adam was. Not until she’d seen him obliterate Pentious’ entire warship in a single blast. Not until she’d fought him herself. Not until he’d destroyed the entire Hotel, and even threatened her own father.
If she’d known before the battle what she’d known now, she never would have asked that of Alastor.
But like Alastor said, she can’t turn back time. Only make amends for it now. “I’m sorry,” Charlie says sincerely. “I didn’t understand how strong he was. If I’d known, I never would have asked that of you. I would have found a way to give you backup, or found some other solution. I never, ever wanted you to be hurt or killed by Adam.”
“People die in wars, Charlie,” Alastor says. “I don’t know what else you were expecting.”
“I don’t, either,” Charlie says. She’d never been so aware of her naivety as she had been the day after that battle. Seeing Pentious die, seeing Dazzle die, watching Adam’s fist coming for her father’s head—all of that had broken something innocent in Charlie that day. After the bloodshed, the tears, the broken remnants of the hotel, she knew she’d been foolish, and she could never go back to that.
She did.
But her mother wasn’t like that.
“I didn’t know what to expect, and I didn’t plan right for it, and that could have gotten you killed,” Charlie says. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about that, and I will do everything I can to help you for what I put you through because of that. If that means helping you heal, or giving you someplace safe to stay, I’ll do it. I mean that.”
“A very empty promise, given where we are now,” Alastor notes, gesturing theatrically at the nothing all around them. “How kind of you.”
“I mean once we’re out of here. I never should have asked you to fight Adam.” Charlie’s expression hardens. “But my mom...she knows Adam. She knows what he’s capable of. She’s his ex-wife, after all.”
She’d been captured by Adam, she knows how strong he is, Charlie almost says, before she bites her tongue. Knowing what she does now, is that even true? Had her mother ever been taken against her will by Adam? Or was that just an excuse to not be around?
Charlie doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if she wants to know. The truth will be painful, no matter what direction it goes in.
“My point being,” Charlie finishes, “that my mom should have known you couldn’t handle Adam. You shouldn’t have been...been punished, or put away for that. It’s not right.”
“Oh, Charlie. I can only assume whoever taught you that Hell should be fair also taught you that it should be right,” Alastor says, with another mirthless chuckle. His smile is there only because it has to be, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. “What does it matter if it was fair or right of my mistress to expect me to defeat Adam? I failed my assignment. A failed soul is punished. A worthless tool is put away until it can be repaired or thrown out. I’m not sure what decision my mistress had made yet, but it hardly matters. It’s not my choice to make.”
Charlie hates this. She hates every part of this. It’s not fair, none of this is fair. None of it is right.
But who said Hell had to be fair or right? Her bitter inner voice sounds identical to Alastor’s.
Still. She’s not going to give up yet. Maybe Hell isn’t supposed to be fair or right, but that’s not what the Hazbin Hotel project is about. She hadn’t gone to Heaven and argued against the High Seraphim herself about the way the system worked, and she hadn’t repelled the extermination, just to give up on souls in need now. Even this one.
Maybe especially this one.
And there’s something in Alastor’s words that Charlie can’t ignore. “Your assignment? Assignment to what? Fight Adam?”
Alastor is silent.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Charlie says with a frown. “Mom wanted me to stop working on the Hazbin Hotel. So if she gave you a last minute assignment, I’d think it’d be to stop the fight entirely. Right? Mom sounded like she didn’t want to start a war with Heaven, and if we won this fight, we’d...well, we’d be where we are now.”
Alastor is silent. When she glances over at him, he’s not even looking at her. Just staring out into the emptiness again.
“And you weren’t told to take a dive,” Charlie says slowly. “And lose on purpose. Because that was failing the assignment, apparently.”
“Charlie,” Alastor says, and his voice is the most serious she’s ever heard it. “Don’t push for answers you don’t want.”
“But isn’t that what you’ve been making me do this entire time?” Charlie gestures incredulously. “You keep telling me I have understanding and I don’t want to face the answers. Well, I’m willing to face the answers now. I need to understand so I can help you. I’m not going to run away. I’m not going to be stupid and naive anymore. I’m going to be better.”
“Ignorance is bliss, Charlie,” Alastor warns, his voice sharp. But he still isn’t looking at her. “You’ve had your little bubble of fair and right for quite a long time. Pop it and you might find yourself drowning.”
“I’m not giving up,” Charlie says stubbornly. “Not on this, and not on you. You’re my friend, Alastor, and I’m going to help.”
“What makes you think the answers will make you want to help?” Alastor asks. “The sweet little lies you weave are what make you who you are, Charlie, dear. They’re the reason you’re the one thing in all of Hell that gives a damn about the Damned. Take your little woven blindfold from your eyes, and you’ll find the world around you a much more rotten, ugly, stinking place than you ever dreamed.”
“Then I’ll fix things,” Charlie says. She’s heading in the right direction, if Alastor’s trying to deflect. Even if his deflection is...strange. Maybe it’s part of the madness of this place, because he’s never tried to put her off course of anything so bluntly before. Clever words and deals are at the heart of what the Radio Demon is, but Alastor has been strange since she arrived here.
If she keeps digging, maybe she’ll find an answer.
“Your assignment wasn’t to lose,” Charlie summarizes. “And no matter what my mother might have said to you, she couldn’t have expected you to win. That’s not possible. So I don’t think it was about the fight with Adam at all. Not directly, at least.”
Alastor doesn’t answer, but there’s definitely a tension in the way he holds himself now.
“About the battle, maybe?” Charlie guesses. “But no...Adam’s at the center of that. We couldn’t have survived if he did. I don’t think Mom could have predicted that Dad would show up, she knows he’s literally bound to his palace on extermination days. I know that because they fought about it, sometimes.”
Mom had been furious that Dad had agreed to sacrifice Sinners in order to protect the Hellborn. She’d been the single exception to the rule, as the Queen of Hell and Lucifer’s wife, but none of her people that she cared about had been spared. Charlie’s not sure what to believe about Mom, anymore, but she knows that anger had been real. She’d felt it. It had been one of the cracks that had grown steadily wider between her parents, until they finally split. It had been one of the things that Charlie had absorbed from her mother, that made her not want to talk to her father much in the early days of the divorce.
She’s thinking too narrowly. She has to be. Mom had talked about broad strokes, before she threw Charlie in here. Destabilizing Heaven. Stopping the Hazbin Hotel Redemption Project. The political and social ramifications of redeemed souls potentially making it to Heaven at all. That breaking Heaven broke Hell. That she wanted things to be better for the souls here, where they were.
And those final words, too. I can’t risk you challenging Heaven, Charlie. I can’t risk losing you—and oh, you don’t understand how badly they want you dead.
Something cold starts to form in the pit of her stomach.
They want you dead.
“You were supposed to protect me, weren’t you, Alastor?” Charlie says softly, slowly turning to look at him.
Alastor doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. He doesn’t look in her direction even once, staring out into the emptiness, but he can’t quite manage to stop the almost invisible twitch of his ears, or the tiniest flinch in his shoulders. His smile is always there, but it’s strained.
“It would make sense,” Charlie says. “Mom said they wanted me dead. Adam would have killed me. He tried, that day. After you vanished, and Pent died trying to protect us…” She swallows. “If you were supposed to protect me, and you ran, and I got hurt…”
Alastor’s shudder is answer enough. Charlie can only imagine what kind of punishment he’d gone through, if Mom had been using him to protect her and he’d run. Even if he was almost dead. Even if there had been nothing more he could do.
But something about that still doesn’t make sense. Because it isn’t a new thing, for Alastor to be there. He hadn’t shown up the day before the battle, grinning widely and offering his services in combat, perhaps in exchange for a deal. Mom hadn’t ordered him to protect her against Adam alone.
No, he’d been so much more involved than that. Alastor had pulled the strings to get Charlie an army for that battle over a month ago. Alastor was the primary defense for the hotel, driving off any and all attackers that would dare hurt Charlie or her dream. He’d had that role since he showed up on her doorstep almost seven months ago now, claiming he’d seen her on Katie Killjoy’s news segment and wanted to help, after several miserable phone calls to her mother and a disastrous on-air fight that anyone could have witnessed.
Charlie is an idiot. She should have seen it from the beginning.
Alastor doesn’t watch TV if he can help it, after all. She’d never thought to question that when he showed up, because she hadn’t known him then. He claimed his interest was purely boredom and entertainment, and he’d stuck to that religiously, but in retrospect that seems a pretty flimsy excuse to get in the door. And his behavior that night, for the first week he’d been with them even, had been—
—had been—
—had been almost exactly like he’s been acting now, in the isolation of nothing. Manic, talking strangely, over-eager and almost too friendly. Like he’d been desperate to get his foot in the door, while trying hard not to look it.
He’d been missing for seven years before that. No one knew what happened to him. The speculation went on to this day on social media platforms.
But no one would ever find a tool put away in a toolbox that no one in existence knew was there, would they?
“It wasn’t just that one time,” Charlie whispers.
She’s not imagining it that time. Alastor flinches.
“It was from the day you showed up,” Charlie says, still soft. “Mom ordered you to protect me, didn’t she? Keep me alive?”
Alastor is silent.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Charlie says, a little louder now. “Or are you not allowed to tell me?”
She can hear Alastor’s teeth grinding in the deafening silence. But then he says shortly, “I’m not permitted if you don’t know.”
“But I figured it out, so now I know,” Charlie says. “Is that right?”
“...More or less, yes.”
“Why?” Charlie says. “Why would Mom do this? Is it because Katie beat me up on live television? Does Mom think I can’t handle myself?”
“Charlie—”
“Answer me!” Charlie snaps back, feeling strangely angry. “Why would Mom spend seven years ignoring me and then pull a Guardian Devil out of her toolbox to shove in my direction? Why pretend she cares in such a distant way?”
“I can’t pretend to understand my mistress’ motives,” Alastor says. “I can only tell you what she told me.”
Charlie wants to throw something when he says ‘my mistress,’ but she keeps her hands to herself and settles for, “Well, what did she tell you then? Was it about the interview?”
“Not the way you’re thinking,” Alastor says. “My mistress was upset by that, of course, but could not take action. It is more what the interview means: your idea going public.”
“And that’s a bad thing why?”
Alastor sighs. “It’s a very political move, Charlie. If souls flock to your doors, they aren’t flocking to Overlords. You started a resource war in Hell. The only reason the real dangerous parties haven’t struck against you so far is because there is no proof your idealist little project works. But my mistress didn’t want to take chances. She had an Overlord of her own in her collection of tools, and she put it to use. My placement at the hotel kept the more dangerous sorts from crushing you outright, because it isn’t worth an Overlord turf war. Naturally, I am more than capable of keeping the rabble at bay, as well.”
“So that’s all it ever was,” Charlie says, her voice strangely flat. “Just orders.”
Alastor cocks his head, but says nothing.
“I can’t believe I was so stupid,” Charlie says. “I can’t believe I listened to that...that stupid lie that you were just here for entertainment.”
“In all fairness, I am an excellent liar,” Alastor says. “And that part was not entirely a lie, anyway.”
Tears sting Charlie’s eyes, but to her surprise it’s not out of sadness but anger. “So you were there because you were ordered to be, but it wasn’t so bad making fun of my dream and calling it stupid.”
“I never lied to you about that, Charlie. I told you from the beginning I don’t believe in redemption. That part is purely, unequivocally me.”
“That’s not what I mean!” Charlie leaps to her feet, relieved to find her ankle takes her weight now, and stands on the roots as she glares down at Alastor. “I knew you didn’t believe in redemption from the beginning, but at least I thought you were there because you wanted to be! Not because you had no choice.”
Alastor’s eyes are wide. This time, that luminous stare isn’t from madness so much as surprise.
“Because you didn’t have a choice, did you? You were here before that, weren’t you?” Charlie waves around at the endless nothing around her. “Nobody’d seen you in seven years, the same amount of time my mom disappeared. So she what, put you in her toolbox and fucked off to who knows where? And then I caused trouble, stirring things up, stupid Charlie who thinks Hell should be right and fair. And she thought, ‘Oh, no, can’t have that’ and pulled her Overlord out to chain him to her idiot daughter, so she didn’t fuck things up so badly with her dumb dream that she got herself killed?”
Alastor opens his mouth as if to interject. Charlie doesn’t let him, and steamrolls forward, clutching her hands against her head. “And of course you couldn’t say no, and even if you could, why would you, if you’d been here? I’d be desperate to get out. I already am. If Mom told me to go play with a stupid girl or I’d stay here, I’d pick the girl, too!”
“My dear—”
“Don’t call me that!” Charlie snaps, whirling around. She feels sick inside. Sick and twisted and confused. Similar to how she’d felt when Adam had revealed what Vaggie was; like how up was down, and nothing made sense, and a part of her world had just broken and shifted and could never go back.
Alastor looks like he’s been slapped, but his mouth snaps shut with a click of teeth. His smile is thin, his lips pressed together, only there because it has to be.
“I thought you were my friend, Alastor,” Charlie says. Her voice is angry, but there are hot tears rolling down her face now, and she doesn’t bother to scrub them away. “I thought a part of you cared. I thought you wanted to be there with us! Maybe not because of redemption, but I thought, I hoped, that maybe a little part of you at least wanted a place to feel safe and to make friends and maybe not have to be the Radio Demon all the time. I thought you liked us. I thought you liked me.”
Alastor only stares, stunned into silence.
“It’s stupid,” Charlie says. “Of course it is, looking back at it. It really is stupid, that I thought you actually gave a shit about any of us. I really thought you meant it, when you said you were proud of me. Hell, I know you did it just to piss my dad off, but I even did start to think of you like another father figure. You were the one that chose to be there when my mom and dad couldn’t bother.”
She turns away, stumbling down the root system of the strange tree, towards the blackness. “But I guess that was wrong. I guess you were right after all. It doesn’t matter how hard I try to make it be. Hell’s not right or fair.”
The stunned silence is broken by a crackling hiss of static, one she can feel in the air all around her. A moment later, there’s a jangle of chains, and the clack of boots on the root system behind her. “Charlie—where are you going?”
“Away from here.”
“You can’t. This is the only safe place—”
“That’s a lie,” Charlie throws over her shoulder. “If Mom put you and me here for safekeeping, then there’s nothing out there that can hurt me.”
“I’m not speaking of physical danger, Charlie,” Alastor says urgently. The footsteps and the jangle of chains get faster, closer. “There are dangers here you don’t understand—”
“Well, if Mom gave a damn, then she wouldn’t have put me here, would she?” Charlie snaps. She makes it to the edge of the root system, steps out onto Nothing. It’s solid enough to take her weight, but she doesn’t look downward too hard, doesn’t try to make sense of it with her eyes. It hurts her head too much to try. “If she didn’t want me to go wandering, then maybe she should have tied me to the tree, too.”
“Charlie, you can’t.” Claws latch around her wrist, tugging her back.
That’s enough to make the twisted, nauseated feelings of betrayal and embarrassment and shame burst out of her in a torrent. “Don’t touch me!” she snarls, whirling around and pulling her wrist from his hand with a snap. Her hand drags, and a moment later the scent of iron fills the air, and Alastor looks down at his torn sleeve and wrist in surprise.
Charlie’s surprised, too. She hadn’t even realized she’d been shifting to her more demonic aspects. She rarely does, unless she gets angry—but she’s truly angry now, and her form shows it. Her tail thrashes behind her, her horns poke through her disheveled hair, and the light her eyes cast is now as red as Alastor’s own. Her claws have elongated now as well, and blood drips from them where she’d torn his skin while freeing herself.
For a moment, Alastor’s eyes flick to dials, and his teeth gleam dangerously. For a moment, Charlie is suddenly afraid that she’ll have to fight the Radio Demon in this cursed place, and she doesn’t know how that will end. She probably has more raw power, but Alastor has experience, and a bloodlust that’s stronger than her rare bouts of anger.
But then his eyes flick back to normal with a blink, and he says, “My apologies, then. I won’t touch you again. But you cannot go out there on your own, Charlie.”
And the fact that the Radio Demon backed down from an obvious fight is enough proof even now of everything she’s said. “Even now, you have to try, don’t you?” Charlie asks bitterly. “My mom threw you away, but you still have to obey. You’ve got orders to protect me, but I bet you’ve got orders to not hurt me, too, right? Mom would want to keep an Overlord in check, just in case.”
Alastor doesn’t say anything.
Charlie backs away from him, a little further into the emptiness. She’s not at all surprised when he follows after, that midnight-violet chain of his soul slowly dragging across the ground from the tree after him.
“Even here, you’ve got to try and protect me. Those are the rules, aren’t they. That’s why you’ve been so nice to me. Why you told me not to keep pushing. Why you helped me walk here and got me taken care of.” She squeezes her eyes shut for a moment, and the tears spill over again, hot and fierce. “It’s never been because you actually cared, has it? It’s all orders. All deals. It’s always deals with you.”
“Charlie, whatever you may think of me or my mistress, I urge you to come back to the tree to disc—”
“No!” Charlie shakes her head violently. “I won’t. I’m done. I’m done listening to lies. I’m done with people pretending they care about me when they don’t.” More tears spill over her cheeks. “A real mother that cared wouldn’t stick her child in a fucked up place like this and call it love. And a real friend wouldn’t toy with their friends like this.”
She whirls, and marches off into the emptiness on her own.
“Charlie!” The crackling of static grows louder, more frantic. The clank of chains and the muffled footsteps over endless emptiness increase. “Charlie, please. Don’t go out there. It’s dangerous and foolish—”
“Oh, I know how much you think I’m a fool, Alastor,” Charlie snaps over her shoulder bitterly, as she marches away faster. Her tail is lashing. Her eyes burn from tears, and her head hurts from crying and from a hot anger she never really deals with. “Don’t worry. I don’t need your protection anymore. You don’t have to come back to the hotel. If my mom ever shows her face again, I’ll tell her that too.”
“Charlie, you don’t underst—glk!”
Despite herself, despite knowing it’s probably a trick, she looks over her shoulder anyway.
To her surprise, it’s not a trick at all. Alastor has reached the end of his leash. The chain is taut, and he strains against the collar, clawing at it with his fingers like he can free himself. One hand outstretches towards her vainly, but she’s already beyond his reach, outside the limits the chain permits.
She’s free of him.
She wishes she could feel good about that—about escaping the shadow haunting her that she hadn’t even known was. But all she can feel is that hot betrayal, that burning anger, and the bitterness of a friend lost.
“Charlie,” he hisses. This far out, away from the dim glow of the tree, the only things illuminating either of them are their eyes. His gleaming teeth are gone, his smile pressed thin, as away as he can put it. “Charlie, please come back. You don’t understand what you’re doing. Don’t do this to yourself, Charlie, please.”
“Bye, Alastor,” Charlie says in response. “I’ll find a way out of here on my own. If Mom can do it, and Dad, then I probably can, too. I hope you never have to put up with me again.”
“Charlie!”
But she turns away, and she doesn’t look back.
She hears him for a long time after that. He’s at the end of his chain, and he can’t come after her. That doesn’t stop him from calling her for a long, long time. He tries everything: her name, curses, threats, pleads, every twisted trick in his book.
She tunes him out, and ignores everything. And after a while, his voice grows dim, like a radio too far from its station. He’s a mere whisper, the tiniest crackle of static. Then nothing at all.
When she looks over shoulder, he’s gone. Not even a hint of him remains, left long behind.
For a long time after that, all she can see in her mind is the last sight of him, luminous red eyes at the end of a gleaming midnight-black collar, watching in failure as she walks away.
Chapter 4
Notes:
Apologies if I haven't responded to your comment on the last chapter yet! I normally try to answer them all when I'm actively posting a story. I'm currently also fostering some kittens, though, and they take up quite a lot of time! I'll definitely respond to comments when I can :)
In other news, welcome to the pain train!
Chapter Text
For a long time, Charlie just moves, riding on pure emotion.
She has so much of it, twisting her up inside like a sickness. Anger at being betrayed. Sorrow for losing a friend. Grief for losing her mother. Shame and embarrassment and guilt and self-loathing most of all, for falling for her mother’s tricks and Alastor’s lies. Awful for thinking these horrible things to begin with.
Frustration at herself, for even now worrying if they’ll be okay. Because despite it all, despite everything, Charlie isn’t a hateful person by nature. The hate and anger in her makes her feel sick to her stomach. More than anything else, she cares, and she loves people with all her heart. It’s awful to really see how easily her love has been taken advantage of, and she feels stupid knowing people she thought cared didn’t, and she never saw it.
But she’s ashamed of herself and her sympathy and love, too. Because even now, she can’t help but think I hope Mom made it out of that explosion okay, or I hope Alastor gets out of here eventually.
Logic says she shouldn’t care. They’d hurt her. They’d taken advantage of her. They’d lied to her, cheated her, used her. She’d spent her whole life trying to emulate her mother and live up to that dream of saving her people, helping them achieve a better afterlife, and her mother had never once believed in it. She’d spent six months trying to give Alastor the benefit of the doubt, standing up for him against everyone, even Vaggie and her father, trying to prove he could be better. And yet he’d never cared from the start.
She should, by all logic, give up on them. Throw them away. Free herself from their cruelty.
But that’s the cruelest trick of all that they’ve played: despite all of it, she can’t help but still love them anyway. Because they’re family. Because she wants so badly to believe that some small part of them does still care. Somewhere.
And maybe that’s what hurts the most. Knowing that she’s naive and stupid enough to want to keep giving them second chances, and third chances, and three hundredth chances. Because she loves them and she wants so badly for them to be able to change.
Well, Hell isn’t right or fair. Maybe it’s time to grow up. Be a little smarter about what she wants.
Except, every time she tries to carve out her heart, tear out that piece and throw it away, she can’t bring herself to. And then she gets angry at herself all over again, for being so weak and stupid and so, so easy to take advantage of, because she loves and trusts too much.
It’s enough to make her hate herself, and everything about her and her stupid, stupid dream.
Her feelings are all twisted up inside of her, so it’s no wonder they stay with her as long as they do. They whirl around in her head like a maelstrom, and when her emotions are so heightened, her demonic form stays. Her tail still lashes with all her pent up frustration and grief and hurt. Her horns still thrust up through her disheveled hair. If she holds her hand in front of herself in the darkness, the red light of her demon eyes reflects off her pale skin and glimmers on her long talons.
She doesn’t know how long all those emotions fuel her. All she knows is she keeps moving, moving, moving through the darkness and the nothing. Her only real thought is to get away, away, away from that tree and Alastor. He can’t reach her if he can’t get away from the tree. And if he can’t reach her, then her mother can’t either. After all, if she owns Alastor’s soul, anything he experiences belongs to her mother.
He’s as good as a security camera to Lilith Morningstar. Charlie can’t help but laugh bitterly at the comparison, and how much Alastor would probably hate it.
Emotions keep her going at a breakneck pace for a long time. She isn’t sure how long, since her phone’s calendar and clock still don’t work properly, and even the stopwatch and timer functions fluctuate wildly. The only thing she can use to keep track of time is counting seconds in her own head, and even that’s difficult when her thoughts are running a million miles an hour, running over those conversations, everything she’d learned, trying to think back to moments before, if there were hints, if there were clues—
She isn’t sure how long. But it’s long enough for her to get tired, and for her to eventually slow her pace and stop, standing still in the middle of nowhere.
She’s definitely away. Alastor could never find her out here. Probably not even if he was unchained, and she doesn’t think he could free himself without her mother permitting it. She should be safe from him, and he’s the only danger in this cursed place. No matter what he said, about other dangers.
But she’s exhausted. Her tears dried up a long time ago, but she’s thirsty and left with an awful headache after all that crying. She feels wrung out and sick, her own feelings and thoughts running her ragged. Her demonic features have retreated, without the energy to spare to maintain them anymore. Even her feet hurt, from walking for who knows how long.
Charlie sits down wearily on the ground to give herself a rest.
She’s safe for the moment, but she feels awful. She wishes she’d thought to grab one of those fruits before she stormed off, because she’s thirsty and hungry, and her throat is dry.
She wants her nice, soft bed. A glass of cool water. The night-light Dad made her when she was five and scared of the dark. Most of all, she wants Vaggie. Vaggie always knows what to do when things are difficult.
Charlie has never been this alone or this afraid before.
But she doesn’t have any of those things. And she won’t have any of those things until she gets out of this place.
And if this place is as impossible to get into and out of as Alastor says...well, she’s not sure if he’s lying or not. Maybe he was. Maybe it was a trick to get her to stay put, where Mom had put her for safekeeping. He worked for her, after all.
But if there is a way out, if anyone besides Mom and Dad have a chance to break through this place, it’s her. Their daughter. And if she’s going to get out, she needs to be able to concentrate. To do magic and understand things better than she ever has before.
“I need to sleep,” Charlie says to herself. Out loud, because the silence is oppressing, and now that she’s not moving, her heels aren’t clacking and her tail isn’t snapping, she can feel it closing in around her. “I need to rest, after all that. Get refreshed. A good night’s sleep always fixes everything, right? Things will be better in the morning.”
Charlie hopes she’s not lying to herself. But she also realizes she’s gotten pretty good at doing that to herself lately, so she’s not taking any bets.
She sighs, laying down on her side and curling up in a fetal position to try and get some rest. It’s colder out here than she’d realized, and the not-quite-ground isn’t hard, exactly, because it’s not anything, but it’s definitely not comfortable. Still, she does her best. She pillows her long hair beneath herself, wraps her arms around herself, and hugs herself as she tries to go to sleep.
Everything will be better in the morning.
Charlie wakes to nothing.
Absolute darkness. Absolute silence. No smells, no textures, no temperatures, nothing, nothing, nothing. It’s hard to tell if she’s even opened her eyes, or if she’s really awake.
It doesn’t make her feel at all refreshed. Not in her head, at least.
But she does feel physically a little rested. Or at least, her feet don’t hurt, and she’s not dragging from exhaustion. The rest of her isn’t so lucky. Her body aches, from sleeping poorly on a strange surface, and her head still aches, and her throat is still dry, and she’s still thirsty and hungry.
But at least she can move. And at least the storm of emotions from earlier has settled a little, leaving her dull and numb but at least able to ignore it, for now.
“Better than nothing,” she says out loud, just to fill the silence. It really does feel pressing, an ever growing pressure on her whole body and being, and her voice is the only thing she has to break it. “Alright, Charlie. Think, think, think. What do we have to do to get out of here?”
Magic is the most obvious answer. Mom must have used some kind of spell to open a door here, one that had sealed behind her.
The question is, what kind of spell is needed? There are all kinds of spells that open doors or portals to places and planes, some more powerful than others. Charlie has a little one Dad taught her years and years ago that she uses to store small things in a pocket reality so she doesn’t have to carry them with her, like her fliers and posters. Some let people shift location, like her Dad’s portal circles. Some are very rare and very complex, and allow people to travel to other planes entirely, like Earth or Heaven. Those ones are usually kept under lock and key, and require Hellish legal approval to even be able to use them, and only for special and approved situations.
Charlie doesn’t know what this place is. Alastor kept calling it Nothing, and there’s certainly nothing out here around her; no light, sound, temperature, or sensation of any kind. Not even Time seems to exist here. So if Charlie had to guess, she would assume this is some kind of plane besides Hell, Heaven, or Earth, because she’s pretty sure all of those places couldn’t contain a space where there was nothing at all.
But that does beg the question: if it’s another plane of existence, and those spells are so heavily guarded, how did Mom get here? Why does she have access to a place like this?
“Well, she is the Queen of Hell,” Charlie mumbles out loud, chewing on a thumbnail. “I guess she could get around any of the legal stuff, if the spell had to be approved…”
But no. She’s probably giving her mother too much credit, even now. “Stupid, Charlie,” she hisses at herself. “You already know she lies, and that she’s not the same person you always thought she was. She’s the kind of person who locks her daughter in prison for disagreeing. Why would she follow rules?”
Assuming this was even a known spell. Assuming Mom hadn’t found her way here on her own, and kept it a secret. Charlie’s never heard Dad talk about a place like this before. And even if people like Alastor—or other souls, fuck, Charlie is only just now realizing Alastor probably isn’t the only one and that’s horrible—even if other souls had been stored here, it would be simple enough to order them to never speak of it. If Alastor was told to keep his mouth shut, he never could have talked about this place outside, even if Charlie knew exactly what questions to ask him directly.
“Okay,” Charlie mutters. “Safest to assume that this isn’t an official or known spell, then. If I go by the assumption this is Mom’s secret space, that should work for now.”
Not that it helps Charlie much, in the end. Because if she’s honest with herself, her sorcery is a bit...well, lacking.
She’d learned some spells, of course. Fire came to her naturally, and she loved fireworks and light spells. Anything that made the world prettier, really. But when it came to the grittier spells, the rituals and sacrifices and precise arrays and mathematical equations, well, she’s never had much of a head for that sort of thing. It’s all so heavy and dark. The first time she’d seen a sacrificial lamb slaughtered for one of Dad’s rituals, she’d cried for days over the cute fluffy creature getting killed.
Dad had tried to teach her a different way instead, guiding her through angelic incantations and galdr that were just as much her birthright as the demonic ones of Hell. Those felt better in her heart, but she couldn’t really do them without Dad’s help. She had angelic blood, but it was fallen angelic blood, and her demonic aspects tended to assume dominance. They required more song and prayer and faith, all things she had in abundance, but they also required holy light, and she was sort of the antithesis of that. Without Dad’s guiding hand, those spells fell flat.
All to say that while Charlie has the basic groundwork for Hellish spellcraft, she’s barely an apprentice, much less a master. Even most Goetian trainees could probably run circles around her when it came to magic.
“Okay,” she mutters. “When I get out of here, I’m sitting down with Dad, and I’m going to do a lot more magic study. I think maybe it’s important to know going forward.”
That’s a promise she intends to keep. Assuming she does get out of here.
For now, she does what she can. She starts by applying the basic premise of her storage-portal spell. She can feel the thinness of the world next to her little pocket reality, and usually it’s as easy as feeling for the door with her magic and opening it.
But she can’t even open her little storage spell here. She can’t feel its presence, and when she reaches out with her fingers for the invisible, spiderweb-thin lines of a hole in reality, she can’t find them. Not even her pocket-spell works in Nothing.
It doesn’t help when she tries to apply it to this place either. She feels all around her, but she can’t find anything resembling a metaphysical wall or door to a different world. Nothing like the hole her mother had made. No tears in reality. Nothing, nothing, nothing at all.
“Maybe it’s just not the right place,” Charlie mumbles.
After all, Mom hadn’t spat her out at the foot of the tree itself. And Dad said there were places that were thinner between planes, places where humans could find themselves in other worlds, places that let clever demons scurry naturally to Earth without the special spells and legal permissions. Maybe the Nothing was so thick here that there was only enough specks of...of Somethings to allow for a door in a few places.
She just has to find the right space. That’s all.
Determined, she stumbles to her feet. Her hooves don’t ache now, after having some time to rest, but there is a dull throb in her whole body from sleeping poorly. Not to mention her head still aches from before.
But she does her best to ignore it, and instead decides to keep moving. The question is, what direction?
“Maybe some light,” Charlie mutters. She holds out her hand, and several sparks shoot out like fireworks. It’s one of her favorite spells, and one of the first ones she’d ever successfully learned from Dad. She could do all kinds of pretty colors and shapes, make them move and dance if she put concentration into it. For now, she keeps it basic, because she doesn’t want to waste more energy than she has.
It turns out to be a smart choice. The sparks leap from her hands, but they’re dull. Their light barely casts half as far as it should, even in a pitch black place like this; it’s like the color and life are swallowed by the Nothing. She barely lights up anything around her, and what she does illuminates...well, nothing.
Even that simple spell leaves her exhausted. Magic takes energy, and she doesn’t have much to begin with. The strongest casters and the best Goetians could draw magic from Hell itself, in the weave of the leylines and Seven Rings, and that gives their spells near infinite levels of power that the caster merely has to channel and shape. But here there isn’t anything to draw from but herself. Oh, she should have grabbed some of those fruits before she left…
Well, no point being angry at herself about it now. She doesn’t even know how to get back to the tree at this point even if she tried. All she can do is just go, and try to find a way out.
Charlie picks a direction at random, and starts marching that way.
She’s not sure if she’s going in the right direction. She can’t see more than six inches in front of her face, and even that is only because her eyes glow. She walks cautiously, afraid that she might trip and fall over something she can’t see in front of her.
Then again, tripping and falling would imply there’s something out here to find at all. Maybe it’d be worth a stubbed hoof and scraped palms.
Well, as long as she doesn’t fall into some...abyss of Nothing, at least. Which is a terrifying thought that she tries to keep as far away as possible.
And as she walks, she tries to keep her senses open, feeling about for those thin places where she might be able to rip a hole from this place back home. Or any place that isn’t here, honestly. Any of the Rings of Hell would do. On Earth she could always try to track down one of Uncle Ozzie’s succubi to help her get home. Even Heaven would be better than this place; at least Emily would be kind enough to help her get back to Hell.
But she doesn’t find anything. Everything wherever she is feels the same: like nothing at all. She walks and walks and walks until her hooves hurt all over again, and her legs and hips are sore, and her head hangs from exhaustion, and she doesn’t find any place through which she can escape.
She’s tired, and the longer she walks, the smaller and more insignificant this place makes her feel. The Nothing presses in everywhere. It’s so dark that the only things she can see are her own hands in front of her face. There’s no noise at all beyond her own breath and footsteps. No wind, no rain, no warmth of the sun. No warmth or cold at all. Just endless, endless emptiness.
It’s scary. It gets scarier with each passing minute, even if minutes don’t really exist here. For a while, Charlie tries to keep talking to herself, walking herself through her plans. When her plans increasingly fall flat, she tries to sing to herself instead, to keep her mood up. But her voice doesn’t carry very far, and even the happiest songs she can think of are dull and pressed down by the Nothing. After a while, her throat is too dry and hurts too much to try and keep it up, and her voice cracks and she coughs more and more.
I wish I had a drink, she wants to say out loud, but her voice isn’t strong enough to do so. Or one of those fruits. Or anything at all.
But of course, nothing happens. What had Alastor said? If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. What a weird phrase, and yet she can’t help but see the wisdom in it now. Wishing isn’t doing a damn thing for her.
She walks and searches until she can’t anymore, aimless, unsure if she’s even walking straight or if at some point things have changed. There’s no baseline, no landmarks, out here in the Nothing. She walks until she doesn’t have the strength to walk anymore, and then she collapses and falls into another exhausted, lonely sleep.
Charlie’s not sure she’s awake until she starts thinking.
It’s hard to tell, because awake or asleep, she’s starting to realize she’s in a damn nightmare.
There’s no sound but her own breath, her own heartbeat. No light but the cast of her own eyes, dim and useless. No touch, no sensation, no anything.
She never realized before how important everything was. Even the little things. Not until none of it was left.
She misses something. Even the little things.
She tries to talk to herself. Psych herself up for trying again. She has to find a way out of here. She can’t live like this.
But her voice still hurts, her throat and tongue dry and parched. Her head pounds, an awful, throbbing thing behind her eyes and all through her skull. Every part of her body aches from who knows how long walking. Her stomach rumbles, carving her up from the inside out from sheer hunger.
She wants to cry, but even that is useless. She doesn’t have enough liquid left in her for tears.
She wants to curl up in a ball and lay there until someone finds her. But there’s nothing out here, and who would ever be able to find her? Alastor couldn’t follow. Who knows if Mom even cares.
No. No, Charlie is on her own, and she has to get herself out of this. She drags herself to her feet and wearily stumbles onward, exhausted but determined.
No being a princess in distress. She needs to find her way back. To Vaggie. To Dad. To Angel Dust, and Husk, and Niffty, and Cherri Bomb, and all the rest of the friends she’s made along the way. She has to get back to her dream, and the Hotel, and making things better.
Assuming anyone wanted that.
Assuming anyone wanted her.
Those are horrible things to think. Charlie hates that those things even come to mind at all.
And yet…
And yet, she’s starting to realize, ever since Mom showed up at the Hazbin Hotel, that she really is a fool. That she trusted so many people and believed them so much when there had been nothing but lies. Mom never believed in her goal and threw her away into nothing. Alastor never wanted to be at the Hotel to begin with.
What if…
What if everything else is lies, too?
After all, if they cared, if they loved her, really loved her, then where are they? She doesn’t know how long it’s been, but it’s been long enough for her to walk for ages, and sleep at least twice. Surely they have to know she’s gone by now.
Were they even looking for her?
Or was she just hoping for goodness and love from people where it never had been?
Vaggie...Vaggie said there would be no more lies between them. And Charlie believed it! But, but maybe Vaggie just knew how easy it was to lie to Charlie, that she’d keep getting second chances. Maybe she just wanted a ticket back to Heaven. Maybe Charlie’s Hotel project is falling apart enough that she’s just not worth it anymore.
Dad...Dad loved her. She knows Dad loved her. They’d sung that song together! I’m grateful you’re my daughter more than anything—he’d said that! He had!
But maybe he didn’t mean it. Father of Lies was one of his titles, and wouldn’t it be so ironic if it was literal for her? He hadn’t bothered to call her for years and years. He thought her project was stupid. Maybe he didn’t care. Because if he cared, he could smash his way into Nothing, he’s the strongest person Charlie’s ever seen, he’s the King of fucking Hell.
But maybe she wasn’t worth it. Maybe he never bothered to look. Maybe he just hadn’t noticed, because she’d been out of his life so long, and what was a few more days?
No. These are horrible thoughts! It’s wrong, wrong, wrong. Vaggie loves her. Dad loves her. She knows they do!
But Mom loved you too, an insidious little voice in Charlie’s head says. You knew she loved you, just like you know Vaggie loves you. Just like you know Dad loves you. She loved you so much, you thought, and she still spit on your dream and locked you away for it.
“Stop it,” Charlie whimpers. Her voice is cracked and painful and dry. She covers her ears with her hands, even though she’s pretty sure the voice isn’t outside, it’s in. “Stop it, it’s—they love me. They do.”
Then where are they? Where are they now if they love you?
Not here. Nobody’s here. Nothing’s here. You’re alone, alone, alone.
“I’m not,” Charlie yells. “S-shut up!”
Talking to yourself, that insidious little voice says. You’re just as crazy as Alastor.
“I’m not. I’m not! Leave me alone!”
I’m not here. Nothing’s here. Nothing exists. It’s all in your head.
“Leave me alone,” Charlie coughs. “I hate you. Stop being mean.”
But the little voice, those little thoughts, get progressively larger and darker and more solid the longer she trudges aimlessly. It gets harder to concentrate on trying to find spaces in the world to slip through, because fighting those thoughts takes up more and more of her focus.
Vaggie never loved her. Charlie was just a ticket to Heaven, and a guaranteed safe space until she could escape Hell.
Dad never cared. He’d stopped interacting years ago. She was the one who forced it, and he’d given up the moment he could.
Angel Dust didn’t care. He was only using the Hotel for a rent-free place to crash, anyway.
Pentious hadn’t stayed because he’d wanted to. He’d done it because the alternative was being killed, and what kind of choice was that?
Husk and Niffty never wanted to be at the Hotel either. Alastor owned them, and Alastor was forced here, so they were, too.
Cherri Bomb wouldn’t even stay. She still didn’t believe, even after all that.
And so many others. Every voice on the television, news reports, social media outlets, that ever called her dream stupid. Called her stupid. Silly, naive, idiot girl who thinks Redemption is possible or even wanted by Sinners who would rather spend their afterlives fucking and fighting.
Foolish. Dumb. Too innocent. An easy mark. What a boring, pointless princess of Hell.
Charlie tries to drown out the voice with her own songs. She tries. But her voice is so dry, and everything hurts so much, and it’s hard to feel inspired to sing about a happy day in Hell or cute things or good times when she’s bombarded on all sides by the idiocy of it all. Her voice cracks and grows weak, and the insidious voice inside gets stronger.
Leave me alone, she whimpers in her head. I don’t want to think like this. These things are horrible.
But those awful thoughts keep spinning in her head. And they’re terrible, and the logic behind them is cruel, but it isn’t wrong.
She’s been fooled so many times before. Maybe Mom was right about her. Maybe she had no idea what she was doing. How much she was fucking up, for trying to believe in an idealized, oversimplified dream.
She crashes to her knees with a dry sob. “I get it!” she gasps, her voice weak and cracking. “I get it! I’m stupid, I fucked up! Just...just leave me alone!”
Are you really sure you want that? To be alone, out here, in the Nothing? You’re the only thing you have left. Better cruel thoughts than Nothing at all, right?
Charlie covers her head, squeezes her eyes shut, and screams. No words, no rebuttals, no desperate pleas. Just raw emotion, frustration and shame and self-loathing and horror, thrumming through with a bit of magic. Fire bursts out of her with her outpouring of emotion, and her demonic aspects slither out of her for just a moment; her tail lashes, her horns burst free, her claws dig into her skull as they elongate. She screams, and screams, and screams, and at last everything has drained out of her and she collapses onto her side with another dry sob.
She can taste blood on her teeth. She’d screamed so much she’d worn her throat raw. So loud her ears should be ringing. But the Nothing all around her had muffled her shrieks, absorbed it all, distilled it straight back into the absence of anything.
No one would hear her cries. No one would come to save her. Even if anyone cared, no one could find her in the Nothing she’s surrounded by.
She cries, tearless and raw, until she falls asleep. Every second of it hurts, inside and out.
“Charlie.”
Go away. I’m so tired. I don’t want to get up.
“Charlie. Hun. You can’t stay sleeping. You have to move.”
Not now, Vaggie. I feel awful—
Vaggie.
“Vaggie!” Charlie yelps, voice hoarse and painful, as she bolts upright.
She gasps immediately at the aches that run through her whole body. Every part of her hurts: her head, her side and back from sleeping poorly, her legs and feet from walking. Her heart and her soul, from the awful dreams and worse waking moments. Every part of her is weak, so much that she immediately collapses back to the ground when her arms give out underneath her.
But she forces herself upright again with a spark of hope, because she swears she’d heard—
“That’s it. Get up.”
“Vaggie!” Charlie makes it to sitting upright on her knees, and looks around wildly for her girlfriend. Even the tiniest of movements send stabbing aches through her head, but oh, the pain is worth it when she sees Vaggie to her left.
Vaggie is here. Vaggie is here.
“Vaggie!” Charlie sobs in relief. “Vaggie, how did you get here? How did you find me out here? It’s so dark—”
“It wasn’t that hard,” Vaggie says with a scoff. “You’re just not tough enough for this place, babe.”
Charlie winces at that. But Vaggie’s probably not wrong. Of the two of them, Vaggie really is tougher, better at fighting, better at surviving.
Although Charlie is a little surprised she could see so well in this darkness. Vaggie doesn’t have very good darkvision; her eye doesn’t glow, and it isn’t adjusted for seeing in dim lighting. Charlie hadn’t learned until very recently that it was because she was an angel, specifically. Besides Charlie’s father, who had been altered during his Fall, none of them were really designed for low lighting. It was one of the reasons the Exorcists wore those strange masks—to better handle the darkness of Hell.
Though, come to think of it…Vaggie doesn’t seem to be hampered by the Nothing around them at all. She’s standing fifteen feet away, but Charlie can see her clearly, even when it’s difficult to see her own hands in front of her face. She can hear her clearly too, since the Nothing isn’t muffling her voice.
It must be an angel thing, Charlie decides. Dad always glowed in dim lighting, and not just his eyes. He’d been Charlie’s own personal night-light when she was very young and the dark scared her. Maybe Nothing had no effect on angels, or at least it didn’t affect them like demons.
Whatever the case, Charlie’s never been so happy to see her. She staggers to her feet, wincing at the pins and needles feeling running down her legs and hooves, and stumbles towards Vaggie. “I’m so, so glad to see you here—”
“Of course you are,” Vaggie scoffs. “You want me to bail you out again, don’t you?”
“I-I’m...I’m not sure what you mean?” Charlie asks, on edge immediately from Vaggie’s tone. Vaggie sounds mad at her. She’s not sure why, but maybe Vaggie had just been upset by Charlie missing. She did sometimes have a temper, but they were working on that together. “Could you explain to me?”
Vaggie crosses her arms. Charlie wants to reach out and take her hands, but she must have misjudged the distance between them. More than fifteen feet, since she’s staggered forward several steps, and Vaggie’s not getting any closer.
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m—I’m not sure I do, but I really want to understand, if you could explain—”
Vaggie huffs. “You want the point of me to be protecting you, don’t you? You always get yourself into danger.”
“That’s not—that’s not true at all!” Charlie says, aghast. “There’s no point to people. You’re so important to me, Vaggie! You’re my girlfriend. I love you!”
Vaggie takes a step back as Charlie stumbles towards her. “Yeah, well. Maybe I’m tired of protecting someone as gullible as you. You’re always getting yourself into trouble because you believe things so much. It’s so much work.”
Charlie breathes in sharply. Her throat hurts, from talking and from being so dry, but now it hurts because it feels tight and lumpy too. Her eyes burn, but she doesn’t have anything in her for tears. “I-I’m sorry,” Charlie stammers. “I don’t mean to be a burden—”
“Well, you are.”
“I’m trying to be better,” Charlie stammers. “I’m learning. Can we talk about this?” She holds out her hands for Vaggie, desperate for contact. She wants to be held. She wants to feel another person’s warmth. She wants to be safe in Vaggie’s arms, and know she doesn’t have to worry.
Except, was that cruel to want? If it put so much burden on Vaggie’s shoulders? If she’s so stupid and needs protecting all the time?
But surely this is an exception? She’s hurting so badly, she just—she needs help, and she can be better later—just, please, Vaggie—
But Vaggie recoils like Charlie’s toxic when Charlie holds her hands out to her. And she’s still not getting any closer. Charlie really must be feeling ill, because she hadn’t realized how badly she’d misjudged the distance, no matter how clear Vaggie looks.
“I’m done talking,” Vaggie says. “I’m done pretending. I thought you’d be smart enough to see through the lies eventually, but you’re too stupid for even that.”
The lump in Charlie’s throat grows thicker. It’s hard to speak. “I’m—Vaggie, that hurts—”
“Good. It’s probably the only way you’ll learn.” Vaggie turns her back on Charlie, and starts to walk away. “Probably best that you stay here. You can’t mess anything up this way.”
“Vaggie, wait—”
Charlie’s staggering, coltish steps speed up as she throws herself into an ungainly run, trying to catch up with Vaggie. But even with her increased speed, stumbling and pathetic as it is, she can’t seem to catch up. Vaggie is still able to outpace her, walking away without looking back.
“Vaggie!” Charlie wails. “Vaggie, wait, please—please don’t leave me here!”
But Vaggie still doesn’t look back. When Charlie stumbles to the ground, falling to her knees with a yelp of pain, she doesn’t turn around. And when Charlie squeezes her eyes shut for just a second to whimper at her bruised knees and looks up again, Vaggie’s gone—vanished into the gloom.
“Vaggie! Wait! Please, we can talk about this! Come back!”
Charlie hauls herself to her feet again and staggers in Vaggie’s direction as fast as she can. But no matter how long she stumble-runs, she can’t seem to close the distance. She doesn’t see Vaggie again, no matter how hard she strains to pierce through the darkness. She calls until she can’t anymore, because her throat is closed up and dry and painful.
Vaggie never comes back for her. No matter how long she walks.
She never thought she could hurt so badly inside. Feel so much, so painfully. And yet have no tears left to let it all out.
Could Vaggie really feel that way about her? Had she always been such a burden? She knew she was optimistic sometimes, sure, and Vaggie was much more pragmatic, but that’s why they worked together so well. At least, Charlie had thought that.
She never knew she caused Vaggie so many problems.
Her eyes are burning, but she keeps moving forward. If she can just catch Vaggie—if she can just apologize, just explain—maybe, maybe at least, they could part without Vaggie being so angry—
She doesn’t want Vaggie to leave her at all, but if she’s happier that way—then—
“Aw, c’mon, little lady. Why the frown?”
Charlie whips around in shock, nearly tripping over her own heels as she catches sight of her father to her right.
That’s her dad. Bright and brilliant as ever, his whites and light pinks standing out almost blindingly in the darkness of Nothing. His eyes gleam gold, and his whole body glows a brilliant white, and the reds of his feathers (why are his wings out?) are a sharp, bloody color in the light. But his smile is fond, and he waves to her when she locks eyes with him.
“Dad?” she whimpers.
“That’s me!”
She hasn’t felt such absolute relief since she was six and saw her first ever Extermination out the palace windows. She wasn’t supposed to open them, but she’d been curious what all the fuss was about. She’d heard the screams of the dying, even so far out. Saw that glowing portal in the air, and the dark shapes winging out of it. Smelled the fire and smoke and iron on the air, even so far away.
Dad had found her sobbing, curled up in a closet by the window, doing her best to hide and scared to death it would happen to her next. But he’d held her close and rocked her and sang to her and promised her that she would always be safe from that. They would never come for her. They weren’t allowed, and if they tried, he’d protect her. He would always come for her when she needed it, because she was his little girl, and he loved her more than anything. He’d squeezed her tightly and stroked her hair and promised her that over and over, and she’d never felt more safe and protected then at that moment.
It’s a very different terror she faces now, but she’s relieved for her father all the same. He’ll fix it. He’ll protect her. He’ll save her.
“Dad,” she sobs, stumbling towards him blindly, squeezing her eyes shut as she holds out her arms for him. “Daddy, I want to go home, please, please get me out of here—”
But she doesn’t fall into her father’s arms like she wants so badly. Instead she nearly falls on her face when she collapses forward, barely catching herself on her hands just in time. And when she gasps in pain and looks around for him, Dad isn’t there anymore. He’s nowhere to be seen.
“I’m not surprised, Sweetheart.”
Charlie whips her head around. Dad is ten feet behind her now, calm as ever, wearing the same fond look as before. Fond and a little smug, too, like when the Hotel had been attacked and he’d told her all about how awful Sinners were.
“I did try to warn you,” Dad says, waving his finger like he’s lecturing her. “I warned you Heaven didn’t listen. I tried to tell you that you wouldn’t make a difference.”
“But—but I did change things,” Charlie stammers, as she hauls herself to her feet again. “I did! Emily didn’t even know what was happening! And we fought back an Extermination!”
“And what good did that do you, Char-Char?” Dad asks. “All it got you was here.”
“It’s—that’s not—I didn’t even know this was possible,” Charlie says. “Dad, please. Can we just...leave? I’m so...I’m so tired. Can we talk after?”
“Why talk at all? You obviously didn’t want to listen to me to begin with.”
“But you...you agreed!” Charlie spreads her arms wide in supplication. “You agreed to help me! You said I changed your mind! You said it was worth helping our people!”
“Our people? Charlie, our people are awful. Look at them. Do you see any of them here trying to help you?”
“I...I…”
But he’s not wrong. Nobody had come for her. Nobody but...but Vaggie, and Dad, and...and clearly, they were upset with her, and she could fix it if she could just think, but she’s so tired and scared and hurting and...and…
Dad shakes his head. His wings whip him back away from her gracefully as she takes a step towards him again. “No, Sweetheart. All of this was pointless. I never should have set up that meeting for you. I never should have picked up that call. I should have known this was pointless from the beginning.”
“Th-that’s...that’s not true! Dad, please, I’m so glad you’re back in my life, I want you to be, please—”
He smiles knowingly. “Because you want the King of Hell to bust you out of the Nothing, huh? Big fancy Dad is only useful for favors, is that it?”
“That’s not it! That’s never been it! I’ve never asked you for much, I just want you to be my dad—please, please, I’m so scared here, please, I want to go home—”
But her Dad shakes his head. “Sorry, Char-Char. It doesn’t seem to matter how I warn you. You’ve got a stubborn streak just like your mom, and you don’t listen to reason. You know, the parenting books say at some point, you just gotta let your kids make mistakes and learn their way.”
He takes a step back.
Charlie’s eyes widen in a panic. “Don’t—please don’t leave! Please!”
“Maybe I’ll come back when you’ve grown up a bit, Sweetie,” Dad says, with a jaunty little wave. “Until then, think about what I said, okay? Good luck, kiddo!”
“Dad, wait!”
But it’s too late. By the time Charlie reaches him, he’s already vanished in a swirl of red and gold sparks, and the light goes with him.
She staggers to a halt with a dry sob. “Please,” she tries to yell, but she doesn’t have the voice or the strength anymore. “Please, please don’t leave me here, please, come back—”
But he doesn’t come back for her. Just like Mom.
“Daddy,” she whimpers piteously, crashing to her knees. “Why...I thought—”
“Charlie! Help!”
Charlie doesn’t think she has much strength in her left to move until she hears that terrified cry. But somehow she manages to stagger to her feet, and take off in the direction of the shout of panic.
“Where the Hell is she?”
“Charlie, hurry—argh!”
Cherri Bomb. Angel Dust. Charlie pushes herself as fast as she can, stumbling and wobbling blindly on aching hooves and heels not made for nearly so much running. “I’m coming!” she tries to yell, except her voice is dead and gone by now, and even if it wasn’t dry and nearly silent, her panting, exhausted breaths would keep her from saying anything at all.
What could be happening? Nothing dangerous was supposed to be out here. Alastor had said—
But Alastor was a liar—
But what if he wasn’t, about this?
But who can she even trust anymore?
“Charlie, please—”
Angel Dust cuts off with a scream and a wet, ripping splat. Charlie’s stomach rolls, and even if there’s nothing in her stomach, she has a sudden, awful feeling she’s going to be sick even as she runs.
Cherri Bomb screeches, a low, agonized wail. “Angie! Angie, no!” And angrier, more accusing, “Stupid bitch, you were supposed to protect him! You were supposed to protect—”
And she too, cuts off with a wet splat and a high, cold scream.
“No!” Charlie gasps. “No, no, no, I’m coming, I’m coming—”
But no matter how much she rushes in the direction of the screams, staggering blind, she can’t find them. She’s so terrified she’s going to trip over a pair of broken, torn corpses, but she never does. She swears she smells blood, but she never finds its source. She can’t see anything in this pitch blackness, this Nothing.
Her fault. Her fault. They wouldn’t have come here if not for her. Dad—Dad must have opened a way in, and they’d come through to find her, and gotten lost out here in the Nothing. It’s the only thing that makes sense, and now something else is out here with them, and Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb had—it’s not fair, Angel had been doing so well, and it’s all her fault—
“It is all your fault,” Husk groans.
Charlie whirls. She can hear him, hear his rough, haggard breathing, his low groan of pain. A faint whimper near his direction that sounds like Niffty, but a helpless, hurting Niffty that she’s never ever heard before. Niffty likes pain, and Husk—Husk is—
“’m here,” he rasps. His voice bubbles wetly, and he makes another low moan. “Mistress ordered...Boss dragged us here...s’cause’ve you...you did this…”
“Husk,” Charlie whispers. “Are you hurt? Keep talking—I can find you, I can help, I just have to find you—” She stumbles blindly in his direction, arms out and flailing, searching helplessly.
“Can’t help. Break every...thing...ffffuck you. Wish I never...met ya…”
Silence. Silence. Silence. “Husk!” Charlie tries to yell. Fails. “Husk, just keep talking, just—just keep—I’ll help, I can—”
But he says nothing. Nothing at all, absolute silence, absolute nothing, nothing’s out here at all—
—something is. Something had to be. What had hurt him? Was it the thing that got Angel? Cherri? Was it coming for her next? Was it—could she—
She can’t fight back. She’s too weak. Broken. Useless. When it comes for her...there’s nothing she can do, nothing, nothing—
She doesn’t hear it moving. There’s breathing in the dark, she thinks, maybe. She’s not sure. The silence is so loud. The dark is so bright. Everything hurts, inside and out.
She doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t think she can fight.
This is it. It’s over.
She’s failed.
She crashes to her knees one last time. Wraps her arms around herself in a pathetic, poor imitation of a hug. It doesn’t make her feel safe, or warm, or comforted, but she’s all she has, just like that little voice had said.
She isn’t enough. She’s so, so lonely.
She squeezes her eyes shut. It doesn’t make a difference anyway. She can’t see in the Nothing. Hear in the Nothing. Feel in the Nothing. Everything is Nothing, and so is she, and it had taken her this long to realize it.
She curls forward, fetal and trembling. Forehead pressed against nothing, bowing to nothing. Nothing, Nothing, Nothing, NOTHING, N O T H I N G.
And then—
There’s Something.
Because that’s when she hears the Song.
Chapter 5
Notes:
Every long fic I write has an inspiration scene that kicks off the whole rest of the fic.
This chapter is that inspiration scene.
Here's some mood music to accompany it:
And the spirits fly away, yet we wanted them to stay,
Tell us why we look outside, when it's all inside our minds?
Chapter Text
The Song is so quiet that at first, Charlie doesn’t even notice it.
But it’s the fact that it is quiet that ultimately catches her attention. Because it doesn’t make sense. Everyone else that she’s been chasing, they’ve been so loud, so easy to hear. All the better to absorb their cruel words as they tell her how useless and unwanted she is, when those painful truths spill from their lips and into her heart.
I’m tired of protecting someone as gullible as you.
I never should have picked up that call.
You were supposed to protect us.
I wish I never met you.
They’re hard words, burned into her mind like a fire spell gone awry. Loud and clear and sharp and cruel and painful.
So the Song’s near-quiet in the Nothing is enough to catch her attention, precisely because it isn’t loud at all.
She picks her head up in confusion. It’s definitely a song. There’s a voice, but no music. She can’t quite pick out the words yet, it’s too soft and muffled, Something struggling to exist through the Nothing. But there’s an undeniable melody—something steady and soothing and haunting all in one. A lullaby, perhaps. Or an old folk song. One she’s never heard before.
And Charlie is...exhausted. Down to her bones. Down to her soul. She’s so, so tired of chasing voices in the darkness, only to be led to cruelty and emptiness.
But...something about this little melody is enticing. It speaks to Charlie’s heart in a way nothing and no one else had so far. Music has always been in her blood since she was a baby. Dad used to sing to her in her cradle.
(Had he still cared back then?)
She can’t deny the call. Like a siren song, the lure of melody and voice, the tiniest hook of Something in the Nothing. It might lead to pain, and it might lead to suffering, but...but what did it matter? She can’t get any lower than this.
Exhausted, feet dragging, eyes barely staying open, Charlie nevertheless manages to push herself to her feet and stumble after the Song.
She doesn’t move fast. Each weary, dragging, painful step takes everything out of her, every last bit of her momentum. It’s so, so hard to keep moving forward. To not just collapse where she is and let the Nothing take her.
But the melody drives her onward, and soon enough, the muddled, senseless voice becomes words in the Song, and she can start to make out the call.
Nothing lives and Something dies
Spins a world of tricks and lies
A soul alone and wanting cries—
there’s oh, so much to fear
Charlie blinks. The words feel...familiar. The Singer understands the Nothing and the Something intimately; she can tell from the way the voice spins the Song. It feels like a message. A message to her, snuck to her through the Nothing, from someone who understands.
She staggers forward further, a little more life and energy to her movement. It’s like the Song invigorates her, spurs her forward. Understanding, connection—she wants it so badly, and the Song holds hints of it.
A wandering spirit, empty, lost
Pay the price and reap the cost
Emptiness and cruelty crossed,
And nothing yet seems clear
She wants to cry, as the words get louder, clearer. Still muffled by the Nothing, but with enough strength behind the voice that the Song fights its way through anyway. She can feel traces of emotion now in the notes, and sympathy in the words. The Song knows her. It’s like the Singer has reached out to her and told her, I know what you’re going through, right now. And I understand. And I’m here with you.
“Please,” Charlie whimpers. Her voice is nearly silent. She’s not strong enough to call out to the Singer. She still can’t see them, not in this pitch blackness. But with her last shred of hope and strength, she calls out to them anyway. “Please. Help me.”
And as if in answer, the Song continues.
Lies and slander weave together
Bind you like the cruelest tether
But it needn’t be forever—
If this song draws near.
Charlie can’t help but sob, dry and painful, at the words. It needn’t be forever. This—all this—it can stop. This Nothing, this suffering, this emptiness and exhaustion and pain, it can stop.
She stumbles towards the Song. It’s getting louder now, stronger despite the Nothing trying to smother it. The voice is more melodic now, easier to make out. Familiar. Strange inflections, but not unpleasant. A strange buzzing to the voice. And a deep hum that she can feel now, on her skin and in her chest, almost in the air itself. Vibrating, like it’s carving through the Nothing to blaze a path for the Song.
“I’m coming,” Charlie whispers. “I’m coming. Please, please don’t leave me alone. Please don’t stop singing…”
And the Singer doesn’t. The Song guides her, haunting and wise, beckoning her ever closer to the voice and to the end of the suffering.
Trace these words where darkness ends
Ignore the lies—they aren't your friends
Back to places light begins—
I'll keep you safe, my dear.
And out of the Nothing, out of the pitch-blackness of this cruel, unforgiving place, Something appears.
It doesn’t appear quickly. Not like Dad or Vaggie had. Just like the Song is quiet and muffled, the Something is dim and overcast at first, so much that for a moment Charlie thinks she must be imagining things. But she blinks, and wearily scrubs her exhausted eyes, and the image doesn’t go away: two pinpricks of red light, over a thin, gleaming yellow crescent.
The Song comes from that Something. And it is a Something, Charlie can tell from how hard it fights to exist in the Nothing to her senses. She stumbles towards it, gasping and sobbing, begging like a mantra under her breath with her raw, tormented voice. “Please...please...please...please…”
The Song stops.
Charlie wants to cry, except a moment later, the voice of the Song says, “Charlie?”
And it’s horrible how much her own name makes her want to scream. She’s not sure if it’s meant kindly, in rescue. Or in disgust and accusation, like it had been when Vaggie and Dad and Angel Dust and Cherri Bomb and Husk had spat her name from their lips.
She just wants the Song back. The Song, the one that promised her safety and an end to everything that hurt. “Please,” she whimpers. “Please...the Song…”
“I can sing for you again in a minute, my dear,” the Singer says. “Come here, if you please.”
“You promise? You promise you’ll sing it again?”
“I promise, Charlie, dear. Just come here first. Let me see you, will you?”
Charlie finds herself hesitant. She hasn’t been seen in so long. She’s not even sure the others had seen her. She’d been in pitch blackness, in Nothing, for so long—she must be a mess. An awful disappointment of a mess, useless and unwanted, someone that made everything worse—
She’s not even aware that she’s whimpering until the Singer says, “Hush, now, my dear. It might be there’s Nothing here, but there’s nothing to be afraid of—everything will be all right. I can’t very well keep you safe if you don’t come to me, now can I?”
And well, the Singer isn’t wrong. So Charlie stumbles forward a little further, towards the red lights and the gleaming crescent in the darkness.
Maybe it’s just because she’s tired, or because distances are so much harder when she’s this worn down and in pain. But the Singer grows closer much faster than anticipated, and with every step she takes, his features become clearer, even with the Nothing trying to obscure it all. The red pinpricks are eyes, which grow wider and more luminous with every step she takes. The crescent is a set of gleaming yellow teeth, twisted into a frightening smile. They illuminate his face, a narrow, sharp thing framed by a head of red-and-black hair.
The image hits her over the head like one of Adam’s brutal punches. Alastor. Alastor is the Singer. Alastor made the Song.
Alastor is the one who knew her plight, understood her suffering, and promised her protection.
She must be imagining things. This doesn’t make sense. He’d been cruel—he’d lied—he works for her mother, who put her here.
But despite all that, she can’t help but whimper in a trembling, painful voice, “Al?”
“The one and only, my dear,” Alastor says. She can see his hands now, close enough to be illuminated by both of their eyes. He gestures her towards himself, his red claws gleaming in the Nothing. “Come now, my dear. You must be tired.”
She is. She is tired. Tired and scared and hurting and hungry and thirsty and everything feels wrong. She sways in place, at the end of her last wisps of energy, knees trembling beneath her. She wants to collapse.
“Not there, my dear,” Alastor says, and there’s a touch of urgency in his voice now. His hand stretches out towards her again, gesturing her closer. His claws glitter in the glow of her eyes.
She sways in place, and doesn’t move.
“Charlie, ple—glk.” He coughs, sways back just slightly, before extending his arm to her again. Something else gleams around his neck, just barely catching the cast glow of their eyes. “A little closer, my dear. I can’t reach you from here—just a little closer, darling, a few more steps, that’s all you need—”
“Tired…”
“I know, Charlie. I know. Just a few more steps, my dear, and I’ll take care of everything. Just a few more. That’s all.”
His voice surprisingly gentle, coaxing her forward. She hesitantly takes a step, but then freezes.
What if this is a lie?
What if it’s another cruel trick? What if he disappears on her like her father? Laughs in her face and leaves her behind, like Vaggie? Spits cruel words at her like poison, the way Cherri and Husk had in the dark? Alastor never held back to begin with. If this place brought out such awfulness in people she thought had loved her, why should Alastor do less when he never wanted to be there to begin with?
She can’t face that. She’s not strong enough to handle more. She’s so tired and so hurt, inside and out, and she just...she just can’t. And she’d rather stop here than let another blow fall.
But Alastor’s eyes fix on her, lamp-like and luminous, and somehow there’s understanding there. “Charlie,” he says, “I promise—whatever you saw out there, it was not real. This? This is real. This is Something. It’s the truth, and it’s where you belong. I am Something. I am real. I am here. And I am not lying when I say I will keep you safe. Just a few more steps, darling, and you will be safe.”
And that hand outstretches for her again, as far as it can, red claws glimmering in the light of their eyes.
His words have power. His voice resonates with Something, and the Nothing hates it, tries to smother it. She wants to believe him.
But that outstretched hand, palm up, red claws spread wide in invitation—
(So it’s a Deal, then?)
A distant, exhausted part of Charlie reminds her that shaking hands with Alastor is always dangerous. He’s a Dealing demon, and his offers always come with a price. He’s one of the fairer Dealers, Charlie thinks, and if he says she’ll be safe, he’ll keep his word. But she doesn’t know what price she has to pay for that safety.
She clutches her hands to her chest, fingers trembling, her whole body shaking, afraid to take that plunge. She’s too tired to bargain, and she hurts too much to try and figure out where the tricks and the traps lie.
Alastor’s red eyes follow her gaze to his hand, then back. “Charlie,” he says. “There are no orders and no Deals to be had here. This is not a trick.”
But she keeps her hands clutched against her chest anyway, to avoid any chance of mistakenly swearing something away that she can never get back.
His ears are barely visible in the dim light, and their black tips vanish into the gloom. But there is a flicker of movement as they flatten for a moment, and he huffs in frustration as he flexes his outstretched fingers.
But he seems to realize that no matter what he does, he can’t get closer to her. Because after a moment, his eyes close—
(and Charlie whimpers, because when they do, the light goes away, and it’s so dark again, so dark, so alone)
—and he takes a deep breath, before opening his eyes again and looking at her and saying firmly, “Charlie. I will swear to you, Princess of Hell, on the soul of my beloved mother, that this is not a trick, and it is not a Deal. None of this is for me. Shocking though it may seem, I am trying to help.”
(No, I’m here because I want to help!)
It’s familiar. It doesn’t add up quite right. Something in her gut tells her nothing about this makes sense. Not with what she’s been told.
But that vow…
Charlie is a naive, idealistic fool. She knows that. She knows she’s so, so easy to take advantage of, that she trusts too easily and believes in love and goodness too much for Hell.
But the way Alastor had said that—on the soul of my beloved mother—it hadn’t felt fake. Something in the way he said it felt too full of love and longing for it to be fake.
Or maybe it was. Alastor himself said he was a good liar.
But Charlie...Charlie is so tired. And she wants to believe it, so badly. And there’s no green glow in his palm, no symbols floating around him, no crackle of magic or scent of spellwork. Just Alastor, offering his hand and safety and the promise to help.
She wants that so badly. A chance to rest and feel safe. She’s desperate for Something, for sound and sight and sensation, and he’s already given her a song and a vision and a conversation that hadn’t ended in pain.
He leans forward, stretching his hand out towards her as far as he can, his oddly-jointed neck twisted back like he’s straining against it. “Please take my hand, darling.”
Charlie hesitates. And then staggers forward the last two steps, with the very last dregs of her strength, and slips her hand into his palm.
There’s no spark of magic, no howl of spellwork or demonic auras taking hold. Alastor had been as good as his word. But his claws still close around her wrist immediately like a vice, his grip strong and unbreakable, tight enough that it’s painful. For one, frightening heartbeat, Charlie is terrified that she’s somehow made a mistake anyway.
But then he tugs, sharp and hard. She staggers forward, unable to stay on her feet from the force of the pull, but his other arm catches her as she collapses. There’s a sharp hiss of static, a grunt of pain, a jangle of chains, and a dizzying sensation of movement, and then its over and his claws stop digging into her wrist.
But he hasn’t let go of her. Instead, she’s leaning against him, held up by his arms wrapped carefully under hers. Her legs won’t hold her weight, but he keeps her upright anyway, and doesn’t let her fall.
And he’s real.
He’s real. Charlie hadn’t realized until just this moment how much she’d forgotten about real. About Something. Dad had vanished, out in the nothing; Vaggie had never let her come near enough to be held; she’d never found the others’ bodies when they died in the dark.
But Alastor is solid. He’s there, Something, a real presence in the middle of so much absence. His very existence means sensation exists with him, and it’s so overwhelming to Charlie’s starved senses that it almost hurts. His coat is soft, but rough and frayed at its torn edges. His claws are hard where they press into her back as he holds her up, sharp but carefully turned to not cut into her and cause her pain. He smells like blood and whiskey and cologne and cigarette smoke, worked so deep into the layers of his coat that it’s him now. The faint buzz of static that’s always around him like white noise is stronger this close, close enough to feel it as a faint vibration. His heartbeat thumps beneath one hand, steady and reassuring and defiantly alive.
And he’s warm. So warm it almost burns to the touch, when he puts his arms around her to keep her upright. Charlie hadn’t realized until that precise moment how cold she’s been, how badly she’s wanted a hug or a pat on the shoulder or just something, anything, to prove she wasn’t the only thing out there.
Charlie sobs—dry, heaving, breathless, ugly things—and buries her face in his shoulder, digging her fingers into the lapels of his jacket as she clings and desperately cries.
There’s a sharp hiss of static, and Alastor breathes in sharply before he says, “Do me a favor, my dear—use the other shoulder, if you please.”
“Wh...what?”
“Other shoulder,” Alastor reiterates. One hand leaves her back to guide her head away from his right shoulder and to his left, although he does it with more gentleness than she ever would have credited him with. “That one’s a bit bruised.”
Charlie’s thoughts are slow and thick and stupid, but it gradually comes back to her that Alastor had been injured. And she’d just crashed headlong into him, and probably hurt him more, and she’s so stupid—
“M’sorry,” she says thickly, trying to push away from him. Her knees wobble dangerously, but it’s fine—it’s fine. “Didn’t mean to—”
Alastor keeps his arms firmly locked around her, and they’re strong as iron. “I didn’t say flee, my dear, and if I let go of you now you’ll collapse. Kindly do not run off again, if you please.”
“But...you’re hurt—”
“Not as badly as you think, I assure you. I’ve been healing quite nicely! But I can do without tears salting the wound, so the other shoulder, if you will.”
Charlie’s too tired to argue. She rests her head on his left shoulder, burying her face into the soft texture of his jacket with some measure of relief. After a moment, she mutters, “Can’t.”
“Can’t what, Charlie?”
“Cry,” Charlie whispers.
Alastor clucks softly. To her surprise, one of his arms raises to cup the back of her head gently, claws massaging with just enough pressure that it takes away some of the ache in her poor head. She whimpers in relief, and then winces a few moments later when those same claws get stuck in her tangled, messy hair.
“Oh, darling,” he murmurs, and again, his voice is surprisingly soft and gentle. “You really have been through it out there, haven’t you?”
“It was awful, Alastor,” she whimpers into his shoulder. “They left me. They all left me. I’m stupid and gullible and—”
“Hush, my dear. None of that. Everything out there that you saw wasn’t true.”
“It feels true. It sounded true. It looked true.”
Alastor sighs. It’s an awful, exhausted sigh of someone who knows precisely what she’s saying. “I know, my dear. I know. Just know it wasn’t true. We’ll talk about it later, when you’re taken care of, but know it wasn’t true.”
It’s hard to believe him. Not because Alastor is a liar. Because everything out there had felt so real, and it was difficult to believe any of it could be a lie.
She’s fading fast, held upright against Alastor with her face buried in his shoulder, worn out with a bone-deep exhaustion and too dried out to cry, filled with emotions she doesn’t have the strength to let out. She starts to sag, but Alastor says, “Hold on, my dear. Try to stay awake for a little bit longer.”
“I’m so tired…” But they probably still have to walk. She’s not sure if she can.
“I know, Charlie. But we need to get you taken care of first, and you need to be awake for that.”
“I’ll try…”
“Good girl.” He pats her on the head.
To her surprise, Alastor doesn’t make her walk, even when she does her best to steel herself to take her first step. He doesn’t even assist her like before, letting her lean on his arm. Instead, he bends and gently scoops her legs out from underneath her, wrapping his arms underneath her knees and around her shoulders. She makes a soft muffled squeak into his shoulder as he adjusts her carefully.
“Don’t,” she mumbles into his coat. “You’re hurt. I...I can…”
Oh, she can’t, she can’t walk even a little and she feels awful, but she doesn’t want Alastor to get hurt because of her, too. She’s lost everyone else. Everyone has abandoned her for her stupidity and her trust and her love. If Alastor leaves because she hurts him, too, she’ll be alone, and...and—
She can’t bear to be alone again. It hurt more than anything.
But Alastor shakes his head, and his soul collar jangles and his monocle chain clinks gently when he moves. “Hush, my dear. I’ve strength enough for this, never worry. And you’ve seen The Beginning, now. It’s hard on any soul. Let yourself rest.”
The Beginning. The name for it sends a shudder of fear and revulsion through her. She digs her fingers even more firmly into the lapels of Alastor’s coat with a choked, dry sob.
“Ssh,” he murmurs. “Stay with me, and I’ll keep you safe. You won’t see it again, I promise.”
She decides to let herself believe him.
“Alastor?”
“Yes, Charlie?”
“Why...why did The Beginning make them leave me?” Charlie whispers. Her voice is so soft, so muffled in his coat, that she barely hears it herself. “Why didn’t they want to look for me? Why do they hate me so much?”
The buzz of static around them increases to something harsh and violent, and Charlie trembles in his grasp. It recedes after a moment, and there’s a quiet, smooth sensation of movement as Alastor starts walking. A sharp jangle of chains, the dragging of metal, huffing breaths of exertion. His arms are tight around her, refusing to let her fall, and he’s warm.
Eventually, he answers. “I don’t know what The Beginning showed you exactly, Charlie,” he says. “It’s different for everyone. But darling, don’t let it lie to you. You are beloved by every single person in that hotel, and every single one of them is looking for you right now. I’m certain of it.”
“It’s...hard. To believe that.” Not when everything had been so vibrant and real.
“I know,” Alastor says. And once again, there’s weight to his words and understanding in his tone that makes her certain he does know. She wonders if he’s seen The Beginning too. What it did to him. What he saw. “It’s a wonderful liar. In The Beginning all things are possible, including the things that weren’t and never will be. Many things feel more real than real. But remember, nothing is real here, because here is Nothing. Listen to me, Charlie. I’m Something. You’re Something. We know what it is to be Something, a thing that is real. If you’re going to believe anything here—believe me.”
“But...how do I know I can trust you?” Charlie asks softly. She hates to ask it at all, it seems cruel, but...but Alastor had said he was a liar, he’d admitted it outright...but what if that had been a lie? Oh, it’s all so confusing. “Sorry,” she mumbles.
But Alastor only laughs, a surprisingly pleasant rumble, not the manic chuckles from their last conversation. “A fair enough question, I suppose,” he says. “But my dear, you had the heart of it earlier. The point of me is to protect you. I am the one thing in this entire place you are safe from, and to keep you safe, it behooves me to teach you how to keep this place from destroying you. So when I tell you this place lies, and nothing in it is real, it serves me just as much as it does you.”
And it’s such an Alastor answer, even juxtaposed against his instructions to protect her. But Charlie finds it strangely comforting regardless. Alastor has never been one to sugar-coat anything, and he never does anything without purpose. But that makes his answer comfortingly familiar, and that helps Charlie relax.
After all, Alastor is acting like himself. And the others in the darkness, in the Nothing...well, they had felt real, more real than real even, but they’d acted...strange. Off. Wrong, when Charlie thinks on it too hard. It’s still frightening, and it’s still hard to distance herself from the emotions and the pain they brought.
But Alastor feels real. Alastor feels like himself. And that’s enough to make Charlie realize that yes, she can believe him.
She sags in relief, wearily resting her head on his shoulder, face turned in towards his coat. He says nothing, but adjusts his grip slightly to fix her weight and make her more comfortable.
“Al?”
“Yes, Charlie?”
“You promised you’d sing the Song again. Could you…?”
“Of course, my dear. Or would you prefer another? Something happier, perhaps, then that mournful thing?”
“No. That song is real,” Charlie says. “I heard it and it led me back here, because it was real. It understands.”
“Yes,” Alastor says softly. “It does.”
And he takes a deep breath, and the Song comes again. This close, it cuts through the cloying silence of the Nothing, drowning out the emptiness close to them. But she can feel it, too; resonating in his chest beneath her ear, in the buzz of the static around him. Sound. Texture. Warmth.
Promises that are real.
“Nothing lives and Something dies
Spins a world of tricks and lies
A soul alone and wanting cries—
there’s oh, so much to fear
A wandering spirit, empty, lost
Pay the price and reap the cost
Emptiness and cruelty crossed,
And nothing yet seems clear
Lies and slander weave together
Bind you like the cruelest tether
But it needn’t be forever—
If this song draws near.
Trace these words where darkness ends
Ignore the lies—they aren't your friends
Back to places light begins—
I'll keep you safe, my dear.
The Beginning shows but ghosts
Ones that feel more real than most
But lies are all the Nothing hosts
Ignore them when they jeer
For you’ve a monster on your side,
Teeth and claws to guard and guide,
The Nothing will regret it lied
Now that I am here.”
Charlie closes her eyes wearily, but she does feel...safer. Like when her father would sing her lullabies at night before bed, or after she had bad dreams, chasing away the fear and the sorrow.
And the song certainly is comforting, but that last part, too...Charlie’s not sure if Alastor added those final lines for her benefit now. She hadn’t heard them before, he’d stopped singing too early. But it is a stark, brutally effective reminder that Alastor is the Radio Demon, an Overlord of the highest capacity, and he’s on her side. Not just as an ally, but as a protector.
Realistically, Charlie’s not sure that Alastor could ever do anything to hurt the Nothing. But it feels a lot better all the same, to know someone so deadly is so dedicated to keeping her safe. Like she doesn’t have to be scared, because the worst thing to exist here is Alastor, and the monster under her bed has absolutely no qualms at all about devouring anything else that threatens her.
She’s still not sure how to feel about that. Alastor’s doing it all on orders, after all. Mom bound him by his own soul—even now, clinking in time to his steps as the chain drags after them—to keep her safe. He doesn’t have a choice in the matter. He delights in causing destruction and clever chaos so much, Charlie can’t imagine he would do any of this at all if he could avoid it.
And that makes her feel a little sick inside. She’s so, so tired and hungry and hurting, and right now, she doesn’t have the ability to process it all. She feels guilty for accepting that comfort, that protection, that dedication when it’s not really earned.
But it’s real, and for now, for survival’s sake, she’s just going to have to trust that he isn’t lying about some of it. That he is going to protect her, that The Beginning does lie, and that when it comes down to what to put her faith in, a Something there by no choice of his own is better than Nothing at all.
So she snuggles wearily against his shoulder, curls up in the sensation of warmth and the buzz of static against her skin, and takes comfort in the one other being that knows what she’s been through.
Alastor tuts softly. “Don’t fall asleep yet, Charlie,” he reminds her. “Just a little longer, now.”
“M’tired,” she mumbles into his shoulder.
“I know, my dear, but if you fall asleep now, it’ll be much harder to get you taken care of,” Alastor reminds her. She thinks he might have told her this before, but he’s patient about repeating it anyway. “You’ll need to eat. Remember the fruits? And I can’t very well do it for you.”
“Oh.” Just a mention of the fruit makes her throat burn with dryness, and her stomach rumbles painfully. But it’s enough of an uncomfortable sensation to wake her, just a bit. “I am hungry…”
“I thought you might be. But don’t worry, my dear! Look ahead. The tree is close. Not too much longer, now.”
Charlie barely has the strength to open her eyes, much less lift her head from his shoulder. But she forces herself too anyway, to catch a glimpse of the strange tree in the middle of The Beginning, the only Something to exist besides themselves.
It’s beautiful. Just like before. A pure thing of both white and prismatic coloration, strong and sturdy and a safe stronghold in the middle of nothing at all. But even its faint glow is too bright for her after the non-existent time she spent in The Beginning, and it’s like needles in her eyes. She whimpers pitifully and lets them close, burying her face back into the safety of Alastor’s coat.
“Ah—I’d forgotten, my dear. It is rather an assault on the senses when you’ve had none.” To her shock, he seems genuinely apologetic, even taking a moment to rest his chin on the crown of her head in lieu of a head-pat when his hands are full. “Never mind, then. Allow yourself to adjust slowly.”
She takes his advice and his not-quite-apology to heart, keeping her head safely tucked against his shoulder, while he carries them to safety. He doesn’t sing the Song again, but it’s too quiet here, even with the muted jangle of soul chains and soft click of footsteps. And he must not like the silence either, because he starts humming after a while, the same tuneless thing he’d hummed when he guided her to the tree before. The same aimless tune she’d thought was familiar, like she’d heard it before even that.
(Smile, my dear! You know you’re never fully dressed without one!)
The first day. It comes to Charlie so suddenly. The first day they’d met him. Once they’d agreed to have him aboard, once he’d agreed to stay, once he’d started inspecting the hotel for things to fix. He’d hummed the tune quite often for the first week or so, as he wandered the halls of the Hazbin Hotel and repaired, arranged, ordered, and prepared. It had been a lifeless place then, broken and nearly abandoned and silent—
Charlie can’t help but shiver. If Alastor had come to them from here…
No wonder he couldn’t stand it. He’d filled the place with sound, put a radio in every room, just to prove he could.
“Here we are, my dear. I know the perfect spot to let you rest—here it is!”
And Charlie is moving again, as Alastor gently lowers her down to the roots of the tree. The spot he picks is almost like a cradle, the root system curling to create a comfortable depression like a bed. The bark is soft and spongy, and it’s lined with leaves from the tree that are equally soft. It’s not her bed back home, but it’s a significant improvement over the uncaring not-ground of The Beginning.
She sighs in relief as she settles into it—and then immediately panics when Alastor starts to draw away. “No!” she cries, digging her fingers into his coat. Her grip is weak, and he could so easily escape, and she’s so terrified he will. “No, p-please, please, don’t leave m-me alone!”
Alastor freezes for a moment. Then his hands wrap around her wrists, plucking them from his coat. She heaves a dry sob, trying to wrench her eyes open against the dim but blinding glow of the tree to see what direction he leaves in so she can follow—
But he doesn’t leave. He lets go of one wrist to pat the back of her other hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry, my dear,” he says. “I’m not leaving you, I promise. I can’t exactly go much of anywhere right now anyway, ah-ha!”
Charlie trembles anyway. “Please don’t go,” she repeats, clinging to his hand in desperation.
“I’ll be right by your side,” he promises, a little more seriously than before. “But I do need to stand for a moment or two, Charlie. You’re hungry, aren’t you? Thirsty? I need to collect some of the fruits, and that does mean I need to stand.”
That makes sense. It does. And it’s so stupid to be afraid of him leaving. Where could he go? He’s literally chained to the tree, just as he’d pointed out.
But she’s so scared that if she breaks contact with him, he’ll vanish into thin air, just like everyone else in The Beginning had. That this, the tree and Alastor and the Song and the warmth and sensation—is its cruelest, ultimate trick, and she’s about to fall for it.
He squeezes her hand gently. Sensation, and that alone is enough to make her understand that he knows just what she’s thinking. “I’m not going anywhere,” he repeats. “And this is real, Charlie. Here, I’ll prove it to you.”
She squints painfully at his red-and-black blur as he reaches up with his free hand towards his face. He fiddles with one ear, and with a soft click-clink, pulls away from it. The hand still gripped by hers turns her palm over, and something metal and glass presses into it.
His monocle. Still in her hand. Still real.
“There you are,” he says. “You can hold onto that until I’m back with your dinner, how’s that? It won’t take me more than a not-minute, Charlie dear, but you can hold the proof in your own hands that I’m real. Just be gentle, if you please—I can’t exactly replace it here. Not that there’s all that much to look at, at the moment!” His laugh is just shy of manic.
Charlie swallows, and closes her hand—carefully—around the monocle and beaded chain. It has weight. Smooth texture from the glass. The beads of the chain are still warm from proximity. It’s still hard to look at it, with the brightness of the tree all around her, but her fingers are distorted and turned red from the glass if she tries to look through it.
Proof. Solid, undeniable proof that Alastor is here and real.
“Please hurry,” Charlie whispers, even as she lets go of him and clutches it close like a lifeline.
“I’ll be but a jiffy, my dear,” Alastor promises, and he pats her on the head once before pulling away completely.
It’s the most difficult thirty seconds of Charlie’s life. There’s no time here, but she counts every second in her head, running her hands over the lens glass, running the beaded chain through her fingers. There’s a clip at the very end that must let Alastor secure it to his ear, and she pinches one of her fingers with it, and it’s solid enough to hurt. Still real. Still not a trick.
Alastor talks the whole time too, narrating as he ruffles through the branches above. “I’ll need to find you the biggest and juiciest ones on offer, of course. You are a princess, after all. And quite starved to boot, I’m afraid, quite unseemly for royalty. Or so I’m told. Americans don’t have royalty, but Hell does seem to be a bit of a stickler for rank and caste, now doesn’t it? There’s one, and two. Ah, and perhaps one for myself as well. One does get parched after singing for however long it was when Time isn’t. It’s no glass of rye, but it does quench the thirst, and deal with the bruises and scrapes. There we go! Dinner for two, and now I’m coming back, my dear.”
Boots scuff over bark as Alastor makes his way back, and there’s a gentle thump as he settles down sitting next to her makeshift bed. A hand pats her on the head again, and Charlie shudders in relief. Not alone, not alone, not alone. Alastor’s back and he’s still real.
“Be a dear and give me back my eyepiece, if you please,” Alastor says. “And then we’ll see about dinner, won’t we?”
Charlie obediently holds her hand out in his general direction, still squinting against the harsh light of the tree. Alastor plucks the monocle from her palm, and tuts as he fixes it back on his face. “Still struggling with the light?”
“Yes,” Charlie whispers.
“Understandable. It’s not bright at all until it is, and very at that. I thought it was because I was a creature of shadow, but it seems it’s because I’m creature of Something, ha ha! Now then—can you eat one of these on your own, or do you need me to cut it for you?”
Charlie can’t help but wilt at the question. The thought of holding the fruit and biting into it, tearing off skin and flesh, sounds exhausting. But Alastor’s already done so much for her, and he doesn’t even want to. She doesn’t have to make him baby her. Even if she’s so tired, and just wants to be taken care of and cared for and held and loved, for a little bit.
I miss Vaggie, she thinks bitterly. Before remembering the Vaggie in The Beginning.
I’m tired of protecting someone as gullible as you.
It’s not true, Charlie reminds herself. Alastor said it’s not the truth. It’s not real. It’s not real!
But oh, it’s so hard to believe it, when she can still see Vaggie’s disappointed face, hear her tired anger, remember her walking away.
“Charlie?”
“I can...I can do it myself,” Charlie promises, shakily holding out her hands. She’s so tired, but she can pull herself together for a little bit. Long enough to not be useless. To make things a little easier for Alastor and his bound soul.
But Alastor laughs, a cackling thing, and pokes her lightly on the nose. “I told you before, Charlie, you’re a terrible liar! What’s the point about lying to me or yourself about something so simple?”
Charlie flushes. “I...I don’t want to be more trouble.”
“Nonsense! These claws can cut through flesh and bone, my dear. Fruit is easy.” And there is indeed a squishing, slicing noise as Alastor starts carving a bite-sized wedge out of one of the fruits a moment later.
Charlie sniffs. If she had any liquid left in her for tears, she knows her eyes would be getting misty. “Why are you being so nice?”
“Hmm?”
“You don’t have to be,” Charlie whispers. “I know you’re being forced to protect me by my mom. I know you probably have to take care of me, and you probably don’t want to. I’m sure it’s annoying. So I can...I can pull myself together. To not be such a burden.”
Silence. It stretches so long that Charlie opens her eyes fearfully, braving the glow of the tree to check if he’s still there. If she’d driven him away…
But she hadn’t. He’s still next to her, a smudge of deep red and black against the prismatic glitter of the strange tree. He’s staring into the darkness beyond, expression distant.
“A...alastor?” Charlie hesitates, and then reaches over gently to touch his arm.
He shakes his head immediately, like he’s coming out of a daze. “Eat your fruit,” he says, and puts a wedge of it in her outstretched hand.
“You don’t have to. I can—”
“This is not a conversation to be had at this moment,” Alastor says, making a shooing motion and gesturing to the fruit wedge in her hand. “For now, eat and rest. I must insist. Best way to shake off the dregs of The Beginning, you know!”
Charlie has a strange feeling that seeing The Beginning isn’t something anyone ever shakes off. Ever. She doesn’t think she can ever leave it behind, and she suspects Alastor had never managed to do so, either.
But she is thirsty, and hungry, and exhausted. So for now she does what he says, and pops the wedge of fruit into her mouth.
Just like before, the Something-fruit tastes wonderful. Maybe even better than last time, with how hungry and thirsty she’s been, and how long she’s gone without. She still can’t figure out the taste, the way it dances between sweet and bitter and savory and back, but it’s delicious and juicy. Her dry mouth and throat benefit from the juice almost immediately, and the flesh is soft enough that it’s easy for her to chew, even weak as she is. It takes her back and back, to the moment she decided to crawl out of bed when she was supposed to be sleeping to go find her dad, because she hadn’t seen him and she wanted to, no matter that Mom said he was busy.
(He still loves her, right? The Dad in The Beginning had been a lie. Alastor said it was a lie. So Dad still loves her, right?)
Alastor already has another wedge of fruit to hand off to her when she finishes that one. She eats that one as well, and the next, and the next, allowing the strength and healing abilities of the fruit to flood through her alongside the memories.
Inviting Angel Dust to stay at the Hazbin Hotel.
Telling Dad and Mom she wanted a little kitten for her birthday to be her friend.
Giving Pentious another chance, despite the others wanting to kill him.
Confidently deciding on her favorite color when she was five years old and having Dad make her whole room purple.
Taking Vaggie home with her instead of dropping her off at a hospital, because she just knew she needed more emotional help than physical.
Gritting her teeth and making that call to Dad to ask for help, no matter how much she hadn’t wanted to at first.
Letting Alastor through the door of the Happy Hotel, even when he’d scared the Hell out of her looming over her on the doorstep, even when Vaggie told her not to.
So many memories across her life, and by the time she’s done with the fruit she feels a little better. More refreshed. Still exhausted, but the pain in her body is less, at least, and she can hold her hands up in front of her without them shaking. Sit up without struggling. Even the light of the tree is easier to handle now, and she doesn’t have to squint like she’s staring into a star.
“You look better,” Alastor tells her cheerfully. He’s still holding the pit from the fruit in his hand. With a toss he casually pops it in his mouth, and with a sharp crunch that makes Charlie wince just to hear it, it’s gone.
“You weren’t lying about the fruit,” Charlie says. Her voice is still soft, but it doesn’t hurt to talk anymore. “It really does work wonders.”
“Little miracles, aren’t they?” Alastor says. “They must put your daddy dearest to shame.”
Not really, if Charlie’s being honest. Dad could make injuries vanish with a feather-light touch or a gentle song. But she supposes nothing can really compare to angelic intervention. These are probably the closest anyone could come otherwise.
“Have the other,” Alastor says. “It’ll do you good.”
He hands the white, glowing, star-shaped fruit off to her, and she takes it gratefully. The first had smoothed away her immediate hurts and taken the edge off her hunger, but she’s still famished and thirsty. She tears into the fruit flesh ravenously, able to handle it on her own this time, now that the prospect of doing so isn’t nearly as daunting as before.
Beside her, Alastor does the same, munching on his own fruit, humming contentedly in between. It’s the same tune as before—the one from the first day of the hotel. The one that fills the silence when he can’t stand it.
Charlie wonders if the Something-fruit makes him think of times past, too. If he remembers being alive, or his life after. If it’s sealing up the terrible wound across his chest even more, and fixing whatever damage he’d done finding her and carrying her back.
She still has so many questions for him. About him. She knows she left angry and betrayed. She’s not sure how to feel now. Not after the Beginning. Not after everything.
But like Alastor said...that’s probably not a conversation for now. For now, she needs to recover. She can move forward when she’s able.
By the time she finishes the second fruit and puts the pit in her pocket, she’s beyond exhausted. The fruits had refreshed her body, but her mind and her soul still need rest. She’s barely keeping her eyes open. And the root-bed Alastor had found for her is surprisingly soft and inviting.
“Go ahead and sleep, my dear,” Alastor says. “You look like you need it.”
Charlie swallows, relieved that her throat doesn’t stick unpleasantly now. “Is it...safe? It’s not…I’m not…”
“It’s real, Charlie. This place is real. It’s the safest place here. Rest in Something and sensation, and it will do you a world of good.”
Charlie nods. She settles back, laying down in the makeshift shelter of the root cradle, letting the soft, spongy bark and leaves take her weight. But she can’t bring herself to close her eyes just yet, and they stay fixated on the red and black shape of Alastor, sitting a little higher on the roots.
“Something wrong, my dear?”
Charlie bites her lip. “It’s...never mind. It’s fine.”
He laughs. “Really now, Charlie. How is the daughter of the Father of Lies so terrible at them?”
Her face falls. “Am I really so easy to read? So...gullible and stupid and—”
“I believe I’ve told you before, my dear,” Alastor interrupts her. “It’s quite unlike you to show off such a miserable display of self-loathing. I think positivity and ridiculous optimism are more your fare.” He shakes his fingers in mocking jazz hands when he lists ‘her’ supposed traits.
“I just...I messed up a lot.”
“And who told you that? The Beginning? Because I believe I told you it lies.”
Charlie sighs. “I figured it out before that. I’ve been figuring it out a lot recently.”
“This is hardly the place for proper self-reflection, Charlie,” Alastor says, flinging a hand out dramatically towards the Nothing that Charlie’s trying very hard to pretend doesn’t exist. “This place does things to one’s head, you know.”
She knows. She’s felt it. She’s seen it in Alastor’s manic, not-quite-right behavior.
“So whatever conclusions you’ve come to about yourself, wait until you’re back in the Something before revisiting those,” Alastor drawls. “Preferably with your sweetheart there to tell you what an idiot you’re being about it. And until then, I ask again, something wrong, dear?”
Charlie looks away. “I don’t want to be more of a burden to you than I have to be.”
“Well, I suppose you won’t know what’s too much unless you ask, will you?”
Charlie’s eyes grow hot. She squeezes them shut for a moment, both to blink the wetness away, and to not quite meet Alastor’s eyes or the rejection when she asks.
“It’s...I...I’m scared to go to sleep alone,” she says, in a very small voice. Like when she was a child, and didn’t want Dad to leave her alone in the dark with the imagined angels that might be hiding in her closet, or under her bed. “Can you...stay with me? Until I fall asleep?”
Alastor chuckles. Like he’s laughing at her for her stupid request. She flushes, embarrassed, and says, “I know it’s stupid, you don’t have to—”
But his claws pat her on the head gently. “It’s not an especially difficult task to fulfill,” he drawls. “I don’t even need to move! I suppose I can make time in my busy schedule of sitting and staring into nothing at all.”
Charlie sniffles. “Thank you, Al.”
She expects him to withdraw his hand. But to her surprise, he goes from patting her head to hesitating, and then leaving his hand resting there, on the crown of her head. His thumb starts to absently rub across her forehead, soothing, careful to neither pull at her messy bangs or cut her skin with his claw.
Charlie wonders, for the first time, if maybe Alastor needs connection with someone, anyone, who is Something in this place of Nothing, just as much as she does. If he’s just as desperate to not be alone, no matter what kind of guise he puts on.
“Not at all, my dear,” he says after a moment, when she doesn’t tell him to take his hand away. “You may rest safely. There isn’t anything that can harm you while I’m here.”
And just like that, she feels calmer. Because the dangers hiding in her closet might be scary, but the monster under her bed is on her side, and he’s oh, so much worse.
As she starts to slip under into rest, Alastor picks up the Song again. He sings it softly, enough to not disturb her, but it’s a comfort all the same. His promise rings in her ears as she slips into a restful sleep.
“For you’ve a monster on your side,
Teeth and claws to guard and guide,
The Nothing will regret it lied
Now that I am here.”
Chapter Text
When Charlie wakes, she’s not sure where she is at first.
She’s not in her bed, and Vaggie isn’t snuggled beside her. But she’s not uncomfortable, either. She’s warm, and her bed is soft, and it’s quiet.
Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Disturbingly quiet.
Charlie’s eyes snap open. She’s bathed in soft light, and white branches that gleam with hidden inner rainbows sway gently over her head. She’s surrounded by spongy bark, in a natural cradle made out of massive roots.
And suddenly it all comes back to her, and she remembers the past...however long it’s been. Time doesn’t exist in The Beginning after all.
She looks around frantically, but there’s no splash of red and black in the root structures on either side of her little makeshift bed. Alastor is gone. And that fills her with fear, with panic, because he’s the one real thing here besides the tree and if he isn’t really—if she’d just made him up in her head—
But when she starts to sit up, something shifts on top of her and tumbles away from her shoulders. She looks down at the puddle of red stripes, and it takes her panicked mind a moment to put together what she’s seeing.
A coat. Alastor’s coat. Tossed over her like a blanket in her sleep.
Charlie’s eyes prick with tears as she picks it up and hugs it close like some kind of stuffed animal, or soft pillow from her bed. As comfort objects go it’s a terrible one. The coat fabric is soft, but it’s so frayed and worn too, especially at the tails. The tear across the lapels shreds several buttons, which are now missing, and there’s dried blood worked into the fabric. It smells like old blood, booze, cigarette smoke, dried sweat, and the faint scent of incense that must have come from the angelic wound.
But Charlie hugs it close anyway, because it means Alastor isn’t a figment of her imagination. He’s real, he’s Something, she isn’t alone, and he’s still here protecting her. Even if he’s not right here, here.
She lays back down and curls up on her side, still hugging the coat close. She’s still tired, especially after that little heart attack, and after everything that’s happened. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt, to close her eyes for a few more minutes. Or whatever counts as minutes here, where Time isn’t.
But her eyes are just starting to slip closed when the intense quiet of The Beginning is broken by voices. She lifts her head in surprise, eyes widening as she clings anxiously to the coat and listens very carefully.
“Haven’t put yourself back together, I see.”
“It’s n-not as easy as it looks! You p-p-put yourssssself back together when you’re brok-k-ken in half!”
Charlie frowns. The first voice is definitely Alastor’s. The second is...similar, very similar, with the same kind of inflection and speaking style, and nearly the same voice. But it’s distorted even more by static than Alastor’s perpetual voice filter, and sometimes it crackles or skips or fuzzes, like a radio station that isn’t coming through correctly.
“Cry me a river,” Alastor drawls. “I was nearly cut in half myself, and I’m nearly fighting fit again already.”
“Says the one talk-talk-talking to himself like a Lew-ew-ewis Carroll character!” The other voice crackles back. “Ha, ha, ha, we’re all m-m-mad here!”
“Mad? Hardly. Something? Absolutely, which is preferable to Nothing.”
“Listen to yourse-el-elf, you lunatic!”
“How can I, if you don’t do your damned job? Is this thing even on?”
“Oh, do-o-on’t blame me! You’re the one-one-one who got me sssplit in h-h-half!”
“And now, I’m the one telling you to put yourself back together,” Alastor says sternly. “Well?”
“I can’t! There’sss nothing to w-w-work with here!”
“You have the tree. It’s full of power. What do you think I keep you there for?”
Charlie’s eyes widen. Whoever Alastor is talking to, they’re here. Had someone else shown up? Why else would they know about the tree?
“It’s n-n-not the ri-ri-right kind,” the other, crackling voice complains. “I can-can-can’t eat the fruit li-ike you! And it has n-n-no soul.” The voice pauses for a long moment, as though thinking. “Though...there is-is-is a soul close by that i-i-i-isn’t ours...if I could ju-ju-just—”
Charlie’s heart ices over. She’s the only soul here, besides Alastor and whoever he’s talking to. Whoever this is can’t be suggesting—
But before she can so much as think about running, Alastor snarls, “I suggest you stop entertaining that idea immediately. That soul is not for bargain.” And based on the low growl that follows, and the way the static resonates through the entire tree and up through Charlie’s root bed into her skin, he’s angry enough to mean it.
She hugs the coat a little closer in relief. Alastor hadn’t lied when he said he was protecting her.
Still, she figures it’s about time to interrupt this discussion with whoever this is. Maybe they could help, if they could reach them here? She hauls herself out of the little depression of roots, folds Alastor’s coat over one arm, and sets out in search of the voices.
“Then d-d-don’t expect miracles!” the crackling voice snaps.
Based on its location, and the way the midnight-violet soul chain has wrapped a little around the bark of the tree, Charlie guesses that Alastor had relocated to the opposite side. She circles the wide trunk quickly, picking her way carefully over the root systems with her heels.
“I don’t expect miracles,” Alastor growls back. “I expect you to do your basic damned job. Do you want to get out of here, or not?”
“Of c-c-course I do, but—”
“Um, Alastor?” Charlie finally spots him as she circles the tree, a red and black shape against prismatic white bark, like a wound in the tree itself. There’s no one else there; just Alastor and herself. “Who...who are you talking to?”
Alastor looks up at her and blinks. “Ah, my dear. Good morning, or perhaps good evening. Who knows, in a place where Time isn’t? Either way, how was your rest?”
“Lunatic,” the mysterious other voice crackles bitterly, from Alastor’s direction.
“Shut up,” Alastor snaps back, without missing a beat. “Charlie?”
“I’m—I um, I slept good,” Charlie says. “It’s a pretty nice tree. Um, thank you for the coat, by the way.” She holds it out to him. “It...reminded me you were real.”
“Always delighted to help,” Alastor says. “You looked a bit chilled when you went to bed. I can’t conjure a blanket in the Nothing, so the Something I had on me had to make do.”
“Listen to yourself,” the voice grumbles.
“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Alastor snaps back.
“Um, I’m gonna ask again, Al—who are you talking to?”
He raises an eyebrow at her, before lifting something from his other side. It’s his staff—or at least, part of it, the top part that acts like a microphone. The bottom half seems to be gone, and there’s a nasty series of bends and snapped pieces where the pole abruptly breaks. The red eye of the microphone part turns to look at her balefully, glowing brightly.
“A worse conversationalist than usual,” Alastor says, shaking the staff and giving it just as baleful a look back.
The eye on the staff narrows, and the microphone spits in a crackling voice that does indeed match the mystery voice of earlier, “Oh! And who-who-who-whose f-a-a-a-ult issss that-t-t-t-t?”
“Oh, enough of you,” Alastor says, flicking an ear at the staff irritably. “Now you just sound like Vox throwing one of his tantrums, before he blows out the electricity in the city.”
“M-m-m-maybe he had-had-had-had the ri-ri-ri-i-i-i-ight idea! If y-y-y-you had-had-hadn’t—”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion. Fix yourself, or shut up,” Alastor snaps. He stuffs the half of a staff deep hole in the side of the tree, one that looks man-made from the deep claw scratches and gouges in the bark around it. There’s an indignant burst of static and noise from inside, and then the staff falls silent.
“How irritating,” Alastor grumbles. “So difficult to find good help these days.”
Charlie watches the whole mess with wide eyes. And continues to stare in concern and confusion as Alastor calmly stands up, stretches, and accepts his coat back from her without any indication that what had just happened was highly unusual. He shrugs it on over his shoulders, wincing a little when it pulls at his still-mending injury, and buttons it up like he’d just had a casual conversation with a passer-by about the weather.
“Um...Alastor?”
“Yes, Charlie?”
“Are...are you okay?” Charlie asks softly.
Obviously he can’t be completely okay. They’re both stuck here in the Nothing, surrounded by The Beginning, and there’s no way to be completely okay with that. But this, this seems...even less okay than Charlie had anticipated.
“Perfectly fine, my dear,” Alastor says. “As fine as one can be in the Nothing, at any rate! How are you feeling? Hungry, perhaps? I think you slept for a while, though of course, it’s hard to tell when a while doesn’t exist!”
“I could eat,” Charlie admits. She is a little hungry, even if the fruits had taken care of the worst of her injuries and hunger and thirst last night. Or that morning? Oh, it’s so confusing.
“Excellent! Let’s move to a more comfortable area, then, and have ourselves a little snack without that irritant interrupting,” Alastor says, gesturing vaguely at the hole in the tree.
“Um, okay,” Charlie says. “Did...did your staff break in the fight?”
“Unfortunately,” Alastor says. “And there’s precious little to repair it with here, as you’ve seen. It’s quite sulky about that. What a complainer! I never realized how unreliable it was.”
“Is it...alive? If it can talk back to you like that?”
“In a manner of speaking, I suppose,” Alastor says idly, as he leads them around the tree, carefully going back in the same direction he left in so he doesn’t wrap himself closer to the trunk with his chain. “It’s a part of me and my power. Much less useful than my shadow, though. I do wish that was here more. Might actually get a thing or two done!”
“But why talk to it like that?”
“Well, there’s precious little else to talk to around here, isn’t there? Ah! But I suppose things have changed, now that you’re here, my dear. I’m sure you’re a better conversationalist than that old thing!”
Charlie frowns at this as Alastor leads them to a spot on the tree that has more bench-like roots, and plucks them a pair of the Something-fruits. If the staff was a part of him, and he could talk to it like that, and it could talk back...what did that mean? Was he talking to himself? Was it a part of his subconscious? Did a part of himself think he was crazy, or want to take her soul for himself?
It’s so hard to say. She’s never seen Alastor act like this before.
Well, no. That’s not true. She had seen him talk to his staff like this before—the same night he’d arrived at the Hazbin hotel. She thought it had been a bit, some weird zany joke to try and convince them he wasn’t out to murder them all.
(Help! Hahaha! Helloooo, is this thing on? Testing, testing!)
(Well I heard you loud and clear!)
But she’s starting to wonder if that was entirely the truth. She can’t help but remember the way she talked to herself in The Beginning, just to hear her own voice and drown out the pressing silence. Alastor’s been here even longer. Maybe he’d done the same.
Charlie resolves to keep an eye on him. Alastor has seemed more put-together about this whole place. He’s quite confident when he tells her he can teach her and keep her safe here. But he’s been off since she first arrived her, and she’s starting to think that Alastor’s not nearly as okay as he’s pretending to be.
They finish off their fruits quickly, Alastor humming his tuneless silence-killing song while they eat. Afterwards, Charlie licks her fingers free of the juice and tries to do something with her rat’s nest of hair.
Last night (morning? Afternoon? Whatever it had been) she’d been too focused on getting back to safety and for things to stop hurting. Now, with a little clarity, she can see how much of a mess her wandering in The Beginning had made of her poor hair. Of her two hair ties, the bottom one is completely gone, lost somewhere in The Beginning. It’s an unfortunate loss, since it was enchanted to re-bind her hair whenever she shifted to her demonic form, but she’s not risking going back out there for that. The rest of her hair is a clumped, knotted mess, and she grimaces when she pulls it over her shoulder to try and deal with it.
“I don’t suppose you have a brush or a comb on you, Alastor?” Charlie asks.
He’s watching with mild interest, but shakes his head at the question. “Apologies. I usually summon such things. I’m not able to here, or I’d make you one.”
Charlie sighs. “Yeah...I have the same problem. I usually have a spare hairbrush in my little pocket-reality for on the go, but I can’t reach it here.” Well, she’ll just have to make do with her fingers.
Alastor watches her starting to slowly and tediously comb her way through her hair with her fingers, pausing to try and untangle or pick apart smaller knots. After a moment, to her surprise, he says, “Would you like some help, my dear?”
Charlie blinks in surprise. “You don’t have to! I don’t think this even counts as protecting. It’s really fine.”
“Perhaps it doesn’t, but it is something to do, and we’ve precious little of that currently,” Alastor notes, waving around them at all the Nothing.
Charlie hesitates. “Your claws are really sharp...you’re not going to cut my hair, are you?”
He scoffs. “Not unless it’s the only way to take a knot out. I’ve learned some finesse with these claws in nearly a century, my dear.”
Charlie bites her lip, but decides to trust him. “Okay. Could you get the parts at the back of my head then? It’s the hardest to reach.”
“Certainly!”
Which is how they spend the next…however long it is, in a timeless place, manually combing through her hair and picking knots out of it. Charlie has no idea how it could get so damned messy with literally nothing out there to pull at it or tousle it; no tree branches, no wind, no attackers. It really puts into perspective how much of a panic she must have been in. How not quite in her right mind she was.
But between the two of them, they manage to smooth the worst of it away. True to his word, despite his menacing claws, Alastor is actually quite adept at picking apart knots and combing through her hair with his fingers, and he does ask before cutting the absolute worst offenders out with his claws. To her even greater surprise, he offers to braid it for her afterwards, to keep it out of her face.
“You know how to do that?” Charlie asks, bewildered.
“Oh, naturally! My mother did some work as a hairdresser, where I learned the basics. And I spent quite a lot of time in the nightclubs and speaks in my day,” Alastor says fondly, as he starts parting her hair into sections. “The girls grew quite fond of me when they realized I could be trusted in their vicinity as a proper gentleman, and that I’d...discourage some of the more unsavory sorts.”
Charlie has a feeling he means more than polite conversation. But she doesn’t interrupt him, or this rare moment of learning about his history.
“I’d sometimes be recruited for assistance getting ready for shows,” Alastor continues. He twists her hair together with a surprising amount of gentleness, not pulling too painfully, but the plaits feel sturdy. “I got rather good at it after a while. Some of the girls would even ask for me.”
“Like Mimzy?” Charlie asks.
“Among others. I’ve also not a bad hand with makeup. I’d sometimes help the girls put on their faces after a little too much to drink...or if they still insisted on going on after I, ah, escorted one of their male admirers out.”
Charlie finds this both fascinating and genuinely perplexing. “If that’s the case, why don’t you do more with your own hair, or try out makeup for yourself? Your hair is a really pretty color—you could probably do a lot with it if you wanted to.”
Alastor actually laughs at that. “Hah! What a thought. Charlie, dear, how much blood did you have to wash out of your hair after the battle, and how long did it take?”
She flushes. “Um. At least an hour. There was...there was a lot.”
“Precisely. And I kill and eat people on a regular basis. I keep my hair short and boring for a reason. Well, besides not caring enough to bother for myself.” He holds out his hand to her for her other enchanted hair tie, which she hands over to him. “Imagine putting all the effort in with all those ridiculous products and creams, styling and shaping, and then ruining it all twenty minutes later when you dine on an idiot that dared to take a shot at the Radio Demon. What a lot of useless work for no reason!”
“I guess that makes sense,” Charlie says slowly.
“Obviously it does. I can be good as new in five minutes. Quite simple and efficient.” He pats the back of her head. “There you are, my dear. Should keep out of your way, now.”
Charlie tentatively feels at her head. She’s surprised at how intricate it feels. He’d left her bangs alone, but otherwise done her hair in some sort of crown braid up-do where it wrapped around the back of her head and spiraled back up around her skull. She only had the one tie, but it felt like Alastor had been creative with the use of a few slivers of bark from the tree in place of hair pins, which kept it nestled comfortably in place. It definitely wouldn’t get tangled on the branches or bark of the odd tree while she was here.
“I wish I could see it,” Charlie says, touching the braids gently.
“Oh, it’s nothing special,” Alastor says, waving it aside. “Perfectly common in my time. Put you in the right dress and you’d look quite at home in New Orleans in the twenties!”
“Still...when we get out of here, could you do this for me again?” Charlie asks. “So I can see it properly in a mirror?”
Alastor hesitates, before sitting back against the trunk of the tree with a clank of his soul chains. “When we get out of here,” he repeats woodenly. “I...perhaps. If we do.”
“We’re going to get out of here, Alastor,” Charlie says seriously, sitting down next to him on the bench-like roots. “We’re going to. You told me last night, people are looking for me. You believe that, right?”
“Unquestionably,” Alastor agrees.
“So they’ll come find us.”
“They’ll find you, Charlie,” Alastor reminds her. “And certainly they will remove you, of that I’ve no doubt at all.”
“And you’re coming with me,” Charlie insists. “You can’t really think I’d leave you behind, right? Alastor?”
Alastor is silent for a moment. Then, “It is not a moment of what you do, or what I believe, Charlie. I was put here for a reason. My fate is not decided yet, but it is not my own to decide.”
And there it is. Charlie figured this would happen at some point, it’s inevitable. And maybe it should happen sooner than later, for both their sakes.
But it doesn’t mean this conversation is going to be any easier.
Still, Charlie isn’t a coward. And there’s not much she can do here to make this whole situation right, but she’ll do what is in her power. Especially for Alastor, who—of his own desire or not—has done a lot to help her since she arrived in The Beginning.
So she takes a deep breath, and says slowly, “I think...we need to talk, Alastor.”
He raises an eyebrow. Combined with his ever-present grin, it looks more than a little mocking. “Is that not what we were already doing?”
“I mean about...about everything that happened. Before I ran off into the Nothing. Maybe even before that. I just…” Charlie hesitates, trying to think of how to explain things. “I think...I got a lot of perspective on things, when I was out there.”
“I believe I told you, my dear, that The Beginning lies and isn’t to be trusted.”
“Not about what The Beginning showed me,” Charlie says. “I got more perspective on you. And before things got really...confusing, out there, I had a chance to think about some things. And I had more time to think about things after, when I was falling asleep.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine what sort of revelations Nothing might give you, my dear,” Alastor says. “But if you wish to talk, there’s little else to do here. I cannot promise to have any further understanding or answers for you than what we discussed before, however.”
Charlie shakes her head. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about. Actually, before I do anything else, I...I wanted to apologize.”
Alastor turns slowly to stare at her. “You want...to apologize.”
“Yes.”
“To me.”
“Yes.”
Alastor seems to puzzle over this for a moment, before saying, “I’ll admit, my dear, I’m somewhat taken aback. I was under the impression that you hated me for my part in the deception.”
Charlie sighs. There’s a lot of complex emotions in her head, but she tries to puzzle out how to voice them correctly. “It’s...true that I was frustrated with you,” she says slowly. “It felt like you were hiding things from me. Like you tricked me. And that hurt. It still hurts, and I’m not sure it’s going to go away right away.”
“Well, I did trick you,” Alastor says. “Without hesitation. I lied to get in the door, I lied about why I was there, and I lied about who sent me by saying nothing at all about it.”
“You did, and that hurts,” Charlie agrees. “But...you didn’t really have a choice, did you?”
“I’m not sure why that makes any difference. I still did the deeds that upset you.”
“It makes all the difference in the world,” Charlie says. “Because I yelled at you for a lot of things, but you couldn’t really help most of it, could you? Mom owns your soul. If she tells you to go babysit me, or lie to me about why you’re there, you can’t exactly say no, can you?”
Alastor is silent for a moment. Talking about his soul ownership is clearly an uncomfortable subject for him. But eventually he says, “I cannot.”
Charlie nods softly. “And most of the things I yelled at you about, most of the things I was angry about...I realize that it’s mostly things I’m angry at my mom about,” she says. “I don’t understand why she did any of this, Alastor, I still don’t. Why couldn’t she just explain that my dream might have political consequences in Hell, or put me in danger? Why not tell me that you were to be sent as some kind of advisor or in-between to the Overlords, or even a bodyguard? Why all this deception?” She swallows. “Why not come help me herself?”
“I don’t know, Charlie,” Alastor says, not meeting her eyes. “I said before, I can’t begin to understand my mistress’ decisions. Only act on them.”
“Why is why I’m apologizing,” Charlie says. “Because all the things I’m mad about are things that Mom did. It’s not your fault she told you to...to work your way into the Hotel to be my bodyguard, or to keep it all from me. You didn’t have a choice. And I’m sorry I yelled at you for that, because it wasn’t fair.”
Alastor watches her silently, and says nothing at all.
“Especially since you were probably trying to escape this place. Right? I did guess right about that?” Charlie glances at him, before gesturing out at the Nothing. “When you went missing for seven years...when nobody knew where you were...you were here, weren’t you?”
Alastor is silent so long Charlie believes he’s going to ignore her entirely. But eventually he says, so quietly she almost can’t hear it even in the deafening silence of the Nothing, “Yes. I didn’t realize it was that long in Something until she released me, but...yes.”
“And...you’ve seen The Beginning too,” Charlie presses, but as gently as she can. “You had to have, at least once. Because you knew how to help me...I’m just going to call it last night to make it make sense.”
“Sense doesn’t exist in the Nothing,” Alastor rambles. “Sense is a thing of Something.”
He doesn’t confirm her suspicions. He doesn’t deny them, either, which is enough to tell her she’s right.
“I get...why you’d want to escape here. Why you would do literally anything, take any job, to escape that. The Nothing. The Beginning. Being asked to babysit the queen’s silly daughter probably seemed like child’s play by comparison.”
Alastor is silent.
“So...it was wrong of me to take out the anger that was meant for my mom on you,” Charlie concludes. “And I’m sorry for that. I really am. It wasn’t fair of me to yell at you like that when you’re being punished here, too, and you’re not responsible for my mom’s actions. No matter what she might make you do.”
“Not for nothing—hah!—but that can hardly be the end of it,” Alastor says. “You aren’t the angry sort. The worst I’ve ever seen you was with your sweetheart, until now. There’s more to your thoughts than that.”
Charlie sighs, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “You’re...not wrong,” she says. “Like I said, even if it wasn’t your fault, it still hurts. To think you were lying to me all this time. Even if maybe there was a reason for it.”
She rests her chin on her knees. “But I don’t think it’s hurt that comes from anger. I’m...upset. I’m sad. Because I thought that maybe you really did like us. That you liked me. When I said I was starting to think about you like another father figure? I wasn’t making that up. So it’s just...painful. To think you weren’t there because you wanted to be, or because you cared about us. And that...that’s going to take some time for me to come to terms with.”
Alastor looks away. “I won’t apologize for doing what I had to in order to meet my mistress’ demands.”
“I know,” Charlie says softly. “I know you had to. I know for you it’s survival. And I’ll get over it eventually. I won’t try to force you to be like friends or family anymore now that I know. I guess it was probably annoying.”
She turns her head, resting her cheek against her knees, so she can look away from Alastor when she says this next part. “I just...I’ll miss it, I guess. Being friends with you. Having somebody I could rely on like a parent to handle things when it got scary. Even when my mom and dad weren’t around, you were. It felt...safe.”
She sniffs a little. She is not going to cry. She’s not going to guilt-trip Alastor into feeling sorry for her. Not that he probably would anyway, since he’s the Radio Demon. But still. “But it’s not fair to ask that of you when you didn’t ask to be here, or actually want to care about me or the others. So we can keep it strictly professional from now on.”
Alastor doesn’t say anything at all.
Charlie rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands quickly, dashing away the mistiness before turning to look at him again. “But! For now, we’re stuck here together. And...and I don’t know why my mom did this, but she did this to both of us. So for now, I want us to at least be on the same team here, so we can survive this, together. Because it’s too cruel to ask either of us to do it alone.”
Alastor’s ever-present grin can’t really go away, but his eyes narrow in his version of a frown. “Do you understand what you’re asking, Charlie?”
“I’m saying, let’s make an agreement,” Charlie says, sitting upright now and unwrapping her arms from her knees. “Not a Deal, no creepy voodoo magic or strings attached. But we’ll work together to make this as...as livable as possible, until we get out of here. I know you have to protect me, an I know you can’t hurt me, but I don’t expect you to baby me and I’m not going to ask you to. I know I still have some confusing feelings about all this, and my mom, and how you’re forced to work for her, but I’m not going to take it out on you, and I’ll treat you with respect. We’ll help each other however we have to here, in order to survive it long enough to escape, as a team. And it will be a team. I’m not going to leave you behind here alone.”
“In effect, you’re asking for us to trust each other,” Alastor surmises.
“I guess, if you want to cut it down to that,” Charlie says. “We’re all the other has right now. We’re in this together. So why not?”
Alastor laughs, and it’s the same bitter, manic, humorless noise of before. “Oh, Charlie,” he chortles. “Haven’t you learned anything? You weave so many pretty little lies, and you’re so easy to lie to. I’ve already proven I’ve lied to you efficiently and expertly from day one. What makes you think I’m still not?”
“I figured it out,” Charlie says with a frown. “That you work for my mom. That you were appointed at the hotel by her. You said you couldn’t admit to it unless I figured it out, but I did. So that’s it, isn’t there?”
“Charlie.” Quick as a flash, Alastor reaches out to grab her under the chin, tilting it up to face him. He’s very careful to not so much as break the skin with his claws, nor does he hold tightly enough to bruise, but it’s frightening all the same. “For one moment, think with a heart not filled with love and caring. You’ve said you don’t understand why you are here. You’ve said you don’t understand the methods. What kind of parental figure locks away their child like this? Anyone who can do that, can do worse.”
Charlie pulls her face away, and Alastor lets her. But she can’t stop the chill from running down her spine all the same. “Are...are you saying Mom might hurt me?”
“I am saying nothing explicit,” Alastor says carefully. “I am also saying one does not casually throw one’s children into a pit with a rabid wolf without knowing some of the potential consequences. Especially if the wolf is on the leash they hold.”
He grits his teeth at the end, hard enough that she can hear his jaws grinding. His claws dig cracks and gouges into the bark beneath them. He takes a deep breath, and then lets it out slowly.
“I am saying,” Alastor concludes, “that it is dangerous to always see only the best in people, or to trust them wholeheartedly. Especially when their actions are not necessarily their own. Perhaps you trust me, but are you willing to bet on trusting my mistress?”
And that’s...frightening. Charlie’s not sure if Alastor has been explicitly given orders to hurt her in certain situations, or if he’s just suspicious and paranoid. With how cagey he’s being about giving direct answers, she has a feeling he can’t really tell her anything.
It’s hard not to treat that warning with fear and grief. Because she’s not sure she’d trust her own mother anymore, not after being put here. And The Beginning doesn’t help. The Nothing has a way of making people doubt everything, even themselves and the ones they hold dear. It makes her want to curl up in a ball and hide from the world and everything in it until it all goes away.
I’m tired of protecting someone as gullible as you.
I never should have picked up that call.
She shudders.
But then she shakes her head. “I...I don’t want to live like that,” Charlie says.
Alastor gives her a confused look.
“You told me The Beginning lies,” Charlie says. “And the things I kept thinking of most when I was there, the things it kept pushing at me the most, was how stupid and gullible and easily to lie to I am, how I should learn to not trust so easily. And maybe that’s true a little bit. I could learn to think things through more, or just just trust everything anyone ever tells me.
“But I don’t think it’s all true. I don’t want to spend my whole life being paranoid. Or looking for manipulations and conspiracy theories and always suspecting everyone is out to hurt me. That’s not me. I want to be able to trust people. I want to show them I care, and I believe in them. And maybe then they can believe in themselves, too, and open up a little in return.”
She turns to look at him. “What I’m saying is...I want to trust you. And I want to believe you. Because if I don’t, at some point, I stop being myself. And if I don’t, I can’t help you get out of this place, either.”
“And what makes you think I haven’t already betrayed you?”
Charlie considers this question carefully. Because she wants to trust Alastor, but if this whole experience has taught her anything at all, it’s that she can’t trust on blind faith alone.
“When you took me to Cannibal Town,” Charlie says slowly, “Rosie and I had a long talk, because I didn’t know how to feel about all the stuff we learned about Vaggie.”
“Rosie is an admirable and intelligent woman.”
“She is. And she told me something important. She said words are cheap, but actions speak the truth.”
Charlie takes a deep breath. “So if I look at what your actions have said since we’ve been here...even if Mom wanted you to kill me right away, you haven’t. And maybe you’re not allowed to hurt me and you have to protect me according to Mom’s rules...but you haven’t been a jerk about it while doing that. You didn’t have to sing for me, or stay with me while I fell asleep. You didn’t have to leave me your jacket or your monocle. So...so maybe you never wanted to be my friend, or family, and Mom forced you to come to the hotel. But at the very least while we’re here, I don’t think you really want to hurt me, either.”
She hesitates, and then holds out a hand to Alastor. “So I’m willing to trust you. Because I want to, and because I think you deserve it.”
Alastor eyes her hand shrewdly. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything so foolish before in my life.”
“Yeah. Well.” Charlie smiles at him, and it’s watery and weak, but it’s a smile, just like he always champions. “You knew I was going to be like that from the beginning. It’s nothing new, right?”
“I suppose it is quite in character for you.” He hesitates, but slowly reaches out for her hand, clasping it with surprising delicacy. There’s no real Deal here, just an agreement to try and survive together and respect one another, but he still seems cautious all the same. “I can agree to such terms, though. Mutual survival is a reasonable excuse for some degree of trust.”
They shake once, and Charlie smiles. “I’m happy to hear it. And I meant it, Al, I’m going to get you out of here too, when they come for me.”
“We’ll see, my dear.” He lets go of her hand, and settles back against the trunk of the tree.
Charlie sits back as well. It had been a difficult talk, and she hadn’t lied that it would take a while to really come to terms with her feelings. It’s something like grief, sitting in a pit in her heart, to know she’d thought of Alastor as family and he’d never asked for it at all. Like she’d lost someone important to her, even if they hadn’t died.
But she can work through that. Eventually. And for now, at least, she feels a little better having apologized to Alastor, having made her feelings clear. Enough that she can live with herself, at least, while trying to help the both of them survive in the Nothing.
After a long moment, Alastor coughs. “For what’ it’s worth, my dear…”
“Huh?”
Alastor sighs, looking away from her as he says, “The hotel wasn’t...the worst job I’ve ever been assigned. I was not lying when I said I found it entertaining.”
Charlie thinks, but isn’t quite sure, that this might be Alastor’s stunted way of accepting her apology. So for now, she decides to accept it for what it is, rather than pointing out that it’s sort of mean of him that the best part about his assignment was watching people fail.
“I’m glad,” Charlie says. And she means that.
The Nothing has no time and The Beginning measures nothing at all. But somehow, Alastor and Charlie manage to create a routine to keep themselves from going crazy.
As routines go, it’s boring. Charlie’s used to being surrounded by a lot of activity in the hotel, and before that, surrounded by hundreds of things to do in the palace. The Beginning has herself, Alastor, and the strange tree, so there isn’t much to work with.
But they do try to make something of it, at least.
They sleep a lot. At least, Charlie does. She’s only ever caught Alastor sleeping once, and even then, it was in a strange state of vigilance; sitting up against the trunk of the tree, eyes closed, but with his ears upright and constantly twitching. He says he sleeps when Charlie does, usually on the opposite side of the tree.
“It would be quite unseemly for a gentleman to sleep near a lady in such a way,” he says. “We haven’t separate rooms, so around the tree is the best I can do.”
Charlie finds his logic a little antiquated, but she supposes it’s better than the alternative. Alastor might be a serial killer and a cannibal, but he is at least a gentleman and would never take advantage of her like that.
They usually share meals together. Meals are always the fruits, because there’s nothing else to eat here. Alastor had admitted trying the bark, leaves, even gnawing on branches just for a change of pace when he’d been here before, but all they’d done was scratch his teeth.
At least the fruits aren’t boring. The fact that the flavor constantly changes, and the memories it inspires are always different, helps with that. They’re always exactly the right amount of filling, and she never finds herself hungry or thirsty. She’s also relieved to find Alastor had been right; there’s never any need to use the restroom, either. Using the bathroom with Alastor here definitely would be a lot more awkward than sleeping on the same side of the tree.
After what they charitably call ‘breakfast,’ they spend what they charitably call ‘the day’ together. If it needs fixing after sleeping on it, Alastor will usually help her redress her hair, sometimes with different styles or various kinds of intricate braids. It should probably be terrifying to have his claws so close to her skull, neck and throat all the time, but she’s never scared of him. And he seems content to have something to do, so he never protests if she asks him to fix it after a rest.
She offers to help him with his hair once in return, but he only laughs in her face. “With what, Charlie?” he asks, and she has to admit, he is sort of right. He can comb tangles out of his hair in a second since it’s so short, and if it gets mussed when he’s sleeping, she never manages to catch it. The worst she’s ever seen is a twig or bit of bark caught in his hair or antlers.
She may be a little bit jealous. She loves her long hair, and she’s been growing it out for years, but it’s not really great for existing in Nothing.
Once their so-called morning routines are complete, there’s not much else to do but talk together.
Talking isn’t exactly necessary, but they have to do something to keep the quiet of the Nothing at bay. Alastor starts humming his aimless tune if the silence goes on too long, or slipping into his more rambling, riddle-filled musings. He’ll talk to himself if no one else is around, even his staff; Charlie’s heard him muttering when she’s waking up before.
But he does better when there’s another person actively participating in conversation. If she can get him to focus on it, and on things that are outside The Beginning, he does manage to claw his way back to some semblance of sanity. For a little while, at least.
And if Charlie’s honest, she’d rather talk to another person than talk to herself. Talking to herself in The Beginning had been...complicated. She doesn’t want to go back to that if she can help it.
So they talk.
But figuring out what to talk about is tricky, at first. She could chatter about things for hours in his direction if she really wanted to, but she wants something that engages them both, because they’re supposed to be helping each other survive here.
And Alastor is so cagey, so careful about revealing anything about himself or giving away too many details. He’ll lock up if it’s not a conversation he’s interested in. He doesn’t care much about her redemption plans. He won’t (or maybe can’t) explain how he met Lilith and what his half of the Deal was, no matter how much Charlie is curious. She tries to ask him about his friends in Hell, or people he’d like to be with or things he’d like to do if he wasn’t on a leash, because she will fight for him to be able to do that if she can. But he’s staunchly silent for these questions too.
In the end, Charlie hits on the real trick when she asks him about his life on Earth.
It turns out, Alastor has a lot to say about his Earthly life, and he’s more than happy to share the best parts with only a little prompting. He tells her about the city he was born in, New Orleans, and his life growing up there. He tells her about the bayous outside the city, and the Earthly animals and plants that lived there. He tells her about the food and cultures and traditions and festivals of his family and his fellow people of New Orleans. He tells her about his job, when he’d been a radio star and made a significant difference in the lives of the city nearly every single day. He tells her about nightclubs and speakeasies, drinking and dancing and singing.
Sometimes, if he’s feeling particularly animated, he’ll even show her some of those things too. His staff doesn’t seem to produce music correctly with the way it’s broken, but he’s still happy to sing the songs of his time, or teach them to her so she can sing along. He’ll recite some old memorable shows from his radio days, because he still remembers the most impactful ones. He teaches her the dances, just at the edge of Nothing, where the roots are next to them and the light still casts, but they aren’t underfoot. She learns all kinds—the Fox Trot, Charleston, Texas Tommy, Black Bottom, Shimmy, Brazilian Samba, and a whole host of waltzes and tangos. She’s shocked at how much there is to learn, but it certainly keeps them both busy and not focused on The Beginning looming all around them.
Charlie also discovers she does have things she can talk about that do catch Alastor’s attention. Sinners are trapped exclusively in the Ring of Pride, and can’t go to any of the other six Rings. Most are content to stay where they are, since Pride is usually enough to leave Sinners distracted. But older Sinners like Alastor have mastered Pride enough to be curious about the places they can’t go, for all their power and skill.
So Charlie tells him about the other Rings: the colors, the people, the cultures, the Sins that run them. At first, Alastor seems mostly interested in gaining knowledge for the sake of use later, like learning about the Sins or ways for Sinners to do business in Rings they can’t enter. But over time he grows more interested in learning about the people and the places, just for the sake of it. Charlie tells him about the amazing restaurants in Lust, the gorgeous ocean views in Envy, the sense of community in Wrath. She tells the silly stories, the ones that humanize (relatively speaking) the entities Sinners can only ever dream of meeting. Like the way Aunt Bee made her the most amazing giant pink birthday cake when she was five. Or how Uncle Ozzie promised to come get her immediately if she was ever uncomfortable on a date or at a party, just give him a call and Mom and Dad didn’t even have to know.
Alastor told her about his life, so she tells him about hers. Growing up in the palace. Getting Keekee. All her princess training. Dad teaching her magic. Being homeschooled with the best tutors. Trips to Goetia meetings or Sin conferences with Dad. Going on vacation. Dad sneaking her things from Earth to covet, because she’d never been there and had never seen any of it: books with pictures, fluffy stuffed animals, living plants that she tried so hard to take care of. (Later, she learned Dad kept revitalizing them when she tried to water them with too much acid. She hadn’t known when she was seven that Earth things didn’t like acid water).
She avoids talking about her mother when she tells those stories. She has a feeling neither Alastor nor herself want to hear them right now.
“I suppose on some level I understood that Hell is the first life for quite a few people,” Alastor finally observes, when she talks about getting her very own Hellevator registration, instead of having to travel with one of her parents, so she could make trips on her own. She’d been so proud that day. “I don’t think I ever considered the sheer mundanity of the afterlife I’ve been sent to, though.” He cackles. “To think, the fate of my immortal soul, the one the preachers swore would be fire and brimstone and suffering and punishment, would be a perfectly normal life for someone else.”
“Well, I mean, there is still a lot of all that,” Charlie says. “Especially in Pride. That’s why most of the Hellborn go somewhere else. The Pride Ring is kind of…” She tries to think how to put it delicately.
But Alastor’s grin grows wider and more wicked. “Overrun by interlopers from another reality? The worst of the worst, outcast from one world into theirs? We are Earth’s cast-off garbage on their lawns, I expect.”
“That’s, um, one way to put it.” Actually a very common way to put it, to listen to some Hellborn. Many of them hated that Sinners were overcrowding an entire Ring, caused endless destruction and chaos, and rarely died off permanently. Some even praised the exorcists and exterminations for wiping out degenerate scum that took up an incredible amount of space in the Rings. Space was limited, after all, and Hellborn demons couldn’t exactly go anywhere else but Hell.
But that’s an entire aspect of Hellborn politics Charlie’s not getting into right now. Even if, maybe, it might be one of those reasons Mom said people wanted her dead.
Just thinking about it makes her head hurt.
When they can’t think of conversations, or when they’re too tired to maintain them, sometimes they try word games. Alastor isn’t familiar with most of them at first, but he’s a quick learner. Would You Rather, Twenty Questions, Never Have I Ever, Word Association, and other sorts of quiz games are a way to pass the time that keep their minds sharp. They try others, but Alastor is too good at catching Charlie in Two Truths And A Lie while she can never figure him out at all, and song guessing games are difficult when they come from radically different musical worlds.
In very serious moments, they talk about their situation.
“Did you ever actually have any progress with escaping, my dear?” Alastor asks her idly once.
Charlie flushes. “I tried,” she says. “But none of my magic works here. I thought maybe, if I could find the right spot—if it was just a certain point where you could come through...but it’s impossible to find anything out there at all.”
“I don’t think that’s the case. I believe my mistress has entered from multiple locations. At least, from what I can tell, based on the position of the tree.”
“Maybe there’s more than one thin point to cut through to The Beginning,” Charlie says. “Ugh! I wish I listened to Dad better about portal magic. He makes it look so easy. I thought I’d always be able to ask him to do it, but now…”
“No point dwelling on it, I suppose.”
Charlie’s head lowers. “I...you do think they’re looking for us, right?” Because it’s been...well, a while, now, she’s sure. There’s no time here, but she’s been measuring thing in sleeps, and it’s been seven sleeps so far. At least a week, right? Plus whatever time she spent in The Beginning.
“I’m certain of it, Charlie. I imagine they’re tearing apart the greater majority of Hell by now trying to figure out where you’ve gone.”
“And you too,” Charlie insists. Alastor’s expression says he doesn’t believe it, but she doesn’t want to start that argument again. “How long do you think we’ve been here?”
“Time isn’t here, Charlie. It doesn’t exist. Nothing changes, because this place is Nothing.”
“How long outside then,” Charlie adjusts her question. “In Something.”
Alastor merely shrugs. “Who knows? Last time, for me, it was seven years. It could be months. Days. Years.”
“How...how long did it feel like this time? Before I got here,” Charlie asks hesitantly. She knows it’s two weeks. If she can try to judge by that, with some rough math…
But Alastor only stares out into the darkness of The Beginning. After a moment he says, “An eternity.”
He refuses to talk for the remainder of what they charitably call their ‘day.’
Sometimes, Alastor gets like this. Despite the need to talk and stay mentally here, in whatever passes for the present in Nothing, he withdraws and refuses to engage with her. Charlie tries not to take it personally. There are definitely days when she wants someone else, someone a little more supportive, someone who likes her company. Vaggie (the real Vaggie) would tell her everything would be okay and would cuddle with her and figure out practical ways they could keep it together. Dad (the real Dad) would hug her so tight and promise her he’d take care of her, and she’d feel safe and warm and loved.
Alastor isn’t like that. And Charlie does her best to respect that, like she promised in their agreement. She treats him like a teammate, a fellow survivor of this place worse than Hell. She doesn’t try to force the roll of friend or family on him when he didn’t ask for it. She tries to respect the boundaries he seems to want but quite literally cannot ask for, because of the restrictions Mom put on him.
But sometimes it’s hard. Especially times when he’s like this. When he’s obviously struggling somehow, but he won’t talk about it. When his grasp on sanity slips and he talks in nonsense. When he won’t interact with her, despite needing connection. She wants so badly to give him a hug, or sit against him, or hold his hand, and tell him how much she cares. But she fights that impulse, because...well, because he wasn’t here by choice, not in The Beginning and not at the hotel, and she’s not going to force even more on him that he never wanted to begin with.
And maybe, a little bit, because it’s confusing to her too. She really had thought of him as a friend. He’d been growing into something like a father figure to her. His song had obviously been to annoy her real father, but the things he pointed out hadn’t been wrong. And she’s still not really sure how to navigate their interactions in times like this, when she’s lost a friendship she’d wanted, and he’d never been in one to begin with.
It stings.
So she doesn’t push, when Alastor doesn’t interact with her. But she does observe, when they’re not talking or dancing or playing word games. Sometimes she watches even when they are, because he might not ever have been a friend but he’s still her fellow survivor, and she does at least want to make sure he’s okay.
What she finds, as the sleeps pass, is that slowly but surely so many of his bizarre behaviors on the outside, in the Something, make sense in the context of the Nothing.
She’d noticed the way he tended to make noise almost any chance he could. Singing, talking—usually to himself—and sound effects if he could manage them without his staff. And his manic behavior here was very similar to his first week with them at the Hazbin Hotel, from the moment he knocked on the door. That all made sense, if he’d barely left The Beginning before being sent on his assignment. They were habits he’d formulated here, in the Nothing, that helped him survive, and he’d carried them with him out the door.
But those things at least had died down in the Something after a week or so. He’d been more eccentric than usual getting them set up, repaired, cleaned and ready for opening. He’d gone above and beyond to prove himself useful with flashy tricks and summoned servants. He’d barely considered her (in retrospect) half-assed deal to “help with this hotel for as long as you desire.” Al’s too sharp a dealer to let something so vaguely worded go, not if it benefits him.
She hadn’t known him well enough back then to know that, though. That the agreement had never been the point. He’d just been desperate to get in the door, to place himself at the hotel to be a proper secret bodyguard. He’d played along skillfully, leaned into his reputation as a dealer to not make them question too hard when he let them off the hook easy, and fell into wearing the mask of a hotelier so they wouldn’t see the placed servant he really was.
But after a week of noise, or other people to talk to, those loud and zany behaviors slowly started to calm down. It was like he’d finally started to realize the Hotel was real, and he’d really found an excuse to work there, and he wasn’t still in The Beginning. He still had his moments, but Charlie had almost forgotten he used to act like this.
Those habits were back now, stronger than ever. Obviously they had been things that let him survive being in here for seven years (or at least, seven years to the outside—an eternity in The Beginning). And even with her here, they’re getting worse the longer they stay. She tries to help him stay grounded, but it’s obvious that the longer he spends in the Nothing, the harder it is to do so.
Not for the first time, she swears to herself that when somebody comes for her, she is finding a way to take Alastor with her. She doesn’t care that he’s bound to the tree with his own soul chain, she will find a way to free him from this. Betrayals or not, friend or not, nobody deserves to suffer in a place like this alone.
She’s not going to leave him behind. Especially not when he sang her out of The Beginning and protected he at her most vulnerable with more kindness than she had ever credited him with.
But for now, just like Alastor said all those sleeps ago, all they can do now is wait. And so far, it’s not fun, but they’re surviving. They’re going to make it, and things are going to be okay.
Thirteen sleeps into her banishment to The Beginning, Charlie is proven wrong, because Alastor is not okay.
Notes:
Listen, I know the “Alastor has gorgeous curls/works hard to take care of his hair/is taught by others to care for his hair” headcanon is a big one, and I know a lot of people hate the bob look. But personally I’m on the “this man gets bloody every day constantly and doesn’t want to spend hours on hair care every day” train and a bob is just about the most easy thing to care for there is.
Chapter Text
There’s no sign at all that anything is going to be different. Charlie goes to sleep with Alastor wishing her a good night like always, as he circles around to his side of the tree to be a proper gentleman. She hasn’t asked him to stay with her when she falls asleep since she walked out of The Beginning, even if it’s sometimes lonely. At least she’s not as scared as that first night.
She eventually falls asleep like she always does.
When she wakes up, it’s to the undeniable feeling deep in her gut that something is wrong.
It’s that feeling that wakes her, in fact. And she’s not sure where it comes from, until she finally registers what it is that feels off: the air itself. The deep hum and buzz of static that’s felt more than heard, resonating through the tree, in her chest. A soft crackle and a buzzing hiss from the other side of the tree, and her attention is suddenly drawn to muttering words. Words that are low, almost too soft to make out the words of, but words that are in pain.
Charlie hauls herself out of her little root-bound depression that serves as a bed, and rushes around the trunk as fast as she can, trying not to break an ankle on her heels.
About halfway around the tree, the disjointed muttering turns into actual words. “Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot,” Alastor snarls. “Stop it, stop listening, stop listening to the lies!”
“They’re n-n-not lies,” comes the answering voice of Alastor’s staff. Crackling, fuzzing and distorted, skipping and popping like it’s broken, a voice that’s just a shade different from Alastor’s. A part of him, he said before—but a part of him that’s broken, and a part of him that’s hurting him.
Charlie hurries faster.
“They are!” Alastor snaps back. “The Nothing lies!”
“Maybe f-f-for otherssss,” the staff crackles. “N-n-nooooot for you. The Nothing is-is-is-is the only p-p-p-plllllace in the worldssss where-ere-ere there is n-n-nothing—ah-hah!—for you to hide be-be-behind. You c-c-can’t look away. Sssso face what you are-are-are.”
Charlie finally draws close enough to spot Alastor at the base of the enormous trunk, nestled in the roots. He’s sitting on one of the larger ones like a bench, a red and black smear against the pristine white and prismatic glow of the tree itself.
But he doesn’t look well. He’s doubled forward, elbows on his knees, hands wrapped around his head. His normally upright ears are pinned back, his shoulders are tense and hunched around his neck, and his fingers are buried deep in his hair. He’s breathing hard, a rasping hiss that comes too fast. The closer she gets, the more intense the static in the air is, the more it hurts in her teeth and spikes anxiety out of nowhere in her chest.
“Lies,” Alastor snarls. “None of it’s true! It’s not Something, it doesn’t know me!”
“That’s right!” Charlie chimes in, as she leaps across the remaining roots and closes the distance. “That’s right, the Nothing lies. The Beginning lies. Don’t listen to what it says, Alastor, it’s just hurting you!”
But Alastor doesn’t respond to her. And when she finally crashes to a halt in front of him, he doesn’t even react to her presence. His face is always gray, but it looks sickly and pale in the soft glow of the tree now. His eyes are wide and staring blankly, and they don’t focus on her even when she waves a hand in front of his face or crouches down to look at him directly.
The staff doesn’t respond either—at least, not to her. She can see it at his side, sitting on the root-bench next to him. The single eye glows balefully, and it’s staring straight at Alastor’s head. It’s constantly making noise, but not the good kind that keeps them distracted in the quiet of the Nothing. These are crackles and pops and screeches of feedback, causing the hairs on the back of Charlie’s neck to raise and her heart to beat faster.
“It knows you-you-you,” the staff says. “Oooooh, itttt knows you. It knows ev-ev-ev-ery potential of you-you-you and what-t-t you c-c-could have been. What you are-are-are. Don’t l-l-l-lo-look away from the tr-tr-tr-uth.”
“That’s not true!” Charlie yells at it. She doesn’t know what The Beginning showed Alastor, of course. She’d never asked, and he’d never pressed her for what she’d seen. It was a deeply private and personal thing. But she knows it lied.
It has to have lied. Because if it was telling truths—
She can’t bear to accept that what was out there was real.
Alastor doesn’t respond to her. His ears don’t even twitch towards her, and his eyes don’t look at her. It’s like she’s a ghost, not even there.
But she’s not out of his thoughts, at least. Because the next thing he snaps back at his staff is, “It didn’t show truths to Charlie! For her, it was lies!”
The staff actually laughs, a terrible, crackling, cackling thing. “Char-char-char-charlie is a lie, you id-id-id-idiot. You thi-i-i-nk she’s here? You think you’re n-n-not allllloooone? What a fu-fu-fu-fucking-g-g joke!”
“That’s not true!” Charlie yells, enraged. “I’m here right now, I’m right here in front of you, Al—look at me, I’m right here!”
She waves her hands in his face, but he doesn’t respond. She yells, jumps up and down, calls his name, and gets no response either.
She reaches out to grab his shoulders, but hesitates at the last second. Alastor’s not in a good place, that much is clear. He doesn’t like people touching him even on good days, and this isn’t either. And they’re not friends, not according to him—she doesn’t have the right to offer any kind of physical comfort if he doesn’t want it.
Alastor’s fingers dig deeper into his skull. Charlie smells iron, and knows his claws have broken skin. “That’s not—she’s here,” he says, but his argument is more of a gasp now, with no conviction. He’s afraid. Desperate. Clawing for anything he can to fight back. “She’s—she’s Something. I saw her—”
“You’re right, I’m here Alastor, you saw me,” Charlie says. Her voice is pleading. “Please, just look at me—I’m here, I’ll help you, Al—”
But he doesn’t listen to her. He only listens to the staff. “The N-n-n-nothing shows you-you-you all kinds of th-th-things. You’ve gotten sssssoft if you-you-you want to im-im-imagine someone so-so-so ssssoft to help-help-help you.”
That enrages Charlie like nothing else. She’s rarely angry, but this crosses a line. “I’ve had enough of you!” she snarls, as her horns start to slip through her hair. She snatches up the broken half of the staff, and Alastor doesn’t even notice. “Even if I wasn’t here, which is a lie because I am and I want to help, don’t you dare try to convince Al he can’t ask me for help if he wants it!”
The staff doesn’t answer as Charlie marches away from Alastor’s bench, and his frantic mumbling. She finds the hole Alastor had clawed out of the tree trunk. “You’re awful help,” she snaps, shoving it back into the hole where it belongs. “Shut up and leave Alastor alone!”
The burst of static and feedback that comes from the staff is painful enough to make her cover her ears. But it falls quiet a moment later, and she marches back to Alastor, feeling better enough that her demonic features slip away again. Maybe now he could hear her, without that thing interrupting.
Except to her horror, it hasn’t fixed anything at all. She gets back to Alastor in time to see his jaws snap shut, forming that perfect, frightening smile. He speaks without opening his mouth, through the radio waves, like he does sometimes when he’s being spooky. His teeth gleam yellow, brightening with every syllable, and his speech pops and cracks and grows more distorted than before. “S-s-soft and weak, if you think anyone’s c-c-coming for you or gives a shhhhhit.”
Charlie’s jaw drops open in shock. But she’d gotten rid of the staff!
Except...it was a part of him, he’d said. Maybe the staff hadn’t been tormenting him at all. Maybe these have always been his thoughts that he doesn’t say, and he’s been tormenting himself.
Alastor gasps for a moment, taking in a shuddering breath, before arguing weakly, “Stop! That’s—that’s not true. I’m not weak, I’m not soft, I’m not pathetic—”
His jaws snap shut again, and the same awful radio voice from before hisses through his airwaves and gleaming teeth, “Face it, you fool. You burned every bridge in the Something. Nobody cares if you vanish. You’re alone. This is the real Hell. And you deserve to suffer eternally in it.”
And then Alastor’s eyes widen, his fingers burrow tighter, he doubles forward, and he screams.
Alastor is a master of terror, but this sound, this is the scariest thing Charlie’s ever heard in her life. The sharp radio feedback in it stabs straight into her brain and almost immediately, her head aches. There’s a frightening animal bellow layered on top of a human wail, and those hurt her heart, because they’re full of so much pain. Heartache and anguish and loneliness and fury and resignation, all wrapped into one endless screech that cuts through even the muffled silence of the Nothing like a knife.
Charlie staggers back at the sheer onslaught of it, and nearly trips over one of the roots behind her. Her arms windmill, but she manages to catch herself and stand upright again.
And through it all, Alastor doesn’t stop screaming.
Charlie can’t help herself anymore. She knows that Alastor doesn’t like to be touched in any way. She knows he’d never willingly wanted to befriend her or become a part of her family. She knows things are complicated between them and might stay that way forever, even when they escape here.
But she can’t listen to someone who had been important to her, someone who’s helped her, suffer like this without trying to help. And before she can stop herself, she reaches forward to put her hands on Alastor’s shoulders, calling to him helplessly. “Alastor! Alastor, it’s okay, I’m here, I’ll—”
She doesn’t get to say anything more. Alastor startles at the touch. He stops screaming, but his eyes are blown wide with raw panic. He twists and snaps his gleaming, sharp teeth at her arm with frightening speed.
Charlie yelps and pulls her arms back hastily. Thankfully, Alastor doesn’t manage to sink his massive teeth into her arm or hand, because that kind of damage would be difficult for even the something-fruits to deal with quickly. But he does manage to nip the pad of her thumb, causing a sharp sting of pain to rush through her.
“Ow!” Charlie cradles her hand against her chest, examining the wound. It’s a nasty scratch, but manageable. “Okay, it’s okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
But Alastor isn’t listening. He doesn’t even seem to have noticed her. Both hands are clutching at his neck, now, fingers digging under the midnight-violet soul collar with choked gasps. It sounds like he’s struggling to breathe.
And now that she looks closer, there’s movement in the soul chains, violet crackles of energy beneath the imitation-metal surface that roil like an angry storm. With every flash Alastor gags and tugs at the collar, fingers clawing so deeply he’s drawing lines of blood in his own neck and throat. His whole body shudders with obvious pain, and the static around him crackles and screeches for him when his voice can’t.
Too late, Charlie remembers. He’s not allowed to hurt me. Oh, shit!
“It’s okay!” Charlie yells. She’s not sure who she has to appeal to; the soul chain, a spell, Alastor himself. “It’s okay, I’m okay! I’m fine, it’s just a scratch, I’m not hurt. It was my fault for startling Alastor, it’s not his fault, he didn’t hurt me, he didn’t know I was here, stop hurting him!”
Charlie’s not sure what works. Or if it even does; maybe the punishment completed itself. But the soul-collar’s smoldering slows and falls still, becoming an inert chain of violet so dark it’s nearly black. Alastor takes a deep, shuddering breath, like he’s reached the surface after drowning, and clutches at the collar like he’s still afraid it will bite him.
Maybe it would. Maybe it has in the past.
“Alastor?” Charlie asks. She doesn’t try to touch him again. She doesn’t want him to panic another time, and end up injuring himself further because of it.
Alastor looks up at her slowly, ears twitching upright at the sound of her voice. For a moment, Charlie is relieved and delighted, because he’d responded, he’d finally responded! The collar punishing him had been awful, but maybe it had drawn him out of his head.
Except his eyes are still glazed and distant when he meets hers. There’s recognition there—but when they widen in shock and in fear, she realizes, too late, that it’s the wrong kind.
“Mistress,” Alastor stammers, and to Charlie’s horror, his ears pin flat and he starts to shake. “I apologize, Mistress, I didn’t notice you arrive, I—I have no excuse, I apologize.”
Charlie thinks she might actually throw up when Alastor throws himself off the root-bench and crashes to his knees, all but prostrating at her feet, still trembling with pure terror.
“I apologize, Mistress,” he repeats over and over, stammering. “I should not have fled the battle. I should not have left your daughter behind. I failed in my duties to protect and serve. I should never have been so weak. Such a pathetic, soft servant shames you, Mistress. I deeply apologize. My fate is yours, do as you must, just p-please...don’t break the bargain. I have no right to beg, but I do. I’m sorry, Mistress. Please…”
Over and over and over. Charlie’s nausea grows worse when she listens, because she’s never heard Alastor sound so subservient, so helpless, so desperate. Not even in that scream from just minutes ago. And the person who had done this to him was her mother.
Charlie’s heart ices over at the thought. Her mother did this. Her mother, who sang with her and taught her kindness and care for her people, who inspired her and showed her so many things, had reduced someone as strong as the Radio Demon to a pleading, terrified, groveling wreck. If she hadn’t seen that other side of her mother for herself, she might have thought this was some kind of sick joke.
But she’d seen it. She had.
And what makes her feel even more awful is the way that Alastor, delusional and deranged and mentally unwell as he is, had so easily confused Charlie for her mother.
It wasn’t uncommon. She might share many of her physical features with her father. But she’d always had her mother’s long hair, her height, the shape of her face. At a glance, she had often been mistaken for her mother in the past. And Alastor isn’t well; she can hardly blame him for thinking it.
But it still hurts to be associated with that...that thing that is her mother.
Charlie drops to her own knees in front of him. She can’t stand the thought of Alastor prostrating in front of her for another second. She doesn’t touch him; she doesn’t want to scare him further, especially not if he thinks she’s her mom. She can’t imagine any physical contact with her mother brought good sensations. She can’t imagine Mom ever bothered to comfort him.
But she does say, “Alastor. Al, I’m not my mom. I’m me. Charlie Morningstar. Remember me? We’re fr...we worked together. At the Hazbin Hotel. You’re my hotelier, remember? Alastor, please. You don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to beg. Just listen to me, and don’t let The Beginning lie to you, okay? Don’t listen to the lies.”
But Alastor doesn’t seem to hear what she's saying. He makes a soft, pained whining noise, and his trembling is getting worse. His breath comes harsher, faster, as he stammers, “I...I don’t understand, Mistress. I don’t understand what you want me to do. I...I apologize for my foolishness, Mistress, please, if you could just explain…”
Charlie’s heart twists, helpless. It hurts to see him like this. So afraid of her. So sure he’s failing further. So sure that failure brings punishment.
“You’re not foolish, Alastor,” Charlie says. “You’re just a little confused. That’s okay. This place is confusing. Can you please come back? My mom’s not here. It’s just me. Charlie. I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”
But Alastor doesn’t understand. He doesn’t raise his head. He doesn’t dare to look her in the eyes again.
Charlie wants to cry. She almost does; her eyes are hot, and her vision is getting blurry. But she blinks them away. She has to be strong for Alastor. She has to find a way to help him, and she can’t waste time sobbing about it.
She wants, more than anything, to pull him into a hug. Like Dad had done when she was young and had an awful dream. Pull him into the biggest embrace, hug him and rock him, tell him everything is okay and the things he’d seen were all in his head and it was okay. But he won’t respond well to that like this, and if he hurts her it’ll only hurt him in turn, and she can’t see a way out of this.
Except…
She can. Because it’s not the first time since being in The Beginning that she found her way out of an awful situation when everything seemed lost.
She takes a breath, and sings.
“Nothing lives and Something dies
Spins a world of tricks and lies
A soul alone and wanting cries—
there’s oh, so much to fear.
A wandering spirit, empty, lost
Pay the price and reap the cost
Emptiness and cruelty crossed,
And nothing yet seems clear.”
Alastor’s ears twitch in surprise. He doesn’t raise his head, but he does ask with confusion, “Mistress?”
Charlie doesn’t answer. Not with words alone, at any rate.
“Lies and slander weave together
Bind you like the cruelest tether
But it needn’t be forever—
If this song draws near.
Trace these words where darkness ends
Ignore the lies—they aren't your friends
Back to places light begins—
I'll keep you safe, my dear.”
Now Alastor definitely seems confused. “Mistress, that song…?”
It’s not a song Lilith Morningstar would know, because it’s a song he’d sung for Charlie. One made to draw another out of the dark and the lies of The Beginning and guide them somewhere safe. And now Charlie returns the favor, singing stronger, calling to Alastor to guide him back from the twisting, confusing depths of his own mind.
“The Beginning shows but ghosts
Ones that feel more real than most
But lies are all the Nothing hosts
Ignore them when they jeer
For you’ve a princess at your side,
I sing for a lost soul inside,
The Nothing will regret it lied
Now that I am here.”
Alastor breathes in sharply at the last words. They’re not the same, not his song, but Charlie hopes the alteration will reach him in a way her words alone hadn’t. I’m here, she weaves into the words with her emotion, her voice, her empathy. I’m here, Alastor, I’m here, I’m here to help. I just need you to hear me.
And then, like a miracle, Alastor whispers softly, “Char...lie?”
He still won’t look up. He’s still tense, bowed on hands and knees, braced like he’s expecting punishment. Like it might even now be some kind of trick, some way for Mom to hurt him further.
But Charlie says, “It’s me, Alastor. I’m here. I’m right here, in front of you, I promise.”
And Alastor shudders, just once, and sags. Like he’s out of strength. Like he never had it to begin with. Like he used everything he ever had in showing the version of her mother in his head his subservience.
Charlie catches him before he can go face-first into the roots. She winces immediately, afraid she might have triggered something dangerous or made him uncomfortable. She half expects him to sink his teeth into whatever part of her he can reach.
But he doesn’t fight back at all. And for Alastor, that’s almost scarier. He just sags like a rag doll, arms hanging limp, head flopped bonelessly, as she hooks her arms underneath him and lifts him up. He isn’t helping her any, so she can’t get him back onto the bench. She settles for letting him sag against her instead, his head resting on her shoulder, his arms hanging lifelessly at his side, kneeling awkwardly.
“Alastor?” Charlie says. Softly, because his ears are right near her face now, and she doesn’t want to startle him. Probably an awful idea to startle someone whose man-eating teeth are that close to her neck. “Al, are you with me?”
“Charlie?” he repeats. His voice sounds so tiny, so far away. There’s no voice filter at all. It’s like he has no energy left, wrung out after his panic attack and whatever confused him so much he saw Lilith instead of Charlie.
“I’m right here,” Charlie says. She can’t help herself, and rubs his back gently, trying to provide some kind of soothing contact. Touch helped, in the Nothing. Real things had touch. Warmth. Physicality. The lies, they didn’t. “I’m here. I’m real.”
“I thought you weren’t,” he says dully. “No Somethings but me. Me and the tree.”
“That’s not true now, Alastor,” Charlie tells him firmly. “I’m here too. I’m another Something. One you can talk to. I’ll listen.”
He hums. One of his ears flick, stuck on her bangs. It seems involuntary, because the rest of him doesn’t seem inclined to move at all.
She lets him stay that way, even if her own legs are starting to cramp, and even the soft roots are digging into her knees. She rubs his back and scratches the base of his skull with her other hand, applying sensation, texture, pressure. Signs of real. Signs that he’s here. Signs that she is.
It’s clear Alastor needs this, the more he leans against her. In fact, the longer he doesn’t try to get away, the clearer it is to Charlie that she’s been an idiot for thirteen sleeps at least. She knew Alastor wasn’t completely okay being here in the Nothing. She knew his coping mechanisms left him scrabbling for sanity.
But she hadn’t realized until today how unwell Alastor really was. How much he might’ve been putting on a mask for her sake. How he must’ve needed comfort and connection more than he allowed himself, but he’d worn a mask instead to hide how much he was starving for it. He’s been struggling from the beginning, from thirteen sleeps and two outside-weeks ago; he was just a good enough liar not to show it.
Until it had spiraled out of control, and led to this.
Or maybe he had spiraled even before this, Charlie thinks fretfully. She only ever caught him sleeping once. How many other times had he quietly panicked when she wasn’t there? Had he been that terrified when she wandered into The Beginning, afraid of what her mother would do to him?
Had he broken like this last time, the time that kept him missing for seven years?
How was he even still functioning?
Charlie squeezes her eyes shut, trying hard not to let herself cry. Right now, Alastor needs her support, the way he’d supported her since she got here. She can hold it together for him.
But she can’t quite keep herself from squeezing him tightly in a hug, even so. He’s hurting so badly, and he’s so unwell, and she can’t help but want to help him and make him feel safe. He’s been her protector for months, whether or not she ever realized it, but now she wants to protect him just as fiercely.
He grunts slightly at the tight hug, and for the first time, squirms a little in her grip. She relaxes it immediately. “Sorry. I should have remembered you’re not really a huggy person, I didn’t mean to cross any boundaries—”
“Do not trust me, Charlie,” is Alastor’s unexpected, rasping interruption.
She pauses in surprise. “What?”
“Do not trust me, Charlie,” he repeats. This must be important to him, because he lifts one of his hanging hands to grip her upper arm (carefully, carefully—never harming, never cutting cloth or drawing blood). He squeezes (again, so carefully), and then wearily levers himself upright, lifting his head away from hers and wobbling like a drunk. “Don’t trust me. No matter what you do, don’t trust me.”
“You’re my—” friend, she almost says, family, but cuts herself off before she does. “—teammate,” she finishes. “We have to trust each other to survive this.”
“Don’t,” he rasps. “You don’t know what I can do, Charlie. You don’t know me like the Nothing does.”
She grits her teeth, furious at the Nothing for hurting him so badly and hurting in her heart for him. “The Nothing lies. The Beginning lies. That’s what you told me, Al.”
“I lie, too. I’m a liar. Don’t trust me, Charlie, don’t do it.”
“No,” Charlie says firmly. “I refuse. We agreed, Alastor. And I told you, I don’t want to live like that, never trusting anyone at all. We’re in this together. I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t,” he whispers bitterly. “My mistress was here, if she—”
“She wasn’t here, Al,” Charlie interrupts, before he can walk himself down that path. “The Beginning lied.”
Alastor goes frighteningly silent. Then what little energy he had seems to drain from him when his face goes white, and he collapses against her again.
“I was right,” he mutters. Charlie has a funny feeling he’s not talking to her at all. “I am a damned lunatic. We’re all mad here…”
Charlie swallows, remembering the discussion Alastor had with...well, with himself, just the other sleep. “You’re just not feeling well,” she says instead. “You need some rest. It’s okay, this place is confusing. Things will feel better when you sleep.”
He laughs, and it’s that bitter, manic sound again, the one she’s grown to hate since she got here. “Sleep is worse. It’s always worse. Dreams aren’t Something, not really, and the Nothing can slip in, slithery and slippery, whisper words and lies and truths and there’s never a way to tell the difference. I won’t let it win. Hah!”
Charlie bites her lip. “Al, have you been sleeping at all?”
“Didn’t you hear me, dear? Dreams live in between Nothing and Something, they can’t be kept out.”
Charlie’s gotten used to deciphering Alastor’s riddles, after seeing The Beginning. But this is a little abstract even for her. Still, she’s going to interpret this roundabout answer as ‘no.’
“How about we go to my side of the tree?” Charlie says, patting him on the back. “For a change of pace. You can take a nap in my root cradle. It’s really soft and comfortable, you’ll sleep really well.”
Alastor stiffens immediately, and does his best to push away from her. “It’s hardly right of a gentleman to take a woman’s bed. Where will you sleep?”
“Well, I just woke up, so I don’t really need to sleep right now,” Charlie says.
This seems to befuddle Alastor, but he still shakes his head. “Improper,” he mutters. “So improper. What would the papers say?”
“There’s no papers here, Al,” Charlie tells him patiently. He seems to be struggling to focus, but Charlie can’t blame him, after everything he’s been through. His grasp on sanity had been questionable even before today’s breakdown.
Alastor considers this carefully, before saying with unusual gravity, “Ah, yes. Of course. Newspapers are Something. And so are the journalists.”
“That’s right,” Charlie encourages. “So how about you let me help you over to the bed? You’ll feel much better when you wake up.” She deliberately avoids calling it hers; maybe that will help him feel better about the ‘improperness’ of sleeping in her bed.
“I won’t let the Nothing in,” Alastor says.
“How about you at least lay down?” Charlie tries to compromise. “You seem worn out. You don’t have to sleep, but at least let your body rest, okay?” Maybe if she can get him to just lay down, he’ll fall asleep on his own.
He considers this again. “Perhaps,” he agrees grudgingly. And after a moment, as if divulging a terrible secret, he whispers, “I may...need your help, Charlie, dear. I seem to be stuck.”
Charlie’s hardly surprised. But she doesn’t want him to feel bad about it, because there’s already a set to his voice and his body that suggests he’s pretty embarrassed about not being able to get up to walk, and drawing attention to it will just make him contrary. So she says, “Sure. On the count of three, we’ll stand up together, okay? One—two—three!”
They manage, with Charlie doing most of the heavy lifting. Alastor manages to at least help somewhat, but he leans on her heavily, and his legs tremble and wobble like—well, like a newborn deer, if she had to use the obvious comparison. She slings his arm carefully around her shoulders and her other arm around his waist, and starts to lead him forward the first step.
“Wait!”
Charlie freezes. “Is something wrong?”
“My staff.” Alastor looks around fretfully. “I thought—I’d been checking on the repairs—”
“I put it away,” Charlie says firmly. “It’s in the hole you made.”
Alastor frowns. “Why? It’s not...you don’t steal. It’s worth nothing anyway, not right now. I can’t fix it—”
“It was hurting you,” Charlie says. “I wanted it to stop.”
“Hurting me?”
“It was saying awful things to you. Things that weren’t true. I wanted it to stop.” Charlie frowns. “But it didn’t really help.”
“Oh,” Alastor says. He sways unsteadily on his feet, even with her help, and he doesn’t seem ready or willing to confront whatever that means. “But it’s put away?”
“It’s put away.”
“Al...alright then. That’s all that matters.”
“C’mon, then.”
Charlie’s not sure how long it takes to get Alastor around half of the wide trunk to ‘her’ side of the tree, because Time isn’t in the Nothing. But it’s safe to say it’s a while, however Time isn’t measured here. Alastor is exhausted, wrung out from his experience and probably from a lack of sleep as well. His coordination is poor and the roots don’t help with his footing. He stumbles and trips often, and Charlie is the only reason he stays on his feet, and only by keeping her hands firmly latched around his waist and wrist.
By the time they reach the little area where the roots make her sleeping cradle, he’s panting from exertion and beads of sweat roll down his face. He struggles to keep his ears upright, but they’re slowly drooping lower and lower from fatigue. Most of his weight is leaning on her, and his head is nearly draped on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” he pants. “This is terribly unseemly. A gentleman shouldn’t shoulder a lady with such burdens.” He does still seem terribly embarrassed by his moments of weakness, if the dusting of red across his ashen face is any indication.
“I don’t really care about that, Al,” Charlie says. “I just want you to be safe and comfortable, okay? Here we go, here’s the cradle. Let’s get you laying down.”
She helps him settle, and the moment he can, he goes limp in the cradle, all dead weight in the woven roots and soft leaves. He tries to stifle a moan of exhaustion and pain and can’t quite manage, for all his efforts.
Charlie can’t help but lean forward and brush his hair out of his face for him, unsticking the loose strands from his sweaty forehead and stroking them back. “It’s okay,” she promises. “It’s all going to be okay. Are you hungry? Do you want a fruit before you rest?”
“Oh. Breakfast. I must have—I apologize, Charlie, I’ve been distracted—give me a moment—”
He tries to push himself up again, but Charlie gently shoves him back down. “You rest,” she says. “I’ll get one for you. There’s plenty I can reach.”
He looks dismayed by this. “That’s not—it’s my job—”
“It’s your job to protect me,” Charlie says. “That means you need to be rested and healthy in case we’re in danger. So let me help with that, okay?” She laughs, a weak, forced thing, but a laugh all the same. “I mean—it’s not like I have to cook anything, right? I can’t mess up picking fruit.”
Alastor looks flustered, but he also looks too tired to really argue. “This once,” he agrees. “Just this once.”
“Okay,” Charlie says, knowing full well she’ll pick as many meals’ worth of fruits as she has to for Alastor to feel better.
She only realizes her mistake when she walks away from the cradle. It’s deep enough that if someone lays down in it, they can lose sight of another person after just a few steps. And sure enough, Charlie barely takes a few steps away before Alastor makes a sharp, shuddering gasp, and the air starts to fill with static again.
“Idiot,” he rasps. It’s in a whisper, like he’s trying to be quiet, and maybe if he’d been on the other side of the tree he’d succeed. “Idiot, it—she—she exists. She exists, she exists, she exists, she’s real, Charlie is real, she’s real and she’s here—”
Charlie curses herself as she whirls around and immediately goes back to the cradle. How could she be so stupid? She was terrified of the same thing, the not-night that Alastor sang her back from The Beginning. Even losing sight of him for a minute made her terrified that she’d only imagined him, that he didn’t exist, that she was alone—
And the things the staff(Alastor) had said to him(self)…
Charlie is a lie, you idiot. You think she’s here? You think you’re not alone? What a fucking joke!
She’s so stupid. “Al!” she yelps, kneeling next to the bed. Trying to stay calm, for his sake. “Al, it’s okay—I’m still here. I still exist, I didn’t disappear, I’m not in your head, I promise.”
Poor Alastor has already rolled over on his side, curling up tight. His arms are wrapped around his head again, nails digging into his skull. She reaches out to grab the closest one, wrapping her fingers around his wrist and pulling it gently away so he can’t hurt himself.
He starts, but then looks up at her. “Charlie?”
“That’s me!”
“You’re real?”
“I’m real,” she promises.
He looks flustered almost immediately. “I forgot...I forgot so quickly...ha! Haha! How pathetic! The Nothing is taking me apart from the inside—soon I’ll have Nothing where my thoughts were!”
She rubs her thumb on the back of his hand. “Easy, Al. It’s okay. I was scared just like that before, when you brought me back from The Beginning. It’s okay. I know how scary it is. It’s okay.”
“Foolish,” he whispers. “Stupid. I should know better. I should. I’ve survived The Beginning longer than anyone. Anyone! I know what it does. But it still gets inside me, a Something hollowed with Nothing—”
She squeezes his wrist. Trying to draw him back out of his head. “It’s okay, Al. It’s okay. You just need some rest. Here, I’ll do what you did when you got food for me, okay? I’ll give you something. I’ll…”
She looks down at herself. There’s precious little to offer. But after a moment, she unbuttons her blazer and says, “You can have this, okay? It’ll prove I’m still here. Even if you can’t see me.”
She shrugs it off, and carefully tucks it against his hand. His fingers curl around it almost immediately, like long spider legs wrapping up a prize. One thumb runs over the material, and his eyes slowly lower down to it. “Real.”
“Yeah. It’s mine, and it’s real, and it’s proof that I’m here. I’m here, Al. I’m not a lie. Okay? I’m not a lie.”
Alastor is silent for a moment. Then he says, “Hurry.”
She does.
Like Alastor had before her, she narrates her progress loudly as she wanders the base of the tree, searching for fruits she can reach. She doesn’t care at all if it sounds silly. All that matters is that Alastor knows she’s real. She’s here. He’s not alone. He doesn’t have to be alone, in the Nothing or in his own thoughts.
She grabs two fruits, one for herself and one for Alastor. They’ll heal the tiny nip Alastor had given her, and the self-inflicted scratches and aches on him. Maybe they’ll help him rest, too, if he feels revitalized.
Even with her blazer, Alastor still breathes a sigh of relief when she comes close again. “Charlie,” he murmurs. “You’re still real.”
“I still am,” Charlie agrees. “I’ll trade you my blazer for a fruit, how’s that sound?”
“I’m starving,” is Alastor’s answer, as he holds the blazer out in her direction.
She helps him sit up long enough to eat, and hands him one of the fruits. He tears into it ravenously, with less poise than usual, ripping shreds of fruit flesh off with his sharp teeth and swallowing them whole. He usually eats the pits, with a noise that makes Charlie shudder every time, but today he sets it aside with a look of disgust. His poor teeth won’t take a beating today, it seems.
He seems calmer by the end, enough that she can coax him to lay back and rest without much convincing. He settles wearily, curling on his side and burrowing his head into the soft leaves. Charlie doesn’t miss that the angle is calculated, also letting him get a good glimpse of Charlie with one eye at all times. Proof that she’s still there. Still real.
“Hey, Al?” she asks softly, when he doesn’t immediately fall off to sleep.
“Yes, Charlie?”
“What...what the staff said to you—”
—What you said to yourself—
“It lied,” she says. “Those were just tricks from The Beginning.”
Alastor is silent for a while. If not for one big, luminous red eye still focused on her, she might have thought he fell asleep.
“Those are the only truths I’ve ever spoken, Charlie,” he says eventually.
She shakes her head. “They aren’t. They said I’m not real. But I’m here. I’m here right now.” She reaches down and touches his shoulder as proof. “See? So why would the rest be true?”
“Things here are true for me more than most.”
“That’s not true. People are looking for us right now. We’re not alone now, we’re together, and we’re going to get out of here, and when we do people will care about us. People care about us right now. They’re looking for us.”
“I’ve said before, Charlie,” Alastor says wearily. “They’re looking for you. Not me.”
“Both of us,” Charlie says stubbornly. “I know you have people who would care if you vanished.”
“It is not in the nature of a monster to have friends, Charlie.”
“You have friends! Rosie—”
“A business acquaintance.”
“How about Mimzy?”
“Burned that bridge. She left quite angry.”
“Well, what about the others in the hotel?”
“They care about you, Charlie. They put up with me at most, because you told them to. Tell me honestly, did any of them actually care when I didn’t show up?”
“They cared,” Charlie says sternly. Even though, admittedly, she had been the one to care the most. “And I cared. We kept looking for you. We rebuilt your radio tower for you.”
Silence. And then that bitter laugh, the one Charlie hates. “A miracle in the Nothing,” he chortles. “The Daughter of the Father of Lies has finally taken up his craft effectively.”
“Alastor—”
“You needn’t comfort me, my dear. I’m aware of what I am, and the ramifications of that. The Radio Demon is a menace. That’s what my mistress needs of me. I’ll burn every bridge I must to stay useful. Even if it means dying alone.”
But he shudders in the cradle of roots, leaves rustling finely, all the same.
Charlie wants to say so many things to that. I’d miss you. Maybe you don’t want to be friends, but I still can’t help but think of you like one. You’re kinder than I think even you want to admit to. You’re not weak. You’re not a menace. I wouldn’t let you die alone.
But she doesn’t think he’d handle any of that well. Or even accept some of it.
Instead, she says softly, “Al? What did my mother give you that was so important you’d let this happen to you?”
“I don’t wish to speak of it,” Alastor says flatly. “Do not ask me again.”
“Oh. Okay.” Charlie bites her lip, and tries a different question. “Can I ask...what my mother did to make you so scared?”
Because she still can’t shake the image of Alastor, kneeling at her feet, begging and trembling and prostrating himself, desperate to apologize. And she can’t imagine what would make someone as strong as Alastor fall that far.
Alastor is silent for a long time. But finally, he says, “Charlie...I know I’ve prodded you into unraveling truths from lies, here. Even if they’re truths you don’t want. But just this once, I am warning you, and I beg you to take my warning seriously: do not ask for the answer to that question. You do not want it.”
Charlie doesn’t ask again.
Chapter 8
Notes:
Yes you did see that change--I've updated the chapter count to 11. Doing final revisions and realized the final chapter is WAY too long, so it's been split in half. Don't worry, I'll post the last two chapters in the final two days so everything drops before s2 does.
This one has quite a few answers, but it's also the chapter linked to all those abuse tags, so tread cautiously.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Alastor sleeps so long after his breakdown that Charlie actually starts to get hungry and tired again, and that worries her. More than once, she has to check to soothe her own anxieties about how he must have died in his sleep somehow, and left her all alone in the Nothing.
But he doesn’t die. He gets restless sometimes in his sleep, anxious and muttering to himself. She can’t make out the words, but they sound just as painful as his argument with himself earlier, and the crackles of unconscious static suggest his dreams aren’t pleasant.
Maybe he hadn’t been delusional when he talked about dreams being in between Nothing and Something.
But Charlie sings for him when he grows restless, always choosing the Song, Alastor’s lullaby. She thinks it helps, maybe. He grows quiet at the sound of song, at least, although Charlie can’t ever be sure if it’s because it’s the Song itself, or if the dream has just progressed enough to let him rest again.
Whatever the case, Alastor wakes an undetermined (but long) time later. He’s more energetic, seems refreshed, enthusiastically devours an entire Something-fruit, and is absolutely mortified by the entire incident earlier.
“Pay it no mind at all, my dear,” Alastor insists, when she says she wants to talk about it. “A regrettable loss of composure. Hah-ha! You’d think I’d drunk my weight in whiskey with how poorly I handled myself!”
His grin his wide and his tone jovial. But he refuses to meet her eyes, and there’s something particularly strained about his smile. Charlie doesn’t fall for it for a second.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it Alastor, but I think we have to,” she tries gently.
“Not at all! I assure you, I will not be derelict in my duties again,” he assures her swiftly. “‘No harm shall come to Princess Charlie Morningstar,’ et cetera et cetera. I won’t be caught sleeping on the job.”
“That’s not what we need to talk about, Al,” Charlie says, a little more sternly. “If you need to rest to take care of yourself, then I want you to rest. Okay? You’re my teammate in all this. We have to look out for each other.”
“That isn’t your job.”
“But it is what we agreed on. We even shook on it. Are you telling me the Radio Demon backs out of agreements, if they aren’t sealed in magic?”
Alastor’s smile is more of a grimace, and his eyes narrow. But she’d hit him right in his pride, and apparently that means something to him even if his health doesn’t. “I do not.”
“Then we have to look out for each other. Both of us. And that doesn’t just mean physically, either.” Charlie pats the root next to her, gesturing for him to sit.
“This really isn’t necessary, my dear. I won’t have such a shameful reaction again.” He strides over, but refuses to sit, presumably to make some kind of point.
“It wasn’t shameful. That’s what I want to talk about,” Charlie says. “When I made it out of The Beginning and clung to you, and cried, and was scared when I couldn’t see you—was that shameful?”
“Obviously not,” Alastor says, as if it’s a stupid question. “You’d just seen The Beginning. It has that affect on people. I hadn’t just seen The Beginning, my dear. There is no comparison here.”
“But there is,” Charlie insists. “You’ve been in this place longer than me. A lot longer. You have a reason to be affected by it. And that’s okay. This place does things to people and it’s confusing and upsetting and you don’t have to be okay all the time.”
“I fear you don’t understand what a guardian is, my dear.”
“I understand just fine,” Charlie says, crossing her arms. “In fact, talking about things and not putting on a strong act might keep it from getting as bad as it did. If I knew you were hurting, I could’ve helped you earlier, and then we’d both be safer. Right?”
Alastor’s teeth are grinding. She can hear it even from here. “Perhaps.”
“Okay! I know that’s tough to accept, and it’s really good of you to try,” Charlie says. “So let’s try to talk about things when this place is getting to us. And maybe make some adjustments to how we’re doing things, so we both handle it better.”
“I’ll listen to what you say, but I cannot guarantee I will agree to it.”
Well, that was a start, at least.
As it turns out, Alastor is not a big fan of most of the adjustments they make. For starters, Charlie pushes for their sleeping arrangements to be closer. The longer they are stuck in the Nothing, the easier it is to forget anyone else is real; even Charlie has not-days where she finds herself glancing anxiously in Alastor’s direction just to remind herself he’s not a figment of her imagination. Part of the reason she thinks Alastor crashed so badly is that he’d been completely alone when the worst of the little lies of The Beginning set in, and The Beginning always worked best with isolation and lonliness.
An easy solution is sleeping within sight of each other. Sitting up and spotting your survival partner nearby, even if they’re asleep, makes it a lot easier to remember they’re real. But Alastor isn’t thrilled with the arrangement.
“It’s inappropriate and improper,” he insists. “What would your sweetheart think!”
“Vaggie would understand. And it’s not like we’ll be cuddling, or sleeping together, or anything,” Charlie says, trying to not laugh despite herself at the mortified and baffled look that crosses Alastor’s face. “Just near each other. Like a sleepover! With everyone in the same room. Easier to help each other, or to remember that the other person is real when things get too...not real.”
Alastor draws back his smile into more of a snarl. But after a moment he says, “Fine. I suppose the Nothing does slip past the Something in dreams. It may be easier to provide defense in the event of an emergency.”
“Sure,” Charlie says agreeably, and lets Alastor hold on to whatever excuse he likes to make the situation palatable for him.
So after that they’re roommates. Sort of, at least, given there’s no rooms, no privacy, and no real need for it anyway. Charlie finds it does help her at least when she wakes up mid-sleep in a panic. When she can’t remember if she’s still trapped in The Beginning, and maybe this is all some vibrant hallucination. She just has to sit up and spot Alastor nearby—stretched out against the roots in sleep, or upright and staring distantly into the Nothing—to remember he’s here, too, and he’s real, and she’s not alone.
It’s comforting for other reasons, too. Like the monster under her bed has stopped hiding. He’s crawled out from beneath the bed-frame, and he’s sitting out in the open in her room, teeth bared and claws out and daring anything more dangerous to come close. If anything comes for her—the Nothing, The Beginning, more tangible threats—they’ll have a hard time reaching her with him on guard.
She’d like to think it helps Alastor too, but honestly, she’s not really sure. She doesn’t wake up again to the same sort of awful breakdown she’d found him in six sleeps ago. He’s closer to her physically, so she’s sure she would have if she could hear his muttering and feel the feedback and the static he emits when anxious. But Alastor isn’t stupid, and he is very good at lying, and he could well be hiding his distress in other ways.
So Charlie makes a point to keep an eye on him in other ways, too. She checks in with him regularly, out loud and directly so he can’t try to talk his way around it or feign ignorance. He still tries, because he’s Alastor, but at least she’s demonstrating she’ll listen.
She gets in the habit of calling them mean mic days. It helps, she thinks, if she treats it like some external enemy, rather than Alastor hurting himself. At least, for now. She’s pretty sure that’s probably not healthy in the long run. But she needs whatever coping mechanisms she can come up with to help Al survive now, and they can try and untangle the aftermath...well, after.
“Is your mic being mean to you today?” she’ll ask, while they share meals, or if Alastor seems detached from a conversation. He’s very good at hiding it, but she’s starting to spot the tells for when he’s struggling. When the riddles and rambling get more intense and make less sense, or when he’s not interested in teaching her to dance or talking about his home city. When he spends more time than usual staring into the Nothing, eyes glassy and ears twitching.
“I don’t even have it out, my dear,” Alastor almost always says in return. “I don’t know why you’re so concerned with my staff.”
“It’s a bully and a bad conversationalist and it’s mean to you,” Charlie says. “Tell me when it’s being mean to you and I’ll sing really loud until it shuts up.”
Most of the time, he rolls his eyes, or pats her on the head like a child, and nods and smiles like he’s appeasing her. She lets him, and lets him have his excuses to hold himself together.
Because sometimes—very, very rarely, but sometimes—he’ll grip her wrist when she sits next to him, or wake her from the middle of her sleep. He’ll rasp in a near whisper, “My apologies for disturbing you, my dear, but could you sing? It’s extra quiet today here in The Beginning, don’t you think?”
And Charlie doesn’t point out that if it’s only the quiet that’s the problem, Alastor is perfectly capable of singing on his own.
And she sings. And he calms down, and the agitated static she can feel more than hear recedes, and he’s a just a tiny bit more himself. And if he’s embarrassed about it after, she doesn’t draw attention to it.
Whatever it takes for them both to survive.
They keep up their other tricks too. They talk often, about anything they can to remind themselves of Something and the outside. Play their word games more frequently, just to keep their minds sharp. They sing often too, these days, old favorites and new things they just made up. The Song never features here; it’s too special, to vital to survival, and always saved for emergencies.
They decide to add languages to their list of things they discuss. Alastor starts teaching her French, as well as something he calls Kouri-Vini, or “Louisiana Creole.” They’re surprisingly musical and pretty languages, and Alastor says she picks up on them with impressive quickness.
Charlie returns the favor with some Hellborn languages from the other Rings. Most Hellborn that lived in the Pride Ring spoke at least one major Earth language or basic Demonic, or had translation spells available for working with Sinners. But in the other Rings, each of the First Races had their own languages and dialects, and part of her training as a princess meant Charlie was taught to speak them all fluently at a very early age.
Some of them aren’t possible for Sinners to recreate unless they have a very specific body type or lungs or skills, and Alastor shows actual revulsion for learning the snarls and growls of Houndhowl. But the clicking and chattering of Impish is fairly easy for most Sinners to replicate and never hurts to know. Imps are everywhere, and always have interesting stories, and they tend to like you more when you take the time to learn their own language. And Greedspeak, the guttural language of the Greedsharks, is probably a smart call if Alastor any has inter-Ring business in the future.
Alastor picks up on both of them fairly well. He even finds creative ways to replicate some of the higher-pitched clicks and chatters of Impish by substituting with radio waves and adjusting frequencies. Charlie is impressed, and soon enough they’re having conversations with each other in different languages, working their way up from basic to more advanced.
When they’re more restless, or need more physical activity, they try other things. Charlie tries climbing the tree once, after begging Alastor to give her a boost. He only lets her when she takes off her heels (“they’ll catch in the branches, my dear, and then you’ll fall and break a leg and not in the theatrical way!”) It’s probably the only time she’s ever seen Alastor hover, roaming constantly beneath her on the root level so he’s always underneath her in case she falls. It almost reminds her of her dad, anxiously hovering near her (sometimes literally, wings out and all) when she climbed the playground jungle gyms or the trees of the palace grounds.
Unlike the palace grounds, this tree has nothing new of interest in it. No bird nests, strange bugs, or interesting animals. No funny-shaped leaves, no flowering buds, no scratches in the bark that might ever have suggested anyone else was ever there. The tree is beautiful, but it’s strangely uniform, too pretty, almost something out of a dream. You can’t even see an interesting view from the top, because it’s just surrounded by Nothing in every direction, as far as the eye can see.
“I could have told you that, without you giving me a heart attack,” Alastor grouses from the ground, when she points this out to him. “Now do come down before you force me to grow and pluck you out of the trees for your own safety.”
Charlie decides not to call his bet.
More often than not, when they’re restless, they dance. Charlie’s getting good at the dances Alastor teaches her now. Even when they have to dance at the edge of Something and Nothing, so the roots don’t snarl up their steps, it’s still close enough to the tree that they both feel safe. They have to be careful of Alastor’s soul-chain, but he has some slack to work with, and they find ways to incorporate dodging it into their steps.
Twenty-five sleeps into her banishment to The Beginning, they’re dancing. They’re dancing, and for a moment things almost feel okay, and if Charlie doesn’t think too hard on it she can imagine that they’re practicing the steps in the new ballroom in the Hazbin Hotel with most of the lights off. And no music beyond what Alastor is humming for them through his radio waves as they move. (Okay, it’s hard to not think too hard on it).
They’re almost having fun. They’re staying busy, distracted. Alastor leads her through a twirl, and Charlie’s so focused on making sure she can manage it while not tripping on Alastor’s soul chain that she almost misses the moment he stops leading the dance completely. Not until she finishes the move and reaches out for the hand that’s supposed to catch hers, and it’s not there, and the humming is gone, and she stumbles to a bewildered halt.
Alastor isn’t...right.
He looks every inch the animal his demonic features suggest, a deer alert and ready to run: ears straight up and quivering, head snapped upright, eyes staring out into the Nothing with an unusual amount of intensity. His lips draw back into a smile in only the barest sense of the word. It’s manic and rickety, and Charlie is certain it wouldn’t be there if he wasn’t forced to smile always.
“What’s wrong?” Charlie asks urgently. “Al? Is it a mean mic day? I can—”
“No,” he interrupts her hoarsely. “My mistress has arrived.”
And he abandons any pretense at the dance or a conversation. He drops down immediately to one knee, one palm on the floor, the other hand resting over his heart in some form of salute. He lowers his head to stare at the not-floor of the Nothing, soul-chain jangling, and his ears drop submissively. Charlie makes out one shuddering breath, one tiny tremble, before he goes completely and impeccably still. The change from energetic and full of personality to something meek and subservient is instant and alarming.
He waits.
And a chill runs down her spine, the first sharp pangs of dread, as she realizes what that means. My mistress has arrived.
Her mother has come back.
She doesn’t know how to feel about that. And she isn’t given much time to think. The approaching click of heels through the Nothing is strangely echoing, not dulled like sound should be. And within moments, a tall figure strides out of the gloom, lit by the glow of the tree, unconcerned by The Beginning that surrounds her.
Lilith Morningstar. Charlie’s mother. The person, before now, that she looked up to and trusted more than anything in all the worlds. Whose words taught her, whose love for their people guided her, who Charlie grew up wanting to be.
And her jailer. The person who had thrown her into this place of Nothing, this world worse than Hell itself.
Mom doesn’t look any different now. In fact, she looks better than she had last time Charlie saw her. Her clothes are cleaner, the scratches buffed from her horns, and her face looks fuller and less pale from a few good meals and some rest. She looks healthy. She looks like the same person Charlie saw almost every day her whole life growing up.
But she feels different. Even if her smile is the same, there’s something cold about the way she carries herself. Something cruel in her eyes, the way she regards Charlie and Alastor; like they’re pieces on a game board to move about, not people. This is her mom but it isn’t her mom at all, and that chill down her spine spreads to her heart as Charlie realizes, she has no idea what to do or how to act.
She’d envisioned Mom coming back to get her. How all that anger she’d unleashed unfairly at Alastor could finally be directed at the person who hurt her. How she could ask why and how could you. On her better days, she could even envision a reasonable conversation, as they discussed what happened like the adults they both were and tried to find a compromise.
But all of it—all that anger, all that sorrow, all that intense need to communicate and find a solution—all of it dies before Mom’s cold aura. It doesn’t matter how sweetly she smiles. That’s not her mother. That’s someone foreign.
And Charlie is frightened of her.
So she stays still. Frozen in place, unable to move, a chill spreading through her entire body. And she doesn’t know what to do.
“Charlie!” Mom greets her like nothing has happened between them. Like she hadn’t just thrown her own daughter away into The Beginning for who knows how long. Like she hadn’t been missing for years before that. Like she’d just stepped out to get a few things from the grocery store and came back with a special treat. “There you are, Sweetheart. I’m glad! I summoned my soul to escort you to the tree, but I’m happy he’s managed to convince you to stay here, too. You can be a little too free-spirited for your own good, sometimes, you know.”
Alastor betrays not a hint of fear or nervousness. He’s still perfectly, frighteningly still, but for the slightest movement of his chest rising and falling as he breathes. His gaze is still directed to the not-ground beneath him, but Charlie can see a bit of his wide smile still, when she glances down at him.
But she can feel the tension coming off of him in waves, anyway. Mom doesn’t react, and maybe it’s just something Charlie’s picked up on, after twenty-five sleeps of surviving in The Beginning with Alastor, or after paying closer attention to bad mic days.
But he’s afraid. And Charlie can imagine why. He hadn’t managed to make her stay put at all, not at first. And she can’t begin to imagine what Mom will do to him if she learns that.
Lie, a little voice in her head tells her. It sounds strangely like Dad’s voice. Lie, and don’t get caught.
Charlie has never before enjoyed lying to her parents. Not even with Dad’s title of Father of Lies, or Mom being the First Woman and part of the First Disobedience. Once she’d understood what lies were, she’d never lied to them much. She preferred to tell her parents everything, because she loved them and trusted them. Especially Mom. She told Mom everything.
But for the first time in her life that she can remember, she lies straight to her mother’s face. “He did! He brought me back to the tree and helped me heal my foot after I twisted my ankle when I fell.”
Because you pushed me, something in her wants to scream. But the more frightened part of her won’t let her say it, won’t let her taunt the danger when she doesn’t know what the fallout will be. Mom has already done this to her. She doesn’t know what else her mother is capable of.
She can’t forget Alastor’s warning, sleeps and sleeps ago. What kind of parental figure locks away their child like this? Anyone who can do that, can do worse.
“After that he told me all about this place. He said it’s called The Beginning, and there’s nothing out there, and it shows awful lies and visions and it’s dangerous. He said if we stay by the tree, that doesn’t happen. So I haven’t left.”
Charlie’s heart is pounding, but she forces herself to breathe evenly. Please, don’t see the lie, she begs. Please, please, please, let this work.
She’s not sure who she’s praying to. Dad, maybe. Lies are supposed to be his thing. Even though she knows it’s silly; if he could hear her prayers, he’d be here by now, taking her home.
The silence is oppressive. Beside her, still on his knee, Alastor betrays no hint at all that she’s lying, not even surprise that she’s lying at all to cover for him. He’s too good at lying for that, and he won’t give them away. If anyone fucks this up, it’s going to be Charlie.
Please.
Charlie’s not sure if she’s better at lying than she thought. If she inherited some of Dad’s skills, and never bothered to use them. Maybe it’s just that Mom is so used to Charlie always telling the truth that she never once considered that Charlie could lie.
Whatever the case, after a moment Mom nods. “Good,” she says. “At least my little soul remembered his job, and who he works for. Isn’t that right?”
“Of course, Mistress,” Alastor says, breaking his silence for the first time. His radio filter is gone completely, and his voice is soft and submissive. He doesn’t sound at all like himself. He sounds like someone beaten down so far he’s forgotten who he is.
Charlie hates it, and she hates that she understands.
“Of course, this little soul would know all about The Beginning, so I suppose he’s the best to educate you,” Mom says.
She clacks closer on her heels, causing Charlie’s heart to pound faster. She wants to back away when Mom gets closer, and is almost relieved when Mom adjusts direction for Alastor instead. And then she feels awful about it, because she’s not the kind of person who casually sacrifices someone else’s comfort for her own. What is wrong with her?
Mom stops in front of Alastor. She bends low and almost casually pats him on the head, scratching between his ears and antlers like he’s some kind of pet. Like Charlie would for KeeKee, not a person. “This little idiot wandered off into The Beginning once. Drove himself quite insane there. I’m not sure how long he was out there, of course, but he wandered so deep I had to drag him back by his chain.”
Her hands slide to the base of Alastor’s neck, grasping the point where the chain connected to his collar and giving it a sharp tug. He grunts slightly in pain as it chokes him, but doesn’t look up or protest. His eyes are fixed on the not-ground with a focused intensity.
“By the time I dragged him out of the dark he was a gibbering mess,” Mom concludes, dropping the chain and patting Alastor on the head again. “It took months to put him back together properly so he could be a useful tool again, didn’t it, you silly thing?” She slides her fingers beneath his chin, lifting his head up long enough to boop him on the nose. Even then, he keeps his gaze lowered, so he doesn’t meet Mom’s eyes. “That’s why I’ve tied him to the tree, this time—so he can’t run off and hurt himself again until I can properly decide what to do about his recent disobedience.”
She lets Alastor go and saunters over to Charlie. Alastor doesn’t so much as move from the position he’s been left in, head up, frozen like an articulated doll Mom had stopped playing with. He doesn’t even attempt to look over at Charlie.
And Charlie...she hates that her mother dropped such a horrible thing so casually. She knows what The Beginning is like. She doesn’t know how long she spent out there herself, and she can’t admit to it or she’ll get Alastor in even more trouble. But it had been the worst thing she’d ever experienced. And she knew Alastor had seen The Beginning too, somehow, but she hadn’t realized it had been that bad.
She tries to imagine it. Being lost out there for so long that the lies become real. Starving, dehydrated, hurting in both soul and body. No help, no hope, only hurt. And no Song to sing him back to safety, no one to take care of him, no one to help him see the lies for what they were. She can’t begin to fathom how it must have fundamentally broken him.
Only to be dragged back to his soul owner by his chain, swapping one form of torture for another.
Charlie wants to cry for him, but she’s too scared to with her mother here in front of her.
Mom who, even now, is reaching out to touch her hair. “Hmm, this is new,” she notes, running a hand down the crown braid up-do Alastor had done for her that not-morning. “Has he been doing your hair?”
“Yes, and he asked if he could first and I said yes, and I like it,” Charlie stammers. “It keeps it from getting tangled on the tree.”
“Oh, Sweetheart,” Mom says, and her voice is so full of love and her eyes are so cold, “Don’t worry! I like if you wear it long, but what you do with your hair is your business. I mostly use him for murder and political intrigue, but you’re more than welcome to use him as a hairdresser if you need. Especially here.”
The caring in her voice, and the way she so casually talks about Alastor like a thing, makes Charlie want to be sick.
“But!” Mom says, clapping her hands together, and it’s loud enough in the eternal quiet of the Nothing that both Charlie and Alastor jump. “That’s what I’m here to talk to about Sweetheart. Being here, that is. It’s been about a week, which I think is more than long enough for a time out and a chance to seriously think about what we discussed.”
“It’s...it’s only been a week?” Charlie asks, her heart sinking. But it’s been at least twenty-five sleeps, plus however much time she’d been here in The Beginning, and the time before, and...it can’t have been only a week. Only a week!
She half expects Alastor to chime in. Time isn’t when Nothing is, he might say, and lecture her over expecting Something and Nothing to be at all similar.
But he says nothing. He remains dead silent, head still tilted upward where it was left, ears flattened submissively, knelt on the not-ground like a disciplined servant.
“Of course!” Mom says. Like Charlie had asked something stupid. “I’m not cruel, Honey. I wouldn’t leave you here forever. But it is a wonderful place to think, with nothing at all to distract you. And it’s safe—anyone who wants to kill you could never reach you here.”
There’s so much, so much, Charlie could say to that. Had wanted to say to something like that, when she’d envisioned this conversation in the past. That this place was torture, worse than even Hell. That Nothing being here was the problem, that it hurt to be so far away from Something, not when she wasn’t made for it. That they could have talked, that all of this wasn’t necessary. That she’d trusted her mother to never hurt her, had never thought her possible of something like this. Never thought her possible of treating a human soul, one of her people, like a pet or a toy.
But she can’t say any of those things. She opens her mouth, and her voice dies in her throat with a choke. Because if she says those things, Mom might get angry, and leave her here again.
Anyone who can do that, can do worse.
She’s never not been able to tell her mother anything before. Not even with she was frustrated with her mother’s rules in the past, like clothes she wasn’t allowed to wear or not being allowed to go to a party. It’s not a cruelty she ever might have considered her mother capable of before. But now...now she doesn’t know what her mom might do, if Charlie disagrees with her about anything.
“So!” Mom says. “Have you had a chance to think about what we talked about, Sweetheart?”
Charlie stares at her. After a moment she says dazedly, “What we...talked about?”
“About shutting down the Hazbin Hotel, and your redemption program,” Mom says. “Remember, Charlie? It’s dangerous. It’s inciting a war with Heaven, and destabilizing the existence of both afterlives. So it has to stop.”
And Charlie doesn’t know what to say.
Because she had thought about it, some, being here. There wasn’t much else she could do. She couldn’t really talk to Alastor about it, because he didn’t believe in redemption to begin with. But she’d thought about it. If the risk was worth it.
And every time, she still comes to the inevitable answer:
Yes. It is worth it.
Because in Charlie’s heart, she knows things have to change. She knows the system is broken, that souls are being sorted in ways nobody understands and that people could very well be punished when they didn’t deserve it. They don’t know what the qualifications are. Did a person who had one bad day and said the wrong things or got a few too many parking tickets deserve to be in Hell alongside convicted rapists and murderers? Did Sinners deserve to keep accumulating sins in Hell, where existence didn’t let them do anything else, to bury them further and further away from salvation? Was it right for souls to find Heaven and then immediately do cruel things, like Adam killing thousands for ‘entertainment’?
No. It’s wrong. It has to change. And she knows, deep in her heart, deep in her gut, that the Hazbin Hotel is the key to that change.
She wants to say that. She wants to be angry. She wants to try and get her mother to understand. They can work with Heaven! They have allies there now! Dad is on board in Hell, and he can get her meetings with Heaven regularly. They can make this work if they all just try and work together.
She wants to say all that. But she’s terrified to.
Because Mom seems to think she’s been put in The Beginning in a time out. To think about what she’s done. Like she’d broken a vase or painted on the walls when she was seven. Like she’s done something bad and this is the punishment to make her think about it.
And if she doesn’t have the right answer…
She won’t get to leave.
And Charlie is so terrified of never leaving. She’s terrified of the thought that if she says the wrong word, her mother might leave her behind here again. Maybe she’ll never come back. Maybe Charlie will exist in The Beginning for the rest of her life. However long that is. Longer still in The Beginning, apparently.
(A week! Only a week!)
She doesn’t know what to say. Panic is building in her chest, her heart is beating frantically. Her words of I won’t stop the Hotel and I’ll do anything you want Mom please I’m sorry just let me out clash together in her throat and make a hard, painful lump. Her eyes grow hot and sting, and her vision gets blurry. Breathing is hard, and there’s not enough air in the Nothing.
I can’t. I won’t. I won’t abandon my people like you did.
Please, please don’t leave me here again!
I believe in them. I believe in our people. I believe they can be better. I’ve seen it.
I’ll do anything, I’ll be a good little girl, I’ll never do anything you don’t want me to, just get me out of here!
I love them. I care for them. I will take care of them.
Please, love me! Take care of me like you used to! Be my mom again!
Mom’s expression shifts to match her eyes—cold, disappointed. “Charlie,” she says, shaking her head. “Honestly. A whole week and you still aren’t able to understand the importance of this decision?”
“M-mom,” Charlie stammers. It’s hard, because the lump in her throat is getting tighter, more painful. “Please...c-can we just talk…?”
“No, Charlie,” Mom says. “We will not talk. We’ve already talked, and I told you what you have to do. The Hazbin Hotel is dangerous. Can’t you understand I’m trying to protect you? Why won’t you listen? You’re as bad as your father!”
Her hand reaches towards Charlie. And for the first time in her life, Charlie actually closes her eyes and flinches. Because she doesn’t know if she should expect a pat on the head, a gentle caress, a bit of hair brushed behind her ear—or a slap on the face and a hard shake, because she’s disobeying and—and—and—
I want my mom back.
Why are you so mad?
Please don’t leave me here!
Mom breathes in sharply before she ever touches Charlie. And Charlie’s eyes snap open in confusion and surprise. She fully expects Mom’s hand to be an inch from her face. Maybe surprised by Charlie’s reaction of being afraid of her. Maybe she’s realized how far she’s come, how bad things have gotten.
Charlie does not expect to see pinstripe red filling her vision, or the back of Alastor’s head.
“Charlie is frightened of you, Mistress,” Alastor says, from where he’s neatly inserted himself between Charlie and her mother. “She cannot answer you.”
His voice is still nothing less than respectful, and his ears are still pinned submissively. But his arms are spread a little, as if to present more of a barrier between Charlie and her mother. He’s always been taller than Charlie to begin with, but he seems so much taller now, when she’s cowering and sniffling and he’s made himself a steadfast wall in front of her.
Why is he doing this? What is he doing?
Mom, apparently, has similar questions. “What do you think you’re doing?” she snaps. “I did not give you permission to stand.”
“Apologies, Mistress,” Alastor says, and he bows his head submissively. But he still doesn’t move. “Of all the orders you’ve given me, your most explicit was to protect Charlie Morningstar at all times. This order is to supersede all other orders. So I am.”
What?
Mom’s eyes narrow. “Are you daring to imply that you are protecting my daughter from me?”
“She is frightened of you, Mistress,” Alastor repeats. “If she is afraid, my job is to protect her.”
Mom looks disgusted. “Always a little worm with your manipulative to-the-letter nonsense,” she says. “Fine. My order to protect Charlie Morningstar is modified: you do not need to protect her against me. Now step aside, and leave my daughter and I alone.”
And Charlie panics at the thought. “No,” she whimpers. “Please don’t leave me—”
She nearly reaches out for his coat, to cling to it like a pathetic child, before remembering how her mother had so casually touched Alastor against his will.
No, no. She won’t be like that. Even if it scares her to be left alone with her mother. Even if she doesn’t know what her mother will do to her for disobeying or having a different opinion.
If her mother could do this just to ‘protect’ her, she doesn’t want to know what else her mother is capable of.
Alastor’s ear twitches. His head turns, just slightly, acknowledging her barely whispered plea.
He doesn’t move.
And in that moment, Charlie thinks it’s the greatest single act of bravery she’s ever seen. Because she’d witnessed Alastor’s breakdown, she’d seen how terrified he was of disobeying her mother. She’d seen how much Mom had broken him, turned him from a being full of personality to a subservient little doll. He’d tried, and he had every excuse to leave her. His orders no longer required it.
He’s still here, and that makes Charlie’s heart ache.
“She is afraid of you, Mistress,” Alastor says. “I am also supposed to care for her. Perhaps I can medi—”
Mom backhands him hard across the face. She uses so much force that Alastor is sent stumbling from the blow, his monocle and chain thrown from his head and clacking against the roots of the tree. He hits the end of his suddenly much shorter than before soul-chain with a gagging noise, staggers, and crashes to the not-ground.
Charlie screams, eyes wide and frozen in place.
Mom isn’t frozen. She stalks towards Alastor as he coughs and gags, sprawled in a painful, ungainly heap on the ground. “You have the gall to tell me what my own child thinks of me?” she asks, and her voice is a dangerous hiss.
Shut up! Charlie begs in her head. Don’t say anything, Al! You’ll only make it worse!
She doesn’t even understand why he’s still trying. He’s going beyond anything that’s required of him by the constraints of the deal and his assignment. He should run. He should give up now, while he can. Do what Mom says so he’ll be punished less. Maybe, if he gives in now, Mom won’t threaten his bargain. He’d been so desperate to hold onto it, when he thought Charlie was her own mother.
I’m sorry I asked for help, Charlie wants to scream. Please don’t get in more trouble over me!
But Alastor coughs again as he struggles to push himself upright on shaking arms. Charlie’s not sure if they’re trembling from fear, or from pain. Probably both. He struggles to get his legs underneath himself as he licks blood from his own torn lips and says, “She said she doesn’t wish to be left alone with you, Mistress. A child should never fear their parents—”
“You will not speak,” Mom says. Her voice thrums with something, and the soul chain thrums in turn, flashing a bright violet for a moment before returning to its near black color.
Alastor’s mouth snaps shut mid-sentence, like his teeth have been glued together. Gleaming woven threads appear over his teeth, binding his lips shut. Even his static falls silent, in a way Charlie’s never experienced before. There’s always a little white noise around Alastor, even when he’s not doing anything at all.
“You will not move,” Mom says next, and once again, her voice thrums, and the soul-chain response.
Alastor freezes in place immediately, the same articulated doll of before. He’s paralyzed in position, arms pushing him upright, hips and legs still sprawled on the not-ground, head half-lowered from the effort of pulling himself up. Even his ears have frozen awkwardly, half-flopped in a way that must be painful to maintain.
And Mom reaches him, stands before him, and kicks him in the head with one of her heels.
“Do you honestly think I want to hear your opinion about me and my daughter?” She snarls at him. “The opinion of a murderer and manipulator? Hah!”
Alastor crashes to the ground from the kick, arms and legs sprawled akimbo, like a tossed rag doll. He doesn’t so much as move, doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t react in any way. Even his static stays gone.
“I don’t keep you for your opinions.” She kicks him in the stomach. He jerks like a kicked toy, but shows no reaction otherwise.
“I keep you for your skillset.” She grinds a heel down on one of his fluffy ears. He doesn’t so much as scream.
“And even that was oversold to me, the way you turned tail and ran when Adam and his idiots came calling,” Mom snarls, continuing to kick him. Stomach. Shoulders. Back. Legs. “What a useless investment, abandoning the cushiest job I ever gave you because of a little cut!”
A little cut? Charlie thinks, dazed. She’d seen the aftermath of Alastor’s wound even after many meals of the healing Something-fruit, and it had still been awful. If he’d fled, he had good reason. He probably would have died.
But then, that wouldn’t matter to Mom, would it? Alastor’s just a thing to her.
Charlie’s crying openly now, tears rolling down her cheeks as she watches this person that looks like her mom but is not her mom, tormenting someone she’d considered a friend for months. She wants it to stop. She wants to do something. But her heart is pounding, and her legs won’t move, and she can’t go near that—that thing that isn’t her mom and never was.
“And now after all that you have the gall, the fucking audacity, to pretend like you’re protecting my daughter when you’re the one that abandoned her!” Mom howls, grinding her foot down on one of Alastor’s outstretched hands. “You dare to lecture me about my own child? A child that even now I am protecting?”
Alastor offers not a word of protest. Not a sound of pain. He takes the relentless beating while remaining boneless and still, a living doll for Lilith Morningstar to take out her rage on.
“You don’t have any idea what it’s like! You don’t even have a child!”
But he does, Charlie can’t help but think. It had been a calculated effort to get under Dad’s skin, and maybe it was a lie because so much of what Alastor had been before was a lie. But he’d said it himself. You’re like the child that I wish that I had. I care for you just like a daughter I’d spawned.
He’d been there. Mom hadn’t. And at the end of the day, which parental figure locked her away, and which one is taking a beating to protect her?
Mom leans down enough to grab Alastor by the back of his collar, hauling him up like a fish by his soul chain. His head sags brokenly on his multi-jointed neck as he continues to not move. He still makes no noise through his stitched-shut lips.
But for the first time, Charlie can see his expression since he’d started taking the beating. And there’s genuine terror in his face when Mom leans close to his face and hisses, “I’m starting to wonder if you’re even worth the investment anymore. All you’ve done recently is fail me. Why should I bother to upkeep my side of the bargain?”
P-please...don’t break the bargain. I have no right to beg, but I do. I’m sorry, Mistress. Please…
Charlie can hear Alastor’s begging from sleeps ago, when he thought she was Mom. He can’t beg now, with his mouth sealed shut, but his eyes are pleading. He can’t do anything to defend himself. And Charlie doesn’t understand why he wants this bargain to stay so badly, or what it was for, but it’s clear that threat is a real one to him.
Mom drops him from his soul chain, and he crashes to the not-ground on his face. There’s a soft crack of broken cartilage. A moment later, there’s an even louder crack as Mom’s foot comes down on Alastor’s sprawled arm, and the upper bone snaps.
Alastor can’t move. Alastor can’t scream.
But Charlie can’t get that pleading, terrified look in his eyes out of her mind, and she can’t unhear that snap.
And something about that sickening noise, something about the way Alastor can’t fight back—it cuts through the noise in her own head. Her fear of her mother doesn’t go away, but it does get shoved to the back, overwhelmed by red hot anger and an internal scream of righteousness.
This is not right. None of this is right. This isn’t compassion, this isn’t protection. This is cruelty.
This is not her mother. Or maybe it is, and Charlie never really knew her mother. But if this is what her mother really is, she cannot respect this person.
And maybe she’d been too afraid to protect herself against that creature, because she doesn’t know what Lilith Morningstar is truly capable of. It’s true she wants to escape this place, she wants to be free. And a small part of her is still desperate to appease, to be given a reprieve from her own pain, to not have to suffer again.
But that would be at the expense of Alastor.
And Alastor may never have cared, and he may have protected her and been at the hotel because he’d been ordered to. But Alastor is one of her people, and he’s being hurt now because of her. She could never look in the mirror and forgive herself again if she took advantage of this and left him to his fate after he’d done what he could to shield her.
No.
No.
No.
Charlie Morningstar is a good person, or at least she tries to be. And she is going to continue to do what’s right even if it hurts her.
Her paralysis sheds from her like an old, dead skin. She steps forward, and as she does her horns and tail slide free, her claws extend, her hair comes loose from Alastor’s crown braid and flows behind her in a wind that doesn’t exist.
She takes a deep breath, and at the top of her lungs, she screams.
“Stop it!”
Her voice echoes through the Nothing, shrieking past even the dulling, obscuring presence of it. Lilith looks up in surprise, and even Alastor’s one current visible eye looks shocked.
“Stop,” Charlie snarls. “Stop hurting him. Leave him alone.”
“He’s a contracted soul, Charlie,” Lilith says. “And not just any soul, but a dangerous one that must be disciplined immediately and appropriately the moment he steps out of line or speaks out of turn. Give this one an inch, and he will use it as precedent to steal a mile with that clever tongue of his. He knows the rules, and this is his own fault.”
“No,” Charlie snaps, stalking forward, tail lashing. “You can’t. He’s one of my people. He is my friend and my family and I will not stand aside and let anyone, even my own mother, mistreat someone who is important to me.”
Lilith looks shocked for a moment, but then she laughs. It’s the same laugh she’s always had, but for the first time, Charlie can hear the condescension in it. “Oh, Sweetheart. Didn’t you listen to what he said? He was ordered to protect you. He was ordered to care for you. He never actually cared, and I’d hardly qualify this murderous little thing as family. I’m your family, Honey.”
“No,” Charlie snarls, closer now. “No, you’re not. The mom I knew said owning souls was wrong. The mom I knew said it was important to care for our people. The mom I knew, if she was family, wouldn’t have abandoned me for seven years and ignored every call I ever made.”
“I told you, Sweetheart, I was trapped in Heaven—”
“You weren’t!” Charlie howls, and her voice echoes through the Nothing again, roaring like a flame. “You weren’t, because you sent Alastor to protect me six months ago! How’d you do that if you were a captive in Heaven, hmm?”
Lilith looks surprised at her argument for a moment, before scowling. “Now, Honey—”
“No. If you really cared, you could have been there six months ago,” Charlie snaps. “You weren’t. You chose not to be.”
“I sent him because I did care! I was busy! You have no idea what forces are at play—”
“I don’t care!” Charlie snaps. “You could have come and told me! You could have picked up my calls and at least explained that you were busy! You didn’t have to lie!”
There are tears bubbling over again, dripping down her cheeks, but her demonic features are still bristling angrily. “Face it. Maybe Alastor was only here on your orders—but out of you, and him, and Dad, you know who’s the only one who was there for me? Him! He was!” She lashes her tail. “So don’t you dare hurt him anymore for protecting me when he’s the only one who tried!”
Lilith’s eyes narrow at her, before she looks down at Alastor. “What did you tell her to poison her mind, you slippery, manipulative little piece of shit?” she hisses, raising her foot to kick Alastor again.
“I said don’t!” Charlie shrieks, her voice echoing through the Nothing again. She shoves her mother away with all her might, forcing Lilith to stumble backwards and barely catch her balance. With a snarl, Charlie plants herself over Alastor’s limp, still-unmoving, still-silent form, and lashes her tail warningly.
Lilith hisses. “He’s poisoned you against me,” she snarls.
“He didn’t do anything,” Charlie says. “He didn’t even want to talk about you. I’ve seen what you did to him. You beat him up just now for daring to try and protect me when I was scared! When I’m the one that asked him not to go!”
“He has no right to tell me how to parent my child—”
“I’m an adult!” Charlie snaps. “I don’t need your parenting! Not like this! Dad learned that, so why can’t you?”
“Because your father has always coddled you too much!” Lilith takes a deep breath, as if to compose herself. “This is something we’ll have to discuss seriously later. This behavior is unbecoming of a princess.”
“You torturing our people is unbecoming of a queen!”
“Not the Queen of Hell, Charlie,” Lilith says grimly. “We’ll deal with you later. For now, my soul has been very improper, and a few lessons need to be taught.”
She makes a wide berth around Charlie. It takes Charlie a few seconds to realize she’s reaching for Alastor’s soul chain.
Charlie doesn’t know what her mother has planned. She doesn’t know much about soul ownership, because her mother had discouraged it so thoroughly. But she does know Alastor is terrified of losing his end of the bargain. That he thinks it’s worth burning bridges for, worth suffering and dying alone for. That it’s worth begging on hands and knees for Lilith to preserve, regardless of his mistakes.
Charlie can’t imagine why anyone would want their soul to remain owned. She certainly can’t agree. She’d free Alastor in a heartbeat if she could.
But she knows it’s important to him. And she knows it’s his soul. He gets to make so few decisions about his soul as it is, if it’s owned. She’s not going to take this one from him, and she’s not going to let her mother take it either.
So she snarls, stalking forward. Her hands feel hot, and when she brings one forward, her skin has gone brimstone black and burns with a magical fire. She recognizes this power from the day she’d protected Dad from Adam. She brandishes her claws warningly and makes a beeline for Lilith.
“Don’t you dare,” she growls. “Don’t you dare touch that chain, or I will never stop trying to make people know what you really are. You’ve hurt him enough today. Don’t you dare.”
Lilith looks startled by the show of power in Charlie’s arm. She takes a step back, then another, from the soul chain. Charlie brandishes her claws and drives Lilith back further—from Alastor, from the chain, from the tree, away into the Nothing.
“Well,” Lilith sniffs. “I see you haven’t learned your lesson. And you’ve been radicalized to even more mistakes.”
“Like you said. There’s not much to do here but think. I had a chance to think about how I’d never seen you like that before. I had a chance to realize I don’t like what that says about you.”
“Tch. I’m only trying to protect you, sweetheart. You don’t understand how dangerous things are out there for you. What kind of dangerous space you’ve stepped into.”
“Then you could have told me,” Charlie says. She doesn’t let her anger go, but she does try to keep her voice reasonable. “We could have talked. Not this. Lying to me? Sending Alastor, but not explaining why? Telling me to stop my dream without trying to figure out other ways to make it work? Imprisoning me here? This place is worse than Hell.” She shakes her head. “We could have figured it out. But I can’t look at you the same after this.”
“Then I suppose the time out will continue,” Lilith says. “I’ll give you a little more time to think about the mistakes you’ve made and the things you’ve said. If a week wasn’t enough, maybe a month.”
That sends a cold chill down Charlie’s spine. A week had already been torment. More than that...she can’t imagine it. She doesn’t think she can last much longer. She doesn’t think Alastor can keep his sanity much longer.
“You can’t!” Charlie says. “People have to be missing us! They’ll know something’s wrong!”
“What makes you think they do?” Lilith asks. “What makes you think it’s not easy for me to work around? You believed my reasons for being gone, after all.”
“What happened to you?” Charlie asks, horrified. “What...were you always like this? Were you always this cruel, and I never saw it?”
“Good luck, Charlie,” is Lilith’s only answer. “Think hard about the things we’ve talked about. And since he’s a point of motivation for you, consider this: if you’re very, very good, and agree to do as I say when I come back, maybe I’ll give you the little deer as a present. Your first soul! He’s useless to me at this point, but he seems to have taken a liking to you.”
Charlie’s stomach churns at the thought of oh-so-casually being gifted a soul and a person like a toy. “That’s not—you can’t—!”
But her mother is gone. Just like that. And she’s alone in the Nothing again.
She drops to her knees with a sob, her demonic features melting away. Trapped. She’s not sure what she’d hoped to do. Maybe, if Lilith opened a portal, she could have leapt through. Screamed for Dad. Come back to show him what her mother had done, what this place was—
But she’s lost that chance. And it’ll be a month outside at least before she’s back. She doesn’t know how many sleeps that is in The Beginning. She doesn’t regret doing the right thing, but she’s so scared she’s not going to make it, after everything.
Dad, she pleads. You’re the only hope we’ve got left. Please, please, please, you have to find us.
A shuddering gasp of pain from behind her draws her attention, and her head shoots up in surprise. Shit! Alastor!
She staggers to her feet and rushes back the way she’d come. Thankfully, although she had entered the Nothing, she’d only herded her mother away a little distance. The tree is still visible, and she makes her way back to it now.
Alastor looks awful. Mom’s departure must have freed him from the bindings of silence and stillness, because his lips are unraveled and he’s managed to curl on his side. The static is back, an anxiety-ridden thing that speaks of obvious pain, and the closer Charlie gets the more his breath sounds wheezing and wet. His nose is definitely broken, and so are several limbs, based on the awkward angles they’re stuck in. Maybe his ribs too, to judge by his shallow breathing. There’s blood smeared around him, and the air stinks of iron, and his coat is wet in several places.
Charlie crashes down on her knees next to him, her hands hovering over him helplessly. “I’m so, so sorry, Alastor,” she says. “I’m so sorry I didn’t do something sooner. I was so scared, but that’s not a good reason—you shouldn’t have gotten hurt like this for me—”
“Hu...hush, dear,” he gasps. “I’m f...fine. Had worse.”
He immediately undermines his own declaration of being fine by coughing and spitting up blood. Charlie gasps. “That’s not fine!”
“Bit my tongue,” Alastor says stiffly.
Charlie doesn’t believe it for a second. His mouth had been bound firmly shut, after all. Lilith had kicked him in the ribs a few times, though, and that certainly couldn’t have helped.
“I’m sorry my mother is such an awful person,” Charlie says, wiping her eyes with the heels of her palms. “I didn’t think she could be so cruel, I’m sorry I didn’t stop her…”
“Char...Charlie.” He waits until Charlie’s looking at him before saying, “You...are not...your mother. You don’t...need...to ap...p...polo...gize.”
Charlie sniffs. “Okay,” she says, although she doesn’t believe that either. “You need to heal. If I help you, do you think you could make it back to the tree?”
In answer, Alastor tries to get up. His arms brace shakily on the not-ground, trying to push himself upright, but he collapses with a gasp of pain and a screech of feedback a second later.
“Oh, nonono, don’t hurt yourself, Al,” Charlie says helplessly. “Don’t, please don’t. I’ll bring you some fruits, okay? Give me a second. Here—here’s my blazer, just in case, I’m just going away for a couple seconds, I promise.”
She leaves her blazer on the not-ground with him as she rushes for the tree. It takes her less than a minute (she knows, because she counted in her head) to grab a pair of Something-fruits and rush back, crashing to the floor next to him again.
“Charlie,” he murmurs with relief. His eyes are glazed, and one of his pupils is blown. Probably a concussion, with how hard Lilith had kicked him. She wouldn’t be surprised if he got confused about her missing faster than usual.
“I’m here,” Charlie promises. “I’m here. Look, I got some fruits! I know you probably can’t eat them on your own right now, so I’ll cut them into pieces for you, okay?”
“There’s...no n...need, dear…”
“Al, one of your arms is broken, and the opposite hand is crushed,” Charlie says. She can’t help but feel that was deliberate cruelty from Lilith. If Alastor had been left behind, how would he have fed himself to heal? His demonic healing would have taken care of it eventually, but it would have been a slow and agonizing process. “It’s okay. I’ll help you.” It’s the least she could do, given the circumstances.
He sighs, but he’s obviously too tired and in too much pain to argue. “Fine…”
She doesn’t have claws that are quite as wicked as Alastor’s. But they do the job well enough to at least slice fruit into bite-sized pieces. She holds the first out in front of his mouth and says, “I’ll feed it to you, okay? Just don’t bite me.”
He snorts at that. But it turns out he can actually be quite delicate with those enormous, terrifying teeth if he wants to be. He takes each piece carefully from her without biting her once. They manage to go through an entire Something-fruit like that, with her slicing it into pieces and poking it into his mouth like a mother bird feeding a nestling, and with him managing to not take her fingers off in the process.
The first fruit definitely helps. The wheezing and wet coughs diminish significantly, and he seems to be in less pain. The second fruit helps even more, when his nose grows back to normal and the cartilage in his ears snaps back into place. His crushed fingers are stiff and difficult to articulate, but not as awful as they had been before. His pupil has returned to normal, and his gaze is a little sharper.
“I think I can make it to the tree now, my dear,” he says. His voice is shaky and still tight with pain, but he can speak in complete sentences again without struggling to breathe.
“Okay. We’ll take it slow, there’s no rush.” They’re going to be here for another three weeks on the outside, after all, before anyone comes for them again. And it’ll be Lilith that comes—
Charlie shudders. But that’s a problem for a different sleep. For now, there’s Alastor.
She helps him get to his feet. His left arm is still broken, so she wedges herself under his right shoulder, and carefully helps him move with him leaning against her. It’s difficult going; Al’s limping pretty badly, and he has to stop for a break often. Getting him over the larger roots is a trial, and he trips at least twice, forcing Charlie to catch him or be taken along for the ride. It’s a painful experience for both of them.
But they make it to one of the root-benches closer to the trunk in the end. Charlie sets Alastor down against it. He sags wearily, leaning back against the trunk with a whine of pain in the back of his throat and a burst of painful feedback. His gray face is more ashen than usual, and the lines around his eyes and his smile are tight.
“I’ll get us some more,” Charlie says, without needing further prodding.
Alastor devours three more of the Something-fruits before he’s anything close to healed. They work fast, but the damage he’d taken had been a lot for even them to handle. By the time he’s done ravenously tearing apart fruit-flesh and consuming the pits whole, his bruises are gone, his gashes have mended, and his broken bones have reset. But although he never complains, he looks exhausted by the whole experience. There’s a stiffness to the way he moves, like the fixed bones and joints don’t quite feel right yet.
“Do you want more?” Charlie asks anxiously. She’d only had one for herself. Lilith hadn’t really hurt her, but she’d burned more energy than she’d realized on her magic.
Alastor shakes his head. “I rarely say so, but if I eat any more, I will explode,” he grumbles. “These things are curiously filling. Perhaps overly so.”
Charlie can’t help but agree. She’s never eaten more than two at a time, and although they aren’t very big, they always leave her feeling stuffed and refreshed.
Alastor sighs, bringing a hand to his face automatically to adjust his monocle. His hands fumble at his face before he remembers it isn’t there, and he groans, tilting his head back. “I’ll have to go find that at some point.”
“I can get it for you. I think I saw where it went, when my mother…”
Charlie falls silent. There’s no real need to speak about what her mother had done. They’re both well aware.
Alastor sighs again. “Perhaps later, my dear. It’s not as though there’s much to see here, after all.”
The message behind the message is clear. He doesn’t want to be alone right now, or lose sight of Charlie. Not even for her to go find a missing item of his for a few minutes.
She understands completely. After all that, she doesn’t want to go very far from him, either.
He shakes his head. “As for my mistress...I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
Charlie’s jaw drops. “You’re sorry? What do you have to be sorry for? You...you didn’t have to protect me like that. She told you to go away, even. That was your order! So why…”
“You asked me not to leave you,” Alastor says.
“I shouldn’t have. I should have known it would get you into trouble. I’m sorry I asked for help.” Charlie shakes her head miserably. “You didn’t have to listen. You shouldn’t have. It would have been safer for you if you didn’t.”
Alastor is silent for a very long time, staring up into the boughs of the tree. Finally he says, “My mother never would have forgiven me if I left. Even if it was because of this.” He lifts a hand and gently touches the collar around his neck. “Especially if it was because of this.”
“What...what does that mean?”
Alastor doesn’t answer.
Charlie doesn’t push. She just shakes her head. “You don’t have to be sorry, Alastor,” she says. “You did everything you could. It still means a lot to me that you tried. I just wish it didn’t end up with you getting so hurt for me.”
“Still. You must understand I was not lying when I said a child should never be afraid of their parents. It’s one of the things I truly hate in the world. Please believe me when I say it’s true, Charlie.”
There’s something vulnerable and exposed in that as Alastor says it. He sounds tired and distant and more himself than she’s ever heard before. And because of that, she doesn’t pry further, because she’s honored that he even bothered to show her this at all.
“I believe you,” she whispers. He nods quietly in thanks.
“Why did you think you could have done more than that?” Charlie asks, after a long moment. “It sounds like she has a lot of rules for you. She seemed angry about your...um…”
“My ‘to-the-letter’ nonsense, yes,” Alastor says, with a bitter laugh. “Funny how she enjoys that particular skill when assigning me to other tasks. If it’s in her favor, I suppose it’s permissible.” He shakes his head. “Well. It worked here, though not as well as I’d hoped. I thought I’d navigated the parameters adequately. I didn’t get quite as far as I would have liked, but at least it was successful.”
“Successful? Al, she beat you up so bad it took five fruits to heal the worst of the damage, and you still look uncomfortable.”
“I didn’t lose my bargain,” Alastor says. “And you didn’t lose your dream, nor did she lay a hand on you. For now...a success.”
“I don’t like this kind of success,” Charlie says miserably, pulling her knees up in front of her.
“It likely won’t work again,” Alastor says softly. “I’ve well and truly earned my mistress’ ire when it comes to you. Charlie, you must find a way out of here before she returns. I don’t think I can provide enough of a distraction again.”
A distraction? He’d been beaten badly just to be a distraction? “Don’t call it that,” Charlie says hotly. “Don’t. You’re not a distraction. I don’t care what she says, you’re a person, you’re not an owned thing. And I’m not okay with you getting hurt badly like that just to keep her focus away from me.”
“I have precious few other ways to keep her focus away from you, Charlie, dear,” Alastor says. “Not with this.” He touches the soul collar again. “Contract rules failed, and so did physical distraction. I don’t have other ways to keep her from you.”
Something about that just doesn’t make sense. Charlie rolls it around in her head for a bit, and finally figures out where the details don’t line up.
“Al,” she says softly. “Why did you do all that?”
“I told you. I’ve told you before, Charlie, I do hate repeating myself unnecessarily—”
“No,” Charlie says. “No, things still don’t line up. You intervened, but based on her reaction, it wasn’t really part of your assignment to protect me.”
“You heard what I said to her. The order to protect supersedes all other orders—”
“But that doesn’t explain why you kept fighting to protect me after that. You did so much—but you didn’t have to. I saw how scared you are of my mother, and I know how much your end of the deal means to you. It doesn’t make sense that you’d put yourself in harm’s way, or jeopardize whatever it is that’s so important to you that you’d be willing to die here.” Charlie gestures out at the Nothing.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re getting at, my dear,” Alastor says stiffly, looking away from her.
“There are too many things important to you to risk protecting me and losing them,” Charlie says. “Especially if I’m just an assignment. You should have walked away. You could even have done it guilt free.”
“No,” Alastor says. It’s so soft she barely hears it, even in the muffling quiet. “I couldn’t have.”
And something clicks.
“Alastor...did you really do all that just because you were ordered to?” Charlie asks gently.
Alastor is quiet for so long, she’s sure he’s ignoring her just to prove a point. Then he sighs, rubbing his forehead. “At first, yes. Absolutely.”
“At first?”
He still won’t look at her. But he does answer. “I didn’t expect much with this assignment. I didn’t know much about you, other than you were the daughter of Lucifer and my mistress. The royal family isn’t talked about much among common Sinners.”
Charlie nods, because this is true in her experience as well. Half the time people don’t even recognize her on the streets of the Pentagram. She’s becoming more noteworthy now, with her recent Hazbin Hotel experiences, but before that she was a virtual unknown even as a princess. They knew her better in the other Rings than they did in Pride.
“Given your pedigree, I expected a stuck up, spoiled, haughty brat. I was told you’d made political moves that might put you in danger. The thought of having to extricate you from political mishaps because you were as ambitious as my mistress but stupid and spoiled and lacking in experience sounded dreadfully boring. Or perhaps you would be someone as cruel as my mistress, one that saw me as a thing and punished me for any perceivable wrongdoing.”
“Oh,” Charlie says meekly.
“I did not expect you,” Alastor says. “And at first I thought I might use it to my advantage for the assignment. You’re so trusting, my dear, so naive and hopeful and willing to see the best in everyone. It was too easy to work my way through the door, even with that business of you shutting it on me twice.”
“Um, sorry?” Charlie says, although she’s not sure if she should be apologizing when Alastor had just insulted her a few seconds prior.
“Oh, don’t worry—a rather tame reaction to the Radio Demon showing up on one’s doorstep,” he says. “I’ve had worse! I didn’t expect you to trust me so immediately after, or give me a job the first day. I really thought I was going to have to earn that place, especially with your sweetheart brandishing her fancy angel stick in my direction.”
Charlie can’t help but wilt a little at that. Thinking back now, she really had let Alastor in so easily. He cleaned up a few parts of the hotel, brought in a few staff members, proved he had ideas and sang a little song—he sang a song! Right after Vaggie told her not to sing to people to communicate!—and she’d let him right in. Easy as that. Probably quite stupidly.
(Even if he had been blunt about how he could have killed everyone in the building if he’d wanted to, and chose not to. After all! Honesty, right?)
“I don’t think anything could have prepared me for what you were,” Alastor says. “You were kind even to a monster like me. You gave me the benefit of the doubt and a chance without hesitation. Your actions were often foolish but their intentions were always well meant. I expected something as cruel as my mistress and I got precisely the opposite. Your lies are different than your father’s of legend. They’re always silly and sweet, but they weave such stories with such strength and passion. It fascinates me. I think it would be a disservice to Hell to lose them. So I’ve kept them, and you, safe.”
“Because you wanted to,” Charlie says. “Not because you were ordered to.”
“Oh, I was certainly ordered to,” Alastor says. “Nothing would have let me walk away from that. It’s what got me in this position to begin with.”
“But you cared while doing it,” Charlie presses. “Right?”
Alastor’s ears are flat, and he’s still not looking in her direction. He sounds a little flustered when he says, “Make of it what you will. I’m quite tired of discussing this.”
Charlie can’t help but smile at that. It’s a weak little thing, but it’s because she’s happy, and that’s a rare thing in the Nothing. “Does that mean we’re really friends? Family? I don’t want to press you into something you don’t want. That happens enough for you as it is.”
But she realizes how much she missed Alastor being her friend. Being family. She might have lost her mother to that monster, but the idea of her friendship returning makes her feel lighter than she has in days.
Alastor sighs. “I suppose I would not be opposed if you wish to call us that.”
Charlie nearly bounces in her seat. “I’m so glad! Can...can I give you a hug?”
He finally turns his head to look at her properly, and raises an eyebrow at her obvious excitement. “It cannot mean that much to you,” he observes, incredulous.
“It does! I really wanted to respect your boundaries, and not treat you like family if it was something you were forced into and didn’t want. And that means not touching you or forcing you to do things you don’t want to do. And that doesn’t change even as family! I want to respect your boundaries. But I really, really missed you, and I miss hugs…”
In truth, she might consider committing actual murder for Vaggie to hold her for just five minutes. Or maybe for her dad to wrap her up so fierce and tight and safe, like he had when she was little.
Alastor’s expression is still a little perplexed. “You can hardly have missed me. I’ve been right here the whole time. I’m the only other Something in the whole Nothing for you to talk to.”
“That’s not what I meant. And I think you know what I do mean.”
Alastor sighs. “One hug.”
“Yay!” Charlie throws her arms around him immediately. She tries to be gentle, mindful that he’s still healing. But even so she squeezes tight and burrows her face into Alastor’s shoulder and relishes in the feeling of contact with another person. Alastor grumbles after a moment, but his arms come up to wrap around her in turn. He doesn’t squeeze her tightly, but his arms do fit comfortably around her shoulders and back, and he has a firm grip, and she hasn’t felt this safe in so, so many sleeps.
“Thank you,” she mumbles into his shoulder. “Thank you for keeping me safe. And for caring, not just doing it because you had to. And being a good other dad.”
“Jumping the gun there, Charlie,” Alastor notes. “I only just agreed to ‘family.’”
“I know, but what I said to my M—Lilith was true,” she says, still squeezing him tight. “You’re the one that was here. You’re the one that was actually protecting me. You’re the one who took a beating for me while the real parent who did it was the one who locked me away. I think you’ve earned it.”
Alastor sighs. “We’ll...talk about it.”
“And she was wrong. You’re not a useless investment. You’re a person, and you’re part of my family, and I love and appreciate you.”
“This is quite a lot, Charlie. I think I’d rather get hit again.”
“Don’t say that!” Charlie says, pulling back from his arms with a gasp. “That’s not funny! I don’t want you to get hurt for me again.”
“The funny thing about the role of a bodyguard and protector, Charlie, is that it’s rather in the job description to get hurt on your behalf.”
Charlie huffs. “I don’t like it.”
“Didn’t say you had to, dear,” Alastor says. “Now then. That whole mess has pulled your hair apart. I think my hand is in working order...would you like me to fix it for you?”
“Oh. Sure.” Charlie had forgotten about it with everything else. The enchanted hairband pulled it back into a basic tail when she shifted away from her demonic form again, just to keep it out of her face. But Alastor’s intricate braidwork was gone. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin it.”
“Given you were chasing off my attacker, dear, I can’t say I blame you for it. Turn around.”
She does, giving him access to the back of her head. He combs through the few tangles that have set in with his claws, humming tunelessly, then sets to work parting the strands and braiding. Normally it’s relaxing, but with everything that’s happened, it just leaves her mind buzzing instead.
“Al?”
“Yes, Charlie?” he asks, as he weaves in more strands of her hair to the complex braid he’s working.
She bites her lip for a moment, before saying softly, “I’m sorry I didn’t do anything when she first started hitting you.”
Alastor’s hands pause.
“I froze up,” Charlie admits. “I knew what she was doing was wrong, but I just...couldn’t move. And you got more hurt than you should have because of me. Maybe you were expecting that if bodyguards and protectors are supposed to get hurt, but I could have done something to stop it earlier—”
“Charlie, stop.”
She stops.
“You have nothing at all to apologize for,” he says. “I told you before. You are not my mistress. You are not responsible for my mistress’ actions. Nothing that she did is your fault.”
“It feels like it should be.”
“It isn’t. And you do not need to feel guilt for freezing. It is not uncommon. And it is a...difficult...thing to watch. It is always hard to reconcile a good person you knew before with a cruel person you know now. I understand.”
Again, there’s that same raw, exposed part of him from before, a part that Charlie doesn’t think anyone gets to see normally. She’s not sure if he’s too tired to hide it, or too worn down from her mother and The Beginning, or if he’s just more willing to be vulnerable after they’ve been through so many hardships together. But it’s there, and it hurts, and she can recognize a similar pain to her own.
“Did you have someone like that?” she asks cautiously.
“I did. Once.”
“Does it get easier?”
Alastor pauses. “Do you want the truth, or a lie?” he asks, with an unusual amount of care.
Charlie hesitates. Sniffs just slightly. “Lie.”
“With time,” is Alastor’s answer. “Once we’re out of here, it gets easier with time, when time is.”
Charlie takes a deep, shuddering sigh. “Thanks.”
“Hmm.” Alastor returns to his braiding. “And a question for you now, my dear, in turn.”
“Oh...um, sure. That’s fair.”
“Why did you lie for me?”
“Huh?”
“You lied to my mistress. You didn’t tell her you’d gone into The Beginning. You’d seen it.”
“She would have hurt you,” Charlie says. “If she knew I’d gone out there. Even though you tried to stop me, and there was nothing you could do.”
“Hmm. And what made you think to lie, my dear? I’ve never seen you do so quite so effectively before. It’s much more your style to talk things out. Explain just that.”
It might have been, once. Before she’d seen that coldness in her mother’s eyes. The way she treated Alastor like a thing.
“If The Beginning taught me one thing about myself,” Charlie says slowly, “it’s that I’m too naive and too trusting.”
“I told you it lies, my dear. You shouldn’t believe it.”
“This part was right about me,” Charlie says. “Hell’s not right or fair. My mother was going to hurt you no matter what I did if she knew the truth. I’m starting to realize that sometimes, doing the right thing isn’t as always as clear as I thought.”
“Hmm.” Alastor pauses in the middle of braiding to pat the back of her head gently. “A difficult lesson to learn. But a valuable one, I think. Though I am sorry to see some of the threads of your pretty lies pulled out.”
Charlie doesn’t have anything to say to that.
She might be naive. She might be too trusting. She might be foolish.
But she’s not incapable of learning. She can be better. She will make a change.
And one way or another, she will make sure both her and Alastor get out of here.
Notes:
The description of Impish is actually inspired by Blitzø's cameo appearance in the Hazbin Hotel pilot, in which he doesn't talk at all and makes exclusively raptor and chattering noises.
Chapter 9
Notes:
The moment you've all been waiting for! A chapter where answers to the questions you've been asking arrive!
Chapter Text
After Lilith’s arrival, in an event Charlie has taken to calling The Incident in her head, living in The Beginning gets harder.
It was already hard to begin with, obviously. No Something but for the tree and Alastor. No sensation to work with or feel or listen to. The Nothing dulls sound and light and anything at all that tries to exist there. The place is a nightmare for anything living.
Even the tree, beautiful and life giving and safe as it is, is starting to feel like a trap or a trick. It keeps them going another day, a single haven in a sea of nonexistence, but it feels like a prison guard. It’s hard not to feel resentful of it.
And on top of all that, all the hardships of surviving in The Beginning to begin with, there’s now the Deadline.
Because they know that Lilith will be back. She’d made it clear a month of ‘time-out’ in Hell is the length of Charlie’s punishment. She hadn’t mentioned Alastor at all, but given how cruel she’d been, Charlie doesn’t really expect her mother to free him earlier than that.
“If she ever does,” Alastor notes cryptically.
“Don’t say that!” Charlie says. “I’m going to find a way to get you out of here. I promise.”
He doesn’t look like he believes her, but he nods indulgently for her own peace of mind.
“She can’t just...summon you out of here, right?”
“No,” Alastor says. “She would have to come get me and escort me out. Even as a bound soul, I can’t leave the limits of The Beginning without my mistress’ assistance.”
Charlie breathes a sigh of relief. “At least she can’t take you away,” she says.
“Delighted to know I make such fine company for you, Charlie, dear,” he notes with a harsh laugh.
It’s true that she doesn’t want to be alone here. The Beginning is already torture. She can’t imagine being here without anyone at all. She doesn’t know how Alastor survived it the first time.
If she’s honest, she doesn’t really think he did survive the first time. Not entirely.
But it’s also for his own protection. Lilith seemed cautious of her magic, enough to at least back off and stop hurting Alastor. Maybe she didn’t want to fight Charlie yet, or maybe she didn’t know what Charlie was capable of. Charlie’s something the world has never seen before, a strange hybrid of angel and demon, and the powers she’d unleashed recently were new even to her. Maybe a small part of her still loves Charlie and doesn’t want to hurt her too badly, at least not yet.
Whatever the case, if Lilith can’t spirit Alastor away whenever she pleases, that means she has to go through Charlie to hurt him. And that means Charlie can protect him from being dragged out of The Beginning just to be punished, tortured or killed. Or to lose his bargain. Charlie still doesn’t know what it is, but Alastor seems adamant about keeping it.
“I don’t understand,” Charlie asks him once, when she suggests trying to find a way to break the soul-chain from here. “Why do you want your soul to be owned?”
“I don’t,” Alastor says. “Ha-hah! I’d be crazy to want that! I’ve been looking for a backdoor to the constraints of my Deal since the very beginning. I want to be free.”
“Then let me help you be free!”
“Not at the price of losing what I paid for,” Alastor says. “I don’t need the Deal broken, Charlie. I need to find a loophole. Something that preserves what I purchased while loosening the chain around my neck.”
“And how long have you been looking for a loophole?” Charlie asks, frowning.
“Decades,” Alastor says. “My mistress is skilled at crafting Deals.”
That makes Charlie’s heart sink, because if her mother had some expertise with Dealmaking, then it was just proof that Alastor wasn’t her first owned soul by far. How many others suffered under her mother, while she put on a bold claim of wanting to eradicate soul ownership and devil’s deals completely?
“She’s good,” Alastor says. “But you’ve seen how much she hates my ‘to-the-letter’ nonsense. I’ll find something to force her to default eventually.”
Charlie bites her lip. “Can I help?”
His grin is wide. “My dear, why do you think I got that favor out of you to begin with? I hadn’t planned on this, or giving you the details, of course, but your help will most likely be essential down the line to put pressure on my mistress.”
“Oh.” In retrospect that actually makes a lot of sense. “Well. I want to help too. You don’t have to force me with a favor. As long as it doesn’t hurt anyone...this isn’t right. And I don’t want it to continue.”
“Your willingness to help is duly noted, dear.”
The problem with The Deadline is that they don’t know how much time they have to prepare for when Lilith returns. Lilith had said a month in the outside, and that it had only been a week when she showed up for The Incident. Charlie tries to do the math in her head to figure out the equivalency—twenty-five sleeps, plus an estimated two more in The Beginning, plus a little extra time before that, and how much that factors into seven days.
But Alastor laughs when she tries. “Don’t bother, my dear,” he tells her. “It’s never the same. I tried too, once. I tracked the time that isn’t here by meals, not sleeps, but it changed each and every time. A week outside was a hundred and six meals once, and three the second, and fifty-seven the third. You can’t reason it out, no matter how hard you try.”
“But that means we don’t know when she’ll be back,” Charlie says helplessly.
“You’re absolutely right! Keeps you on your toes, doesn’t it?” Alastor says. His voice is bright and cheerful, but there’s dread in his eyes. He can’t expect anything good from when Lilith returns, either. The most favorable result is that Lilith gives him to Charlie like a hand-me-down toy for being a good little girl, and that’s still cruel and dehumanizing.
(Charlie hasn’t told him about Lilith’s promise. She’s not sure if Alastor would have been close enough to overhear it, but she’s still disgusted by the thought of it. Alastor is a person, he doesn’t deserve to be treated like an object, and she’s not going to even bring up the issue unless he asks. He doesn’t).
Since they don’t know when Lilith could possibly return, they start discussing a plan the sleep after she leaves them, trying to be proactive. Unfortunately, their options are limited when they’re trapped here, need Lilith to escape, and one of their number is bound by his soul to obey.
“Maybe I could pretend to agree to shut down the hotel?” Charlie asks. “Mo—um, she said she’d let me out, if I thought about what she said and did it. If I could just get on the other side, I could go to Dad for help, and come back and get you.”
But Alastor laughs at the suggestion. “For you, impressively manipulative,” he says with resounding cheer. “But not an option. For starters, you’d have to be able to lie convincingly.”
“I did before!” Charlie says.
“Once. Compared to a significantly high number of failures. The odds are not in your favor, Charlie.” Alastor waves away the thought. “Besides, even if you did manage to successfully lie without being caught, do you think my mistress hasn’t faced simple tricks like that before? She will bind you to an agreement before she permits you to leave.”
Charlie wilts. “She wouldn’t want my soul, would she?” She can’t imagine her mother doing that to her own daughter...but then again, before this, she never would have imagined her mother locking away her own daughter in a place of nothingness. She doesn’t know what her mother is capable of anymore.
“I can’t say,” Alastor says. “I imagine it would be dangerous with your idiot father sniffing about. He does like to stick his nose where it doesn’t belong. And I imagine he’ll be quite attached to you when you return from whatever place my mistress claims you’ve been. He might sniff out a soul deal, but perhaps not a binding agreement sealed magically.”
That’s fair. Alastor hadn’t taken her soul either, but he’d still gotten what he wanted out of it. Then she frowns. “Why is it you hate my dad so much?”
Alastor raises an eyebrow. “Besides his obvious rudeness towards me as the help when he first arrived?”
“Besides that,” Charlie says. “He’s normally really good about treating servers and staff like people. He wasn’t rude to Niffty or Husk. You provoked him from the beginning. Why?”
Alastor scoffs. “I suppose because he made my job more difficult, among other things. My mistress fully expected him to remain sequestered away wherever he’d been hiding. It’s one of the reasons I was sent. So of course he had to show up and make my life difficult. Before, I only had to guard your back against Overlords, scammers, and would-be territorial disputes. Your father shows up and grants you access to Heaven, and suddenly my mistress was quite upset at me for allowing you to put yourself in another sphere of political danger.” He throws up his hands in disbelief. “As if I can stop Lucifer fucking Morningstar if he sets his mind to something!”
“You sure tried,” Charlie says. “All that stuff about being the better dad and picking verbal fights with him...you really gave it your best shot.”
“As best I could,” Alastor agrees. “I hoped to drive him away. Discourage him from assisting you. Get in his head and under his skin, because loathe as I am to admit it, in a direct fight against your father, I think I might actually come out the loser.”
He grits his teeth like it’s painful to admit to it. Charlie can’t really blame him for that assessment, though. Dad is one of the most powerful things in creation, even if he acts like a silly, awkward dork ninety-nine percent of the time. If anyone seriously threw down against Dad, he’d probably wreck them without breaking into a sweat, just like he’d casually beat Adam.
“I’m glad it didn’t come to a fight,” Charlie says. “I wouldn’t want either of you to get hurt.”
Alastor hmphs.
“Did...did my m—Lilith really punish you for that? Because I called my Dad for help and he agreed to it?”
Alastor gives her a flat look. “Of course she did, Charlie. My mistress was incandescent with rage when she learned her ex-husband was a game piece on the board. He’s difficult to predict at the best of times. I should have found a manipulative way to stop you from reaching out at all.”
“But you couldn’t have known! I literally decided to do it that morning, when Vaggie convinced me!”
“It doesn’t matter,” Alastor says bluntly. “I failed my assignment, because I was busy fixing toilets instead of sticking to you like a shadow and talking you out of your decision. So I was punished.”
“That’s not fair,” Charlie says hotly.
“Life so rarely is,” Alastor observes idly.
Trickery to escape seems unlikely to work. Alastor’s suggestion is to take a more offensive, aggressive approach.
“That little trick of yours proved useful,” Alastor says. “With your voice, and your claws. How did you do it?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie says, a little sheepish. “I just...did it. I’ve never done the thing with my voice before. The thing with my arm I did once before, during the battle at the hotel—Adam was trying to attack Dad from behind, but I managed to stop his punch...somehow.” She shrugs helplessly.
Alastor cocks his head with interest, and his ears are perked upright. “Interesting,” he muses. “One of those punches felled my shield, but you were able to negate it? That is impressive power, Charlie. We could make use of it to fight back against my mistress. Perhaps it could even be the method of your escape.”
“Our escape,” Charlie reminds him.
“Yes, yes,” he says, waving his hand at her flippantly. “Either way, let’s see you do it again.”
But Charlie can’t. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t make her voice do whatever it did before. She can change to her demonic form at will, but she can’t make her right arm change color or glow with red energy, or cast off sparks and flames.
Alastor tries to coach her through the magical methods he’s familiar with. Unfortunately, none of them work, no matter how hard Charlie devotes herself to meditation or practice. “I don’t know enough about the magic you possess,” he scowls. “I’ve observed my mistress casting spells, and whatever you did with your voice is similar to her techniques. But it doesn’t seem to be the same. And who knows what influence your father’s blood and magic has in all of that.”
“I wasn’t thinking about casting spells at all,” Charlie says. “It wasn’t something I actively chose to do. I just...did it.”
“You are a very emotional thing,” Alastor notes. “Perhaps it’s related to that instead. What were the conditions the first time? The one when you defended your father?”
Charlie closes her eyes, and tries to think back to that day. Dad had arrived and saved her. She’d been grateful and in awe, and a little embarrassed with his ‘fuck you’ remark when he’d tried to be badass. He’d taken to the skies to fight Adam. Adam had destroyed the hotel, and she’d been terrified then, falling to her death. Dad caught her, promised he had her, and she’d been relieved and full of love, so happy he was there for her—and then she’d seen Adam, and she’d refused to lose that.
Stop. Stop. Stop. You won’t hurt him. He’s my family. He’s my family! I won’t lose another!
“I loved my Dad, and I saw he was going to get hurt, and I wanted to protect him. More than anything, I didn’t want to see my family hurt.”
“I see,” Alastor says slowly. “And this time, with my mistress?”
“I...the same, I think,” Charlie says. “She was hurting you. And I realized that you’d always been family to me, even if I thought you didn’t want to be called that, because you were here protecting me and getting hurt, and she locked me away. And I didn’t want you to be hurt. I loved you and wanted to protect you and stop you from being hurt.”
“Hmm,” Alastor says. “I suppose that’s our answer, then. It seems to be a power driven by your emotions.”
They try to use that knowledge to their advantage. Unfortunately, even with that as the potential key, Charlie still can’t seem to summon those skills to make use of them. Her voice remains as dampened by the Nothing as ever, and her arm remains its usual shade of white.
“Do you require sufficient motivation?” Alastor asks, exasperated. “I can go on in great detail about how we require that protection or we will end up suffering excruciatingly.”
“That only stresses me out!” Charlie yelps. She knows so much of their escape is riding on her. She knows of the two of them she’s the most likely to break out, with her heritage. She knows her strange ability with her arm probably would be helpful, maybe letting her cut through the Nothing into the Something again.
But no matter how hard she tries, she can’t seem to make it work in their favor. It’s like someone has to be in mortal danger, someone beloved to her, before she can take action.
Alastor pushes her relentlessly, but when Charlie actually starts crying at her own uselessness, he finally pulls back. He pinches the bridge of his nose in frustration, and says, “My apologies, Charlie, dear. It’s unfair of me to put such a weight on you.”
“It’s not,” Charlie sniffles. “I get it. I’m probably the only one who can do this. I just...I don’t know how, Al. I would do it if I could, I swear! I just don’t know how.”
“That’s all right. I suppose there is always the backup plan,” Alastor says grimly.
Charlie perks up at that. “What’s that?”
He shrugs. “We know for certain that if conditions are right, I’m capable of...inspiring your little power boost,” he says. “Should my mistress return, we shall use that to our advantage, and you will make every effort to escape while she is sufficiently distracted.”
In other words, Alastor will get the shit beaten out of him for disobeying, forcing Charlie to change—and then apparently, she’s supposed to try and cut her way out of The Beginning instead of protecting him.
“Absolutely not!” she says sharply. “I won’t let you get hurt as a distraction. What if my m—Lilith does something awful to you while I’m out? Even if I found Dad and brought him back right away, she could still kill you, or break your bargain, or take you away, or—no. Not an option!”
“Then I hope you have an alternate solution, my dear, because we haven’t Time at all here, and out there I’m sure we’re running short,” Alastor says tersely.
So Charlie grits her teeth, and devotes herself harder to her practice.
The fact of the matter is, magic practice of any sort here is difficult. It’s full of Nothing, and that includes no magic. Charlie only has her own energy to work with, and even with that replenished by the Something-fruits, she only has so much. The Nothing dampens magical output too; just like in The Beginning, even her fireworks spells never make it as far or burn as brightly as they should. Something more complicated, like...like whatever she had done, is so much more draining.
But she tries. She tries so hard, and devotes herself harder to magic than she ever has. Alastor’s magic isn’t the same as hers, but some of his tricks are universal, and they help her get a little stronger. But by the end of each not-day, she’s still beyond exhausted, barely keeping her eyes open, barely able to focus on words. Sometimes, she can’t even do that, and Alastor quietly scoops her up, brings her back to her root-cradle, and hands her bits of Something-fruit to eat because she’s too tired to manage even biting into one by herself.
They sleep closer than ever before, now. Sometimes Alastor will stretch out right next to her cradle, ignoring the awkward shape of the roots or the “improperness” of sleeping so near. It feels less like a sleepover and more like a guard dog—or perhaps a guard deer?—at the foot of her bed, waiting to bite any threat that comes. The monster under her bed has long stopped pretending about where it came from, or what its job used to be. But she can’t complain, because if he’s there she can see him always, and she can be sure he hasn’t been dragged off by her mother in the dead of not-night while she was dead to the world asleep.
They don’t have anything else in The Beginning, not anymore. If nothing else, they are determined to protect each other, no matter what happens. No matter when her mother comes calling.
They practice. They scheme. They talk, and try to hold themselves together for a little while longer.
And in the end, it doesn’t seem to matter at all, because they aren’t ready for the day The Beginning starts shaking.
Charlie almost thinks she dreams it, for a minute. The Beginning lies, but sometimes their senses lie to themselves, on especially bad days. She’d gone to bed exhausted and jerks awake with a start in no time at all later. She doesn’t know what wakes her, until she sees Alastor, alert as he had been the day Lilith arrived, ears forward and quivering and back ramrod straight, sitting next to her cradle and staring into the darkness.
Then it happens again. The Beginning trembles. Above, the boughs of the tree quiver and creak, and the leaves rustle. One of the Something-fruits thumps to the roots and rolls off into the darkness of Nothing.
“Alastor?” Charlie asks. Her voice is trembling. So is the rest of her. “Is that an earthquake?”
“I don’t know,” Alastor says, and Charlie hasn’t heard anything so frightening in a long, long time.
“Has...has this ever happened before?”
“Not that I’ve ever seen or felt,” Alastor says, just as The Beginning trembles around them again.
“Can my...can Lilith do that?”
“I don’t know,” Alastor repeats grimly. “Not that I’ve seen.”
The Beginning shudders, the force of it stronger than before. Charlie digs her fingers into the bark of the tree cradle, holding tight, until the worst of it passes. The trees rustle harder above, and several more soft Something-fruits thud down around them.
“What do we do?” Charlie asks in a panic, even as she scrambles out of her root-bed. She’s still exhausted from today’s training, but she’s able to at least stumble to her feet.
“Hush,” Alastor says immediately. “Stay calm. Be ready.”
Easy for him to say. Charlie’s heart is thudding wildly now, and she’s not ashamed to admit she’s scared to death. The only thing notable about The Beginning is that it’s reliably the same, always. Nothing new happens there ever, because it’s Nothing. For Nothing to be changing what it does now, something is very wrong. And if they’re trapped in it when something goes wrong...Charlie doesn’t know what’ll happen, but she’s sure it will be awful.
Charlie’s not sure if Alastor picks up on her distress. His expression is intense and focused, and he’s staring out into the Nothing, ears pricked and twitching as he hunts for the origin of the danger.
But when another shudder rocks The Beginning and Charlie can’t help but yelp, he’s quick to grab her wrist and tug her against his side. “Stay close,” he warns, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t run off, now. It’s quite a bit harder to guard someone when they do.”
Charlie nods nervously. She’s not stupid, she’s not incapable, but—but she doesn’t know what’s happening, and Alastor is here and he’s the one safe thing that exists in The Beginning, and she knows he’ll protect her. Not just because he has to, because he wants to. And that makes her feel a little bit better about pressing into his side, under his arm, where she’s shielded.
The shuddering increases, and a loud bang echoes through the entirety of the Nothing. The sound isn’t dulled at all. In fact, Charlie can’t even tell where it comes from, because it seems to echo from everywhere around them. It’s so painfully loud that she covers her ear with one hand and presses her head further into Alastor’s side to muffle it.
“Move!” Alastor barks.
His arm tightens around her as he half pushes, half carries her down the ornate root system towards the Nothing. Charlie looks up in time to see dozens of Something-fruits crashing down through the boughs of the trees, snapping twigs and causing cascades of leaves to flutter to the ground. The great tree groans and creaks ominously. Thankfully, they make it to the edge of the roots to stand on the not-ground of Nothing safely, without anything falling on them.
Alastor laughs, but the sound is manic and forced. “For once, it seems Something is trying to kill us, rather than Nothing!”
“Al, what about your chain?” Charlie asks anxiously. The collar is still around his neck, and he still has some slack. But he’s still bound to the tree, which shakes and groans with every deafening bang that fills the Nothing.
“Don’t worry about it,” Alastor says. “Even if the whole tree were to fall, I’d be bound to rubble, but I have room to breathe.”
“But if we have to run—” Charlie begins, before cutting short at the awful realization that if they do have to run, Alastor is as good as dead already. He can’t go anywhere.
“A concern for another time,” Alastor says curtly. “Can you tell where it’s coming from?”
Charlie can’t. His own ears would probably be better for it, but both of them are pinned flat to his head. Based on the way he winces every time a bang shudders through the Nothing, she thinks it’s less out of fear, and more out of pain. If it’s deafening for her, she can’t begin to imagine what it’d be like for sensitive animal ears.
She shakes her head.
“I’m not being summoned,” Alastor says, looking around intently. “My mistress hasn’t—Charlie!”
Charlie’s not sure what happens; it’s all such a blur of sensation. A shattering noise like glass, a crumbling noise like brick, but thousands of times more that sensation than the sensation itself. A burst of brilliant light, so bright it pierces her eyes and causes her to shriek. A screech of feedback, a guttural snarl, an animal bellow. Something wraps her up tight and curls over her, something with too-long fingers and disjointed arms, something that smells like old blood and whiskey and cologne when it presses her face against it.
Then movement stops, and everything rights itself, and Charlie can finally make sense of sensation.
She’s crouched on the ground, kneeling where she’d been pushed. Her face is pressed into Alastor’s shoulder, shielding her from something behind him that even now is making that awful shattering-crumbling noise. He’s curled over and around her protectively, and he’s larger than usual. It’s not his full, two-story demon form, but his elongated partial demon form, with the too-long limbs and fingers and a rapidly growing rack of antlers. One long hand and wicked-looking set of claws is curled over and around her head like a cage, shielding her skull from the threat.
His eyes are red dials in a sea of black, and blood dribbles between his teeth, as he snarls and looks over his shoulder.
Charlie lifts her head to see over it as well—at least, as best as she can with Alastor shielding her with his own body. Almost immediately she has to look away from the blinding light cutting through the Nothing, burrowing her face back into Alastor’s shoulder with a cry of pain.
It takes her a minute to blink spots from her vision enough to understand the brilliant after-images floating in front of her eyes. A crack in the Nothing, brilliant light pouring through. Claws forcing their way through the crack, scratching and scrabbling and worrying relentlessly, breaking it open wider and wider. The horrible shatter-crumbling noise with every pull, every cut, every strike—and the whole world shuddering with each blow. A single eye, peering through the crack as the claws dig and dig and dig, casting light deeper into the Nothing, pelting Alastor and Charlie with shards of non-existence with every strike.
The world booms. More cracks of non-reality rain down on the two of them. Alastor curls tighter around Charlie, shielding her from the worst of it even as he hides his own eyes in her hair. He grows a little further, lifting her to try and carry her away from the danger. The Beginning, breaking, breaking, breaking as something deadly tries to claw its way through to them.
And then the hole is big enough for the watcher to peer through with more than just a single eye. And a voice cuts through the Nothing like a roll of thunder, a piercing, distraught howl of rage and terror and worry.
“Charlie! Charlie, Char-Char, Sweetheart, I’m coming! Hang on, I’m coming!”
And Charlie is still blinded by the light piercing through into the Nothing. But she knows that voice. She’d know it anywhere. She’s known it from the day she was born, singing at her cradle.
“Dad?” She stammers. And then louder, with a sob, “Dad! Dad, I’m here!”
“Charlie!” The thundering bang through The Beginning gets louder, more insistent, more frantic. “Charlie, hang on! Just hang on, I’m coming!”
The crack-boom that follows is enough to drive even Alastor’s partial demonic form to his knees as a concussive force sweeps out from the crack in the Nothing. Charlie screams, burying her face in Alastor’s lapels and digging her fingers into the coat to hold on, to not be torn away. Alastor’s arms look spindly, but the strength in them is frightening, and he holds on tight as he shields her with his body. His long, spider-like fingers and piercing claws are less than an inch from her head, but they’re still curled around it protectively like a cage, keeping her safe from debris while tucking her face against his shoulder. His own face is close enough for her to hear his hiss of pain, and she can feel more than hear a grunt of discomfort reverberate through his chest, but he doesn’t let her go for a second.
Nearby, there’s a terrible crack and groan as something from the tree snaps and crashes to the ground from the force.
But then it’s over. The concussive onslaught slips away, and the thunderous noise fades. When Charlie takes her face from Alastor’s coat and peeks over his shoulder, there’s more light, brilliant and burning as ever, and she can barely see even when she squints.
But she can make out a figure there now, silhouetted by the light casting through the crack in the Nothing. A figure with six wings, a lashing tail, and tall horns that tower over a fancy top hat.
“Dad?” Charlie sobs. “Dad, is that really you—?”
“It’s me, I’m here, I’m here Sweetheart,” Dad says, soothing and comforting and every inch the way he sounded when she was little and scared and had a bad dream, and he was going to make it all go away.
But that changes immediately when every inch of him bristles. His eyes glow from deep in his silhouette, and his voice takes the more guttural snarl of his demonic form as he hisses, “And you. Bellhop. You fucking bastard, I will make you worse than dead for daring to kidnap my daughter. Put her down. NOW.”
The power that bursts from Dad’s voice at the last word is a concussive force in its own right, but magical instead of physical. The note of Command, from the King of Hell himself, is undeniable. Alastor’s arms twitch around Charlie automatically, loosening as he’s compelled to obey.
But before Charlie can shake her surprise at Dad’s words, Alastor’s whole body emits a screech of static feedback that drowns the Command, and his grip tightens again. He tucks Charlie close, and even as he turns to face Dad, he does so in a way that angles her away from him, shielding her with his own body.
“Spawn of The Beginning,” Alastor hisses, and his own voice is tinged with demonic growling and violent static. “You’re a thing of lies. I will not be tricked and I will not fail again!”
What?
“Don’t you dare think you can keep my daughter from me,” Dad snarls. “I have been looking for her for three weeks and you will not stop me now that I’ve finally found her, you cowardly kidnapping piece of shit!”
The silhouette of Dad’s hand raises high, and Hellfire starts to build in his palm, cold and blue and—
—wrong.
“No,” Charlie whimpers. “No, that’s not—that’s not right, he’s not right—”
“A lie,” Alastor agrees, his too-long body contorting even more grotesquely in front of her to keep her hidden from view. “Another lie. I won’t let him take you.”
“What the Hell are you talking about?” Dad says. He sounds so startled the ice-blue Hellfire drops from his hand, fizzling out into nothing. “Charlie, it’s me, it’s your dad, remember? Lucifer! Dad! I taught you your first song! I turned your whole bedroom purple when you were five! I made you Razzle and Dazzle! Sweetheart, it’s me!” And more helplessly, “What did that bastard do to you?”
“Don’t pin your lies on me,” Alastor snarls. “I did nothing, not Nothing, and you don’t exist.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
Charlie shakes her head, burying her face in Alastor’s shoulder. “Just get away,” she begs. “He sounded right in The Beginning too, but it wasn’t him, it’s a trick—”
“Of course,” Alastor’s demonic growl agrees. He starts backing away, his soul chain dragging behind him, always keeping the majority of his too-long, many-jointed body between Charlie and the impostor. By now, he’s actually carrying her in one arm, but it’s easier when he’s continuing to grow with every second.
The impostor hisses, “It’s me, Charlie! And what do you mean by The Beg—oh. Oh, fuck.”
Quicker than Charlie can keep up with, the outline of the thing-that-looks-like-her-dad flashes past the both of them, away from the crack in the Nothing. Alastor turns as best he can to keep himself between Charlie and the Lie of the Beginning, snarling and spewing static with every harsh, panting breath.
When the thing finishes moving, away from the harsh and blinding light in the crack in the Nothing, it’s easier to see. And it’s—
It’s Dad, but it’s different.
He looks like Dad, or at least, like someone had heard a rough description of Dad’s demonic form but had nothing else to go off of. He has six wings, horns, a tail, eyes appearing in strange places, a halo made of a serpent and fruit.
But the fruit isn’t Dad’s usual apple. It’s one of the Something-fruits, glowing a brilliant white over his forehead. The eternal flame of Hell is gone from between his horns. Every inch of his skin and feathers that had once been the purest white now glimmers prismatic, shifting colors, just like the tree of Something. The red of his feathers and claws and horns are gone, replaced by a crystalline blue so pale it’s nearly white.
Her Dad.
But not her Dad at all.
Alastor snarls warningly when not-Dad looks their way. Even not-Dad’s eyes, which should be glowing red, are a perfect, pristine white. “A terrible imitation, sir,” he hisses, even as his grip pulls Charlie closer. She digs her own fingers into his coat in turn, afraid of being torn away by that thing. “If you wanted us to believe you were the King, perhaps you should have done your research. Or is the Lie of the Beginning so poor at its job?”
“The lie isn’t this,” not-Dad answers quietly. He’s staring down at his hands, dumbfounded. “The thing you know me as is the lie. Or more accurately, the thing you know now is a poor imitation to the thing that was: this.” He gestures at himself.
Charlie’s gotten used to riddles and strange wordplay in the days since being sent to the Nothing. But this is all the more confusing.
“Shit,” not-Dad says helplessly. His hands come up to clutch at his head, and he shakes it slowly. “Shit. Charlie—I’m so sorry—if I knew you were here—but how could I have known? It shouldn’t be possible, but—shit. Charlie. Sweetheart. I’m so, so sorry. I know you’re confused, and I know this doesn’t make sense, but I promise. I swear to you. I really am your father. I am not a lie, not of any kind. I really am here, and this really is me.”
“You don’t look like my dad,” Charlie says defiantly.
“I don’t look like the Devil,” he corrects. “This is what I was before the fall. Before Eden. Before the tree.”
The tree. Charlie can’t help but glance at the Something-fruit hovering in place of her father’s usual apple. The same thing growing on the beautiful tree not far from them, broken and damaged but not yet dead.
“I don’t understand,” Charlie stammers.
Not-Dad smiles at her helplessly. “Aspt qaas,” he says, something musical and a little too hard for her brain to quite catch. He whirls in place, holding out his arms to gesture at the Nothing all around them. “Before Creation. This is what there was before things were made, even me.”
In The Beginning, there was Nothing. Alastor’s jaunty little scripture from the start of this whole mess comes back full force.
“Since nothing has happened here, and nothing exists here, time doesn’t either, and neither have any decisions ever made,” Not-Dad murmurs. “Every possibility that never happened is here. This place is full of potential that wasn’t realized and choices never taken. My mistakes...exist outside of this place, but in here, they don’t have to. So.” He gestures at himself. “Me. As I was. Or could have been. I suppose.”
“I don’t know if I can believe that,” Charlie says helplessly.
“Nor should you,” Alastor growls in agreement. By now, he’s grown nearly to his full two-story tall demonic form. Charlie is cradled in his palm, which is in turn cupped close to his chest. His hand can shield her from danger in a matter of seconds if needed. She can peek out between his fingers, but she’s safe here. “The Beginning lies.”
“That’s alright, Sweetheart,” not-Dad says. “Things will make sense when I take you home. You’ll be safe as soon as I teach this bastard a lesson.” His eyes gleam white and cold, and his wings raise.
“Try me,” Alastor hisses, as his claws curl into a protective cage around Charlie, tucking her closer against his chest. His other set of claws raise warningly, points out, wicked and sharp. “I wonder what angel lies taste like, hmm? I’ve been eating fruit too long. I miss meat.”
Charlie yelps and hastily grabs hold of one of Alastor’s fingers for balance as he launches out with his second set of claws, stabbing straight at the Lie. Alastor might keep her safe, but being carried by him during a fight doesn’t exactly feel like the sturdiest place to be.
Not-Dad flaps his wings once and shoots up into the not-sky. “Shit,” he says. “You’re pretty fast for a mortal on the outskirts of Creation. How’d you even find your way here? How are you even alive?”
“I didn’t,” Alastor growls, crouching low like a spider; not-Dad is too high for even him to reach. “And I died a long time ago.”
“Don’t be pedantic, asshole,” not-Dad snaps. “There’s no fucking way a mortal could find their way to non-existence. It should break you. Well, it is breaking you, you sounded more off your rocker than usual. But it should be breaking you faster than this.”
“Fuck you,” Alastor answers petulantly, glaring up at not-Dad with baleful, radio-dial eyes. Charlie can barely see his face from this angle, but she can tell that Alastor is pissed about this little stalemate. In the Outside, he’d have his shadows for extra reach, growing like tentacles from his back. But they’re not permitted here, so for all his size, all he can do is wait.
“Stop it!” Charlie yells at the Lie. “Stop trying to hurt Alastor! If you were really my dad, you wouldn’t hurt my family!”
Not-Dad looks bewildered. “What?”
Charlie ignores him, pushing on relentlessly. “And stop looking like that! Stop using my Dad. Stop using Vaggie. Stop using my friends and just...just go away!”
The last words are enough to trigger at least some form of voice magic, because her order howls through the Nothing without being muffled. The Lie’s wings stutter mid-air at the noise, before catching the flying pattern again.
“What do you mean, your family?” not-Dad asks incredulously. “He—he kidnapped you, Charlie! He brought you here!”
“Don’t insult me,” Alastor growls, and the static around him grows to an angry pitch. “Though I suppose it is in character for Lucifer to blame me for all the bad things that happen, ha-ha-ha. You play pathetic well, at least.”
“You piece of—” Not-Dad takes a deep breath, and says, “I want to hear it from Charlie. Did this f—this person kidnap you, Charlie?”
“No,” Charlie says. “He was here before I was. Don’t you dare hurt him!”
Charlie doesn’t expect that to actually work. The Beginning can’t be negotiated with, and it can’t be driven away with words. But to her great shock, the not-Dad hovering in the air frowns and back-wings away from them, holding up his hands like he’s surrendering.
“Fuck,” Dad says, as his horns and tail start to melt away. His halo curls neatly around his hat, but the fruit doesn’t change back to an apple, and a Something-fruit still glows in the snake’s coils. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Somebody’s messing with all of us.”
And for the first time, something about this odd illusion of her father rings true.
“What does that mean?” she asks out loud.
“A clever lie, I’m sure,” Alastor growls warningly. “Be on your guard.”
“Not a lie,” not-Dad says. “In fact, you know what? Bellhop, you go right ahead and keep holding onto Charlie if it makes her feel safe. Just know that if you hurt her, I will end you.”
“I will feed on lieflesh first,” Alastor taunts back. His massive jaws are drooling a little. Charlie winces and keeps tucked up against his coat, out of range of his over-long neck and bloodied saliva.
“I’m not dignifying that with an answer,” not-Dad says. “Charlie, I know you’ve got to be so confused—outside of Creation isn’t a place for mortal things. Hell, it makes my head spin sometimes, and I can make sense of non-Euclidian geometry easy as pie. You two are things that exist, and the sensory deprivation from literal non-existence is probably doing a number on you right now. I’m here to take you back to Creation, Sweetheart. Fuck, I’ll even take the bellhop, if you want, as long as he stops being an asshole about threatening to eat me.”
“Come close and see if it is merely a threat,” Alastor growls, even as his fingers curl a little more protectively around Charlie.
“No, thank you,” Dad says. “But here’s something I don’t get. You’ve been here this long—how? The busboy, I get—if he dehydrates or starves, he’ll regenerate. But you can’t, Sweetheart. How are you still—how are you still—”
His voice starts to shake by the end, and Charlie is unexpectedly sympathetic. He sounds frightened. Like he’d only just come to the realization that Charlie might have died when he wasn’t around. Like he could have lost her without being able to do anything at all about it.
The not-Dad in The Beginning wasn’t like this. He’d been jaunty and unsympathetic. He hadn’t let her touch him, even though she’d wanted a hug so bad. He’d refused to take her home. He’d left her there.
He’d been cruel. He hadn’t been real.
This person—he looks wrong, but he feels right. The opposite of the thing in The Beginning. And Charlie’s so hesitant, but she wants to believe this is real.
So she pokes through Alastor’s curled claws and points in the direction of the tree, deigning to give him an answer.
Not-Dad whirls around, and freezes. “No,” he says slowly, staring at the tree. “That’s not possible. That’s literally impossible. How is it here?”
And he wings off towards the tree in a flash of prismatic, shimmering feathers.
Alastor stays stubbornly put, far enough out into The Beginning that the tree’s glow is weaker, but close enough that he still has slack in his soul chain. He seems perfectly content to stay there, glowering at not-Dad’s back.
Charlie isn’t. Something about this creature isn’t a lie; he feels too real for that. And how does he know what the tree is? Charlie had never seen it before in her life. Alastor hadn’t in his life or afterlife. But she can’t shake the image of one of the Something-fruits hovering in his halo in place of the apple. There’s a connection there.
She tries to push her way through Alastor’s massive fingers, caging her in. “Come on. I want to see what’s happening.”
“Don’t believe that thing,” Alastor says, although he’s careful not to let her get crushed or sliced by his claws as she pushes through them. “The Beginning lies.”
“But has it ever gotten that close to the tree before?”
For the first time, there’s uncertainty in Alastor’s voice when he says, “No.”
“And you said my Dad was the only other person who might be able to get here.”
“Maybe. If he’s half as good as he says he is.”
“And the Something-fruit is in his halo. I don’t think he’s lying about the tree.”
“Maybe a trick,” Alastor suggests.
“He didn’t know the tree was there until I pointed it out,” Charlie says. “How could he know what it looked like?”
Alastor doesn’t answer in words, but his static is buzzing loudly against the Nothing, displaying his irritation.
“I just...this doesn’t feel like the lies did,” Charlie says. “It feels different. Doesn’t it?”
Alastor is silent for a very long time, before hissing softly, “Yes.”
And suddenly he’s setting her down, tipping her gently to the not-ground from his palm as he shrinks down to his usual self. He brushes himself off, adjusts his bow-tie and the lapels of his coat, and then says, “I’ll admit I’m as curious as you are, my dear. But you know what they say—curiosity kills the cat, or the Radio Demon and the Princess of Hell, as it were. We will move forward, but you will stay behind me until I deem it safe.”
Charlie nods. “Okay. I can do that. Just—if it really is my dad—”
“Don’t get your hopes up yet, my dear. They dash most exquisitely, the higher they are.”
Charlie winces, biting her lip. “Right. But if it is him—please don’t start a fight. Please.”
Alastor shows every single one of his teeth in an irritated grimace, but he says, “If I determine it is actually the King of Hell, I’m not stupid enough to attack him in this condition. I don’t even have half my usual powers.” He tuts.
Charlie had hoped that maybe, if it really is her dad, the two of them could work on getting along. But that’s probably too much to hope for right now. “Let’s go.”
Alastor leads them cautiously, still moving like he’s expecting to sneak up on the not-Dad. He doesn’t need to bother. Not-Dad is up at the top of the roots, standing next to the trunk, gently stroking one of the long cracks in the bark. The poor tree has been better; a few of the smaller branches have snapped and crashed to the ground, the roots are cracked and broken in places, and nearly all of the fruits have fallen.
Not-Dad turns to look at them as they approach. There are tears dripping down his face, tears that are nearly as prismatic as the tree, glimmering through rainbows of color and back to pure white as they fall.
“How is it here?” he asks again. His hand reaches up to gently pluck the last of the gleaming Something-fruits, and he holds it in his palms like it’s something fragile and precious. “It was destroyed. It was eradicated. They made it stop existing, it shouldn’t be…”
“It...it was just here,” Charlie offers hesitantly. “It’s the only Something, so it’s safe…”
Not-Dad looks up from cradling the little fruit. First to her, then to Alastor. Alastor’s ears flatten for a moment, but he adds, “It’s been here for as long as I’ve known. At least seven and a half years in the Outside. Perhaps longer.”
“What is it?” Charlie asks. She has a sudden growing suspicion in her heart, with the way the same fruit appears in not-Dad’s halo, but it couldn’t possibly be true, this has to be some kind of lie—
But not-Dad adjusts the way he cradles the fruit, gently displaying it in his hands to the both of them. “Vanglor-Nanaeel,” he says, again in that musical language that Charlie’s ears can’t quite make sense of. “Fruit of Will.”
Stunned silence, and then Alastor says, “You are joking, sir. You’re having a laugh at our expense. You are a lie after all.”
“The lies couldn’t touch the tree, Alastor,” Charlie reminds him. “It couldn’t come close to the Something. It couldn’t hold one of the fruits.”
She reaches out to pick up the fruit from the not-Dad’s hands, just to prove it’s real and not an illusion. He hastily pulls it away from her, though, cradling it close to his heart. “Ah! No offense, Sweetheart, but last time I handed one of these off to a person it sort of caused an entire Biblical Event.”
“Well we’ve been eating them for sustenance for however long it’s been in here, what with Time not being a thing,” Alastor says testily. “Whether you measure by sleeps or meals, it hardly matters. I daresay we’re more full of knowledge than anyone else to ever exist by this point.”
“Not...exactly how it works, but that does answer my question on how you two are still alive and reasonably sane,” not-Dad says. “Holy shit. Uh, I should probably look you both over when we get out of here. This was intended to be a once-in-a-lifetime gift, you know! It wasn’t meant for casual snacking.”
“Excuse us, for not getting the memo!” Alastor snaps. “Perhaps post a sign before your life-altering tree and its fruit of biblical implications to warn a person! Wasn’t that the whole point of the damned thing in the first iteration of the story?”
“That’s not how it went! And I already said,” not-Dad snaps. “This one isn’t mine, and I don’t know who put it here!”
“I did.”
They all whirl around, stunned. Mom—Lilith—is striding out of the Nothing towards them, her eyes on the not-Dad. Alastor curses, grabs Charlie by the arm, and immediately pushes her behind himself, watching Lilith warily. She can feel how badly he’s shaking, even if he hides it very well visually.
Charlie peeks out around his arm, too many emotions to identify rushing through her all at once. They’re not ready to face her yet—but if Dad is here—but what if he isn’t—but she can’t let Alastor be a ‘distraction’ like he’d planned—
But Lilith doesn’t look at Charlie or Alastor at all. Her eyes are on not-Dad—except, with the way they’re looking at each other, Charlie is suddenly, one hundred percent confident that not-Dad had never been lying. That is her father, the real Lucifer Morningstar. He is here. They’re safe.
Maybe.
“You granted me the fruit first, remember,” Lilith says. “Before we agreed together to share that gift with Eve. I ate the fruit, but kept the pit inside. When your siblings tore up that beautiful tree you made and cast it into oblivion, and struck even its name from Creation and Time, the pit survived. I held it as we fell, and I found a crack into this place from that destruction, when Hell was still new and expanding into the Nothing it was surrounded by.”
“You didn’t,” Dad whispers, looking down at the fruit in his hands.
But Lilith smiles proudly. “It may have been struck from Creation, and from Time. But neither exists here. I built ways into this place, and I planted it, and I nurtured it, and I helped it grow in the one place it can still exist: nowhere at all. It was meant to be a gift for you, to return the gift you gave me. To remind you that the will you granted was a gift, and a beautiful gift at that. Look at it!”
She gestures up at the tree. Charlie can’t deny it is a beautiful tree, but something about its story makes her feel...sick. Not in her stomach, although the thought that she’d eaten so many fruits from it now feels quite off-putting. But in her heart, because in all of Dad’s stories this tree was meant to be a gift of kindness and strength, to give humans choices. To think it spent its whole life in the dark, hidden, in an act of deception, with no choice of its own…
What caused the lies, Charlie wonders? The Beginning? Or this poor tree, just as trapped as they were? Missing a life in Something it could never, ever have, because it didn’t technically exist?
“Lily…” Dad’s face is pleading. “You saw what it did. It was reckless. We’ve seen what people have done with that free will. There doesn’t need to be another—”
“And that’s why I never gave you this gift, Lucifer,” Lilith spits. “Because you lost your own will. You lost yourself. That creator and dreamer, the one who had the skill and devotion to make something like this—” She gestures up at the tree. “—didn’t exist anymore. By the time it grew tall enough to bear fruit, you were a shell of the creature I fell in love with. Weaker. Useless.”
Charlie had heard words like this from her mother before, but they had always been just before the divorced, when her and Dad fought more frequently. It had been awful to listen to, especially since Dad rarely if ever fought back. Just wilted away and accepted that he really was useless.
He doesn’t wilt now. Instead, he looks Lilith in the eye and says, “You’re the one who kidnapped Charlie. You did this, didn’t you?”
“I had to. To protect her.” Lilith is adamant. “You don’t know what they’re saying in Heaven, Lucifer, she’s in danger—”
“Danger?” Dad says softly. “Danger bad enough to put her here? Outside of Creation? Do you know what this does to mortal minds? Mortal bodies? They aren’t meant to be here.”
“She was fine,” Lilith says. “Heaven and Hell can never reach her here, not until I sort out everything for her. And she had the tree for nourishment. My soul for protection. And plenty of quiet to think—”
“This isn’t thinking!” Dad roars suddenly, so much that Charlie jumps, and even Alastor tenses. Dad doesn’t usually raise his voice like that, but now he does, flaring all six of his wings wide. “This is torture! Mortal minds cannot exist here. Anything that exists cannot exist here! I wouldn’t even wish this place on him, and I hate that guy!” He points at Alastor.
Alastor raises an eyebrow and sneers. “Well now,” he says. “I’m shocked and yet delighted to find there is in fact a level you won’t stoop beneath, sir.”
“Shut up,” Dad snaps at him. “Still don’t like you.”
He turns back to Lilith. “This? This is cruel. In no way is this saving anyone. And you did it to our daughter. Our daughter, Lilith! And you lied about it! Three weeks, listening to you feed us lies about how the busboy had some alternative plan, throwing out breadcrumbs to lead us on a wild duck chase! And me believing you, because no matter what came between us, I thought we could at least agree to be truthful and work together when Charlie’s life was on the line!”
Charlie’s stomach churns. That’s what was going on? Mom blamed Alastor for running off with her? No wonder Dad had been so furious when he broke through. Everyone must be so angry, so frustrated…
Three weeks. Three whole weeks she’d been gone from existing. From the Outside. All because of her mother’s so-called protection.
“I don’t regret what I did,” Lilith says, raising her head high. “The hotel is dangerous. Heaven doesn’t listen, and the political ramifications are enormous. Everything is destabilizing up there, Lucifer! Because of Charlie’s foolish redemption plans!”
“They’re not foolish!” Dad snarls back. “I thought so at first, but they’re not! I was scared Heaven wouldn’t listen to her, but they did! She’s the first person to make a change down here since human civilization finally popped off, and I want her to have her free fucking will to make her own choices and try to change the world!”
Charlie staggers back, swaying in place. Alastor catches her arm and steadies her, although he still keeps himself largely between her and her arguing parents. “All right, Charlie?” he asks, frowning as best he can over his eternal smile.
Charlie shakes her head, because she doesn’t know how to explain how jarring this is. To hear her mother—who inspired the whole hotel, who she’d wanted to make proud—call her foolish. To hear her father—who had lost his own will, who hadn’t wanted her to go near Heaven—defend her staunchly with all his support. It’s so hard to tell what’s real and what’s not anymore.
Her head hurts.
Her parents are still arguing. “—knew you would figure it out eventually,” Lilith says. “But I didn’t expect it to be so soon. I never planned to keep her here forever! Just until she learned her lesson.”
“You put our adult daughter in time out in literal non-existence,” Dad says, incredulous and disgusted. “And apparently one of your own servants, too, to judge by that chain. What happened to the soul trade is terrible and you should do something to stop it? Do you even understand how vile it is to chain a soul against its will to the fucking Tree of Will?”
“I saved Charlie’s life—or I would be if you weren’t getting in the way!” Lilith yells. “And don’t you dare lecture me about the soul trade, you never did anything about it—”
“I never kept any! And even I can see this is an affront to basic human decency!”
Lilith laughs bitterly. “And where was this backbone when I needed it, thousands of years ago? You’ve changed, but too little too late.”
“If there’s one thing I can agree with you on, it’s that,” Dad says. “You changed, Lilith. You aren’t the person I fell in love with, either. And I will not stand by and allow you to torture our daughter for your own political gain.”
Lilith’s only answer is a screech that thrums with magic, before she howls, “Soul, attack—”
“Belay that,” Dad says immediately, snapping his fingers and pointing in Alastor’s direction. The soul chain glows violet, crackles with gold, and then darkens, Lilith’s order countered immediately by Dad’s Command. “You don’t get involved.”
“For once, sir, you’ll hear no objection from me!” Alastor says, with a mad bark of laughter.
Lilith hurls herself at Dad with a shriek, already taking on her more demonic traits. And Dad, his altered horns and tail and halo re-emerging, drops the last Fruit of Will and takes to the air. With a snarl, he rushes down to meet her, claws extended and teeth bared.
“Wait! Stop!” Charlie tries to throw herself around Alastor towards her parents. What Lilith had done was unforgivable, but that didn’t mean Charlie wanted her and her dad fighting. Literally fighting, not arguing! She doesn’t want either of them getting hurt, especially not over her.
But Alastor grabs her arm when she tries to dodge past him, and immediately pulls her back. “Absolutely not,” he snaps. “We are not getting involved in a fight between not one but two biblical powerhouses, Charlie. That’s just asking to be dead! Or double-dead, in my case!”
“But we have to stop them!” Charlie says, struggling against him. His static buzzes with agitation, and without any ceremony he scoops her legs out from underneath her and turns, bolting in the opposite direction that Dad and Lilith had gone in. “Al, wait!”
“Can’t, my dear. Explicit instructions from the King of Hell not to get involved.”
Charlie thrashes against him furiously, trying to get him to put her down. “Like you’ve ever cared what my dad said before!”
“Explicit instructions infused into my soul-chain, Charlie, I couldn’t disobey him if I wanted to.” Alastor grits his teeth, and his spindly arms lengthen as he grips her more securely. “Stop fighting me, I’m trying to keep you alive—”
And that’s when the first explosion hits.
Charlie’s not sure which of her parents caused it. Both of them are powerful in their own right, and have a great deal of magic at their disposal. Whoever it is, they blow a hole clear through the side of the massive trunk of the Tree of Will, causing branches, bark, and strips of wood to burst outward in all directions.
Alastor and Charlie are both thrown forward by the concussive blast of the explosion. Charlie hits the not-ground of the Nothing with a yelp of pain. Alastor hits the ground just next to her with his own static feedback of agony, but then throws himself over her, shielding her with his own body. He’s grown into his half-demonic form again, not big enough to make a massive target to be hit by, but large enough that he can shield her even with his wiry form. Debris thunders down around them, and Alastor grunts several times from impacts of some kind. Charlie smells blood that’s fresh, a sharp tang of iron, rather than the old blood smell worked into Alastor’s coat.
“Al!” She pushes against him. “Get off! You’re hurt—”
“Again,” Alastor hisses, a little breathless, “Injuries go hand in hand with protection, Charlie. And there’s precious little else I can do to keep you from being impaled by your family’s ridiculous biblical tree of impending doom. Stay still.”
“But you—”
“No! Stay. Still. I will be fine. I regenerate. You do not. And we are not getting involved in that mess, or all we’ll do is end up however many levels of dead come next for us respectively.”
Another explosion sounds. The entirety of The Beginning rocks, shuddering and sudden. The not-ground feels even less real than usual beneath Charlie’s body.
And there really is nothing she can do about any of it. “I hate this,” she sniffles bitterly. “I hate all of these people getting hurt because of me.”
“If it’s any consolation—hrgh,” Alastor cuts off with a grunt as something hits them hard from the side, before continuing, “—it does seem every person in this scenario is at least not coerced into getting hurt because of you.”
“It’s not,” Charlie says miserably. She hates that she inspires people to be hurt. That’s awful!
“I mean that they care enough to bother,” Alastor corrects. “Not that they’re getting hurt. People don’t invite in pain for fun, Charlie.”
Charlie sniffs, and digs her fingers into his coat as best as she can when he’s curled over her defensively. “I care about you too, Al. That’s why I don’t want you to get hurt for me.”
“Read into it as you like, dear,” he says stiffly. “I am not budging until this fight is over, or they move in our direction. In which case, I will be very clear, we are moving away.”
And he sticks to that stubbornly. Charlie curls up tightly beneath him on her side, and Alastor keeps her pinned, shielding her from the worst of the damage with his own body. He doesn’t let her up even when she wriggles to try and get more comfortable because her arm is falling asleep, or she can’t see what’s happening, or any other excuse she comes up with. He never hurts her, but his grip is firm, and she doesn’t have enough leverage to budge him.
And she doesn’t know how long they’re like that. Time still isn’t, in The Beginning, or outside Creation, or whatever this place is. She has no way to track how much time passes. She can only track the battle by the concussive force, the explosions, the way the whole of the Nothing shudders around them with every impact. By the yells of pain and crackles of magic and the way that neither Lilith nor her father seem to be dampened by non-existence.
She doesn’t know how long it is, because she can’t even keep track of how many of those things happen. But she does know when it ends, because there’s one last, high-pitched shriek, and then the Nothing returns to its eerie silence and stillness.
“Is it over?” Charlie asks.
“Not sure.” Alastor lifts his head, ears pricking up as he looks around.
“Charlie!” The rushing flap of wings, and Dad is suddenly there, still resplendent in his strange before-form but without his demonic attributes. He lands and folds his wings away, and adds almost as an afterthought, “Oh, and you too, I guess.”
“A pleasure to see you as always, sir, quite a pleasure,” Alastor says acidly, as he finally uncurls from over Charlie and lets her go. “I just took a dozen bullets for your daughter, but please, do continue to treat me with disrespect.”
Dad grits his teeth for a moment, but then his expression softens. “Sorry,” he mutters, genuinely apologetic. “I can heal those if you want. Easier when we get back to Creation, but if you’ve got anything life-threatening now—”
“I’ll be fine,” Alastor says stiffly.
“Dad!” Charlie’s arm is asleep and it takes her a second to uncurl from where Alastor had pinned her, but then she finally throws herself up and into her father’s arms. And this time he doesn’t disappear on her, like in The Beginning. His arms wrap around her immediately and squeeze her so tight, so close, and he’s so warm, and now that he’s really here she can’t imagine for a second how she ever mistook that thing in the Nothing for him.
“Charlie! Char-Char, Charlie, Sweetheart, I’m here, I promise I’m here, I’m so sorry about all of this—let me look at you, Char-Char, are you okay?” He’s hugging her back and stroking her hair, and then leaning back and stroking her face, looking anxiously at her eyes, touching her temples and pulsing with magic to check for injury—
“I’m—I’m fine, Dad, I’m fine, I’m okay, Alastor protected me—”
“I wasn’t talking about the fight, Sweetheart, I never got to see how you handled all this, I know you’re confused but I promise I’ll make it better, I promise—”
“I’m fine, I’m fine, really, I promise. Al took care of me too, he’s been here before, he knew what to do—”
“Not to interrupt such a touching reunion,” Alastor says, with a tone that says he very much would prefer to not witness it at all, “but what happened to my mistress, sir?”
“Your what—” Dad scowls for a moment, showing his teeth, before he blinks and shakes his head. “Soul owner. Right. Not—right. Right.”
“Dad?” Charlie asks nervously. “Where...did she go?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “She ran. I’m not sure to where, and I didn’t want to try and follow her with you two back here still.”
“Lovely to be included, sir.”
“Shut up. I still don’t like you.” Dad waves a finger in Alastor’s face. “But you did protect Charlie. And even if you didn’t, you don’t deserve to be here.”
“But what do we do about M—her?” Charlie asks. Lilith has proven she’s strong, clever, and sneaky. She’s also made it clear she’s no fan of the Hazbin Hotel, and that she has some kind of connection to Heaven. Charlie doesn’t know what that could all add up to, but she’s not so certain her mother is on her side anymore, and she could cause quite a lot of trouble if she wanted to.
“Let me worry about that,” Dad says grimly. “For now, let’s get you two out of here, okay?”
“Home?” Charlie nearly whimpers.
“Home,” Dad repeats. “All your friends have been looking for you. Maggie—sorry, Vaggie—she’s been worried sick. So have the others. Uh, we’ll probably have to do a bit of explaining to keep them from going for his throat—” He gestures to Alastor. “—but otherwise, they’ll be excited to see you. You’re going to be smothered in hugs. I’ll make your favorite meals. Everyone will do as many redemption exercises as you want if it makes you feel better. They all want you home safe.”
Charlie whirls around, delighted. She’s crying, but they’re tears of happiness. “Al! You were right! They really were waiting for me. Everything out there was a lie.”
Alastor smiles at her. “I’m delighted for you, my dear. You’re finally going home.”
His smile is wrong. He always talks about the importance of smiles, but his is wrong. It looks fake. It feels fake.
“Not just me,” Charlie says. “Both of us. You and me, Alastor. We’re both going home.”
“Yeah,” Dad agrees. “I don’t like you, Bellhop, but I’m not asshole enough to leave you here.”
“I think you’ve both forgotten something rather important,” Alastor says. He reaches behind himself to his collar, catches the links of the chain, and lets it spool out through his fingers before he drops it to the not-ground with an unceremonious clink.
Charlie follows the length of the chain with cold dread seeping into her stomach. The midnight-violet soul links trail all the way back to the now-ruined Tree of Will. But it’s still bound securely around the trunk, the links twisted against root shards and buried under branches and debris.
“In a truly ironic twist of fate,” Alastor says, “It seems my will has been taken by the tree that granted will. Ah-hah! How cruelly hilarious! So I think at this point, my dear, I bid you and your father adieu.”
Goodbye. She knows that one now, because of the French lessons that Alastor gave her here.
“No,” she stammers. “No! I’m not leaving you behind here! It’s not right, not after you helped me survive here! It’s not fair that you don’t get to go home after all this!”
“And what did we learn before, Charlie, dear?” Alastor nearly sing-songs. “Hell is neither right nor fair. Don’t worry, though! I’ve survived it before. I’m sure I will again! Unless my mistress decides my recent performance warrants termination. And I don’t mean firing, ha-hah! Well, unless she chooses fire, at any rate. Either way, probably a mercy!”
“No!” Charlie reaches out and grabs his hand, clenching her fingers around his firmly. It’s scary, how fast Alastor is sinking right in front of them back into his zany behavior and bizarre wordplay. He’s not okay, and she can tell from the way his hand is shaking when she grips it. “We will figure something out. I promised I would figure something out, and I’m going to. Okay? We are not leaving you here.”
“You haven’t a choice, Charlie,” Alastor says. His voice is eerily calm and reasonable, but his eyes say different; they’re glazed and sick-looking with dread. His hand won’t stop shaking in hers, even when she squeezes it and rubs her thumb reassuringly over his knuckles. “It’s fine, dear. I already knew from the beginning I wasn’t going back with you. Hah! And wouldn’t it be pointless anyway? I’m the villain, after all. Always am. Every bridge burned—I was always going to die here—just faster now, without the pretty little fruit tree and its tasty little memory meals—”
“Mmm, no. Fuck this.” Dad’s hands glow with power as he strides forward, reaching his hands up towards Alastor’s soul collar. “Lilith’s gone too far with this. This is cruelty on the highest level. I’m breaking this contract.”
Charlie’s eyes widen. “You can do that?”
“Technically, all Sinner Demons fall under my domain. So yeah, I can. It’ll be a little trickier here, but the fact that he’s bound to my gift to completely circumvent it might actually help in this case. It’s cruel, but it gives me an in—”
“No!”
Alastor bites at Dad’s fingers with a snarl. Dad whips his hands back just in time, and manages to keep all his fingers. “What the fuck, Bellhop? I’m helping you here!”
“No! No. You will not touch me or my contract. I will not allow it.” Alastor’s eyes flick to radio dials, and his teeth gleam, yellow and dangerous.
“Geez! I don’t have to touch you, holy shit,” Dad says with a scowl. “I can just sever the chain links instead—”
“No!” Alastor throws himself over the midnight-violet chains as Dad reaches for them, hiding them with his own body. “You won’t. You won’t! I’d rather die alone and insane and tortured in this Nothing than let you break it!”
“I will drag you out of here kicking and screaming if I have to, asshole,” Dad snaps. “I cannot leave a thing that exists here. Not in good conscience. You can’t honestly want to be my ex’s property, can you? Are you working for her?”
But Charlie already knows the answer to that. “He’s not,” Charlie whispers. “He hates it. But it’s not that. It’s the terms.”
Dad blinks, and then laughs incredulously. “What could possibly be worth this?” he says. “Money, power, fame? Is she the one that made you an Overlord? Gave you your fancy shadow? None of it’s worth this.”
“It is,” Alastor snarls. “It’s worth it. It’s always worth it.”
“But it wasn’t worth letting my mother hurt me,” Charlie says. “So there was at least one thing worth risking it over.”
Alastor flinches.
“Please, Alastor. Please, let us help you,” Charlie says. “I know you told me not to ask, and I tried to respect that, but this is the difference between saving your afterlife and sanity, and...and this!” She waves her hand around at The Beginning, at the broken tree, at the lies and torments they know exist here.
But Alastor is silent.
“Fine,” Dad says. “I’ll be the bad guy if I have to. I already don’t mind if this guy hates me. Just one more thing to add to the list—”
He reaches for the chain again.
And something in Alastor finally breaks.
“My mother!” he yells, frantic, as he throws himself over the exposed links near Dad on his hands and knees. He swats at Dad’s fingers, and Dad pulls away with his hands raised in exasperation. “The Deal! Eternal servitude for my mother’s soul, rightly sorted.”
Charlie freezes. So does Dad. After a moment, nearly at the same time, they both say, “What?”
Alastor laughs, but it’s a hysterical, terrified sound. “I died young. Only thirty-five. My mother buried me, and lived ten years past me. Do you know where she went, when she died?”
And Charlie wants so badly to say, Heaven. Except she knows it’s never so black and white as that, when Heaven doesn’t even know what gets souls sent to them to begin with.
Dad is a little more blunt. “She came to Hell, didn’t she?”
Alastor cackles, but it’s that same terrified, hysterical noise as before. “And! Do you wish to know why? Because my mother, she wasn’t a terrible person! She was a good woman! God fearing! Church every Sunday! Helped her neighbors, fed the hungry, cared for the sick, turned the other cheek for every cruelty ever aimed her way or mine! A good! Woman! Do you know what the stain on her soul was?”
His cackle is more like a shriek, and his feedback screams so high Charlie winces. “Me! She gave birth to a killer and it was enough to damn her!”
Dad is frowning now. Charlie’s eyes are growing hot, as she kneels down next to Alastor. He’s on his hands and knees still, staring at the not-ground and the soul-chain piled beneath him.
“Me,” he hisses. “Me, because I killed and killed and killed. And I liked it. And I didn’t believe a damn thing about the scripture and would have laughed in the preacher’s face when he told me the Devil whispered in my ears.” Dad winces, and Alastor cackles again, raising one hand to stare at his claws. “Even falling didn’t bother me. I revel in this place. But my mother. My mother! She didn’t deserve it. If I’d known—if I’d known existing would have condemned her—”
“It’s not right, Alastor,” Charlie says. She hesitates, but then rests her hand gently on his back, rubbing between his shoulders. “It’s not right, and it’s not fair.”
“Hell is never right and it is never fair, Charlie,” Alastor hisses. “That’s why I fixed my own mistake. My mistress had connections in Heaven. She could put my mother where she belonged. Take the stain away, let her be free. All it cost was my soul.” Another sick laugh. “The payment of one wretched soul for a pure one. Easiest Deal of my existence.”
“Did...did it work?” Charlie asks, stunned. How could he know?
“It worked,” Alastor says. “I got my proof decades ago. My mistress smuggled her in through her...connections.”
“Adam,” Dad says, disgusted. “He could probably make it work, if he had the right incentive.”
“My mother is free in Heaven, as she should be,” Alastor says. “But only as long as my Deal remains. Should the bargain break, Heaven would so quickly discover the stain on my mother’s soul. The one made by me.” His smile is bitter. “So I must find a loophole, if I want my freedom. But it cannot be broken. I would rather die here, alone and insane, than risk my mother’s eternal peace. I owe her that much for damning her.”
“Disgusting,” Dad whispers.
“I know what you think of me, sir,” Alastor hisses. “There’s no need to—”
“Not you,” Dad says. “Lilith. To think she’d take advantage of souls like that—she knows better. She knows what it means to lose Heaven. That she’d—it—argh.” He turns and paces, restless.
Alastor snorts, before he eyes Charlie at his side. “Do you see now, why redemption is nonsense? If even good people like my mother can be made to fall, do you honestly think the addicts, liars, thieves and killers you call family can reach the pearly gates? There isn’t anything left that can save us loathsome Sinners when Heaven throws away even the worthy.”
“Oh, Al.” He’s still on his hands and knees, head hanging and shaking, but Charlie pulls him gently into a hug anyway. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t understand everything.”
“I never expected you to. I never told you.”
“I know. But still…” Charlie hugs him tighter. “Al, I know it’s possible. I know we can do it. Heaven has already been forced to think about how souls reach them. And if we broke the contract and your Mom came down here, we would take care of her at the Hotel—”
“No.”
“Alastor, we can’t leave you here—”
“No!” He shoves her away. “No. No. I will not forfeit my mother’s place in Heaven over me. I cost her eternal salvation once. I will not be the cause of it again!”
“I’m not saying you have to,” Charlie says, “but would your mom really want you to suffer like this for her?”
“Don’t you dare bring her into this.”
“I have to,” Charlie says. “Because you said she’d never have forgiven you if you let my mother hurt me. Especially because of your bond.” She sits back on her heels, and holds out her hands pleadingly to Alastor. “And that means she’d have thoughts about this, if she knew about it. She doesn’t know about it, does she, Al?”
Alastor’s smile is agonized. “Why, if the Queen of Hell herself says there was a clerical error, who’s to doubt her?”
Charlie blinks tears out of her eyes. “Al, she wouldn’t want this for you. She wouldn’t.”
“You don’t know that—”
“Hey.”
Dad is back, crouching next to the two of them on his heels. “Can I touch?” he asks, gesturing at the chain. “Not to break. Just to...read it, I guess. Best way to put it.”
Alastor’s ears flatten, and his lips draw back in a warning snarl. Before he can say anything, Charlie puts her hand on his shoulder, and says, “Dad, you swear you’re just looking?”
“I’ll swear it on Hell itself, if you want me to,” Dad says solemnly.
Alastor eyes him warily. “On your precious tree,” he spits.
“Alright,” Dad says. “Then I swear on Vanglor-Nanaeel, I am only looking, not breaking.”
“Fine,” Alastor hisses. “Once.”
And sure enough, Dad places his hands over the links on the not-ground, and closes his eyes, and nothing at all happens to them. His eyes flicker underneath his eyelids, like he’s reading, and then he says, “This is vile.”
“I am aware,” Alastor says stiffly.
“This is vile,” Dad repeats. “You know if she has other contracted souls?”
“I’m certain of it, though she never let us meet each other. Plausible deniability, and all that.”
Dad grits his teeth. But then he says, “Breaking it will destroy both ends. But moving it…”
Both Charlie and Alastor blink. After a moment, Alastor slowly sits up, and says, “Moving it?”
“Lilith’s...tricky. I think she really, genuinely does believe she’s protecting Charlie,” Dad says slowly. “It’s fucked up, but I can see evidence of it here. Like this inheritance clause.”
Alastor’s ears flatten, and he growls. “I beg your pardon?”
“In the event of Lilith’s death, it looks like there’s a clause to give ownership of your soul to Charlie,” Dad says. He pauses. “Actually, to her blood decedents, if you want to be very specific. Charlie still qualifies. The Deal maintains in that event—based on the magic fingerprints here, I’m assuming that’s because she wanted to protect Charlie from some revenge killing if you got off the hook.”
“Ah, yes,” Alastor says bitterly. “Must keep one’s pet rabid dog from biting if it gets off-leash.”
Belatedly, Charlie remembers her mother offering to give her Alastor if she was a good little girl and gave up on her dream. This must have been what she meant.
“My point,” Dad says, “Is that I can sort of...nudge that along. Force the inheritance clause. You still get what you paid for, but Charlie owns your soul instead.”
Charlie squeaks. “I don’t want to own any souls!” Charlie yelps. “Alastor’s a person, not a thing to be owned!”
“Hey, I don’t like it either,” Dad says, taking his hand away from the soul chain. “I’m still all for breaking it. Never did like the whole soul deals thing. But if he needs to keep the bargain complete, it’s the only other option. And you’d at least treat him like an actual person.”
“I don’t know,” Charlie frets. “That still sounds awful—”
“I’ll do it.”
Charlie looks over at Alastor in surprise. “Wait, what?”
“I’ll do it,” he repeats. “I’m being given the opportunity to decide the fate of my soul. I will make that choice gladly. Charlie is an infinitely preferable soul owner to my mistress.”
“You...you’re sure?” Charlie asks, incredulous.
“Absolutely.” Alastor looks tired, but certain.
Charlie definitely isn’t. She’s never, ever wanted to own a soul, not in her whole life. And not just because of Lilith’s lectures about how the trade was wrong...even if those turned out to be lies. It’s just never sat right in Charlie’s heart, the idea of owning someone so...completely and intimately.
She knew there were advantages. She knew Overlords fought over troves of souls because of the power and people they granted.
But she’s never wanted that kind of strength for herself. Even the idea of buying souls to force them to come to the Hazbin Hotel for their own redemption made her sick to her stomach. Angel Dust had asked her once why she didn’t just do that, and make people stay there. The very thought had horrified her.
The thought of owning any soul is awful. The thought of owning Alastor’s soul is intimidating and alarming on more than one level. Because he’s an Overlord, and incredibly powerful in his own right, and having that kind of power at her command is a little scary. But also because he’s her employee, and her friend, and her family, and maybe-even-eventually a father figure, and the idea of owning his soul is everything from an HR nightmare to a horrific power imbalance to just plain fucked up.
“I don’t know,” Charlie says helplessly. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“Charlie.” Alastor reaches out to her, wrapping his hand around her wrist. “This is the only way. This is the first loophole anyone has found in decades.”
“But it doesn’t let you be free,” Charlie insists.
“But it will keep me alive, relatively speaking, to find a way to achieve that freedom,” Alastor says. “It isn’t in you to be cruel. But if my mistress comes back for me after this…”
Charlie can feel the way he trembles through his grip on her wrist. He doesn’t have to elaborate. Mo—Lilith would almost certainly punish him for his participation in this whole mess. Maybe his mother too, if Alastor’s mom was bound up in his entire Deal, whether she knew it or not.
“I’ll ask it of you as a favor, Charlie,” Alastor says. And the way he says favor, something thrums in her heart, and she realizes he’s calling in his half of the Deal they’d made over a month ago. “For my mother. Please.”
Charlie squeezes her eyes shut. She wants to cry, because she gets that. Until three weeks ago Outside, and however many sleeps it’s been here...she would have done almost anything to help her mother. She still would for Dad.
And yes, for Alastor too. Even something as cruel as this.
“Okay,” Charlie whispers. “But only if you let me help you find a way to be free in the end, and find a way to help your mom. We could talk to Heaven. Dad could get us another meeting. Maybe they could fix it.”
“I could do that,” Dad agrees.
Alastor gives him a suspicious look. “I can’t imagine you doing anything to help me,” he says flatly.
“I wouldn’t be doing it for you,” Dad says. “I’d be doing it for a soul that never belonged in my realm, that my ex-wife took advantage of. I’d be helping to right a wrong. The fact that it’s related to you is irrelevant.”
Alastor frowns. But after a moment he says, “I can...agree to that stipulation, Charlie. I’ve no wish to be under anyone’s thumb permanently. But until a better solution is found...this is the only way I see forward.”
Charlie hates it. But she can’t deny it either.
“Okay,” she agrees, her voice still soft. “Dad...tell us what we have to do.”
Dad laces his fingers together and cracks them. “Not much actively,” he says. “But you,” he adds, pointing a finger in Alastor’s face, “don’t freak out for this part, okay? I have to break the chain to move it. If you do something fucking stupid like bite me mid-soul-adjustment, it might snap the Deal for real, and you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself. Do you understand?”
Alastor’s teeth grind together, but he says, “Absolutely.” And just to prove it, his sharp claws sink into the not-ground beneath them, locking himself in place. “Do what you must, then.”
“Alright. I’m touching the chain. Charlie—come here, sit next to me, and hold out your right arm.”
Charlie does so obediently, just wanting to get this whole mess over with. Dad scoops up a length of chain a few feet from Alastor’s collar, and this time Alastor doesn’t protest, although he does squeeze his eyes shut tight.
“This will probably feel weird, Sweetheart,” Dad says. “Just bear with it.” Charlie nods.
With a frightening amount of strength, Dad takes the length of chain between both hands, twists, and pulls. One of the links snaps apart with a howl of magic, and the midnight-black color goes translucent immediately, nearly invisible in Dad’s fingers. Alastor gasps, like he’s been dunked in ice water, and almost immediately collapses onto his side. One clawed hand burrows out of the Nothing to dig into the cloth and skin over his heart.
Dad ignores him for the moment. Instead, he takes the near-invisible length of chain in his hands, wrapping it around Charlie’s wrist three times in rapid succession. It’s so tight Charlie can feel the circulation cutting off in her fingers, which are starting to tingle and go numb.
The sensation doesn’t last long. Once Dad has tied off the chain, he takes her hand in one of his own and covers the awkward soul-bracelet with his other hand, closes his eyes, and starts to mutter under his breath. It’s the same musical language from before, when he talked about the tree and the fruits and the place before Creation, but now it’s so fast Charlie can’t follow the words at all.
The chain around her wrist burns for a moment, and then slithers, dripping like it’s melting under Dad’s fingers. It solidifies, and suddenly there’s a thick bracelet like a manacle around Charlie’s wrist, one she couldn’t easily slip her hand out of. The translucent color of the metal bracelet shifts to a pale pink, which flows down the links towards the collar snugly around Alastor’s neck, glowing soft and gentle.
The moment the color reaches him, Charlie gasps. She can feel him. Feel Alastor, the essence of what makes him Alastor, as it slithers its way somewhere behind her heart and nestles in place.
Power comes with it, something that flows through her like a shot of adrenaline, but it’s not physical, it’s magical. Everyone one of her senses feels a little sharper, a little more aware, a little more alert. She has the sudden, uncanny impression that if she cast her fireworks spell now, the colors and shapes would go much farther than before, even through the muted darkness and silence of The Beginning. That her demonic form could be more deadly. That those strange skills they’d tried to train her to use, the songs and the fiery red and black arm, would come a little easier.
It’s a rush, unexpectedly tantalizing. She’s stronger. Alastor’s soul is powerful and she can easily leech strength from it where it hides behind her heart. And she can sense that inexorable control that chain gives her over him. She could tell him to do anything, anything at all, and he’d have to obey. She could so easily order him to participate in hotel activities or never kill and eat people again or stop putting screams on his broadcast, and he’d have to. He couldn’t not. She could make him be a better person.
But the fact that those thoughts even crossed her mind makes her stomach roll with nausea and her heart tighten in disgust at herself. If she did that, Alastor wouldn’t be Alastor. She’d be no better at all than her mother, or the cruelest Overlord in Hell. The fact that she even felt that tiniest thrill of excitement from that rush of power makes her hate herself.
Across from her, Alastor cackles softly. “Oh, the irony,” he says, in that strange, deranged voice he takes on every time he starts talking in riddles.
He’s still collapsed on his side, but he’s staring at the pale pink chain between him and Charlie now, and after a moment he makes a weird snickering sound. “The White King and the Red Queen, and what does one get? Of course, of course. I should have seen it. Is the game over, then? The pieces taken or moved? Back, then, to where Something outnumbers the Nothing, and only the mad ones are left bound to each other? Ah-hah!”
“Alastor?” Charlie reaches out to him hesitantly, and takes his hand. He flinches almost immediately like he’s been struck, and then freezes in place. Like he’s unsure if he can flee or not. “Easy, Al. It’s okay. Everything is okay. I promise.”
Alastor doesn’t look convinced. His teeth snap shut, and he goes strangely silent. Given how noisy he’s been in The Beginning up until this moment, filling the muted space with tuneless humming or sound effects or mindless chatter, the silence is unsettling.
“You both need to rest,” Dad says. He makes a gesture with his hand, and the pale pink chain and collar vanish. Only physically, at least; Charlie can still feel Alastor behind her heart, a permanent presence. “Him especially. His soul transferring to a new owner will be disorienting, especially with all the contract requirements adjusting.” He hesitates. “Also, I think Lilith may have added a bit of an, um...let’s call it a tranquilizer to that transitional clause. To keep him docile until everything settles, so he can’t lash out at you in the interim.”
“Oh.” Charlie lets go of Alastor’s hand, which thumps unceremoniously to the not-ground when he doesn’t bother to hold it up. He does look pretty out of it—eyes half-lidded, glassy and mindless.
It makes Charlie sick, to think her mother treated Alastor like...like some kind of rabid dog. Something to be leashed and muzzled, and magically drugged until it could be “properly” handed off to a new owner with new restraints.
She has half a mind to reach out, to stroke his hair back and try to comfort him and tell him things will be okay. Except her hand has only reached out partway before Alastor goes tense again, and Charlie is reminded of the time her mother came back before. When Alastor had remained perfectly still, and her mother had pet him like a dog, scratching him behind the ears and antlers.
No. No, Charlie will not start off this...this whatever it is, she doesn’t want to think of it as soul-ownership—with making Alastor so obviously uncomfortable. As much as she wants so badly to give him comfort, to reach out to him and let him know she’s real, that things are okay and they’re going home, she doesn’t push the boundaries she knows about.
We’ll need to figure out the rules for this right away, she decides.
But not now. They’re too exhausted and worn out from the whole ordeal. So for now, Charlie just taps the not-ground in front of Alastor’s eyes, and says, “I’m sorry about the weird tranquilizing thing. That was wrong of her. But it’ll be okay, I promise. We won’t do any more than we have to in order to get us all home safe.”
She’s not sure if she imagines it or not. But she thinks Alastor might have breathed out, just slightly, in relief.
She lets him be, for the moment. If she concentrates, she can feel that he’s injured. Not the exact injuries, but she can tell the extent of the damage. He’s wounded, but not badly enough to be life threatening. Dad can heal it when they get home, and then they can both rest.
Dad rests a hand on her shoulder. “Ready to go home, Sweetheart?”
Charlie nods eagerly. “Yes,” she says. “Please. I hate this place.”
“I can’t blame you,” Dad says quietly. He gives her a quick hug. “Just need to do one final thing, first.”
“You do?” Charlie looks around. Besides themselves, and the broken Tree of Will, there’s nothing here at all. “What’s left to do here?”
“This.” And Dad gets up, walking over to the Tree of Will.
It’s a shattered mess by now. Most of the branches have been blown off, collapsed over the root system. The fruits are all fallen, splattered and bruised. The great trunk still stands, but with jagged holes blown into it, dribbling crystal-clear sap like blood from gaping wounds. The remaining soul chain links that had been tied around it are gone, crumbled to dust when Alastor’s deal was moved.
It’s impossible to walk close now, with the devastation. But Dad spreads his six wings out of nothing and flaps his way to the very heart of the tree and its trunk. He finds a mess of debris and roots to stand on, placing his hands against the tree. Leaning his forehead close and pressing it against the bark. Closing his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says. Somehow, despite his voice being so low, despite being in the Nothing, his voice carries to Charlie anyway. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve this. This was torment for you, too. This wasn’t what I made your mother for. This wasn’t what I made you for.”
It’s only a tree. It’s perfectly silent. But somehow, Charlie swears it answers anyway, in the rustle of its leaves, in the crack and groan of the roots settling.
“Thank you for taking care of my daughter,” Dad says. “And the other mortals that may have been here. I can’t take you to Creation. I’m so sorry. But I can end your suffering, for what you’ve done.”
And he steps back, one palm still pressed to the trunk of the tree for just a moment, before the whole thing sets ablaze.
“Dad!” Charlie shrieks.
But her father is fine. He back-wings from the Tree of Will as the whole thing goes up in flames, flying above it in vigil. The flames are strange—blue and gold, not Dad’s usual Hellfire, and they seem to burn much faster than usual.
Dad flutters back to her, sets down next to Charlie. “It wanted freedom, too,” he says quietly, at her shocked look. “It can’t have it. They tore the original out of Creation Itself. Struck its name from existence. Most people can’t even hear the real name, or see the real thing. But I couldn’t leave it here.”
“I...I think I understand,” Charlie says. If she didn’t have a choice—if she was trapped here for eternity, and could never leave The Beginning again—she might pick the same thing.
Dad nods quietly. After a moment, he reaches for his hand, and starts twisting his wedding band on his finger. At first Charlie thinks it’s the same nervous tic he’s always had, when he thinks about M—Lilith. But to her surprise, he twists the ring fully off his finger, looks at it in his palm, and with a note of finality, tosses it into the flames of the Tree of Will.
Charlie breathes in sharply. “Dad?”
“I thought there might have been a way back, once,” Dad says. “But after this...no. There’s no going back. Not ever.”
Charlie wraps her arms around him in a hug. “I get it,” she murmurs into his ear. “I feel the same way. I thought...but it’s not true. Maybe none of it was ever true.” She sniffles. “What do we do?”
“We’ll figure it out, Sweetheart,” Dad hugs her back. “For now—let’s just get you and your hotelier out of here, huh?”
Charlie’s glad he doesn’t call Alastor bellhop or busboy. Especially given the recent soul transfer. It feels a little wrong to treat him like a servant when Al doesn’t have a choice in the matter.
Then she swears, rushing for the tree. “Oh, shit! Al’s staff! It’s still in there!”
“Woah!” Dad grabs her by the wrist and pulls her away from the flames. “You don’t want to touch those, Sweetheart. They’re a little more potent than normal.”
“But Alastor’s staff was in the tree! I have to get it back for him, it’s part of his power—”
But even as she holds her hand out towards the burning tree in a panic, there’s a shimmer in the air, and something drops into it. Two somethings, actually—two parts of a staff, snapped in half. The eye on the microphone blinks once, and twists to stare at her in what she swears can only be confusion.
“L-l-l-ittle hot-hot-hot in he-e-e-ere, isn’t it-it-it?” the microphone asks.
Charlie stares. “How did it…?”
“If it’s part of his power, it’s part of your power now too,” Dad says. He puts his arms around Charlie and leads her away from the tree and the flames, back towards Alastor laying on his side. “You can summon him, so you can summon parts of him too, if you need.”
“Oh,” Charlie says, alarmed. She’s going to have to figure out this soul owning thing fast if she doesn’t want to mess anything up for the both of them.
Alastor is still laying on his side where they left him, eyes half-lidded like he’s falling asleep, mumbling under his breath about Somethings and Nothings. Charlie kneels down next to him and gently puts the staff parts in his range of vision. “Here, Al. I got you your staff.”
He blinks at her once, owlishly. Then again at his staff. “How did you make it shut up?” he mutters, even as his arm crawls out and wraps around the pieces, dragging them close like comfort objects.
“We can talk about that later,” Charlie says. “For now, let’s go home.”
“Back to Something?”
“Back to Something. Can you stand?”
Alastor blinks at the question, before making a wobbling effort to get upright. His coordination is poor, like his limbs are too numb for him to feel properly to walk. Between that and his injuries, he doesn’t look like he’ll be getting upright under his own power quickly.
“Here,” Charlie says, anxious to get out of The Beginning already. “Let me help you.”
Alastor flinches ever so slightly. Too late, Charlie feels the soul behind her heart squirm as it’s compelled to obey.
Shit, she thinks. Did that count as an order?
But before she can try to puzzle it out, Alastor only says, “Of course,” and obediently allows her to help him upright. She squirms underneath one of his shoulders, setting his arm around her own and gripping his wrist, trying to be mindful of his injuries. He lets her, passively and just as obedient as before.
Oh, Charlie hates this. She’s going to have to figure this thing out fast. She wants to help Alastor, but she wants him to accept her help because he’s learning to trust her, not because he’s forced to.
But for now, the important thing is just getting them out of there. They can figure out anything else after. So once she’s gotten Alastor more or less upright, she looks at her Dad, and says, “Okay. Let’s get out of here.”
“Right,” Dad says. “Hold tight, just a moment.”
The old crack he’d made in the Nothing to enter has mended itself by now. That doesn’t seem to stop Dad any. He grows into his full Demonic form, his color and details still altered by this strange world of Nothing. His hands draw back, claws sharpening, and then he rams them into mid-air ahead of him.
For Charlie, this always did nothing, even when her and Alastor were trying to train her to cut though the world. But Dad must know what to do or what to feel for, because his claws find purchase on something. Or maybe Something would be a more accurate way to put it.
Whatever the case, his claws dig in deep, and he pulls. And cracks of light—real light from Hell, a real Something—start to shine through the holes he tears in non-existence as he creates a makeshift doorway in the air.
He pulls, and the hole grows. The size of her palm. The size of a clock face. Bigger, bigger, bigger, pulling back further and further on the fabric of reality until there’s a hole the size of a doorway in The Beginning.
It’s so bright Charlie has to squint, her eyes almost closed. Alastor moans where he’s leaning on her shoulder, turning his head away with a hiss. And there’s color through it, and warmth drifts through, and scents, and so many sounds that it’s almost overwhelming.
Despite her desperation to leave this place, Charlie’s legs freeze, and she can’t move forward.
“It’s okay, Sweetheart,” Dad says. “It’s a lot, I know it’s a lot. I’ll help you and him with it after. I can dampen things so you can adjust to it gradually. But you’ve got to take the first step yourself.”
Charlie swallows. “You’re coming, too?”
“I am, Char-Char. I promise. But you’ve got to go first. I have to close the door behind you.”
Still, Charlie hesitates.
Three weeks.
Three weeks without any of the things through even this little slip of Creation, and there’s so much more besides past it. She knows that. It’s so much. It’s too much. Could she handle it? Could she ever? After the things she’s learned here, could she really handle existing again?
Alastor’s arm tightens around her shoulder. Despite the fact that she’s helping him stay upright, he still manages to give her an approximate shove towards the door. She squeaks in surprise. “Al?”
“The first step is the hardest,” he answers, with madness and stability all in one. “It’s difficult. I’ve done it. So you can do it, too.”
“But what if—”
“But nothing,” Alastor says. “Not to be confused with but Nothing. Ah-hah! What have we learned about Nothing, my dear?”
“It lies,” Charlie says. “The Beginning lies.”
“Then don’t let it lie you into keeping you here. It’s a lonely thing. It doesn’t deserve company. Go.” And he gives her another halfhearted push with the arm around her shoulder.
“I…” Charlie takes a deep breath. Lets it out again. “R-right. Right. The Beginning lies. Out there’s where we’ve wanted to be. We can do this.”
And she takes her first step through from the Nothing to the Outside. From The Beginning to Creation.
Whatever comes after—one way or another—she’ll figure out how to live with it.
Chapter 10
Notes:
Sorry for the delay! These last two chapters are the least edited so I wanted to give it a rigorous scrubbing before I posted it.
Also, I am BEYOND honored and delighted with all the lovely comments you've all been giving me! I've been working on getting these last chapters cleaned up, so I haven't had a chance to respond to them all yet. Rest assured I will when I have the chance!
Chapter Text
Somehow, Charlie had envisioned returning to the Outside would come with a great deal of fanfare. Maybe stepping into the Hazbin Hotel lobby, surrounded by her friends. Or back to the room she’d first been dumped out of, the suite she’d planned to give to her mother. Or maybe even the place where Alastor was first pushed through—perhaps his old radio tower, where they’d seen signs of him last.
She had not anticipated stepping out of The Beginning in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere in the jagged, sharp mountains surrounding Pentagram City.
As desperate as she is to see Vaggie, to see her friends, to see Razzle and KeeKee...she has to admit this is probably for the best. Even the empty mountains feel like too much. The light above, cast from the sky rune, is blindingly bright after the pale glow of the Tree of Will and the darkness of Nothing surrounding it. The Pride Ring has always been predominantly red, but Charlie has never until this moment been overwhelmed by just how red it is, from the rust-red brimstone to the brownish-red petrified trees with their blood-red leaves. After the lack of scents in The Beginning, the stench of brimstone and sulfur, iron and smoke is like a slap in the face. A hot wind blows against her skin and whistles through the sharp spines of the mountains, and the air hisses faintly from a recent acid rain storm.
It’s so much. It’s too much. Charlie staggers as her legs give out underneath her. Alastor, still leaning on her heavily, collapses in an ungainly heap next to her. He must be overwhelmed too, because his static shrieks with feedback, and he flattens his ears to his head, covering them with his hands and squeezing his eyes shut.
“Hang on, hang on a sec, just a sec guys, just gotta close this,” someone stammers. Loud. So loud. Everything is too loud. Everything is too bright. Everything is too much.
But then something brushes over her temples, and there’s a faint pulse of magic, and the world gets...quieter. All of it. Not silent, not like the Nothing, but dampened. A little less...everything.
Not just sound either. When she opens her eyes, the reds are a little less vibrant. The smells a little less intense. The feel of wind and heat against her skin a little less grating.
“Better, Sweetheart?”
Charlie looks up and meets her Dad’s eyes. He’s kneeling in front of her, fingertips still resting against her temples. He looks right again, like she’s always known him, ghost white and blood red, nothing outside of time or his choices.
Charlie nods. “What...what did you do?” she asks.
“I dampened your senses,” he says. “I’ve set it for about twenty-four hours—it’ll gradually increase over time, until you’re back to your usual sensory input. Gives you a chance to adjust slowly. Just don’t push it, okay, Sweetie? Sensory deprivation is no joke, and you’ve been starved of a lot of things mortals need. Let yourself get better gently.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Okay. Give me a second to help this asshole, and I’ll take us back to the hotel.”
“Why’d we come out here?” Charlie asks, as Dad reaches down for Alastor’s temples. Alastor bares his teeth warningly at the touch, slitting his eyes open just enough to reveal radio dials and black sclera, and he looks like he’s ready to bite. “C’mon, Al, let my dad help you,” Charlie chastises. “It feels a lot better.”
The soul behind her heart squirms. Alastor’s snarl chokes back into a whine, and his teeth slip away behind the flattest smile he can manage. He blinks, and the dials are gone. The immediate aggression disappears, but he still glares balefully and uncomfortably as Dad presses fingers against his temples. Like he doesn’t want to let it happen but has no choice.
Shit, Charlie realizes, too late. He doesn’t have a choice. I just gave him another order, didn’t I?
Oh, this is difficult. She’s going to have to figure out a way to communicate with Alastor that isn’t accidentally giving him orders all the time.
If Dad notices the mistake, he takes it in stride. “Take it easy, it’ll only be a few seconds and then it’ll hurt less,” he says. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you getting slapped with every radio signal the Pentagram has to offer. Yeah, I know about the electromagnetic wave spectrum, you’re not as clever as you think. Who do you think helped design that thing, huh?” Dad rolls his eyes at Alastor’s bewildered glare, before glancing back at Charlie. “It just came out that way.”
“Huh?”
“You asked why we came out here. It just came out that way. This is where the hole I made led to.” Dad jerks his head at the nearest sharp, pointed spire. “Before Creation isn’t meant to be traveled to. There’s not really rules for portals, and not even I have a lot of practice with translocation from non-existence to existence. I just opened the hole where it was.”
“Oh.”
“But don’t worry! Now that we’re in my actual neck of the woods, I can take us back to the hotel whenever you like.” He takes his hands away from Alastor’s temples, adding, “There, asshole. That should feel a lot better.”
“I don’t like you messing around in my head,” Alastor grouses immediately. Without Dad’s hands to hold his head up, it flops unceremoniously to the stone beneath their feet with a painful sounding thud.
“I don’t like messing around in your head, so we’re in agreement there,” Dad says with a scowl. “Now, while we’re at it, how about you let me deal with those injuries?”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Alastor says. Which would probably be more believable if his voice didn’t slur like he’s had too many drinks.
Now that she can see without squinting against the light of Pride, and it’s light enough too see, Charlie gives Alastor a more careful scrutiny. The wound on his chest, the one he got from Adam, should be mostly healed by now after all the Fruits of Will they’d eaten. But his back and arms are peppered with nasty-looking wounds from where he’d shielded her with his own body against the fight in The Beginning. The blood blends in with his red coat fairly well, but the tears in the fabric are hard to miss.
I just took a dozen bullets for your daughter, he’d said, back in the Nothing. Maybe not literal bullets, but it looked like he’d been impaled by more than one shard of the Tree of Will, even if the pieces themselves are gone.
Dad had said he couldn’t bring it to Creation, and maybe not even the slivers could come here. But without them there, Alastor’s starting to bleed more than before. Enough that Charlie can make out the iron smell of it, even with her sense of smell dampened by Dad’s magic. Enough that the soul buried behind her heart starts to pulse with minor distress that she can feel like a warning bell.
“You’re not fine, Alastor,” Charlie says. “You got really hurt for me...I’m sorry.”
“It is my job,” Alastor says. “There’s nothing to be sorry for, and I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine,” Charlie says. She almost adds, let my dad help you, but bites her tongue to stop herself just in time. She’s pretty sure that would count as an order, and Alastor would hate it. She doesn’t want to force him to accept help, not unless it’s life threatening. She wants him to trust her. Instead, she tries, “Please let my dad help you?”
Phrased as a request, and not an order, seems to give Alastor some leeway in the soul binding. “It really isn’t needed, my dear,” he says stiffly. “We’re back in the Something. I’ll heal fine on my own.”
“But you’ll heal faster with my help,” Dad says. “And I don’t want to have Charlie worrying over you for days because you’re too stubborn to accept help.”
“You’ve done quite enough already,” Alastor says with a grumble. “And I’m fine.”
“So fine you haven’t gotten up yet,” Dad notes with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m sleepy thanks to that idiotic tranquilizing inclusion,” Alastor grouses. He does look it, his eyes still half-lidded and a little glazed. “What a foolish stipulation. As if I’d have turned on the princess.”
Charlie squeaks. Both of Dad’s eyebrows raise.
Alastor is silent for a moment, before observing, “I said that out loud, didn’t I.”
“Loud and clear,” Dad says, with a toothy grin.
“I hate this damned spell,” Alastor grumbles. “If either of you tell anyone…” He trails off, but the threat is implied.
Charlie decides to tactfully not point out that Alastor literally can’t do anything to her, which is exactly why the soul-bind rules and the magical drugging were for to begin with. Instead, starry-eyed, she says, “It’s okay, Alastor! It means so much to me that you care so much about me!”
“I never said that. Don’t put words in my mouth.” Alastor pointedly refuses to meet her eyes.
“I still appreciate that,” Charlie says kindly. “And I would really appreciate it if you would let Dad help you feel better. In fact, I would like to, um, aggressively kindly ask you to pretty please let my dad help you.”
Alastor stares at her for a long moment. Blinks. And then laughs. Just a few short, sharp cackles, but they’re strangely wholesome and normal, for Alastor. Not the manic, frightening things of The Beginning. Like he legitimately thinks this is funny.
“I’m obligated to ask,” he says after a moment, still wheezing a little, “was that an attempt at an order?”
“No! No orders. I’m not going to force you, Al. I’m just going to ask you aggressively kindly to please take care of yourself, or let us take care of you.”
Even Dad seems perplexed and amused by this one. But then, Dad is already a King, and probably a little more used to throwing his weight around. After a moment he turns to Alastor and says more seriously, “You protected my daughter in that fight, and therefore, some of these injuries may have been my fault. For the sake of closing out debt, let me heal you so we can move on already. I’d like to get back to the hotel sometime this century.”
This seems to convince Alastor more. He blinks at this, considering through half-lidded eyes, before nodding tiredly. “Fine. Heal me and the debt is closed.”
“Finally.” Dad rolls his eyes, but he’s careful when he touches Alastor’s forehead and his hand glows to life. The injuries each glow with an inner gold, before the light winks out. Dad had even repaired Alastor’s coat, sealing up the frayed holes the shards of the Tree of Will had left behind.
“I patched up that wound on your chest, too,” Dad adds, as he pulls his hand away. “It was mostly done, but I cleaned up what’s left. Sleep off that tranquil transfer spell and the sensory issues and you’ll be fighting fit in twenty four hours.”
“Good,” Alastor hums, and then promptly closes his eyes right there.
“Al, wait! Don’t go to sleep yet.”
Alastor groans, but wrenches his eyes open immediately, teeth bared. Charlie winces, but she had recognized the order that time, and let it pass. They can’t let Alastor fall unconscious in the mountains, after all. They still have to get him back to the hotel.
“You can rest once we’re safe at the Hazbin Hotel,” Charlie clarifies the rule quickly. “But we need to get there first. Can I help you stand again?”
Alastor makes a tired sounding sigh, but says, “Very well.”
It’s an endeavor, but between the three of them, they manage to get Alastor upright long enough to walk through one of Dad’s sparkling portals. Al leans on Charlie’s shoulder long enough to stagger through into a room. Charlie recognizes the general decor of the Hazbin Hotel, but not the room specifically.
“Where are we?” she asks her father, as he steps through the portal after them and snaps his fingers to close it.
“I picked a spare room,” Dad says. “I figure it’s neutral enough ground it won’t aggravate your senses, or his.” He nods to Alastor, still leaning wearily against her shoulder. “And a safe enough spot to have the others meet you one at a time, so it doesn’t overwhelm you.”
That made sense. She loved her new room in the new hotel. But she’d already been filling it with things she’d recovered from the ruins of the old one, or new plants sent to her from her aunts and uncles from the other Rings, or pulling things out of storage from the palace to fill it. It would probably be a lot right now, even to her dampened senses.
“I’ll collect the others together,” Dad says. “And make sure they know not to attack him on sight before they come up here.” He jerks a thumb at Alastor.
“Do they really think he kidnapped me?” Charlie asks, bewildered.
“I do everything evil,” Alastor mumbles under his breath. “I’m very easy to blame. I’m the Radio Demon, you know.”
“I know, Al,” Charlie says reassuringly. He’s starting to droop from her shoulder and arm, so she steers him towards the spare bed, sitting them both down on its edge. His eyes are nearly closed, only the faintest red slivers visible under his darker eyelids. “You can rest now, if you want.”
Alastor hmms faintly. He doesn’t topple over, or lay down immediately. But he is slowly tipping sideways, presumably without realizing it. Poor Al; this spell really was doing a number on him. All to apparently keep him docile enough for Charlie to settle as his new owner and manage to grab hold of his leash without him biting back.
It makes her sick to her stomach.
“They do think he was responsible,” Dad says, answering her original question. “For all of it. I’m sure your friends will fill you in on the details, but the summary is your moth—Lilith left enough of a breadcrumb trail with magic and planted evidence to make it look like the Exorcists were working with him. Supposedly, they attacked and kidnapped you, and handed you off to him to spirit away for...I don’t know. Overlord things.”
“Ah, yes,” Alastor says dazedly, from where he’s swaying slightly on the bed next to Charlie. “My terrible and evil Overlord things.” He cackles, or at least tries to. It comes out more like a sleepy cough.
Charlie rubs his back gently. “I’m sure if you really did kidnap me it would be for a very clever evil plan,” she says reassuringly.
“The best,” Alastor agrees. He pauses. Considers. “Though it would put me in a bit of a difficult situation. I’d have to track myself down to battle against myself, to protect you from kidnapping against myself. But I think I’d put up a rather frightful fight. I’m not sure who would win.”
Dad gives him an odd look, before saying, “Look, I won’t lie. Lilith fed us a story and we bought it hook, line, and sinker. Looking at it now, she was planning to scapegoat this asshole and the Exorcists by pinning the kidnapping on them. On the Hell side of things, we get rid of him and never suspect Lilith. If we ended up involving Heaven, the Exorcists are already in deep shit from the recent Exterminations, and nobody would believe them, so they get sacrificed while avoiding a war with Heaven. We didn’t think to look twice.”
He pauses. Closes his eyes. “I didn’t think to look twice,” he admits, after a moment. He steps forward, taking Charlie’s free hand gently. “I’m so sorry, Char-Char. I didn’t think she would do something like this. I know we divorced a long time ago, but I really thought when it came to you, we could still be on the same page to protect you. I believed her. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize what was happening and to find you. I promise you, I never stopped looking for you from the moment I learned you were gone.”
Charlie throws her arms around his shoulders in a fierce hug. “It’s okay,” she says. “I believe you. She tricked me too. I’m just glad you found me in the end.”
“Always,” Dad says, squeezing her tightly back. “It might take me a while to find you but I will always coming for you, I swear it. I love you so much, Charlie.”
“Very touching,” Alastor grumbles, still listing sideways. “Must I be here for this?”
Dad rolls his eyes, and reaches over to swat Alastor’s shoulder lightly. “Oh, go to bed,” he mutters.
It’s a light swat, but it’s enough to topple Alastor sideways onto the bed anyway, antlers stabbing into the closest pillow. Alastor grumbles for a moment, but makes no effort to get up. “This is very uncomfortable,” he mutters after a moment, neck craned awkwardly where it’s been wedged.
Frankly, Charlie’s not sure how, given she knows he has at least one extra joint in his neck, which appears to currently be in full use. But she obligingly pulls away from her hug with her father to readjust Alastor on the bed, pulling the pillow more comfortably under his head, taking his monocle off for him, and pulling his legs up from the ground for him. In the end he’s sprawled on his side on the spare bed, eyes mostly closed but for the faint sheen of red slivers and the occasional twitch of an ear that suggests he’s still paying close attention.
“Right,” Dad says. “I’ll get your friends. Any first requests? Probably should be one at a time, so you’re not overwhelmed.”
“Vaggie,” Charlie says immediately. “I want Vaggie. Please.”
Dad smiles. “Right. Of course. Probably should have figured. Hang tight, I’ll send her up.” He pauses, placing a hand on Charlie’s shoulder one last time. “And, Sweetheart?”
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Once I get your friends sorted out, I’m going to start working on protections right away,” he says, raising his hand from her shoulder to gently cup her cheek. “She won’t be able to come in here again, okay? I promise, I won’t let her hurt you again. You’re safe here tonight. And every night after you’ll be even safer. I’m keeping watch.”
Charlie sniffles, putting her hand over her father’s. “Thank you,” she whispers.
“Of course, Sweetheart,” he says. He kisses her gently on her brow, just like he used to when she was little and he put her to bed after a bedtime story. “I’ve got you.” He pulls back, and puts on a smile. “Now, let me go get your girlfriend, and make sure nobody wants to murder him when they get in here.”
“Very touching, sir,” Alastor grumbles into his pillow. “I didn’t know you cared.”
“I don’t,” Dad mutters back, before giving Charlie a gentle wave and disappearing out the door.
There’s a clock on the wall, so Charlie can actually measure the time—Time that exists!—for how long it takes for Vaggie to show up. Ten minutes, almost down to the tick of the second hand. Long enough for Dad to pull everyone together and explain the basics and tell Vaggie where to go. Long enough for Charlie to start hugging one of the spare pillows anxiously, burying her hands in the soft texture. Long enough for Alastor to turn on the radio on the shelf with a snap of his fingers, and tune it to a soft jazz so they have sound. Long enough for him to adjust his position on the bed to be more comfortable, and accidentally-on-purpose press his knee against her hip, just so they’re both reminded the other one is still there and real. Long enough to get used to the red circus theme in the room, the decor, the colors, the warmth, the dim lighting.
“Your father must have decorated this,” Alastor grumbles at one point.
“He did. He helped build the whole new hotel.”
“I can tell. It’s tacky,” he complains, before falling silent again. He doesn’t quite sleep, but he’s still enough that Charlie hopes he’s getting rest, even with his eyes still half lidded and his static buzzing lazily.
Then Vaggie knocks on the door and bursts through before Charlie can so much as say ‘come in,’ and nearly throws herself across the room in a single bound, wings out to propel her forward. “Charlie!” she says, her voice just short of yelling—like she was told not to raise it, and is barely succeeding. “Charlie, honey—thank the stars you’re okay!”
She stops just short of Charlie herself, hands out like she wants so badly to wrap Charlie up in a hug but is afraid to touch. Like she’s been told not to, not without being sure it’s okay first.
It’s enough to feel the threads of The Beginning’s lies starting to loosen from her mind. But Charlie feels her eyes getting misty anyway as she says, “You...you sound worried. You were worried?”
Vaggie can’t quite manage to resist as she carefully takes Charlie’s hands in her own. Charlie lets her, and the warmth in Vaggie’s hands almost burns as Vaggie herself says, “Of course I was worried! Babe, you went missing for three weeks. I was so scared to death for you! I’m so sorry, I should have protected you better, I should have known Lilith was up to something. That story was odd, but I was so worried about Lute coming back to try and kill you that I didn’t even think about Lilith being the danger, and that cost you so much and I—”
“Vaggie,” Charlie interrupts with a sob. “It’s okay. It’s okay, just please—hold me?”
And Vaggie, bless her heart, doesn’t hesitate. She immediately sits down on the bed next to Charlie and wraps her up in the biggest, warmest, safest hug. Vaggie is shorter, but she feels so much bigger and stronger now as Charlie nestles her face down into Vaggie’s shoulder and clings to her.
“It’s okay, honey,” Vaggie says, squeezing her tightly. There’s a flutter of feather-soft sensations against Charlie’s skin and hair, and it takes her just a few seconds to realize Vaggie’s wrapped her in wings too, like a protective shield. “It’s okay,” she says again, as she holds Charlie and rocks her and strokes fingers through her hair and up and down her back, plants gentle kisses over and over against her temples, and never once lets her go. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, and I’ll protect you, so everything’s okay now, Charlie.”
Charlie sniffles. “It doesn’t bother you?”
“What doesn’t bother me?”
“Protecting me,” Charlie says. “It’s not...I’m not a burden?”
I’m tired of protecting someone as gullible as you. You’re always getting yourself into trouble because you believe things so much. It’s so much work.
“What?” Vaggie sounds incredulous, and her grip grows tighter. “No, never. Never, Charlie! I protect you because I want to. Because I love you and because you’re important to me, and because I want to support you.”
“Even if I’m gullible and naive and I believe people too much? Even if that causes trouble?”
“Charlie.” Vaggie tries to pull her away for a moment, and Charlie whimpers, clinging to her shirt. But Vaggie says firmly, “Just one second, hun. I want you to look me in the eyes when I say this.”
So Charlie lets go, fearing what will happen when she meets Vaggie’s gaze.
But Vaggie’s eyes aren’t cold like the Vaggie in The Beginning. They’re full of love and pride and strength as she says, very firmly, “I love you because of that. Sure, sometimes you do believe people that you shouldn’t, and who are dangerous. And I don’t mind stepping in to fix things when that happens, or to make sure you stay safe. Because I love that you do show so much compassion, and that you love everyone, and always try to see the best in everyone. I love that you don’t see that kind of love for everyone as out of place, even in Hell. I love that you’re always willing to try and help people, even when they don’t deserve it. I love that somehow, your compassion and kindness brings out the best in other people. Like me, or Angel Dust, or Sir Pentious.”
“What,” Alastor interrupts with a lazy drawl, “No love for me?”
“Shut up, pendejo,” Vaggie growls. “Nobody asked you, and you’re ruining the moment.”
“Oh, my apologies,” Alastor mutters. “I hate being here too, if it’s any consolation.”
“It’s not.” Vaggie turns back to Charlie, and gives her a gentle kiss, before saying, “I love that part about you, and I consider it an honor to protect you so you can keep bringing that to the world.”
And those last parts of the Nothing-Vaggie in Charlie’s heart shatter and fall silent. It’s not true, Alastor had said, all those sleeps ago. And Charlie had done her best to believe it. But being here, seeing it, feeling it in the warmth and strength of Vaggie’s arms and the absolute conviction in her words—
—that really, really helps drive the point home.
Charlie can’t help herself. She bursts into tears as she buries her face back into Vaggie’s shoulder. “I missed you so much,” she sobs. “I missed you so, so, so much, Vaggie, I wished you were there every sleep.”
“I’m here now,” Vaggie promises, hugging her fiercely. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there, and I’m sorry you were taken, but I’m here now and I will help you through this and keep you safe.”
“This is far too much emotion,” Alastor grumbles. “I want to throw up, just a little bit.”
They ignore him. For a long while—time that Charlie knows is passing, even if she doesn’t know how much—she just sobs into Vaggie’s arms and lets herself be held, and safe, and warm and reassured. She lets out all the emotions and stress and hardships of being trapped in The Beginning, the hurt and grief about her mother, the lies of the Nothing. She cries it all out until there are no tears left, and when it’s done she feels empty and exhausted but better. Just a little.
Vaggie lets her sob herself out, before stroking her hair back gently again. Most of Alastor’s recent braid had fallen out in the fight, so it’s long and untethered, but Vaggie gently brushes a little behind her ear. “Do you want to talk about it right now?”
Charlie shakes her head. “Not yet.”
“Okay,” Vaggie says. She doesn’t push. “When you want to talk about it, you know I’m here.”
“I know,” Charlie says, and she is so beyond happy and relieved to realize she does know. She knows Vaggie is there for her, unquestionably. The longer Vaggie holds her the more the thing in The Beginning feels like just a bad dream, and she can’t believe she ever thought that Vaggie was real. “I know you will.”
“Okay,” Vaggie says. “But I do want to ask one thing, if that’s okay.”
Charlie sits up a little, but she still holds onto one of Vaggie’s hands. Just to reassure herself she’s still real and still here. “What’s that?”
Vaggie gestures to Alastor. He’s still flopped on his side on the bed, watching them with half-lidded eyes. He hasn’t moved much from where Charlie put him originally, beyond that subtle adjustment so that his knee was nudged against her hip, so they were constantly in contact. Charlie’s not sure if it’s because he’s too weak to or tired from the spell, or if he’s still overwhelmed by all the...all the Everything in the Something. “Why the fuck is he here?”
“Lovely to know you care, Vagatha,” Alastor drawls, glaring balefully through his slitted eyes.
“Not my name,” Vaggie says.
“He got...hurt, I guess is the best way to explain it,” Charlie says. She’s hesitant to go into details about Alastor’s soul ownership—that he belonged to her mother before, or her now—or the rules of the transference specifically. So she just says, “Mo—Lilith put a kind of tranquilizing spell on him.”
“Oh yes, do tell everyone,” Alastor mutters. “Especially the one with the pointy angel spear.”
“Vaggie won’t hurt you,” Charlie says firmly.
“That depends,” Vaggie says. “His Majesty said Alastor’s not actually responsible for kidnapping you, and not to attack. But I do want to be sure.” She gives Alastor a suspicious look. “So tell me yourself. Did you kidnap Charlie?”
Alastor scoffs at her. “And why should I even dignify you with an answer? It isn’t as though you’ll believe me even if I did tell the truth.”
“Listen, shitass—”
“He didn’t hurt me or kidnap me,” Charlie interjects firmly. “Vaggie, I’m really serious about this. The place M—Lilith put me, he was there at least two weeks in the Something before. Lilith threw him in there too, right after the battle at the hotel. He couldn’t have kidnapped me even if he wanted to.”
“Which I do not—not that you’d believe me,” Alastor grumbles. “Besides, if I did kidnap her, I’d do a much finer job of it than this mess.”
That, of all things, seems to calm Vaggie down. “I...guess that’s true,” she admits. “Weird as it is to say.”
“He kept me safe in The Beginning, too,” Charlie adds. “He didn’t just not kidnap me. He protected me. I don’t think I’d have survived there without him. So I really don’t want to hear anyone else badmouthing Alastor, or blaming him for this. Okay?” She keeps her voice gentle but firm, because she’s serious when she says she won’t tolerate it.
Vaggie blinks for a moment, but then nods. “Okay,” she says. And then, to Charlie’s surprise, “Sorry, Alastor. We’ve been chasing what we thought was you all over the Pentagram for three weeks. I’ve been on edge, but it’s no excuse to be an ass. I’ll lay off.”
Alastor is silent for a moment, but his static buzzes oddly. After a moment, he says in a bewildered tone, “Two apologies. Perhaps even three, if we count your father closing his debt. I must say, I’m not sure what to do with this.”
“You could start by accepting the apology,” Charlie offers. “Or forgiving Vaggie.”
“Hmm. Very well, then. Vagatha, I forgive you for thinking I would be pathetic enough at kidnapping to actually leave a breadcrumb trail all across the Pentagram.”
“That’s not my name,” Vaggie grouses. “And I didn’t even know backhand forgiveness was a thing.”
“I am a unique and unpredictable demon,” Alastor says, with a perfectly straight face. Or at least, as straight as it can get when he can’t not smile.
Vaggie sighs, before returning her attention to Charlie. “It’s been a while, and everyone else is worried sick about you,” she says. “Your dad said to come one at a time because it’d be a little overwhelming, but you’ve already been through a lot. Do you want me to tell them to wait, or—”
“No,” Charlie says quickly. “I—I don’t know if I could do a long visit, but I do want to see them. All of them, before I go to bed or take a break or anything.” Because she knows The Beginning lied, but she still needs to see for herself that they’re all alive and okay. Just to be certain. To leave no doubts.
“Okay,” Vaggie says. “I’ll go get them—”
“Wait.” Charlie grabs her wrist. “Can you stay?”
Vaggie looks worried. “Your dad said one at a time—”
“For everyone else, okay,” Charlie says. “But I want you to stay. Um, as long as it isn’t too much for Alastor, anyway.”
“I don’t care, as long as she doesn’t stab me,” Alastor offers helpfully.
“No stabbing,” Vaggie agrees. “Okay then. I’ll just text them.” She sits down on the bed again next to Charlie, who keeps her fingers laced with Vaggie’s free hand while Vaggie taps out a message on her cell phone with the other.
It doesn’t take long for the next one to arrive. Angel Dust knocks on the door and lets himself in with a flourish. His eyes set on Charlie and his expression immediately shifts to one of relief, even as he saunters over casually.
“Hey, Toots,” he says. “You had us real worried. How ya feelin’?”
Charlie immediately reaches out for him with grabby hands. She doesn’t know how she has more tears in her after all that crying into Vaggie’s shoulder, but her eyes are welling up again at seeing Angel Dust alive and whole, and to hear his usual accent not screaming in pain. “I’m good,” she says. “You’re alive! I’m so glad. Can I please have a hug?”
“Well, since ya asked so nice,” Angel drawls. He ends up crouching at the side of the bed on one knee, which still leaves him even with Charlie, who immediately throws herself into him for a fierce hug. He wraps her up in all four arms. It’s glorious.
“You’re so so-ooo-ooo-oooft,” Charlie sobs into his chest fluff, rubbing her face into it like KeeKee sometimes does with blankets.
“I have been told that,” Angel says, with a snicker.
“It’s so nice,” Charlie whimpers happily. Soft was not a thing in the Nothing. The Nothing didn’t have any sensations.
“Uh-huh,” Angel says. “Y’know, I normally make people pay for this, Toots. But I was so damn worried about ya, I guess you can have this as a freebie.”
“Thank yoooo-ooo-ooou,” Charlie sobs into his chest fluff. She squeezes him tightly with her arms. Soft and warm and alive. So very, very alive. Another lie of The Beginning dispelled.
Angel Dust doesn’t stay long, mostly because Vaggie kicks him out after about ten minutes. “Don’t wanna overwhelm ya with how soft I am, Toots,” he says, winking at her. “But don’t worry! Ain’t the last you’ll see’ve me. And I’m plannin’ out a little sleepover party for ya when yer feelin’ more up for it.”
“That better be an actual sleepover party,” Vaggie warns.
Angel laughs. “Don’t worry,” he says. “It’ll be the chaste kind. I mean, unless some lovebirds wanna break away for a little one on one time…” He grins at Vaggie.
She rolls her eyes. “Get out.”
“Yeah, yeah. Feel better, Toots. You too, Smiles. Glad ta know you ain’t actually a kidnappin’ motherfucker.” He winks at Alastor too. “And hey—you’re invited to the sleepover too, and it ain’t gotta be chaste for you if ya want a little soft fluff yerself. My treat, don’t gotta pay for it this one time either.”
“Never going to happen,” Alastor grumbles, and his static takes a slightly painful buzzing edge. “Offer again and I will remove that fluff you’re so proud of.”
Angel cackles as he heads out the door.
Niffty is next, and she mostly fusses over Alastor for her ten minutes. Charlie is a little relieved, because it does give her a break, and Niffty can be a lot in most cases. But Niffty is surprisingly gentle with the both of them, careful not to walk or crawl over either of them like she usually does. She settles down next to Alastor and says excitedly, “I’m glad you’re back! I don’t like it when you’re gone. You’re very far away then.”
“I don’t like it either, but I think I shall not be going there again,” Alastor says. “Nothing to worry about, my dear.” He manages to lift one of his hands enough to pat her gently on the head, and Niffty’s eye closes blissfully as she leans into the pressure.
“I got your room all set up as much as it can be! And your studio. I can’t make the bayou, but everything is nice and clean, and all the stuff we saved from the old ruins is back in the right spots, and I even put up some decorations,” she says proudly. “They’re dead rats! And dead roaches! I killed them and made trophies out of them for you, sir! As tribute.”
“That sounds quite lovely, Niffty, darling. I can’t wait to see them.”
“I’ll go make sure there are new linens for you now!” Niffty says excitedly. She pats Alastor once on the head and scurries out the door, off to her chosen task.
“Niffty’s been going a little crazy without you here,” Vaggie offers. “She couldn’t really help with the search through the Pentagram, and it was making her so anxious she was stress-cleaning everywhere. And stress baking. We have more cookies than any of us can ever eat, and more...weird...jello meals and casseroles than anyone wants to eat.”
“Poor Niffty,” Charlie says. “I hope this makes her feel a little better.”
“She did actually break the case, though,” Vaggie admits. “I guess we owe finding you guys to her.”
Alastor’s ears prick upright in interest. “Oh? How did she manage that?”
“I’m not sure I understand the details exactly,” Vaggie says. “The suite Charlie wanted to put Lilith in had half a wall blown out from what we thought was an exorcist attack. We were kind of in a rush to chase the lead, so His Majesty just did a quick repair job on the wall and Lilith moved to a different room. But Niffty was cleaning the suite to try and get it presentable again and she found...I don’t know what to call it. It was like a tiny little shard, but there was nothing in it. It was just...empty, I guess. Like it wasn’t made out of anything, but it was?”
Charlie’s eyes widen, and she meet’s Alastor’s own startled look. “The Nothing,” they both say, at nearly the same time. When Lilith opened the door to shove Charlie into the Nothing, something must have shed from it. The tiniest fragment, the littlest grain of non-existence.
“Uh, sure,” Vaggie says. “Anyway, she couldn’t figure out what it was, but she thought it was weird, so she didn’t throw it away since it didn’t feel normal. She showed it to His Majesty and he started yelling about it not being a part of this world and that maybe you were somewhere else the whole time. I’m guessing he used it to get to you somehow.”
Alastor’s grin seems genuinely fond. “Oh, Niffty. I simply must give her a fine reward for her diligence when I’m able.”
Charlie can’t help but agree. Niffty deserves to be showered in gifts for this. Her mother probably hadn’t even noticed that little shard, or thought it could be found. But she didn’t know Niffty, and she’d underestimated Charlie’s friends.
Cherri Bomb is next to visit. She doesn’t stay long—Charlie and Cherri still don’t really know each other all that well. But it is long enough for Charlie to verify she is alive, and also not angry like she had been in The Beginning.
At least, not angry at Charlie. “I can’t believe that bitch tricked us!” Cherri scowls, punching her fist into her other hand. “Ugh, if she ever shows her face again I’m gonna stuff a bomb down her fuckin’ throat. I got weird vibes from her from the beginnin’, but I figured it was just her bein’ a queen and all that shit. Royalty sucks, y’know? Uh—not you, though,” she adds hastily, at Charlie’s bewildered blink. “I shoulda trusted my gut from the beginning. Fuck!”
“I’m glad you were helping to look for me and Alastor, at least,” Charlie says.
“’course I was! I was here when ya vanished. Fuck me, you shoulda seen the way your dad flipped his fuckin’ shit when we learned you were missin’.” Cherri shakes her head in disgust. “Guess me and Angie felt a little bad about it. We’re the ones that pulled him off you guys so you could have your talk. If we hadn’t been distractin’ him, maybe he woulda caught her sooner.”
“It’s not your fault,” Charlie says. “It’s not anyone’s fault.”
“It is Lilith’s fault,” Vaggie points out.
“Here, here,” Alastor chants in agreement.
“Okay, but it’s not anyone here’s fault,” Charlie says. “None of us could have known. Don’t feel bad, Cherri. I’m just glad you were here to help, and I’m really glad you’re okay.” And not mad at me, Charlie doesn’t have to add anymore.
She knows The Beginning lied again.
“Well, I’ll be here to help a little longer, yeah?” Cherri says. She plucks a bomb from her cleavage and absently rolls it around over and under her arms, although thankfully, she doesn’t light it. “Yer dad’s busy settin’ up some kinda defense against your crazy mum, and I’m sure Vaggie here’ll be lookin’ after you, so I figure I can take care of any losers that try to topple this joint until you’re back on your feet.”
She nods to Alastor. “You too, Radio Bastard. I was ready to stuff one’ve these down your throat too—” she brandishes the unlit bomb, “—but it sounds like you ain’t as bad as we thought, so I’ll let ya off the hook. Take it easy, I got it covered.”
Alastor’s smile looks a little pained at the form of address, but the tranquilizing spell keeps him from getting too aggravated about it. “I see. Do leave a little carnage for me. I’d rather like to let off steam after all this.”
“Hah! Then get better fast, fucker,” Cherri crows. “Or I’ll kill’em all before you get any.”
Husk is the last to arrive. This is because he brings a cart with food and drinks, which is extremely welcome.
“Figured you could use something filling,” he grumbles when he enters. “Your dad said to keep it light, so I’ve got soup, bread, and water. Also brought one of those smoothies you like, kid.”
Charlie sniffles. “You’re so nice, Husk.”
“I certainly hope there’s rye on that tray,” Alastor grumbles, eyeing the cart suspiciously.
Husk rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Boss, I got your booze,” he says. “Assuming you can even drink it. You look like you’re gonna pass out.”
“How insulting, Husker. I absolutely can hold my drink,” Alastor says indignantly. Charlie’s not sure if he means literally holding the glass, or being able to stomach liquor in this state. Maybe both.
It does take a little work—mostly on the part of Husk—to get Alastor sitting upright at the headboard so he actually can take a meal. Husk had planned ahead and brought tray stands, which is a relief, since there’s not many other places to actually put the food.
It’s just a simple chicken soup, and a loaf of crusty bread from the market. Charlie still thinks it’s the most delicious thing she’s ever tasted in her life. The soup is savory and salty, the bread has a wonderful texture of softness inside and crunchy, flaky crust. The smoothie Husk made for her is sweet and soothing. None of it tastes like the Fruit of Will, just ordinary, good, wholesome food.
Charlie never starved in The Beginning, but she hadn’t realized until this precise moment just how much she missed real food.
“Slow down, hun,” Vaggie says, putting a hand on her arm when Charlie ravenously spoons up more soup. “It’s not going anywhere. Don’t choke.”
“It’s just so good,” Charlie sniffles. “It’s real.” Alastor nods in agreement, and his buzzing increases, even as he works on his own bowl. “You can’t imagine, you can’t—thank you so much, Husk.”
“Um,” Husk says awkwardly. “Sure, kid.”
He offers her another bowl when she finishes her first. She agrees, but before he can hand it off, she asks, “Husk?”
“Yeah, kid?”
“I’m...I’m sorry if I fuck things up a lot,” she says. “And if I caused you problems.” And I’m sorry you have to be here, she wants to say, but doesn’t, not in front of Alastor. Not if you don’t want to be.
He only blinks at her for a moment. Then he says gruffly, “You don’t fuck things up a lot, kid. You’re just young. You’ll learn.”
“Still. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to apologize for. You make mistakes, but you make things right after. Better’n most around here.” Husk looks uncomfortable as he takes a swig from his bottle, which he’d brought with him from downstairs.
“Husker has always been a sourpuss,” Alastor says, as he holds out his own bowl for seconds. “Don’t let his frowny face bother you, Charlie, dear.”
Husk scowls at him, but dutifully serves more soup.
“Can I, um...give you a hug?” Charlie asks.
Husk blinks. “Me?” She nods. “I...guess? If it’ll make you feel better?”
“It will,” Charlie promises. He sighs, but comes over and lets her wrap her arms around him. She does immediately, burying her face and fingers into his fur and squeezing him tightly. He’s still here, and he’s still alive, and he’s not mad at her, and it’s beautiful.
“Shit! Is she fucking crying?” Husk asks in disbelief, as his claws rest awkwardly on her back.
“I’m sorry!” Charlie sobs. “You’re just so soft! Like Angel but not like Angel! And warm! And real! And—and—”
“Fuck me, I thought this was supposed to make you feel better,” Husk says, incredulous.
“I believe she made it quite clear, Husker,” Alastor says. There’s a strange, warning growl in his tone. “You’re soft. That is Sensation and Something. It makes her quite happy. Let her hug you, and don’t worry your fluffy little head about it.”
“No, no,” Charlie says, sniffling as she pulls back from Husk. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overreact, I just—it’s all real, and they were lies, and...I’m so happy.”
“Of course they were lies, my dear,” Alastor says. “I told you so. But I imagine seeing makes for much easier believing.”
“It really does,” Charlie sniffles.
“I do think you’re getting a little overwhelmed though, hun,” Vaggie says. “This was a lot for today. How about you finish your soup, and I’ll take you back to our room and we can put you to bed?”
“Okay,” Charlie says meekly. It had been a lot, and there’s been so much Something, and Vaggie might be right that she needs a break. “What about Alastor? I don’t want to leave him here.”
I don’t want to leave him alone.
I don’t want him to leave me alone.
“Husker will be a good man and escort me to my room,” Alastor says with a yawn.
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to be alone after The Beginning,” Charlie says, biting her lip worriedly. In truth, there’s a silly part of her that wants him to come with her and Vaggie to their room. How is she even supposed to sleep, if the monster under her bed is gone? Alastor’s spent so long guarding her rest that it feels like it will be impossible to manage without him there.
“I’ll be quite fine, my dear. Who’s the expert here? I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. You needn’t worry about me.”
He’s not wrong. Still, Charlie resolves to keep an eye on him, now that she knows what he’s been through. She hadn’t known Alastor needed help last time. But she knows what to look for now, and she won’t leave him isolated again. She won’t let him suffer like he did before.
(And if she’s a little upset he doesn’t mention coming with them either, she shoves it down. It would just be weird. It would be weird, right? And he probably wouldn’t go for it anyway, what with all his talk about improper behavior and taking a bed from a woman, and there’s two women now, and…and she’ll just have to figure out how to get to sleep on her own).
Time moves in a whirlwind after that. Charlie barely registers finishing her soup and bread (still delicious, but she’s starting to get tired from sensory overload). Vaggie carries her to their room, and she’s so kind and gentle about everything. Leaving the lights dim. Talking gently and softly. She helps Charlie take a bath, washing her hair for her and helping her scrub away the ash and dust of the Tree of Will’s last day. The Nothing didn’t really have any way for its prisoners to be come dirty, but Charlie feels so much better after the remnants of the place are scrubbed from her skin and hair.
Vaggie finds her the softest pair of pajamas Charlie owns, and it feels like she’s wrapped in a cloud when she finally towels off and climbs into her clothes. Vaggie settles Charlie into bed and pulls the covers over her gently, and Charlie has never been so relieved to be in her bed again. The root cradle hadn’t been terrible, but this...this was so, so much better.
“You’re coming too, right?” Charlie asks anxiously, when Vaggie strokes her hair back. If Alastor can’t be here, at the very least she wants Vaggie to stay. She can’t be alone when she sleeps, she can’t.
“Of course, hun,” Vaggie says. “I’m just gonna take a quick shower first, okay? I was out hunting leads in the Pentagram when your dad called and I’m a little gross at the moment.”
Charlie bites her lip. But Vaggie can’t spend every second with her. It’s not feasible. Outside isn’t like The Beginning. “Okay,” she says softly. “I—can you put on some music before you go?”
“Sure, honey. Anything special?”
She wants the Song. Alastor’s lullaby. It always helped her fall asleep or feel safe in The Beginning. But it doesn’t exist out here, not yet, and Vaggie wouldn’t know what she was talking about.
Maybe she can ask him to record it for her later. So she can always have it.
For now, all she says is, “Do we have anything like lullabies?”
“I’m sure I can find a playlist online,” Vaggie says.
“Okay. Thanks. And—can we leave the light on? But not too bright. Just...just a little.”
“Sure. Is it okay like this, or do you want it brighter or darker?”
“This is good,” Charlie says. She hesitates. “I’m sorry. I sound like a baby. I don’t want to be a problem, I just—”
“Charlie.” Vaggie rests her hand gently on Charlie’s shoulder. “You’ve been through something really difficult. I don’t understand everything, but your dad explained some of the basics. You are not being a problem and you are not a baby. Whatever it takes to help you, I’ll do it and gladly.”
Where would she be without Vaggie? She missed her so, so much. “Thank you.”
“No problem. Give me a little bit to get clean, and to clean up some stuff in here to make it easier for you, and then I’ll join you, okay?”
“Okay.”
Vaggie finds the playlist easily enough. It’s full of lullabies and folk songs and soft music—enough to be comforting noise and fill the quiet while not being overwhelming. Charlie settles into her soft pillows, hugging one close, as she listens to Vaggie moving around. First bustling about the room, taking care of the hastily discarded laundry and covering up the things with brighter lights and sharper smells to help Charlie adjust. Then disappearing into the master bathroom, and the shush of the shower is enough of a gentle white noise for Charlie to not be afraid she’s alone.
But it does give her enough time to think.
It’s the first time she’s been separated from Alastor in so long. Three weeks, in Outside time; an eternity in The Beginning. She’s not sure how she’s supposed to function at all without him nearby. And that doesn’t seem like it’s a good thing, but she just...she wants to know if he’s okay. She wants him here.
But she doesn’t say it, because that would be weird, and she knows it.
She can feel his soul, at least. Still nestled behind her heart, a quiet source of power. There’s no pulsing distress like before, so she thinks that means he’s safe. He’s still alive, because his soul is still with her.
If she closes her eyes and imagines, she can almost pretend he’s there. Hiding in the shadows, or maybe really under the bed. Keeping her safe and guarding her sleep like he always did in The Beginning.
It’s not the same, but she doesn’t want to force him to stay, and she doesn’t want to ask him to, and all she can do is hope he’s alright in his own room, alone. (How could he be? But maybe he’s better at being alone. He survived The Beginning for seven years without her. If anyone could do it, it’s him).
It’s a relief when Vaggie returns, because her closeness makes Charlie’s thoughts stop spinning in the wrong directions. When she comes back and crawls into bed on the other side, Charlie gratefully snuggles close to her. And bless her, Vaggie immediately pulls Charlie into her arms and cuddles her close, and Charlie feels so, so safe.
“Thanks for being here,” Charlie says.
“Always, Charlie,” Vaggie answers. “Go ahead and rest. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
And for the first time in weeks—if you count from the Outside—or eternity—if you count from The Beginning—Charlie doesn’t dream about the lies The Beginning showed her.
Charlie wakes up in Vaggie’s arms, with the music still playing and the lights still on, feeling rested and just a little bit hungry, and she’s shocked at how normal it all feels.
It’s almost wrong. Like things shouldn’t be so easy to slot back into after everything that happened. Like she’s not allowed to have normal again, but somehow here it is. She was just in The Beginning not even a day ago (in Creation) and now she’s not, and she’s never going back, and it’s all so baffling.
But Vaggie squeezes her tightly the moment she stirs and says, “Welcome back, sleepyhead,” and somehow everything is okay.
“What time is it?” Charlie mumbles sleepily.
“Almost ten thirty at night,” Vaggie says, and Charlie can’t help but feel a thrill that there’s an actual answer to the question now. “You slept for about ten hours. Your dad brought you back a little before lunch.”
Charlie flushes. “I’m sorry,” she squeaks. “I didn’t realize I slept that long, or that it’s a weird time to get up or for you to go to bed, I—”
“Charlie! Easy, hun,” Vaggie says, squeezing her tight. “It’s okay. Trust me, the least difficult thing about this is when you’re sleeping. Your dad already told us your sense of time is going to be messed up for a bit, it’s okay. We can work on getting you back on a normal sleep schedule later.”
“Okay,” Charlie sniffles. It all feels so stupid. The Nothing messed her up so badly she can’t even sleep right!
“Feel like getting up?” Vaggie asks.
Charlie nods. “I’m a little hungry,” she admits. “And I want to try going down to the kitchen, maybe seeing a bit of the hotel…”
And maybe try to find Alastor, if she can. She can still feel his soul nestled behind her heart, but this is the longest she’s been away from him since The Beginning. Ten hours. Ten whole, actual hours. She hopes he’s okay. She hopes he hasn’t fallen into his own head without her there.
“Are you sure you’re up for it?” Vaggie asks. “There’s...a lot. It might still be overwhelming for you.”
“I want to at least try,” Charlie says. “I won’t stay long if it’s too much. And I promise I’ll say if I’m getting overwhelmed. But I want to at least try to start getting back to normal.”
“Okay. As long as you promise me you’ll take a break if you need, or let me know,” Vaggie says seriously.
“I promise.”
Because it’s late, and because she’d been wearing her hotel manager outfit for either an infinite amount of timelessness or three weeks, depending on how one looked at it, Charlie opts for a simpler outfit for now. Slacks and a sweater are comfortable enough and their textures are manageable, as well as a pair of comfortable dress shoes with raised heels for her hooves. She has a little moment of panic when she habitually goes to check for her phone in her pocket, and realizes it isn’t there.
“Vaggie! Do you know where my blazer went?” Charlie asks anxiously. “I think my phone was in it…”
Vaggie pokes her head out of the bathroom, where she’s been brushing her long hair and tying on her bow. “I sent all your clothes down to the wash for Niffty to take care of. But I emptied the pockets out first—I set your phone to charge on the desk, and the rest is on the nightstand.”
“Thanks!” Charlie finds her phone exactly where Vaggie said it was. She’s relieved to find her phone actually has a date and time again—ten thirty-eight PM on a Saturday night.
She’s less relieved to see she has quite literally hundreds of voicemails and texts from dozens of people trying to reach her for the three weeks in Creation she’s been missing. All of her friends had reached out of course, as well as her dad, trying to call her in the early hours after her disappearance.
But there are messages from so many others, too. Old family members reaching out. Every single one of the Sins, even Uncle Mammon, had called or texted. And several unknown numbers, identifying themselves as Overlords (Rosie and Carmilla at the foremost), or Goetian royalty allied with the crown, or even one number that identifies itself as a Heavenly ambassador investigating the whole mess.
In fact, the only person that never tried to reach out is Lilith herself.
Charlie’s eyes grow a little misty as she scrolls past the names. She’ll take the time to go through the messages when she’s more ready to handle it. For now, it fills her heart with so many emotions to know so many people were on her side, and had cared, and were doing what they could to find her.
The Beginning had been filled with nothing but lies. But if it did one thing for Charlie, it was showing her the truth of just how loved she really was.
She investigates the pile of other things emptied from her pockets as well while Vaggie finishes with her hair. Her wallet, which is fortunate—the last thing she needs is to lose her identification cards in the middle of literal Nothing. Some keys. A few crumpled bits of paper and notes. And—
She freezes at the sight of two small, star-shaped pits sitting on the nightstand next to all her other things.
How?
It comes to her in a daze. Her first Fruits of Will in the Nothing—when she’d first been dropped in and Alastor found her. And when she’d returned from The Beginning. She’d put the pits in her pocket for lack of anything better to do with them. When she’d realized just how long they were going to be stuck there, she’d stopped bothering—either dropping the pits into the root system, or just giving them to Alastor to eat if he’d been eyeing them in her hand hungrily. She’d forgotten she’d put these ones in her pocket to begin with, and now…
How were they even still here? Dad said he couldn’t bring the Tree of Will into Creation. It couldn’t exist, because it had been struck from existence itself. The shards of bark lodged in Alastor’s wounds had vanished the moment they stepped into Creation. Dad couldn’t even say its name here.
But...Lilith had managed to hold onto her own pit, hadn’t she? That was how she planted the Tree of Will in the first place. It wasn’t the original tree from the stories, the one Dad had actually made and shared. It was a new one.
Maybe only the tree itself had been struck from existence. But not its seeds. They weren’t really trees yet, after all. Just...potentials.
“Babe? You okay?”
Charlie looks up in surprise as Vaggie takes her hand and squeezes it gently. “I’m...I’m fine,” she says, a little shakily. “I didn’t expect those, is all.”
Vaggie glances over at the pits, and frowns. “I didn’t know what they were, but I didn’t want to throw out anything you had without asking,” she says. “Do you want me to get rid of them?”
“No! No,” Charlie says quickly. “Not yet. I just need time to think about what to do with them.”
“Okay. Just let me know,” Vaggie says. “Let’s get something to eat, then.”
Charlie nods, and allows herself to be led away in a daze.
Getting a meal goes well. Better than anticipated, honestly. It might be late, but most people in the hotel are night owls anyway. Husk is still at the bar, and he gives Charlie a wave and a promise that Alastor made it to his own room successfully. Charlie is relieved to hear that, even if Alastor himself is nowhere to be seen, and she’d wished to talk to him directly. Angel Dust is in the kitchen itself, throwing together ingredients for a quick pasta dish after a photo shoot at work, but he offers to make extra when Charlie watches what he’s doing hungrily.
“Ain’t nothin’ like some classic Italian food to cure ya,” Angel says with a grin, as he starts assembling a sauce together.
Overall, Charlie’s first foray into real life again works well. She can only handle it for about an hour, long enough to eat and have a small conversation with Angel about completely normal, unrelated-to-her-kidnapping things. The smells of spices and the warmth of the kitchen and the clash of pots and pans being cleaned become overwhelming after a while, more than Charlie can handle. But up until that point, it had been nice.
It’s what really drives home that she can do this again. Be normal again. She can have this again. She just needs a little time.
So she takes it, carefully, over the next few days. There’s no rush to be better right away, everyone keeps telling her. The Hazbin Hotel is closed for business for the moment anyway, since they’d shut down the project temporarily to put all their time and effort into finding her. A few more days or weeks won’t hurt Sinners or their potential redemption, not when Exorcisms are potentially on hold and there’s no immediate urgency.
After the first twenty four hours, Dad checks in with her on the sensory dampening. He asks if she needs another sensory reduction to adjust, but she refuses, wanting to adjust naturally.
He also gives her a quick magical once-over for potential side effects of the Fruit of Will. “I’m not really sure what it could do to you,” Dad admits, as she sits in a chair and he gently puts his hands against her temples. His fingers pulse with magic as he looks her over. “You already have free will and the ability to make choices. You already understand what good and evil are. You would have inherited the gift through your mother. Same with the asshole, since he’s technically a descendant of Eve.”
Charlie waits anxiously as her father’s magic runs through her, checking for potential damage. Vaggie is next to her, gently holding her hand, fingers laced for support. But in the end, Dad pulls back with a perplexed look more than anything else, as he gently takes his hands from her temples.
“Well?” Vaggie asks, frowning.
“It’s odd,” he says. “The most obvious effect is that you’re alive, of course. It provided all the nourishment you needed. I’m fairly certain it was also feeding you sensory information somehow, which would have let you and the radio guy keep it together a little better. That makes sense, because I didn’t expect either of you to be so...coherent once I realized where you were.”
Charlie winces a little at that. But she does say, “When we ate it, we didn’t just taste it or feel it. It made you remember things, too. Specific memories.”
“What kinds of memories?” Dad asks.
“Um…” Charlie thinks back. “I don’t remember all of them. Sometimes they were really simple ones. I remembered deciding I wanted my room to be purple when I was really little. Sometimes they were more important...like letting Alastor through the door to the hotel, even when Vaggie said not to.”
Dad sits back in his own chair, surprised. “Choices. Were they all choices?”
Charlie closes her eyes and thinks. And, yes, in retrospect, they were all choices. Sometimes dumb little ones, like what she would order at a restaurant or deciding to go find her Dad when she was little even though she was supposed to be in bed. Sometimes more life altering ones, like deciding to open the Hazbin Hotel, or bringing Vaggie home to live with her.
“Yes,” she says slowly. “Always.”
“Huh,” Dad says. “It’s what you did with your free will. You already have it, so it showed you the choices you’d made and the sensations that came with it. It kept you alive in more than one way.”
“And that’s it?” Vaggie presses. “It’s hard to imagine eating something so...important all the time would just do that.”
“Well…” Dad hesitates. “I’m not sure how to explain this one without getting a little metaphysical, but it seems to have, um...altered the way you think a little, too.”
“What?” both Charlie and Vaggie yelp.
“Not in a bad way!” Dad says hastily, raising his hands. “You’re not a different person or mind controlled or anything like that, I promise. It’s just...well. It’s the Tree of Will, but there’s a reason Heaven and a lot of the early biblical writers translated it as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Will and choices come from understanding differences. If you understand there’s a good choice and an evil choice, you can choose to go in either direction and set your fate. With me so far?”
“Yes,” Charlie says slowly.
“Okay,” Dad says. “So, you already had an understanding of morality before this. Good and Evil is pretty clearly defined at this point.”
“Right,” Vaggie agrees.
“But it’s also gotten more nuanced since Eden, too,” Dad says. “Things used to be more black and white. Heaven still likes to think of it that way. But you can do bad things for good reasons, and good things for bad reasons. Determining ‘good’ and ‘evil’ gets a lot more complex that way.”
Like her own mother locking her away in the endless isolation of Nothing to ‘protect’ her. Charlie can’t help but shudder, because it makes sense. A bad thing, for a good reason. “I get it,” she whispers.
Dad snaps his fingers and points at her. “And that’s the change,” he says. “You get it now...get it?”
Charlie blinks.
Vaggie frowns. “Wait, what?”
Dad hesitates. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Sweetheart, because I love your optimism and your willingness to see good in everyone,” he says. “But your take was...very black and white before. Now it seems a little more...gray.”
Vaggie scowls. “And that’s not because her mom turned out to be an asshole? That’d make anyone change their mind, right?”
“No,” Charlie says, before her Dad can argue back. “No, I...I get what he means.”
Because yes, seeing her mother for the monster she was certainly changed her view...but only on her mother. But it was only after she started eating the Something-fruit—the Fruit of Will—that she started changing her perspective on everything else. Hell wasn’t right or fair, but it didn’t have to work in absolutes, and she’d learned that through her experience in The Beginning. She’d heard her own father’s voice telling her to lie in order to protect someone she cared about. She understood that people could do awful things against their own volition, and that good people could be cruel.
A good woman could go to Hell for the crime of giving birth to a killer. And a serial murderer who reveled in blood and death could sacrifice his eternal afterlife for one person’s comfort.
Life is so, so complicated. Maybe even a little scary.
But Charlie thinks this might be for the better. She might be able to help in ways she never thought possible now.
“What about Alastor, then?” Vaggie says, wrinkling her nose.
“I can’t know for sure without examining him, too, and I doubt he’d let me,” Dad says with a scoff. “But I imagine more of the same. More, even, if he’s eaten more of the fruits. You said he was there for seven years in Creation?”
“Yes,” Charlie says.
“Well, it could only keep him so sane,” Dad says. “But he’s probably not a completely gibbering mess because of the fruits. And I imagine he’s got more...moral nuance to him too. Hell, maybe it’ll do him some good.”
Maybe it already had. Just in the opposite direction. Alastor had said he reveled in murder and chaos. But he’d shown her more kindness than Charlie had thought possible, especially in The Beginning. Everyone thought of Alastor as a selfish, self-centered monster, but he’d fought for more than one person that wasn’t himself, for no personal gain.
Maybe he was learning some nuance too.
“I don’t think it’ll hurt either of them in the long run,” Dad finishes. “But definitely let me know if you feel strange while you’re settling back in, Sweetheart, and I’ll take another look, okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Dad.”
And with that approval, she does her best to get used to things slowly.
She takes big sensory things in small doses, and works to grow her exposure to it over time. She gets used to breakfasts and dinners with her friends, and the influx of scents and sounds and temperatures and the fullness of the rooms and the way there’s so much Something. She tries wandering the Hotel a little at a time, finding rooms and things with Sense and Sensation, just to adjust—the softness of the linens in the laundry room, the sounds of the instruments in the music room. And day by day, she’s able to handle things that used to be so easy for her for a little longer, with a little more energy.
It’s not perfect. She knows she’s...off. She can tell from the way others look at her. It’s almost funny, how she recognizes those looks. It’s the same way everyone used to look at Alastor when he first showed up at the Hazbin Hotel, and did things in his own zany way that no one really understood.
Charlie needs noise, these days. Not a lot, not overwhelming noises like clashing pots and pans, or shouting, or explosions. But little things in the background, just to prove there’s sound, and it’s not dampened by surrounding Nothing. She turns the radio on in every room she’s in, or puts a playlist on her phone to listen to. If there’s no music, she’ll snap her fingers or tap her feet or sing to herself. Sometimes she talks to herself, if she needs to figure something out and puzzle through it.
She needs touch, too, more than anything. Soft things—pillows, blankets, KeeKee, carpets. Textures of any kind. The walls. The decor. Metal things, ceramic things, hot things, cold things. She once plunges her hand into the freezer just to pull out an ice cube and marvel at the cold and slippery in her hands.
People most of all, if she can get it. She hadn’t really realized how desperate she was for physical touch, for contact of any kind, until she had access to it again. Alastor had held her hand or done her hair sometimes in the Nothing, but he wasn’t an especially touchy person, and he certainly didn’t like being touched. Being able to hug people, to sit with her head in Vaggie’s lap or snuggle into Angel’s chest fluff or have Niffty climbing all over her, is something she’s craved so badly. And the first few days, that touch almost burns, it’s almost painful. But the more she has it the more she gets used to it, and the more she feels safe and wanted again.
She knows she’s acting weird. She knows the others give her concerned looks when they think she’s not watching. She knows they can’t hear the capitals when she talks about Nothing and Something, because she couldn’t hear them when Alastor first talked about them to her. She probably sounds a little crazy.
But to their credit, they always indulge her when they can. They help her get used to sensation again and back off when it’s too overwhelming. They put up with the way she makes noise everywhere or the way she touches things randomly. They even find other ways to help her, like Niffty sewing her little dolls, or Angel buying her fidget toys from the Pentagram.
(The Pentagram. Charlie can’t even fathom going out into The Pentagram right now. She loves her people but it’s so, so, so much, too much smell and sound and taste and touch and temperature and people, and the thought of it is a little scary after so much Nothing).
In fact, the only person she doesn’t see much of is Alastor.
Well, technically that’s not true. Charlie swears she sees Alastor a lot. But it’s always more of a feeling that somebody is watching, and when she turns around to look, he’s never there. She’s not sure if it’s just another part of her going crazy, or if he’s really there and not approaching. Maybe she just needs sights and smells and touch and Alastor, and if he’s not there her brain will just make him up.
Because it’s true that she really, really misses him. She knows he’s still alive and around, because his soul is still tucked behind her heart. But she’s spent three-weeks-or-an-eternity with him surviving in The Beginning, and after having him so close for so long as a protector and fellow survivor, it hurts that he’s not there. There will be times when things get overwhelming, when there’s too much sense and sensation and Something, and nobody else understands, and more than anything she wants to flee to Alastor. Alastor will make it right again. Alastor gets it.
Being separated from him so fast felt like losing an arm. She could do it, if she had to. She has friends and support. But it would be easier if a part of her hadn’t been cut away so unexpectedly.
She tries to be subtle about asking. She knows subtle isn’t her skillset, not really, but she is genuinely worried about Alastor’s absence. She doesn’t want anyone to think she’s not okay, though, not with how attached she’s gotten to Alastor. It’s weird to cling to somebody like that so badly, right? Right?
What she finds, when she asks, is that no one else has really seen Alastor around much either.
That worries Charlie a lot. At this point, everyone is aware that Alastor had nothing to do with her disappearance. They even know he was responsible for protecting her, and they know not to give him a difficult time about it. She can see it’s hard for some of them, after spending three weeks frantically hunting “Alastor” for daring to hurt her, but they’re trying.
But despite that, Alastor seems to be keeping to himself. Charlie asks after him more and more often, and the others keep an eye out. Angel Dust reports Al cooking up a massive batch of jambalaya at two-thirty in the morning when he comes home from a filming session, because the spice had been thick and heavy in the air, but all trace of it is gone by morning. Husk tells her he comes down sometimes for a glass or two of rye, but never stays long. Niffty reports seeing him in his room whenever she cleans or brings him meals.
He’s probably struggling with his own sensory adjustment. But whenever Charlie goes looking for him to see how he’s doing, she can never manage to find him before her own timer runs out.
It’s such a departure from his last release from The Beginning into life. He’d come into the Hazbin Hotel loud and sensational, and he’d filled the place with noise and light and people. But then, he’d been trying to find a way to stay. His safety and his place are secured now, so maybe he doesn’t have to show off so badly just to stay.
Charlie still worries about him. But it’s only been a few days (and she can tell that now! Days! Because there’s time!) and maybe he still needs time to adjust. It’s not easy to be trapped with another person for so long. Especially a person as private as Alastor.
Maybe he just needs some space, after everything that’s happened. A break from her clinginess after The Beginning. She wants Alastor to be around so badly, but he’d survived The Beginning before on his own, and maybe he didn’t.
Or maybe, she frets, he’s still buried in his own head. Maybe he thinks people only cared about her, and came for her. Maybe he doesn’t realize that everyone in the hotel would help him adjust too, if he wanted it. Maybe, after everything, he doesn’t know how to ask for help or thinks he deserves it. That’s what really scares her.
(Or maybe he’s concerned and avoiding her because she owns him now. Which is something she’s going to have to deal with soon, her own problems or not. But she can’t help him until she’s strong enough to help herself, she insists to herself. So she’ll give him a little more time, even if more than anything she wants him to be there. She won’t force him. She won’t use that power. She is not her mother and she never will be).
During moments when she can’t really handle a lot of people or things, she retreats to her room. Vaggie is a welcome constant and the only person (besides Alastor, if he were there) that she can stand to be around for more than a few hours at a time. And Vaggie takes care to not push the limits too much. When Charlie needs breaks, she talks softly, closes the window curtains but leaves the light dimly lit, and lets Charlie hug her or play with her hair without complaint.
She also listens, when Charlie starts haltingly explaining what she’d been through.
It takes more than one session, which is almost funny. There hadn’t been anything to do in the Nothing, after all. There’s not much to describe besides the tree. There isn’t much to talk about besides explaining how much she and Alastor had talked, just to try and stay sane.
But it does take longer to get through the worst moments in the Nothing. The things she’d learned from Alastor about Lilith. Running into The Beginning. Finding her way out. The way Alastor had cared for her. The way her mother had tortured him because of Charlie. The moment she’d refused to think of her as her mother anymore, and drove Lilith off with righteous anger.
(She doesn’t explain Alastor’s more private moments. His breakdowns and insecurities. The constraints of his Deal. How he feels about the Hazbin Hotel and its people. Those are things he gets to hold close, and she won’t reveal them until he’s ready to himself).
Vaggie holds her close in the worst moments, when Charlie cries as she explains. The things she saw in The Beginning are some of the hardest things to explain, and Vaggie squeezes her tightly and promises over and over, “I would never say that. Never, never, never. I love you so much and I would never do that to you.” And Charlie knows that already, because Vaggie is here with her and has been here with her and made it clear the night she came back that Charlie isn’t a burden to her, but it’s still nice to hear it all the same.
“Your dad would never do that either,” Vaggie promises. “He was losing his mind trying to find you. Angel Dust and Cherri were hitting the streets and shaking down every single information broker, dealer, assassin, and wanna-be Overlord they could find to see if they could get leads on where you were. Husk called in half his old favors as an Overlord to try and get something for us to work with. I already told you how Niffty was stress cleaning so much she cracked the case for us. Everyone was looking for you every moment they could, hun. Everyone here loves you so much and was so scared for you.”
You are beloved by every single person in that hotel, and every single one of them is looking for you right now. I’m certain of it.
Alastor had called it from the beginning, in The Beginning. He’d known they were lies. He’d known what the truths were.
Charlie can’t help but sob with relief into Vaggie’s arms that day.
During those in-between-senses moments, Vaggie fills her in gradually on what had happened on their end while Charlie was missing. Dad had already explained some of it, but Vaggie is able to give her more details.
The way the explosion must have been set off by Lilith, but was made with angelic weaponry and holy magic, so that it looked like the Exorcists had come to collect and had taken Charlie. How, when they could find no further traces of Heaven-sent attackers, the trail gradually turned and the evidence pointed to Alastor instead. Traces of his symbols and magic at key points, convenient places where a shadow-blessed individual could disappear and others couldn’t follow, little quirks and anomalies with radio waves and cell reception in just the right places. Things that, in retrospect, could easily be faked. But things that felt all too real and believable, when there was someone to point blame at, when everyone was scared.
But it had gone farther than that. No lead had gone unchecked, no stone unturned. Dad had contacted Heaven almost immediately, enraged and furious about Charlie’s potential kidnapping by the Exorcists. His fury had been enough that both Sera and Emily had immediately taken steps to calm him and investigate the angle on their side, and they’d been working closely with her father on the investigation. For all that Sera had allowed the Exorcisms to happen, she had never intended for someone like Charlie to be taken out of revenge, and she was adamant about stomping out such nonsense immediately. Especially if it had the potential to start a war with Hell, over kidnapped royalty.
And other hints had suggested that Alastor had, at some point, passed along Charlie to a Hellborn contact. They’d theorized this was a way to throw off the trail. If Charlie was supposed to be delivered to Heaven, and potentially to the Exorcist barracks, who would think for a second she would be sent to the deeper Rings?
Dad hadn’t wasted any time reaching out to the other Sins, apparently, once that possibility came to light. And each one came through in their own way, even Uncle Mammon, although the fact that Dad had also offered a reward for her return was probably a strong help there. Every single Sin had their Rings locked down and their best people hunting for the missing princess. Elite Hellhound trackers, mafioso Greedsharks, entire posses of family Imps out hunting for one girl. The succubi had even been mobilized to search on Earth, in case Charlie had somehow been spirited through a portal to the living world.
Uncle Ozzie had even, apparently, reached out to a few trusted Goetian royals in his good graces, who had done their best to help. Charlie is still stunned that Prince Stolas had been so moved by the story of Lucifer’s missing daughter he’d not only worked his augury every day to try and foretell where Charlie might be, he’d even hired an especially aggressive team of imps to search Imp City as well. Sinners could get there, after all, and fake-Alastor could easily have hidden her there out of sight of most Sinner eyes. That team had spent the better part of three weeks hunting leads and smashing in doors in Imp City, hunting for a missing princess. The boss of the team, apparently, was also very moved by the story of a missing and beloved daughter.
“The predictions didn’t really help,” Vaggie says, as Charlie listens to the increasing spiderwork of strangers that didn’t even know her trying to help. “He kept sending messages about endless darkness, and he saw Alastor a couple times. Always the same thing, over and over. So we thought Alastor must have captured you, and maybe hid you with his shadows, or something.”
“Well,” Charlie says, a little stunned, “he wasn’t wrong.” She’s frankly both shocked and impressed that anyone could see inside The Beginning. She’ll have to send the prince and the team he hired some sort of thank you later, when she’s able.
It’s humbling, but also inspiring, to realize so many people had cared. Even perfect strangers. She spends her in-between time going through all her texts and voicemails, responding to everyone and letting them know she’s okay. Thanking them for looking for her and caring.
And eventually, after a week of carefully pushing herself a little further every day, she’s ready to tackle it with her family in the Hotel, too.
Angel had planned the little slumber party just like he’d promised. And just like he’d promised, he’d kept it simple on her behalf. By now, everyone was more used to her sensory needs and quirks, and how much she could handle. So they set up in the new parlor, where they can keep the lights dim but not dark. There’s scents of butter and popcorn and sweet treats, but it’s gentle and not overpowering. The pillows and blankets spread out all over the floor are soft and cozy, and there’s enough room to have everyone there while not being all piled uncomfortably close.
Angel and Cherri set up a little projector and screen, and have picked out a ton of different movies. All of them are wholesome and sweet, full of music and good lessons and happy moments. Many are animated and adorable, gentle and comfortable. It’s meant to be a sticky-sweet, feel-good time with happy memories and good sensations.
Charlie is so appreciative for Angel’s efforts that she gives him a tight squeeze. “You’re so nice,” she says gratefully. Because she knows he’d probably rather be showing off one of his porn videos, or watching something a little more raunchy or full of blood, but it’s really nice of him to put together something simpler for Charlie.
He hugs her with all four arms, and grins down at her. “Yer just sayin’ that to get a free snuggle with the chest fluff, aincha?” he laughs.
“You’re soft,” Charlie says. “But no, I mean it. This is really, really, really nice of you, Angel. Thank you.”
“No problem, Toots. Rather be doin’ this then lookin’ for ya in the creeper districts.” He pauses. Grimaces. “Not that I wouldn’t! Obviously, I was doin’ it ‘cause I wanted to find ya. Just, it’s nicer to have you here, y’know? And that ya weren’t in any of those fucked up places.”
“I know,” Charlie says.
It doesn’t take long for the guests to arrive. Everyone is here—even Cherri Bomb is staying the night, with Frank the Egg Boi snoring against her side already. Razzle is curled up next to Charlie, and Keekee is sitting on Husk’s lap. Vaggie is next to Charlie on her other side. Niffty has been convinced to stop cleaning every kernel of popcorn that strays to the floor long enough to just sit and watch movies. Even Dad is taking the night off, curled up in one of the nearby chairs and enjoying a bowl of popcorn. He’s been devoting his time to setting up stronger protections against Lilith and working things out with Heaven and the Sins to keep an eye out for her, but it’s nice to see him taking a break.
The only one who isn’t here is Alastor, but that immediately sours Charlie’s good mood. “Has anyone seen Al?”
“I tried to invite Smiles, but I couldn’t find him,” Angel says, as he fiddles with the projector. “I put a coupla notes under his doors though, for his room and the radio tower.”
“He should be here,” Charlie frets. “He needs this too.”
“We can’t make him accept help if he doesn’t want it,” Vaggie says gently, putting a hand on her shoulder. “He’ll come to us when he’s ready.”
But Charlie can’t shake the feeling that he won’t, not if he can avoid it. Because The Beginning makes things so complicated. But also because, well, Charlie’s his soul owner—something she hasn’t told anyone yet—and she can’t help but feel like Alastor’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.
She gives her father a glance. He notices and nods back slowly. He might not like Alastor, but he’s probably thinking along the same lines.
“I’m gonna go find him,” Charlie says, pulling herself up from her nest of pillows and blankets next to Vaggie.
Vaggie frowns. “Are you sure? I can come with you—”
“No. I think I need to talk to him alone,” Charlie says.
“If you’re sure…”
“I’m sure,” Charlie says firmly. “It’s okay. Start watching the first movie without me, okay? I’ll be back, but it might take a little bit to find him. You know how Al is!”
The rest of them look around uneasily. Eventually Cherri Bomb says, “Tell him the more he hides, the more assholes I get to kill instead’ve him.”
Charlie grins weakly. “Can do.”
Husk gently taps her wrist as she squeezes past him, and gestures her closer. “Can’t get an exact feel,” he mutters to her quietly, “But I think he was hangin’ round the entertainment stuff earlier. If you can’t find him in his usual places…”
“Thanks, Husk,” Charlie says, squeezing his hand gratefully.
She tries Alastor’s room first, and then his radio tower. He’s not in either, and Charlie’s certain of it, and not just because he doesn’t open the doors when she knocks. She can...feel it, somehow. That the soul nestled behind her heart isn’t close to its body of origin.
That’s unfortunate, because it would have made things a lot easier. Then again, it’s probably hard to be completely isolated and without sense. She’s not sure what Alastor has access to that might help him get used to the Something again, but he’s not acting like he did last time. Charlie doesn’t know why—if he has more experience with recovery and is trying something new, or if he’s in bad shape and needs help. And until she can ask him, talk to him, she can’t know for certain.
She tries Husk’s suggestions next. She’s not exactly sure how these soul bonds work, but Husk had a general idea of where Alastor had been, and maybe that makes sense. He’d have to know where to go if Alastor needed to talk to him or something, right?
So she wanders to their new entertainment areas. They’d included these with the new hotel, so they had more spaces for more therapeutic activities and more fun, wholesome exercises. Alastor wouldn’t have had a chance to see any of them, since he’d vanished before the new hotel was built. But if he was exploring now, and trying to broaden his senses and get used to more sensations, they would be a great place to start.
He’s not in the arts and crafts room. It’s a little spooky at night, with the dark red of the Pentagram filtering through the windows and illuminating weird shapes and stands all over the place. She has that weird sensation that she’s being watched from somewhere close by. Charlie fumbles until she finds the light switch to flip it on and take a look, but thankfully it’s all normal, every day stuff. Easels, pottery wheels, mannequins, stacks and stacks of supplies. But no Alastor.
It’s the same with the music room, too. Again, poking her head into the dark room sends a shiver down Charlie’s spine until she manages to fumble around to find the light switch and flip it on. There’s all kinds of things in here too—stands for instruments and music pages, booklets full of songs and instructions for every level from beginning to expert, recording devices and microphones. No Alastor here, either, but she thinks she might be getting closer. The lid to the grand piano is upright still, like someone had been here earlier, and the bench is still pushed out.
“Alastor?” she calls. “Al, are you around? I just want to talk to you for a minute. And maybe invite you to the sleepover?”
No answer.
The theater is empty, of course. They had a stage and a full projector for future performances and showings of films and TV series, but this was intended for a bigger group. Angel had opted for a cozier, smaller gathering in the parlor for tonight, where they could spread out and snuggle into blankets instead of sitting in the theater seats. Charlie appreciates it, because this room is big and cavernous and a little overwhelming. Even when she manages to find the light switch, it’s dim and echoing, and it’s hard not to feel like the darkness is pressing in.
“Alastor?” she calls. Her voice echos through the theater.
No answer.
Charlie bites her lip and moves on to the ballroom. If anything would catch Alastor’s attention, she’s sure this would be it. She knows how much he loves dancing now, and they could probably do a good swing and jazz themed party here in the future. Maybe she’d even ask him if he wanted to help set something like that up.
The ballroom is big, cavernous, and very dark. Charlie’s hesitant to enter it, when she peeks in the door, because even if it’s Something it feels very reminiscent of the Nothing. “Alastor?”
No answer.
But Alastor is a demon closely associated with shadow. He’d said himself in the Nothing, he’d struggled with the light of the Tree of Will. And she still can’t shake that feeling that somebody is watching her. Maybe, despite what The Beginning was, he preferred it.
“Alastor?” she calls again. She tentatively eases in, reaching out along the wall to feel for the light switch. Just a quick check. Just to be certain. If he’s not here, she can move on. “Al? I just want to talk. Can we just talk for a second? I wanted to see if you were okay—”
She keeps fumbling for the light switch, but she can’t find it. Maybe it was on the other side of the double doors? It’s dark, and she’s only been in here once since the place was built; she hasn’t had a chance to get used to it yet.
She turns to head for the other wall. The door thuds shut behind her.
Instantly, everything is cast in darkness. The ballroom is pitch black. There’s no lights. There’s no people. There’s no anything.
It’s Nothing.
“No,” Charlie whimpers. “No, no, no, no, I’m not there, I’m not, we got out, this is Something, we’re back—”
But the harder she tries to grasp reality, the further it slips through her fingers. She flails wildly for the light switch, but she only finds open air, and maybe she’s turned around, or maybe she missed it, or maybe she’s in the Nothing again after all—maybe Lilith came back for her—maybe she walked through the door and into The Beginning, and she’s gone again and they won’t find her—
—or maybe she’d never made it back at all. Maybe none of it had ever happened. Maybe she’s still in The Beginning, and she’d imagined Alastor singing her back to the tree, and Dad rescuing them, and all the kind things after—the caring messages, the people looking for her, her family that loved her—
“No, no, no,” she whimpers, gripping her head in her hands. “No, it’s—it was true. It’s real. It’s not—I’m not—I’m safe, I’m—”
But it’s so dark. So empty. So cold and lifeless, and she can’t find the way back, and maybe it had never been real, maybe she fooled herself—
Charlie crashes to her knees, and digs her fingers into her hair, and sobs. “No! Help—Alastor, help me, please, please, h-help—”
And to her immense shock, somebody does.
“Easy,” a voice murmurs in her ear, and someone gently takes her hands from her head. “Easy. Don’t hurt yourself. It’s safe. I’m here.”
Alastor. That’s Alastor’s voice. Alastor’s claws, gentle around her wrists. She flails for him blindly, and follows when he guides her hands to his coat. Clings with a desperation she hasn’t felt since she walked out of The Beginning the first time.
“Al,” she whimpers into his chest. “Al, how did it—how are we back here—I thought we got out—I thought—I th-thought—”
“Hush,” Alastor says. His hands stroke her hair back gently. “We are safe. We did escape. That is true. This is real. This is Something.”
“But it’s so dark—”
“Ordinary darkness, I’m afraid,” Alastor says, even as he scoops her up gently from the ground and cradles her close. “Quite frightening, but still a thing of Something. Thankfully, I’m an old hand at navigating it. Give us a minute.”
He’s walking now. Charlie buries her face in his chest, afraid to look away. His voice is real. She can feel that, in the way it resonates in his chest, in the buzz around them. He has sensation, his coat has texture, he has warmth, his hands are careful as they hold her. He’s real. He’s real, he’s real, he’s real.
“A moment—there we are.” He juggles her in his hands, easing her into one for a moment as he frees the other. Something cracks in the darkness, and a sliver of dim light cuts through it.
A door. Just an ordinary door, leading to an ordinary hallway in the Hazbin Hotel.
Charlie bursts into relieved tears as Alastor carries them out of the ballroom—just an ordinary ballroom, without the lights on—into the hallway. And then she flushes with embarrassment as she clings to him, because—because what a stupid thing to get so upset over. It’s like she’s five years old all over again and terrified of the dark and crying for her father to sit next to her until she falls asleep.
She sniffles, wiping her face with one hand. Still reluctant to release Alastor with the other. “I’m s-sorry,” she stammers. “That’s—that was so dumb. I can’t believe I—the door closed and I was just—”
“That’s quite alright,” Alastor says, as he gently sets her down in one of the many soft chairs that line the hallways as resting points. Charlie finally lets go of his coat, but grips the chair’s arm as a reminder that it’s solid and Something and real. “The Beginning...it has a way of lingering, even long after one leaves it. I completely understand.”
Charlie gives him a flustered look. “Thanks for helping me. And I was coming to see if you were okay.” She hesitates. “How...how did you even find me?”
Alastor’s eyebrows raise in surprise, before they draw together in confusion. “Why, you summoned me, Mistress.”
Charlie doesn’t have the ability to make Alastor’s screeches and squawks of feedback, but if she did, she’d have deafened the two of them. She gives him a dumbfounded look, searching his face anxiously. But he isn’t wearing the glazed, confused recognition he had when he called her Mistress before, when he thought she was her own mother.
This is real. He’s really calling her that. She’d only ever heard him use that name when he was terrified out of his mind, and the only time he’d used it with her he’d been so scared of her, and she can’t stand it. Even the thought of him addressing her like that makes her want to be sick to her stomach. “Wh—what—”
He cocks his head at her politely. “You do own my soul. If you have need of me in the future, Mistress, you need only summon me. That is what I am bound to you for.”
“No! No, that’s not what I—” she shakes her head anxiously. For the first time, she notices something seems off about Alastor. She couldn’t see him well in the dark of the ballroom, but out here—
He’s smiling, but only because he has to. Every part of his expression is polite servitude otherwise, down to the submissive posture of his ears and the way his arms are folded behind his back. He reminds her not of Alastor at all, but of the old butlers in the palace, the ones that insisted on acting more like fixtures than people because that was what they were paid to do.
And his voice is...wrong. Mistress is the most obvious, but…
His radio filter is gone. He hadn’t called her ‘my dear’ or ‘Charlie’ when he found her. Not even ‘darling’ like he had when he sung her out of The Beginning.
It’s not right. It’s not right. This isn’t Alastor, this is the doll her mother had made, and Charlie immediately hates it.
“Why are you calling me that?” Charlie stammers. “You called my mo—Lilith that.”
“It’s one of the terms of the Deal you’ve acquired, Mistress,” Alastor says. He seems honestly surprised. “The transition is over. The terms have settled. You haven’t reviewed the contract yet? It’s all there in detail.”
Charlie flushes. She wasn’t aware she had to do something like that. “I haven’t yet,” she says. “Is that why you’re acting like...like this? Not like you?”
“I’m bound in eternal servitude, Mistress,” Alastor says. “Attitude and inappropriate behavior is not permissible for a servant of Hellish royalty.”
But his grin looks painful when he says it. And there’s something hollow in his eyes—like the core of him has been torn out alongside with his soul, nestled behind her heart.
“I don’t like this,” Charlie stammers. “I thought I was just holding the Deal for you—so your mom would be okay. I didn’t think it would come with all this...this extra stuff.”
I didn’t think it would make you so unlike yourself.
I didn’t think it would put such a divide between us.
I didn’t think it would make you a servant instead of my family.
But now, at least, she has her answer as to why he’s been avoiding her and everyone else.
Alastor blinks at her slowly. After a moment, he says, “The Deal comes with many stipulations in exchange for my payment. I cannot take a role of advisement, but I would observe that it would be useful to know them, so you are aware of how to best make use of me, Mistress.”
Charlie nearly chokes at that. “No!” she says, standing upright in an unexpected burst of energy. “No, no, no, there is no ‘making use of you’ Alastor! You’re a person. I don’t want you to be a—a thing. Or a slave. I want you to be you, until I can help figure out how to free you.”
Alastor only blinks at her again. Still no real life behind his eyes. Still a restrained soul.
Charlie hates it.
“How do I change this?” Charlie asks. “Can I change this?”
Alastor hesitates. There’s a little thrum in her heart, and Charlie realizes he’s testing the bonds of the soul ownership she inherited. She’s a little afraid, because if he does something that hurts him, she doesn’t know how to stop it, not yet.
She doesn’t know anything about any of this. How does she fix this?
After a moment, Alastor says very slowly and carefully, “In my eternal servitude, I am not permitted to make any requests or altercations to the contract, Mistress.”
Charlie grimaces. “What does that mean? You can’t ask me to change things?”
Alastor’s eyes burn, just a little. Like he’s trying very hard to get a message across when he’s forced into the role of a silent, subservient doll.
“Okay. Okay, I don’t think you can tell me,” Charlie says, pacing. “So I need to figure it out. Like before. I’m assuming you’re allowed to tell me if I figure something out?”
“I can,” Alastor agrees. Carefully neutral.
“Okay. So you can’t make any requests to change things,” Charlie says. “I’m assuming that means you can’t change things on your own either. But mo—Lilith didn’t like your to-the-letter stuff, she seemed mad about that. And you can be tricky with words. So…”
Inspiration strikes.
“So I’m guessing you can’t just make requests. You can’t even ask. Or suggest things. Because if you were being tricky with your words, then you could be doing your sneaky thing, and maybe wriggle something in that’s not good for Lilith. Or me, now.”
“An astute observation,” Alastor says, which Charlie thinks is a cagey agreement, to the best of his ability.
“And Lilith knows how to do this soul deal stuff, so she wouldn’t need you how to tell her to make them or fix them,” Charlie says, still pacing. “But...but if you got handed off to me, she’d probably want to lock you down so you couldn’t trick your way out of it with somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing.”
“A logical conclusion,” Alastor sort-of agrees.
“Except for the part where we want that,” Charlie says with a groan, slapping her hands over her eyes. “Ugh! Okay. So you can’t teach me how to do this soul deal stuff, because you’re locked down. Even though you’d probably be the best for it.”
Alastor is silent. But based on the way his eyes burn, he is very much in agreement there, and simply can’t say it.
Charlie bites her lip. “You said you can’t take a role of advisement earlier,” she says. “Could you...um...observe another person who might be able to teach me this stuff?”
He gives her a bland look. “Are you asking me to provide you with intelligence on skilled soul dealers?”
“Um,” Charlie says. Alastor is staring at her, and she has a feeling he’s trying very hard to lead her to some kind of trigger or viable request in the constraints of his deal. “Yes, please give me your current intelligence on skilled soul dealers.”
Alastor’s teeth grind together in a smile that’s much more a grimace. “Experts in soul ownership are rare, Mistress. Generally speaking, Overlords are the only ones with any experience in the matter.”
Charlie winces. She can’t exactly ask most Overlords for help figuring out soul ownership. Revealing to anyone that she owns Alastor’s soul would cause all kinds of problems. She might be a bit naive when it comes to Hellish politics, but even she knows that would put a target on both of them.
Maybe she could ask Rosie. But that would be complicated. Even if Rosie and Alastor are friends or business partners or allies or...whatever they are, it’s still a lot to ask. And it still puts Alastor in a very vulnerable position. And she doesn’t want to risk that, not when his safety really is in her hands now.
“It is curious,” Alastor notes, almost like he’s observing the weather, “that we actually have an ex-Overlord in residence.”
Ex-Overlord? Charlie’s eyes narrow as she thinks through her list of guests and staff. Not Vaggie or Dad, obviously. It couldn’t be Angel Dust. Niffty seems...unlikely.
“Husk,” Charlie realizes, eyes widening. It made sense, and based on the way Alastor’s eyes flash, she’s hit it right on the money.
Husk could work. He might be able to give her advice on how to actually fix this stupid soul deal and help Alastor. But he wouldn’t be likely to brag about it or make problems, because Alastor owned his soul.
“Are you okay with me asking Husk for help?” Charlie asks.
“I would not dream to dictate what my Mistress does regarding her owned souls,” Alastor says, but there’s something pained in his voice. Obviously it’s not his first choice, but given the situation…
“I’ll be private about it,” Charlie decides. “Just Husk. But please don’t hurt him or anything for helping me or knowing, okay?”
“Provided he is discreet, no harm shall come to him,” Alastor says after a moment. “I believe he is clever enough to know that.”
“Okay. I’m gonna fix this, Alastor, I promise. I’ll talk to Husk and figure out how to look at this contract and how to fix things so you can be you. I just want to protect your mom being in Heaven. I don’t want to control who you are, or make you not you.”
She wants to reach out and take his hands, squeeze them and let him know things are going to be okay. But she remembers again the way Lilith had scratched Alastor’s ears like he was some kind of pet, touched him against his will. He’s not in a place where he can say no, and there’s too great a power divide here. As much as she’d like comfort from her mentor and maybe-parental figure, and to comfort him in turn, she’s going to respect boundaries until he has the capability to set them on his own.
Alastor looks like he has a great deal he wants to say about that. But he probably can’t, not with the stipulations of this stupid contract that Charlie still doesn’t know about. She hasn’t seen it yet, but she has a feeling Alastor’s sassy backtalk and mockery is strictly forbidden. The Mom she knew might have found it funny, but the Lilith that Charlie saw in the Nothing seemed to hate everything Alastor was.
For now, all Alastor says is, “You are most kind, Mistress.”
Charlie winces at the name. She hates it. She hates that it makes her seem like Lilith. She hates that Alastor’s forced to call her that. She misses my dear more than she ever realized already.
“Um,” Charlie says awkwardly. “For...for now, we’re having a little sleepover and movie night. Just to get used to more senses and more people. I know you don’t like movies, and you don’t have to watch them. But you’re invited if you just want to...to be around. To not be alone.”
Alastor cocks his head. “Are you ordering me to attend, Mistress?”
“No! No. Only come if you want to. I just…” Charlie hesitates. “I’m just worried about you,” she decides to tell him honestly. “The Beginning was so hard, and—and everyone’s been helping me adjust so much, and it’s been really nice of them, but I haven’t seen much of you and I’ve missed you a lot. It feels weird not having you around after the Nothing. I just worry. You don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to be. The Beginning lies, Al.”
Alastor is silent for a long time. “I...appreciate your offer to attend, Mistress,” he says carefully. “But I do not think it...wise. At this time. If you’ve no need of me, of course. If I am required…”
He lets it hang.
Charlie could do it. She could force him to come, for his own good. Get him used to people. Teach him how to be better. Put him near her so he isn’t alone, so she can watch him, and make sure he’s really recovering okay. Make him stay near her, so he’s there when she needs him.
But he wouldn’t be Alastor then. He’d just be her little serving doll, instead of her mother’s. And she won’t do that to him.
“You don’t have to,” Charlie says. “I just wanted to offer, if you were interested.”
“Very kind of you, Mistress,” Alastor says mechanically. “Do you have need of me further, then? An escort back to the others, perhaps?”
“No. No, you can go, if you want. Just…” Charlie bites her lip. Then, “Alastor?”
“Yes, Mistress?”
“Just...please promise me you’ll take care of yourself? And if you need help, please reach out, to me or somebody else?” Charlie hugs herself, since she can’t hug him. “I don’t want to make it an order. I don’t want to force you to do things. But I do want to know you’ll be okay. If The Beginning’s lies get too loud, or if you just need somebody to talk to, like back there...please ask for help?”
Alastor is silent, watching her. Charlie is almost afraid he’ll just leave, without answering.
But at last he says, “I will bear it in mind, Mistress. I promise.”
He’s gone before Charlie can answer. But she swears there was real gravity, real, genuine life to that response, rather than the hollowness of performing in the constraints of a Deal.
Charlie really, really hopes he meant it.
Chapter 11
Notes:
I've added a tag I forgot about when setting up to the tags list, and that comes up in this chapter, so I wanted to give fair warning. There is nothing graphically described but Alastor does talk about two prior suicide attempts. Take care of yourself if this might be hard for you!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Needless to say, Charlie is a bit...distracted during the movie night and sleepover. She tries not to be, and she does sort of enjoy it, but it’s hard not to see Alastor’s empty expression or the way he’d had everything that he was stripped away from him. Or the way that, despite everything, despite his obvious discomfort and the clear power gap between them currently, he’d still come to help her when she’d found herself in her own head.
And okay, he said she’d summoned him, so maybe he couldn’t say no. She doesn’t know how she did that. She hadn’t done it on purpose, that’s for sure.
But he’d still been kind when rescuing her. Showing as much care as he could when he was restrained so painfully by the shackles Lilith had put around him. And that makes Charlie want to fix this as soon as she can.
She’d start that night, if she could. But it would be a little obvious if she pulled Husk away from the group event just to talk to him one on one. It would definitely draw suspicion, and she doesn’t want to put that on Husk or Alastor.
So as much as it sucks, she waits. She waits, and she does her best to enjoy this little event that her family and friends had put together for her. She waits, and she tries not to think of Alastor all alone, or the way The Beginning had preyed on that. He’d always been so certain nobody was coming for him, that all his bridges were burned. The Beginning told him he was alone and pathetic.
Charlie wants him to know more than anything that he isn’t, not anymore.
So first thing in the morning, after the sleepover is all cleaned up and everyone has had breakfast and are wandering off to their daily duties or plans, Charlie catches Husk. “Can I talk to you in my office for a minute? It’s about, um, alcohol shipments.”
Husk merely raises one long, feathered eyebrow at her. But to his credit, he does wait until the office door is closed before he says bluntly, “Alright, kid, what’s this about? You ain’t been back long enough to care about alcohol shipments.”
Charlie flushes. “That obvious?”
“You’re a terrible liar, kid, and you got the worst poker face I’ve ever seen.” He pauses, and then adds, “Plus, I’m the one that’s been handling all the booze shipments since you and the Boss have been gone, so. Ain’t really anything for you to talk about, anyway.”
Charlie waves her hands to the chairs at the desk, sheepish. “Sorry. I just...needed a believable reason to talk to you privately.”
Husk grunts as he sits down in one of the chairs. Charlie drags another one over so she can face him directly, rather than sitting across the desk from him. This is a personal matter, and she doesn’t like the idea of sitting across a desk like royalty making Husk explain things. Even if she technically is royalty, and asking Husk to explain things.
“Alright, kid,” Husk says. “Shoot. What’s this about?”
Charlie takes a deep breath. Here we go. “I need to know about soul deals and contracts. And, um, how to look at them and edit them.”
This time both of Husk’s feathered eyebrows raise, and he looks shocked enough that even his usual frown vanishes for a second. “What for? That’s heavy stuff, Charlie.”
“I know,” Charlie says, flustered. “I don’t really want to, but I need to. But um, before I explain more, I need you to promise that you won’t talk about it with anyone else. Except my Dad, if you need to—he already knows.”
Husk’s eyes are starting to narrow suspiciously. Charlie knows he’s smarter than he acts, and he’s definitely starting to put some pieces together. “If I talk, am I gonna get into deep shit?” he asks.
“Um. Probably. I did my best to not get you into trouble, but…”
“But shit like this is sensitive,” Husk grumbles. “Yeah. I get it. Fine, I can keep a secret. But this is big stuff, kid. You gotta be real careful with this, or you’ll be in bigger shit than you realize.”
“I know,” Charlie says grimly. “And like I said, if I had a choice, I wouldn’t be. But, it’s important, and I really need your help, and I think you’re the only person I can ask safely.” She takes a deep breath, and spits it out all at once. “I-kind-of-own-Alastor’s-soul-now.”
Husk stares at her for a long moment. Blinks.
“Husk?”
He sighs, rubbing his face with his claws. “Fuck me,” he grumbles. “I need a drink. Is there anything in here that’s actually strong?”
“Um.” Charlie gestures to the small liquor cabinet off to one side. “Al’s got some stuff in there, he drinks sometimes when he’s doing inventory or bills—”
“Great.” Husk gets up, rummages through the cabinet, and pulls out a half-full bottle. He pops the cork, takes a big swig, and takes it back to his chair with him. “You’re gonna replace that so he doesn’t skin me alive for getting into his whiskey.”
“Um. Okay.”
“Alright,” Husk says, taking another swig. “Starting from the beginning. You ‘kind of’ own the Boss’s soul?”
“Um. Well. I guess I do own it. Officially,” Charlie says.
“But you didn’t before you went missing,” Husk says shrewdly, pointing at her with a claw not wrapped around the bottle.
“No,” Charlie says fervently. “I’ve never owned a soul before. I never wanted to. I didn’t even want Alastor’s soul, but he used his favor to make me take it, and it was the only way to help him with the inheritance clause, but now all the stupid Deal stuff has passed to me and now I don’t know what to do and—”
“Kid. Slow the fuck down,” Husk growls. “Start from the beginning, got me?”
So Charlie does. Briefly, skirting around most of the details of The Beginning as a whole, and careful not to explain what Alastor sold his soul for, because that’s deeply private. But she does explain that Lilith had owned Alastor before, and how he’d been bound to the tree (whose name she can’t say) by his own soul. How the only way to protect him had been to force an inheritance clause that would make his Deal and his soul pass to Charlie automatically if Lilith died.
“So now I own his soul,” Charlie says miserably. “And I guess it’s a good thing, because it’ll keep him safe and make it so he can...keep what he paid for. My mo—Lilith was awful to him, Husk, you don’t even know.”
“I can take a guess,” Husk says with a sigh, massaging his head with his free hand. “Shit. I knew he was on a leash. Known for a while. He gets nasty if you bring it up, and I learned my lesson, so I don’t. But I figured he had some Overlord yankin’ his chain. Not the goddamn Queen of Hell.”
“I didn’t even know,” Charlie says. “Not until The Beginning. But that’s not important to this discussion.”
“Figured as much,” Husk grunts. “Now you got an Overlord on a leash and it’s like holdin’ a tiger by the tail, huh?”
But Charlie shakes her head. “No,” she whispers. “It’s the opposite. Alastor’s barely himself anymore when he’s around me. There are so many rules that she bound him with, and I hate what they do to him. He’s like a doll. Or a ghost of himself. He’s not...him.”
Husk nods slowly. “And you wanna know how to change that.”
“If I can,” Charlie says. “I have to hold the Deal so the payment stays put, or we would have just broken it right away. But I don’t want to be his owner. I want to be his friend. And that’s not possible when there’s such a power imbalance between us. When he can’t even be himself. You know?”
“I know,” Husk says. “Can’t say I get your taste in friends. But, fuck. You gave a drunk gamblin’ addict like me a chance. Figure it’s like you to give the Radio Demon one, too.” He sighs. “Probably wouldn’t be you if you were forcin’ people to be better against their will.”
Charlie shudders at the thought. “I don’t want that, ever,” Charlie says. “I don’t like this at all. But if I have to own Al’s soul, I at least want to give him a chance to be himself and improve on his own, without all these creepy restrictions.”
“Well, fuck. Maybe if that happens, he’ll lighten up around the rest’ve us,” Husk says. “Alright. I’ll teach you what I know.”
Charlie lights up in delight. “Really? Thank you so much, Husk!”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Husk warns. “There’s a reason getting’ a hold of souls is so difficult, and why Overlords are special for it. You didn’t have to do the bind yourself, you you’re startin’ off easy. But it also means you ain’t had a chance to practice the magic.”
Charlie sits up straight. “I can be good at magic,” she says, determined. “I will be good at this, for Alastor’s sake.”
“Alright. Then let’s get to work. For starters—can you feel his soul?”
Charlie puts a hand over her chest. “Here, kind of. Inside me. Behind my heart?”
“Good start,” Husk agrees. “Notice anything different about yourself?”
“All my senses got better,” Charlie admits. “I feel like I have more magic now? Or not more magic, but like it would...do more. Or that I could do magic longer, if I had to.”
Husk grunts. “Souls give you power,” he says. “Lots of different kinds of power. Social power too, if you know how to use it—owning the right people in the right places can get you things you don’t have access too. Stronger than paying somebody with money, ‘cause they can’t say no. Alastor gives you influence over the Overlords and a lot of the political spectrum in Hell. And also an infamous spy network. Bastard’s gets a hold of gossip like you wouldn’t believe, and he’s a nosy fucker, so he knows things.”
“I don’t want to use Alastor for anything like that!” Charlie says, horrified.
“No, you probably don’t,” Husk says. “But I’m gonna beat it into your head now, kid, that just ‘cause you’re good and want to help him, doesn’t mean anyone else will. Al’s a real fucking strong soul, and he’s got influence all over the Pentagram. He’s an Overlord, he’s got magic, he’s got strength, he’s got hundreds of his own souls, including me. People are gonna want that. People like Vox’d slit your throat for a chance to steal that soul and all the power that comes with it. So the first rule of business is: know how much power you got on hand, and don’t fucking let on that you do got it, ‘cause people are gonna notice if you start slinging spells or getting into places you couldn’t before.”
“Oh!” Charlie squeaks. “I knew people would want to, um, steal Alastor’s soul or attack us both if they figured it out. I thought I just wouldn’t say anything. I didn’t think of other ways people could figure it out…”
“Which is why I’m tellin’ you now,” Husk says firmly, jabbing a claw in her direction. “Once you renegotiate the extra shit in his contract, he can probably teach ya how to hide it better. He’s good at that shit. But be careful what you show off, even unintentionally. Assholes like Vox are always lookin’ for a new power grab. Even showing that kind of strength off in front of someone like Angel Dust could be bad. Angel wouldn’t use it against you, but that doesn’t mean Valentino can’t make him.”
This is more complicated than Charlie had anticipated, but she nods. “Okay. I’ll do my best to keep that in mind.”
“Good. Now, next most important thing to know. You got a connection to the Boss now, whether you like it or not.”
“I could kind of feel when he was hurt, when we were in The Beginning,” Charlie says. “Not like, all the details. But I could tell he wasn’t dying, even without looking at him.”
“That’s a start,” Husk says. “You can also get a rough idea of what direction he’s in, if he’s close or far away, or if he’s dead or alive. He can feel the same in reverse, sorta. Same with me and him. Right now, I know he’s at least in the Hotel, and he ain’t dead, ‘cause my chain’s still there.”
“Okay,” Charlie says, nodding carefully. She closes her eyes for a moment and thinks about the soul nestled behind her heart, and—sure enough, she can feel that Alastor is in the general vicinity. Not precisely where, exactly, but she knows he’s at least close enough that he’s in the building, and he’s not hurt.
“You can use that link to summon him, if you need,” Husk says. “Don’t do it now, ‘cause I don’t wanna see his stupid face when I’m explainin’ how to control him. But if you concentrate on that soul and give it a little tug, it tells him to come to you. He can find you anywhere when you do. Like the Maps thing on a phone, only it’s magic and in your heads.”
“Oh!” Charlie frowns. “Can...can you do that accidentally?”
Husk raises an eyebrow. “You summoned him already, huh?”
“I didn’t mean to! But I was kind of, um, really freaked out,” Charlie explains slowly. “And I was begging for somebody to come find me and help me, and I think I called his name, and then he showed up. He said I summoned him, but I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“Might’ve done it if you freaked out bad enough,” Husk admits. “I don’t know what the rules of this contract are either. But I do know some souls get owned on protection clauses, and they can find their charges anywhere in a pinch, especially if shit gets bad.”
Alastor was supposed to protect her. That part of the contract was probably still in effect. And she had been in a panic, and he had genuinely shown a desire to keep her safe and protect her before his soul had been passed to her. If he’d felt her soul panicking, if they were linked, and she’d cried out for help hard enough to tug on his chain, it might have been enough.
“Can he summon me?” Charlie asks.
Husk shakes his head. “Not exactly. The owned soul doesn’t have control over the owner. Some contracts allow for calls through the link, though.” And at Charlie’s confused look, he adds, “Like in mine, with the Boss. He uses me as an information collector. That’s why he’s got me slingin’ hooch for him at any place he takes an interest in. Everyone talks to the goddamn bartender, and then if I pick up somethin’ he’s lookin’ for, I can give my chain a little shake and he knows to come talk to me when he feels like it.”
“Oh!” Charlie winces. “Uh, should you have told me that?”
Husk actually snorts as he takes a swig from his bottle. “Kid, Al’s your soul, which means his information network is now yours, which means you’re the top boss here. I’m just cuttin’ through the bullshit.”
“Oh,” Charlie says again. This is a lot more than she had bargained on.
“Now, the most important thing is the contract,” Husk says. “I’m guessin’ you haven’t looked at it yet?”
“I don’t even know how,” Charlie admits. “Dad was able to read it by holding onto the chain, but I don’t know how he did that, or how to even make the chain show up.”
“You don’t need it,” Husk says. “Find the soul. Concentrate on it. Focus on its bond to you, the thing keeping it with you. There’ll be bindings in there. Those are the stipulations of the contract. It’s all magic, and you’ll be able to feel it. The best Dealers don’t even need anything besides that, because they know how the magic works well enough to make it do just what they want, and to put the intent into the weave and bind. But you can manifest it physically if you need, when you’re a beginner. Or if you gotta show it to the contracted soul. I suggest doin’ that until you get better at readin’ that soul weave.”
Charlie has closed her eyes as Husk starts describing what to do, but she opens them at that last part. “Physically? Like the fancy scroll thing in the stories?”
Husk shrugs. “That’s pretty traditional. Don’t need to be a scroll, though. It’s just a physical way to read the intent. I used to keep my souls as playing cards. The faces had their own codes. Easy for me to read, but not for anyone else trying to poach my souls.” He gestures to her with his bottle. “Do whatever works easiest for you.”
“Easiest for me. Okay.” Charlie closes her eyes again and concentrates.
It’s easy enough to find Alastor’s soul, nestled quietly behind her heart, because it’s still such a foreign presence. She doesn’t know how Overlords could get used to having so many, and still wander around doing things on a day to day basis. How could anyone keep track of hundreds, even thousands, of individual contracts?
Finding the bond is trickier. Charlie has to concentrate for a long time, gently tapping at the soul with her mind. It doesn’t help that every time she tries to feel it out, find the place where it’s tied to her, she can’t help but think, I hope this isn’t annoying Alastor. I wonder if he can feel this. Am I doing this wrong? And then she gets distracted and loses her concentration, and has to start all over again.
“Don’t overthink it, kid,” Husk says eventually.
“How do you know I’m—”
“I know you,” he says. “You get too deep in your own head. And this is about someone else’s soul, so I figure you’re driving yourself crazy in there now.”
Charlie cracks open her eyes and gives him a flustered look. “I keep thinking I must be annoying him—”
“Probably,” Husk says bluntly. “I’m also guessin’ he’s the one that sent you to talk to me about all this to begin with?”
“Yeah.”
“Then he knows you’re practicin’, which is to his benefit. He’ll deal with it. You can’t hurt him like this, and he ain’t here to order around, so the most you’re doing is the soul version of flicking him in the ears a lot.”
“I don’t mean to—”
“He knows that. I know that. Now calm the Hell down, and focus.”
Charlie does, squeezing her eyes shut again. It takes her another ten minutes of carefully poking at the soul nestled inside of her before she finally finds it: the metaphysical chains binding it to her own soul and power.
She squeals with delight. “I found it!” she says excitedly, grinning at Husk.
He looks unimpressed. “Good. Now do it again. Faster this time. And actually pull the contract.”
Right, right. That’s what she was supposed to be doing. “Okay.”
Finding the link is easier this time. This time, when she tentatively brushes her mind against it, she can feel that...that intent that Husk had talked about. There’s purpose here. Orders. Restrictions. She can feel the essence of them, the way they keep this soul restrained and muted. There’s so many, she can barely pull out the specifics. Everything flashes past in her head too fast.
But Husk said she could manifest it physically in an easier to read way, if she wanted. She touches at the links, feels the restrictions and orders running through it like an electrical current. Electricity. Ah, now there’s an idea!
She concentrates, and something drops into her hands. She opens her eyes and is delighted to find it worked: a pale pink tablet has appeared in her hands, with something like an e-reader app open, displaying rows of neat, orderly, organized text. The top of the document reads:
THE SOUL CONTRACT OF ALASTOR LEBEAU (OWNED) AND LILITH MORNINGSTAR CHARLIE MORNINGSTAR (OWNER)
“I did it!” Charlie says excitedly, holding the tablet up for Husk to see.
He puts his claws up immediately, blocking his view of the tablet. “Good job, kid, but don’t go showing me what’s in that,” he says bluntly. “More than my afterlife’s worth.”
“Right.” Charlie looks sheepish. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have done that...it’s private anyway.”
“Uh-huh,” Husk says. “Now, you said you wanted to fix a lot of the rules in that contract, right?”
“Yes. As much as I can, so Alastor doesn’t have to be…” A doll. A ghost. A soulless thing, literally and spiritually. “...not himself.”
“Alright. You can probably use that thing to make adjustments easily. It’ll help rework the spell bindings,” Husk says. “But a couple things you need to know about adjusting soul contracts.”
“I’m listening.”
“First thing is you can’t re-negotiate the main term of the Deal,” Husk says. “That stays no matter what. Break the primary terms, and you break the Deal. Sounds like you can’t do that, so don’t touch it. Should be the first thing listed in the contract.”
Charlie looks down at her soul-tablet. Underneath the main heading, it reads:
This Soul Contract (the “Deal”) is made binding January 31st, Ninteen-Forty-Four (the “Effective Date”) by and between Alastor Lebeau (the “Owned”) and Lilith Morningstar* (the “Owner”). The Primary Terms of the Deal are as follows:
The Owned will pay his soul to the Owner and by doing so pledge eternal servitude from the moment of signing until his final death. In return, the Owner will ensure the correct sorting of the soul of one Josephine LeBeau (the “Mother”) and guarantee all rights to Heaven and Eternal Peace.
*As of October 24th, Two-Thousand-Twenty-Five, by virtue of the Inheritance Clause (Section 25.5), Ownership of the Owned has been transferred from Lilith Morningstar to the next viable blood descendant, Charlotte Morningstar. All references to Lilith Morningstar as the “Owner” are hereby terminated, and the title the “Owner” now refers exclusively to Charlotte Morningstar.
“Okay,” Charlie says slowly. “I think I found that part.”
“Good. Don’t touch it. That’s the thing you gotta keep. Anything else underneath that, other clauses and amendments and shit—that should be fair game.” Husk shrugs as he takes a swig of his bottle. “Soul owners tend to start tacking on stupid rules the longer they own a soul. Just for shits and giggles, sometimes. Sometimes it’s worse, if they wanna start messin’ with their souls, makin’em squirm. But those are all extras. You can adjust those things if you gotta.”
“Okay,” Charlie says, briefly scrolling through the list underneath the Primary Terms. There’s so many bullet points. Her eyes widen as she scans them briefly. How could anyone live like this?
“If you wanna do it proper, you’ll have the Boss there with you,” Husk says. “Some Overlords might change up the rules of the game without tellin’ their owned souls, and they like watchin’em squirm when they break a rule they didn’t know was there. Asshole thing to do. Never did it myself, even when I was an Overlord.”
“Does...does Al do stuff like that?” Charlie ventures to ask.
Husk shakes his head. “Nah. He’s got stupid fuckin’ rules for some things, but he’s always straight with his souls when he changes stuff. Ain’t fond of the asshole, but he’s a fair boss, at least. Most’ve the time, anyway.”
“Okay,” Charlie says, and she feels a little better about that, at least. “I can go over this with him. I’m guessing that once I get rid of some of these rules saying he can’t ask for changes, he can actually help me edit the rest, right?”
“Yeah, once you find’em all,” Husk says. “Might take a bit.”
“Alright. I can work with that. Um, just a couple more questions.”
“Shoot.”
“First...um, the original Deal had some...punishments built in,” Charlie says slowly. “Alastor...triggered one once, by accident. He didn’t hurt me on purpose, and it was only a small scratch, but it...hurt him.” She puts her hand around her own neck slowly, wincing at the memory of Alastor clawing at his own throat, suffering and struggling to breathe because he accidentally nipped her. “How do I turn that off, if something happens before we clean all this up? There’s so many stupid rules, I don’t want him to get in trouble and then just hurt for no reason.”
Husk frowns. “Fuckin’ electric collar bullshit,” he growls, before sighing. “Y’know how you felt around for that contract? Do it like that, only you’ll feel it when a rule is crossed. It’s a little different for everyone. For me it was like fire, and I could smother it if they crossed a line.”
“Okay. I think I get it.” For Charlie, it had been like...like a stream of electricity. Maybe she can find a way to halt the flow, or flip the switch, or...or something.
(She hopes she doesn’t have to figure out too quickly).
“Also, how do I uh...stop accidentally giving orders?”
Husk raises an eyebrow. “Accidentally giving orders?”
Charlie winces. “Like, if I say something like ‘let me help you get up, Al.’ I don’t mean it like an order. I just want to be able to help him. But it seems like he’s forced to do what I say anyway. I never even realized just how much normal talking can sound like an order! It’s so frustrating. I’ve already done it a few times, I don’t want to keep doing it.”
Husk actually snorts at this. “Yeah, there’s a way to deal with it. Every play Simon Says?”
“I think we have a version of that in Hell,” Charlie says. “It’s called Devil Says, but I’m guessing the idea is the same, right? If the Devil Says you can do a thing, you can, but if it’s not called out, you can’t?”
“More or less. Same principle, but in reverse. You can put an order phrase in the contract.” Husk gestures at the tablet in Charlie’s hands. “Makes it clear that it’s only considered a magically binding order if you use the phrase. Usually it’s something simple and direct, like ‘I order you to go get me a drink.’ Don’t say ‘I order,’ he don’t gotta do it. Do say it, and he’s compelled to do it.”
“Oh!” Charlie sinks in her chair in relief. “Thank goodness. I can do that! That sounds fair. Thanks, Husk.”
“Sure.”
“Oh, and one more thing.” Charlie points at the pale pink soul tablet in her hands. “Um...how do I get rid of this?”
Husk rolls his eyes. “Just put it back.”
This is a baffling answer to Charlie. But she finds that if she picks it up, and pretends she’s mentally putting it back into the chains binding her soul to Alastor’s, it vanishes into thin air. Just to practice, she reaches into the bind and pulls it out again, and then puts it back again. It gets easier every time. “Okay! I think I get it.”
“Great. You’ll be an Overlord in no time.”
“I don’t want to be that,” Charlie protests. “I just want to help Alastor.”
Husk gives her a shrewd look. “Maybe,” he says. “But you wouldn’t be the worst soul owner out there, y’know. And you might find it’s useful, down the line. For your redemption thing, even.”
“I’m not going to force people to redeem themselves,” Charlie says, crossing her arms. “That defeats the whole purpose.”
“Not what I meant,” Husk says. “But people sell their souls for all kinds of reasons. Protection is one of the biggest. And I figure, if I had to choose between some fucker like Vox or Valentino, or the princess who’d treat me like a real person and keep me safe until I could go to Heaven, I know what I’d choose.”
“Oh,” Charlie says meekly. She’d never considered that.
“Anyway.” Husk gets up and stretches, bones cracking. He grunts, eyes the now-empty whiskey bottle, and sets it down on the nearby desk. “I’m getting’ back to the bar, unless you got any more questions?”
Charlie grins. “Just one. Is there anything I can do to pay you back for teaching me all this?”
He smirks. “Wouldn’t say no to a bottle of the good stuff. The kind of shit only you rich folks can get.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Charlie promises. “For now...for now, I’ve got to rework a whole soul contract.”
Husk eyes her critically as he heads for the door. After a moment, he says, “Ain’t my business, so I’m not gonna ask for details. But...good luck, kid. You might own his soul, but don’t let him out-Deal you anyway.”
Charlie thinks back to the way Alastor had begged for the bargain to remain, when he thought she was her own mother. The way he’d fought off her own father to keep him from breaking the soul chains. The way she’d promised to help him find a loophole at all, if she could. The way she promised to help find a way to save Alastor’s mother, outside the bounds of the Deal.
The way she’d promised to trust him, because she doesn’t want to spend her life watching everyone and everything through a paranoid lens.
The way Alastor had genuinely fought to protect her, even when it would have cost him everything he’d ever held dear.
“I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” Charlie says quietly.
“If you say so, kid.”
Charlie decides to take some time to read over the contract first, now that she knows how to summon it, before actually getting down to work fixing it. She wants to know what she’s dealing with so she and Alastor can clean it up properly.
Reading through it is a relatively simple exercise since, despite all the legalese, her soul deal tablet had helpfully color coded things for convenience. Everything below the primary terms of the Deal are classified as Amendments, and they’re each helpfully numbered and bulleted. Every order Alastor has ever been given is documented here. The ones that are still active are written in midnight-violet text, matching the color of his former soul chain, and indicate Lilith’s orders. Ones that are grayed out and faded seem to be one-time orders that have since been completed. Struck out rows of text are orders that have been rescinded. One bright gold strike-through line seems to be when Dad countermanded Lilith’s order to attack. And at the very, very bottom are the few accidental orders Charlie gave, written in pink.
Charlie reads through each one carefully. There are hundreds of Amendments, and not even a quarter of the way through, she’s glad she read this before asking Alastor to join her. By the halfway point, tears are rolling down her face. By the time she reaches the end, she has to put the tablet away and put her head down on her desk to quietly sob, because it’s all just so disgusting.
Alastor told her once in The Beginning to never ask what Lilith had done to him to make him so scared of her. Even now, Charlie doesn’t know the full picture, and she doesn’t think she ever will. Not unless she ordered Alastor to tell her, and she would never do that. But the list of orders is enough to paint sharp outlines of that picture, and it’s enough to make her want to be violently sick.
Some of the orders are predictable, especially given how Lilith had so casually talked about “using” Alastor for murder and political intrigue. Many of the orders are to kill targets or torture them for information, and provide the results to Lilith. Some of the names are even ones Charlie used to know, because they had been major political influences, Overlords, or important players in the Pentagram’s landscape. A few names Charlie even remembers being attributed to one of the Radio Demon’s rampages, because their voices had been heard screaming over the airwaves.
But that’s the disgusting beauty of Lilith using Alastor as an assassin. Because people know him for killing, but they also know him for always doing it a certain way. He’s a cruel and vicious monster on the streets of the Pentagram, and he’s known for killing and broadcasting screams over his radio show. Which means, when significant deaths happen and those voices don’t sound over the radio, obviously it wasn’t the Radio Demon. He has a very clear and recognizable way of operating.
And that’s precisely how Lilith had used Alastor for assassinations, more often than not. Charlie remembers seeing on the news or reading online about a lot of these names, but they’d always been pinned on someone else, or the murderers had gone undiscovered. Because it was Alastor, hiding in plain sight, and Lilith pulling strings behind the scenes. She’d been involved in Pentagram politics and building the city, but in a much more conniving way than Charlie had ever realized.
And that wasn’t all. There’s so many other orders in here to manipulate, trick, betray, torture, and spy. They make Charlie feel sick, but they also make sense. Lilith had talked about wanting Alastor for his skillset, and those are all things he excels at.
Charlie would feel awful even if she found just these things in the contract. Alastor isn’t a good person—he’s in Hell for a reason—but being forced to do all of these things would never help him be better.
Except these things are really cruelty towards others. They’re examples of Lilith using terrible tricks and murder to control the Pentagram, but they’re not really about Alastor.
The ones that want have her sobbing by the end are the orders that are cruel to Alastor himself.
He’d talked about burned bridges, and making a monster of himself. Now Charlie understands why. It seems like any time he started finding a friend, a support network, anyone who might have been able to help him, Lilith intervened. He’d been forced to back-stab people he liked interacting with, in some cases literally. Spy on and betray people he’d considered friends. Hurt the ones he’d maybe started to consider caring about in any capacity. Sever any connections before they could realize how bad off he was, and maybe help him.
Charlie doesn’t recognize most of the names in those orders. She does recognize the most recent, Vox, the television demon and member of the Vees.
She remembers that fight, because it had been broadcast publicly. She remembers the Radio Demon, fuzzing and staticky on the news. The way he’d nearly killed Vox on camera. The way Alastor had sneered and laughed about Vox’s uselessness, and practically monologued about how pathetic and worthless he was. At the time, Charlie had taken it at face value. It wasn’t uncommon for Overlords to turn on each other when a better opportunity arrived, or for them to be dramatic about it.
Now, seeing the order in the contract, she suddenly remembers the expression of genuine shock on Vox’s face, just before he’d been slammed into the ground by a shadow tendril on camera.
Sever the friendship with Vox immediately. Do not kill him, he may be of use some day. Injure him severely enough that he will consider you an enemy from now on. You are no longer permitted to interact with him in a friendly way.
Charlie’s heart goes out to Alastor. No wonder he’d been so cautious about admitting he cared about anyone or anything. Any time he did, Lilith took it away. She kept him isolated, with only himself to rely on.
This is vile, Dad had said.
Dad was right. It got worse.
Because Lilith had talked about having to discipline Alastor any time he ‘stepped out of line.’ And based on the orders Charlie finds for so-called discipline, that meant doing anything at all Lilith didn’t agree with, and hurting him whenever he acted like anything more than a perfectly subservient doll.
You have spoken out of turn. As punishment, you will eat glass, and learn the value of silence.
You botched that assassination. I had to waste favors to cover for you. As punishment, you will disembowel yourself.
Disgusting, greedy cannibal soul. Your gluttony got the best of you. You will not eat again until I permit it.
(Based on the timestamps on the Amendments, Alastor had not eaten for over a month).
And so, so, so many instances of you will not speak and you will not move, and Charlie can envision with frightening sharpness what happened after.
On and on and on. Alastor had been relentlessly tortured, beaten down, treated as a thing. He’d been used and abused for decades. He’d had no one to go to for help, because Lilith removed every potential support network or shoulder to cry on he’d ever had. He’d taught himself to isolate himself just to avoid the inevitable pain that came with trying again.
And just from the tone of these orders, Charlie can’t help but see that Lilith treats Alastor like the lowest of the low. And yes, he had been a serial killer in life, and he’d done more than enough things that he’d earned a place in Hell. He’d admitted to it himself. But Lilith seemed to think he was completely irredeemable, and not even in the Heaven-bound way. Like his crimes on Earth made him so worthless in Hell he deserved to be tortured, humiliated, and isolated.
Didn’t it mean anything at all, to Lilith? That he’d handed over his own soul without hesitation to save his mother’s? That he felt remorse and guilt for what he’d done, that it had hurt even one person, and done what he could to atone for it in the only way left to him? He’d tried to right a wrong. That should mean something. It should be a start.
But it hadn’t been. Not to Lilith.
And by the time Charlie gets to the end of the list, to her own well-intentioned and accidental orders, she can’t help but notice the stark difference between herself and her mother. Because Charlie had felt bad with even her simple orders, like let me help you or don’t go to sleep just yet, which were meant to help but still took away Alastor’s limited agency. And yet Lilith had shredded Alastor’s afterlife apart with the cruelest orders imaginable without a hint of remorse.
It makes Charlie sick, to think she’d ever looked up to her mother. To think she was related to her.
So yeah, she cries. She puts her head down on the desk in her arms and she sobs, for a long time, about all the things Alastor’s been forced to bear on his own. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair, and Charlie hates that this is what Hell is.
And when she’s done letting it all out, she dries her eyes, puts herself back together, takes a deep breath, and tugs on the chain gently, just like Husk had taught her. Because Alastor might have had to do all that alone, but he won’t have to anymore. As long as his soul is in Charlie’s possession, she is going to make this right.
Charlie expects Alastor to slither into the room through his shadow, or appear unexpectedly in a corner. She doesn’t at all expect him to knock once on the door and enter the mundane way, which is strange.
As always, his face is emotionless, his ears lowered in subservience, his hand settled over his heart in a servant’s salute. His grin is there, but now Charlie knows for certain it has to be, and it doesn’t at all mean he’s happy. He bows perfectly and says without a hint at all of himself, with even his voice filter gone, “You summoned me, Mistress?”
Oh, Charlie hates it. Just a few minutes more, and he’ll be free of those stupid requirements.
“Hey, Al,” she says. “Thanks for coming so quickly. We’ve got some work to do.”
“Of course,” he says. Then he glances cautiously at her face, and to her surprise, a bit of emotion actually shines through. There’s the barest hint of a frown in his eyes when he asks, “Are you...quite all right, Mistress?”
“I’m fine,” Charlie says automatically.
But then she remembers the darkness of The Beginning and the way she’d confided in Alastor, the way they’d been there for each other. It feels so different now than the gaping chasm between them. And she decides, no. She’ll be the first to start building the bridge across it and back to him, because she doesn’t want there to be this between them forever.
“No,” she says. “Actually, I’m not fine. I just read through your contract, Alastor, and it...it made me really sad, and angry for you, and just...upset. That you had to deal with so much.”
Alastor seems perplexed about how to handle this. “I...apologize for causing you distress, Mistress?”
Charlie shakes her head. “You don’t have to apologize. And that’s why I’ve called you here. Husk taught me how to look at and edit contracts, and I’ve been practicing. I’m sure you felt it earlier. So now that I know what to do, we’re going to fix it. And make it as bearable as possible so that you can be yourself, and not a...a thing.” She takes a deep breath. “But! That’s probably going to take a little bit. So, um, if you want to get some snacks, or drinks, or something first...you can do that, if you want.”
He stares at her in what can only be bewilderment, underneath his forcibly muted expression. After a moment he offers, “I can...summon coffee and pastries, if my Mistress wishes it. For the work ahead.”
“Great! Sure! Whatever you want,” Charlie says. “And you can sit down too, if you want. Make yourself comfortable if you want to.”
She thinks she’s managed to walk the line between suggestion and order, because she doesn’t feel Alastor’s soul squirming against being compelled behind her heart. He slowly comes over to sit at the desk across from her. After a moment, he snaps his fingers, and a silver pot of coffee appears, along with cream, sugar, and a small plate of pastries.
“Go ahead and feel free to help yourself,” Charlie says. Alastor does so, pouring coffee for her first, then him. He adds Charlie’s preferred cream and sugar and hands the mug off to her, but this at least feels normal, and not servitude. He often did things around the kitchen, presumably because he enjoyed it, and it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to assemble drinks or snacks for people.
“Thanks,” Charlie says, taking a drink of her coffee. Perfect as always, and the heat and bitter taste softened by the cream and sugar do wonders for her. Even after being out of The Beginning for this long, any taste that isn’t Fruit of Will is borderline heavenly.
She lets Alastor assemble his own drink and take a sip before she summons the soul contract in its tablet for and puts it on the desk between them. “Husk showed me how to summon this, and I picked this form since it’s easy for me,” she says. “I know you don’t really like technology much, but I hope you don’t mind this since I’m still learning. I can fix the fonts and the size though! So let me know if you can’t read anything and I can adjust it.”
Alastor nods wordlessly, glancing at the tablet. She hates how expressionless he is, outside of that forced smile. How he has nothing to say. He should be giving the tablet a disgusted look, or ranting about the uselessness of modern technology.
Lilith had gutted him with all these restraints.
But Charlie’s going to fix that now.
“I want to be really clear about what we’re doing here,” Charlie says carefully. She’s been thinking about how she wants to word this, and she runs through it now, even as she searches for the specific Amendment that’s her first target in the contract. “I don’t want to own your soul permanently. I want you to be free. And I don’t want a slave or a servant. What I want is my friend and family member back, but I understand that’s not possible or fair when I hold your soul.”
Alastor watches her silently over his mug. His eyes flick between her face and the soul-contract tablet as she searches for the right amendment.
He’s cautious. She can’t blame him. She could order him to do anything right now, including to play friends or second dad, and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it but obey.
Charlie could not feel more sick at the thought.
She continues. “So I am going to work with Dad to set up a meeting with Heaven, as soon as we’re both up for it. We can see if we can have it at the Heaven Embassy, so that you can go too, if you want. And we’re going to work to fix this so that your mom is okay and safe and in Heaven where she belongs, but it doesn’t cost you your soul.”
Charlie jabs at the Amendment she’d been looking for. “But until that can happen, and we can make everything right again, we are stripping this whole stupid deal down to the bare basic parts. Husk said the only thing I can’t gut out is the primary terms—your soul and servitude, for your mom going to Heaven. Everything else is fair game. So let’s get rid of all this other stupid crap, okay?”
And she pulls out a stylus to go with her soul-contract tablet, and deletes the first of many Amendments: The Owned may not make any requests, suggestions, altercations, or demands of his contract. And with it goes every single additional bullet-pointed amendment related to that. Ones that prevented Alastor from ever asking for help, or changes, or having opinions, or providing any kind of advice on the contract. Every thing that ever restricted him from ever having a voice in his own eternal servitude.
Alastor breathes in sharply as each order vanishes. His expression is still carefully neutral, but he says slowly, “Are you...certain about this, Mistress?”
“Okay, that one’s going next,” Charlie says with a scowl. “I hate the mistress thing. It makes me sound like her. I don’t want to be her to you, Alastor, I just want to be your friend.”
She scrolls up on the tablet, finds the amendments about interacting with ‘The Owner,’ and deletes The Owned will address The Owner as ‘Mistress’ at all times.
While she’s at it, she deletes the other stupid things about how to interact with her as well, offhanded orders Lilith must have given over the years to shape Alastor into the perfect subservient doll.
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The Owned will always smile.
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The Owned will show proper deference for The Owner at all times.
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The Owned will not speak unless spoken to.
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The Owned will not speak out of turn.
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The Owned will maintain proper distance from The Owner at all times unless otherwise summoned.
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The Owned will never show disagreement with The Owner.
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The Owned will always bow upon greeting The Owner.
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The Owned will always salute upon greeting The Owner.
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The Owned will maintain proper decorum when interacting with The Owner.
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The Owned will not use sarcasm, talk back, or use humor with The Owner.
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The Owned will dispel his disgusting radio voice when speaking to The Owner.
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The Owned will accept punishment without complaint from The Owner.
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The Owned will allow The Owner to touch him without complaint or flinching.
On and on and on. So many rules, and Charlie deletes each and every one with vindictive satisfaction. Even more satisfying is the way Alastor seems to gradually come alive again with each rule broken. He sits up straighter, his ears prick up, more emotion slips into his eyes and his face.
When she releases him from his smile, he actually gasps, and Charlie spots several threads snapping away from his face and vanishing into thin air. His hands raise to his face in surprise, and for the first time ever, Charlie sees him without his infamous smile. His lips are pressed thin and perfectly straight, teeth hidden, and his fingers massage his cheeks like they ache.
Charlie’s heart hurts for him. She’s ached from smiling before, but those were always for good reasons. Laughing so hard she cried. Grinning so hard it hurt because she was having a good time. Being forced...it’s just not right.
“You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to,” she tells him firmly.
“A smile is a valuable tool, my dear,” Alastor echos his words back to her from that day long ago, but his voice sounds flat and a little confused. His radio filter is back, because she removed the restriction against it.
Charlie never thought my dear could thrill her so much from Alastor. He generally uses it with every woman he meets. But it’s so much better than mistress.
But more importantly is the rest of what Alastor said.
“It can be a useful tool sometimes,” Charlie says. “But sometimes it’s okay to just be sad. Or to be not okay. And that’s okay, Alastor. You are allowed to be not okay. Especially now, when we’re doing all this. I know it’ll probably be a lot. So you don’t have to smile if you don’t want to.”
“I...see,” Alastor says faintly. Despite her words, his lips creep up a bit in the beginnings of a smile. He winces. “My apologies. Habit, my dear. I can—”
“No, don’t worry,” Charlie says hastily. “I’m not ordering you to not smile. I just want you to do what’s comfortable for you, okay? If you’re more comfortable smiling right now, that is totally okay. I just want you to know that you don’t have to, if you don’t want to. But that’s up to you. Understand?”
“I believe so,” Alastor says, although he seems a bit dazed all the same.
Charlie can hardly blame him. He’s been wrapped up in these chains and restrictions for so long, anything loosening must be so complicated. Like...like…
Like not having sense and sensation in the Nothing for so long, and then having it again, and not knowing how to live.
She decides to take it a little slower for his sake. “I think I’ve loosened things up enough to start that you can work with me on your contract, right? Let me know if I missed something. I think you can now, though.”
Alastor shakes his head, like he’s clearing himself from the daze. “I...believe I should be able to,” he says after a moment. “It’s not nearly so restrictive, not anymore.”
“Great! Then let’s build a contract we’re both comfortable with,” Charlie says firmly. “My goal here is to only be a steward for the Deal. I’m just holding it so your mom will be okay. I don’t want to restrict you. I know that technically means you still owe me your servitude, but I don’t want to take advantage of you like that. I have to hold your soul, but I don’t have to use you.”
Alastor stares at her like he’s seeing her for the first time. “You’re...serious.”
“I am.”
“Do you...realize how foolish that is, Charlie?” He flinches almost as soon as he says it, because snapping back like this would have gotten him in trouble before under the constraints of his Deal.
But it is normal for him. He’d pushed her so hard to understand real truths in the Nothing, and he’s never been shy about saying what he means. He doesn’t sugar-coat.
Charlie is relieved to see it come back. Cautiously, because he’s testing his boundaries, but she has no intention of punishing him for it.
“Maybe it is,” Charlie says. “But I don’t want to live like that, or be that kind of person. I’m not going to be my mother. I couldn’t live with myself if I did that to my people. Especially someone I’ve thought of as family.”
“You could use me to further your goals for the hotel,” Alastor counters sharply. “I could kill your most dangerous opponents. Silence the ones who call you foolish. Make it clear that you are not so easily taken advantage of. My soul would make you powerful. You could fight them yourself.”
“And then I wouldn’t be me anymore,” Charlie says. “And the redemption project would be meaningless. I can’t help people be better if I do it by forcing them, or scaring them, or killing anyone who gets in my way. I know that sounds naive, and I know there are people who will cause problems if I don’t hit back hard. I’m going to learn, and I’m going to be smarter, and I’ll take your advice if there’s a problem. But I won’t be what I’m not. And I won’t force you to be what you’re not, either.”
Alastor stares at her for a long moment. Then he laughs. And it frightens her at first, because it’s one of those hysterical, manic laughs from The Beginning, and Charlie’s scared that maybe he hasn’t gotten much better since they escaped. One of his hands comes up to cover part of his face, one of his eyes, as he cackles.
But then he says, “Do you know what the greatest irony in all of this is, Charlie, my dear? I think perhaps you, of everyone in Hell, is the best suited to own souls.”
“I don’t want to do that,” Charlie says, incredulous. “I don’t want to be my mother, or an Overlord—”
“And that is precisely why you deserve to have them,” Alastor cackles. “Because you would do well by them. Not treat them like cattle, or tools.”
He drops his hand, and leans forward towards her over the desk. His long neck cracks as it gets even longer, growing closer to her face. “I don’t think you truly understand how dangerous a little real kindness in Hell is, my dear. Not because it’s weak. Because it draws in needy souls like moths to a flame. And to grow closer to that warmth, perhaps they would be willing to change, even a little.”
Charlie doesn’t know what to make of that.
But before she can ask, Alastor retreats and sits up straight. And he’s smiling again, but it seems more...genuine. “Very well then, my dear,” he says, and it’s wonderful how fast he seems to be filling into being himself again. “Let’s adjust this thing together, shall we?”
So they do. They go through every single Amendment left, line by line, and delete almost everything. Even the one-and-done orders Charlie deletes, because she hates seeing them, and she doesn’t want them to be a burden on Alastor’s soul any longer.
“There’s really no need to remove those, my dear,” Alastor comments, when Charlie vindictively removes a past order to not speak. “They’re over with. Only a record, at this point.”
“I don’t care. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. We’re not starting off our contract like this. It’s all going away.”
“Hell isn’t right or fair, Charlie,” Alastor says quietly. His face is a little haunted as he watches her viciously delete an order to cut out his own tongue for speaking out of turn. His smile is very, very small—the smallest she’s ever seen it, smaller than he was probably ever permitted, just a faint quirk at the corners of his lips. “I thought you’d learned that already.”
“Hell might not be right or fair,” Charlie says grimly. She deletes another awful order. “That doesn’t mean I have to be that way.”
There’s something odd in Alastor’s expression as he watches her deleting row by row of awful past torments. Charlie’s not sure what to call it. Awe or respect don’t seem like the right words for Alastor, but...well, he’s certainly looking at her differently. But not in a bad way.
They cut out every single remaining order they can find that restricts his personality, habits, expressions, the way he holds himself. Everything that removes his autonomy, or allows him to be touched without protesting, whether it be to hurt him or to pet him like a dog. Everything that restricts him from protesting orders. Everything that treats him like a tool, or a thing, and not a person.
Alastor has nothing to say to these. He still seems overwhelmed by the prospect of getting himself back.
He does have more to say on specific amendments or restrictions or orders regarding prior duties—orders that are still active and related to business, not his own treatment. “She had me spying on this Overlord due to smuggling in other Rings—you may perhaps wish to keep that one active,” or “I believe she had me watching this individual with the intent to assassinate them, you may wish to remove that one.”
Alastor doesn’t seem to mind the work itself. “I probably would have done it anyway, dear, even without her interference,” he admits. “I’m quite a fan of the gossip, you know, and I like knowing what my competitors are doing.”
“I don’t like the idea of using you like that,” Charlie says, frowning.
“I would say it’s hardly using me if I was planning to do it anyway, and happen to give you the information,” he says mildly. He seems much calmer now, more and more himself, the more they work through the contract. “It gives me things to do, and it isn’t boring. And you are going to want to have your ear to the ground for the goings-on in Hell, my dear. There is a reason I was appointed as a bodyguard for political intrigue. These people will probably strike at you eventually, and if you don’t want to kill them, a little dirt on them instead can’t hurt.”
In the end, between the two of them, they manage to rework the language for these orders. Alastor turns out to be quite good at his ‘to-the-letter nonsense’ and a great help in reworking the legalese. It leaves him still doing spy work, and keeping an eye on information or dealings going on in the Pentagram. But it removes the punishments for failing to get any information, especially if there’s nothing to collect.
He seems satisfied with it, so Charlie doesn’t push. Alastor did mention more than once that boredom was a problem for him in Hell. This gives him something to focus on, and it does help, but it doesn’t get him in trouble or punish him. It’s a lot more like a job, really. Not an ownership.
There are other orders that worry Charlie more. Such as when her stylus slides over one Amendment which says, chillingly, The Owned may never permanently self-terminate, and its three additional bullet points:
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The Owned may never temporarily self-terminate without instruction from The Owner, by his hand or by others
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The Owned may never intentionally injure himself without instruction from The Owner, by his own hand or by others
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The Owned may never intentionally fall before the Exorcists, or seek permanent termination from them
Charlie can feel Alastor watching her as she hesitates over these items. Finally she says carefully, “I’m going to ask with an order for this one, and I’m sorry about that, but I really have to know for your own safety. Tell me truthfully, Alastor: are these still needed?”
She can feel his soul squirm a little at the compulsion, and his ear twitches, but he doesn’t seem quite as...hurt or frustrated by the order as he had when she’d accidentally forced him to do things. “Truthfully speaking, it isn’t, Charlie,” he says quietly. “I...thought that perhaps if I died, the contract would still remain in effect. It stipulates service until my final death. And I was desperate for a loophole and a way out.”
She bites her lip before saying carefully, “Please tell me the truth: did you ever...act on any of these?”
Alastor is silent for a long time. It doesn’t feel like resistance against her compulsion. More like he’s trying to figure out how to say what’s coming next. She lets him take his time.
“Twice,” he admits finally. There’s something deeply vulnerable in his voice, like there had been back in the Nothing, when he talked about his own person like Lilith. “The first was...an active attempt upon my afterlife. She must have sensed through the chain that I was dying, and stopped me in time. That prompted the first rule. The other...I thought perhaps if I was clever about it, if I died in the line of duty following one of her orders...well. I allowed an opponent I had been sent to kill to hit me quite badly. But that didn’t work either, and prompted the other clarifications.”
“Please tell me truthfully: do you still want to hurt yourself? Or double-die?”
“I do not,” Alastor says, firmly enough that she would believe him even if he wasn’t compelled to speak the truth. “You have already been quite kind in all of this. I don’t feel the need to escape you. I never truly wanted to die then, either, but I had no other way out, and it was the only agency I had left.”
Charlie looks him in the eyes. He looks back at her, unflinching.
She believes him.
“Okay,” she says, and deletes the rules. “I’ll take these out. But...I do hope if you ever do feel like that, you’ll come to me. I don’t want you to feel like you have to escape from me. I’d rather talk it out and fix it.”
She deliberately words it like a request, not an order. But Alastor nods solemnly anyway, and says, “I...will consider it. If I ever fall that far again.”
“Okay.”
Some rules are easy enough to delete outright. Things like The Owned may never harm Lilith Morningstar, Charlie deletes without hesitation. She doesn’t want her mother and Alastor fighting, but if Lilith tries to punish him in other ways for all of this, she doesn’t want him to be defenseless. The same with The Owned may not lie to Lilith Morningstar and The Owned must protect Lilith Morningstar for similar reasons.
Alastor breathes a sigh of relief when those ones go away, and his claws flex like he aches to bury them in flesh. “Oh, I almost hope she tries to come for me again,” he growls, his eyes flicking to dials for a moment. “She’ll find me much more difficult to endure when I’m not her little dog on a leash.”
“Please don’t intentionally start a fight with her, Al,” Charlie begs.
“You can’t seriously care for her after everything she’s done, Charlie,” Alastor says, incredulous.
“I don’t.”
That’s not true, not really. She does, still, because it’s only been a few weeks (in Creation) since she learned what a monster her mother is. That’s not enough to immediately undo a lifetime of seeing her as a good person. She’s in mourning, really, because her mother is dead in all the ways that matter. But it’s hard to just erase the good memories and the wonderful moments from her mind, and it’s hard to not crave that connection.
Even if she knows with her head that Lilith Morningstar is a monster, her heart still misses her mother.
But she shakes her head as she says, “It’s not for her that I’m asking, Al. Mo—Lilith is dangerous. I’m sure you know how strong she is. I don’t want you to get hurt because of her. Not after we’re finally finding a way for you to be free, and to help your mom.”
“Hmm.” Alastor’s eyes flick back to normal, but he seems to consider this seriously. “I will promise that I will not intentionally seek her out,” he says finally. “But should she come for me again...I will not hold back.”
“Just as long as you try to be safe, and get away if you can,” Charlie says. “Or call me for help. Husk said you can do that with soul bonds. Can you do that with me? If not, we can add it.”
“Very well,” Alastor agrees after a moment. And he shows her how to add it as a part of the Deal. Which just further goes to show how one-sided the previous Deal was, when Alastor had no way to reach out to Lilith at all. He’d always been at her beck and call, and never had the chance to ask for help, even if he’d needed it.
If just makes Charlie all the more angry, even as she carefully pens the lettering into the contract they’re building to set up that two-way connection. Lilith didn’t give him any way to reach out, so she had no right at all to be angry with him if something was too difficult for him to handle. If he’d had a way to contact her, maybe he could have asked for assistance during the battle at the Hazbin Hotel. He wouldn’t have had to almost die trying to fulfill his orders, and then be punished for it because it was too much for him.
Charlie won’t be like that.
With Alastor’s help, they dismantle more of the subtle things. He helps her figure out how to turn off the automatic punishments, so he won’t be tortured through his soul chain if he accidentally scratches her while trying to protect her or something else equally ridiculous. They adjust must come immediately when summoned to must come as soon as safely possible and add some additional technical amendments for emergencies.
Charlie also removes every single one of the isolating Amendments. Every single thing forbidding Alastor’s old friendships or acquaintances. “I’m not going to tell you that you can’t have friends outside the hotel,” Charlie says firmly. “I don’t want to do that to you.”
“Most of them are dead,” Alastor says, although he sounds tired when he does. “Exterminations. Overlord wars. A few by my own hand.”
He sounds particularly bitter about that last one. Charlie tries to imagine being forced to kill Vaggie, or Angel Dust, because she’d gotten too friendly with them. It makes her stomach twist uncomfortably.
“I’m sorry you had to do that,” Charlie says. She hesitates over the last one—Vox—before intentionally removing it. “I know he’s still around...if you wanted to, you could…”
Alastor watches her remove the restriction, but he looks a little forlorn. “Too late for that, I think,” he says quietly. “That bridge was burned a long time ago. I think it drove him to be a very...different person than he was. One I’d rather not associate with anymore.”
“You could say sorry?” Charlie offers. “Explain…”
Alastor laughs, but it’s a bitter sound. “Explanations won’t do much now, my dear,” he says quietly. “Too much bad blood between us. Besides, the Vees are proving to be quite a threat to your operation now. Vox would kill you as soon as look at you. And if he found out you own me, there’s only extra incentive. No...that’s long gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Charlie says. “I wish I could fix that, too…”
He shakes his head. “You’ve fixed enough,” he says. “More than you’re obligated to, Charlie. This isn’t your mess to clean up, but you’ve still gotten your hands dirty. It means quite a lot, but it isn’t your fault if a few stains you didn’t make won’t scrub away.”
Charlie doesn’t stop wishing she could anyway.
In the end, they have a much smaller contract, with hundreds of orders and restrictions cut away for a fresh start. If Charlie had her way, it would be even shorter, but there are a set of Amendments that Alastor insists on keeping:
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The Owned may not harm Charlotte Morningstar (excepting in cases in which The Owner instructs otherwise)
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The Owned must protect Charlotte Morningstar. This Order is to supersede all other active Orders and to take the highest priority.
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The Owned must keep the harm and protection Amendments a secret from Charlotte Morningstar, unless discovered by outside means.
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Charlotte Morningstar’s life, health, safety, and happiness takes priority over The Owned’s afterlife and continued existence. If required, The Owned will protect Charlotte Morningstar up to and including his own second, permanent death.
Charlie can’t help but scowl at these, and brings her stylus down to delete each and every one. But to her shock, Alastor’s hand flashes out and carefully closes over her hand, preventing her from doing so.
“Keep those, my dear,” he says, insistent. “We can modify some of the verbiage, but I do not recommend removing them.”
Charlie frowns at him. “I trust you. I know you won’t hurt me. You said you wanted to protect me.”
Alastor’s ears flatten a little at being reminded of actively expressing care. But he doesn’t deny it. In fact, he says, “I do wish to. Even if I didn’t, protecting you is in my own interest. You are safeguarding my mother’s soul; protecting you is protecting her, too.”
“So why make it a rule?”
“Because I wish to keep you safe, my dear,” Alastor says. His expression is grim. “Lilith knows the bounds of this Deal. She orchestrated it. The fact that you are now its steward and the owner of my soul does not erase that knowledge. She could very well try to influence or blackmail me against you in...other ways. For example, making use of her connections in Heaven, and threatening to tell them about my mother’s...unique circumstances, if I do not comply.”
Charlie can’t stop her horns from emerging as she snaps, “That would be so...so fucked up.”
“And yet, do you think Lilith Morningstar incapable of it, after what you’ve seen?” He gestures at the tablet, and the hundreds of orders they’ve removed.
Charlie grits her teeth. But it does seem like precisely the kind of manipulative, cruel thing her mother would do. “No. She...she could try it.”
“Which is why I would like to have some insurance that I quite literally cannot harm you, my dear,” he says grimly. “Because if it is to control you, and keep you her twisted idea of ‘safe,’ she will not hesitate to destroy me or use me against you.”
And Charlie can’t help but drop her eyes to the first of the Amendments. The Owned may not harm Charlotte Morningstar (excepting in cases in which The Owner instructs otherwise).
She swallows. “You tried to warn me, in the Nothing,” she says slowly. “You said anyone who can do that, can do worse. This was what that was about, wasn’t it?”
Alastor nods slowly.
“What...what was the plan, exactly? Why would she…”
“I can’t claim to know her thoughts, even now,” Alastor says. “But based on...prior uses of me...I can guess that this was added for emergencies, as a backup plan. I suspect that I was supposed to be used to frighten you into complying. It may have been harming you directly, to frighten you into following your mother’s orders. It may have been sabotaging or ruining the hotel project. Or hurting others close to you. Whatever it took, to make you see her brand of sense.”
Charlie shudders. That makes sense, with the way Alastor had been immediately blamed for her kidnapping. “Do you think…if we had really been there the full month, and she took me out of The Beginning…”
She can’t finish. It’s too sick to even say.
Alastor is not so afraid to say it. “That I would have been ordered to harm you, perhaps severely, to sell the idea that I’m a terrible kidnapping Overlord?” he asks bluntly. “Almost certainly. Only once you’d been broken enough to agree to her demands, of course. I would have been the last thing to herd you into her arms. Given how much of a problem I’d been in The Beginning, I suspect I would be conveniently permitted to die on the end of your sweetheart’s spear as well. All loose ends tied up.”
Charlie puts down her stylus for a moment and rubs her eyes. “I hate this,” she whispers. She hates knowing her mother would have hurt her and called it keeping her safe. She hates that it probably would have ended in more isolation for Alastor, or even death, because nobody ever would have trusted him again. She hates her mother.
She hates that she can’t hate her mother, too.
“I know, my dear,” Alastor says. He sounds genuinely sympathetic. “I am...sorry you’ve been dragged into all this. I know soul ownership is not something you ever strove for.”
Charlie sniffs once, rubs her eyes again, and then picks up the stylus again. “It’s not your fault,” she says. “And it’s not my fault either. It’s not either of our faults. It’s Lilith’s fault, but we’re going to fix it enough that both of us can live with it.” She takes a deep breath. “So. How do we fix this?”
In the end, they adjust it into what Alastor says is more of a bodyguard contract. Husk had mentioned those were a thing, and the way that Alastor adjusts the words, it makes sense. The parts about lying to Charlie are removed, as well as the parts about hurting her in certain circumstances. Alastor maintains the line about protecting her being the highest priority, escalated above all other orders. “So I can come get you even if I’m in the middle of something else, if there’s an emergency,” he explains.
Charlie is insistent on removing the last line. “I’m not more important than you,” she says firmly, deleting it. “And I’m not going to expect you to sacrifice yourself for me.”
“That won’t stop me from doing it, if I wish to,” Alastor notes.
“At least you’ll have a choice,” she says firmly, and she refuses to budge on that.
In the end, this part of the contract makes it clear that Alastor is to protect and serve Charlie specifically, can’t harm her directly or indirectly, and can’t be manipulated against her. This is a precaution mostly for Lilith, but Alastor points out it will protect her from Overlords potentially using him as a piece against her, too.
“Just...don’t get in a lot of trouble because of me, okay?” Charlie says. “I don’t want to force this on you. I don’t want to force you to do anything.”
“My dear, we have talked repeatedly about the role of a guardian, and how it often comes with injury,” Alastor says. “Moreover, this is not something I am forced into. I have chosen it of my own accord. You have given me permission to ask for adjustments. Should I find it too burdensome, we can review again. The fact that it is a magically binding choice is irrelevant.”
“Okay,” Charlie says. “As long as you’re okay with it.”
“I assure you, I am.”
Soon enough they have a contract that’s been significantly slimmed down. There are orders, but only the ones Alastor is comfortable with or actively requested. He has the choice to act as he likes, be himself, or engage in his own affairs outside of the contract. The things that are left feel enough like job stipulations and not like slavery that Charlie can stomach living with those things bound into the soul behind her heart. At least, until they can fix this problem permanently.
“Okay,” she says. “Now that we’ve trimmed all the bad stuff out—is there anything we need to add or fix?”
“I would like my shadow back,” Alastor requests immediately.
“Oh!” Well, that explains why he hadn’t slipped in that way. “I thought it was only forbidden in The Beginning?”
“It was forbidden from use until permitted again.”
Charlie frowns down at the tablet. “I didn’t see it in the orders, did we miss it?”
“It isn’t an Amendment. It’s a Clause.” Alastor can’t physically touch the soul contract, but he gestures for her to scroll up a little. “All of my powers have...control clauses, to remove or weaken them for better power over me.”
Charlie scrolls to the clauses. Sure enough, there’s rules for all of Alastor’s powers. His personal magic, his staff, his soul ownership, his physical demonic traits...and his shadow. From what she can tell, most of these haven’t been restricted, but the shadow has been disabled until “The Owner” speaks a release phrase.
Charlie releases it, and there’s a soft shshsh as the room seems to grow a little...fuller. A moment later, something crawls up the wall by the desk, and Alastor’s shadow appears. Its eyes gleam a pale, translucent red, its teeth are sharp and dangerous, and its rack of antlers grows wide enough to fill the wall as it leers down at her.
Charlie will admit, even having seen it following Alastor around before, it is rather intimidating to have it focusing on her directly.
But then it crawls down the wall and slithers over the desk towards her. There’s a very faint pressure against her skin and clothing, like a bug had skittered over her arm, as it flows over and around her. It makes no noise, but she swears its strange not-quite-there body wraps around her once in the oddest hug she’s ever had. Then it slithers to the floor and disappears into Alastor’s natural shadow. The red eyes peer out of it once, blink, and vanish.
Charlie stares back for a moment, before saying, “Why would she take just your shadow away?”
Alastor shrugs. “I imagine because it has a mind of its own,” he says. “It isn’t alive, but it isn’t not, either. It’s Something, and unlike my staff, not Something that is wholly me. Misery loves company, but I imagine she wouldn’t permit even that.”
“Oh.” That made sense. Lilith’s biggest form of control over Alastor seemed to be isolation. But he’s never really alone when he has his shadow, is he? Unless it’s taken away, of course.
Every new thing Charlie learns about her mother makes her want to be sick.
“Everything else is fine though?” Charlie asks, glancing down at the clauses and his powers.
“Most assuredly.”
“What, um...what about your staff?” He hadn’t brought it with him. Or if he did, he hadn’t summoned it. “Is it still broken?”
He gives her an odd look. “It is,” he says slowly. “But for once, I’m shocked to say Lilith had nothing to do with it. That really was Adam, I’m afraid.”
“Oh. Is...is there a way I can help fix it?”
He gives her a shrewd look. “We’ll see. I haven’t had a chance to try all my own avenues yet. Give me some time.”
In other words, he doesn’t want to be in any more debt than he can help. Well, Charlie will give him the chance to figure things out on his own, and he can come to her for help if he needs.
Which reminds her. She scrolls back down to the Amendments, and says, “I think this one is really important.” And in blocky letters, she writes, ALASTOR IS ALLOWED TO ASK FOR HELP FROM CHARLIE, WITHOUT PUNISHMENT.
She watches in dismay as the tablet almost immediately translates this to the impersonal legalese of “The Owned” and “The Owner.” But the message gets across.
Alastor only cocks his head at her in curiosity at that one. “That isn’t even an order, Charlie.”
“No, but I want to make it a really clear rule for both of us,” she says firmly. “Because my m—Lilith made it so you were alone, and could never ask anyone for help. And I don’t think that helped you. Even in The Beginning, even when you were really hurting, you didn’t want to ask for help. Even when you needed it. So I want to be really clear, you are allowed to ask for things, or for help. And I’ll do my best. And you won’t be punished for not being your best.”
This seems to settle uncomfortably on Alastor’s shoulders, but not at all because of any restrictions or rules like before. “If I am to be your bodyguard, it would be unseemly to ask for—”
“No,” Charlie interrupts firmly. “No. I understand if protecting me is important to you, Alastor, but I’m just going to say it again. This isn’t a contract where you’re supposed to be bound to serve me. I don’t want that. I want you to be you. I want you to be my family. And family helps each other. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t come to me if you need help because of a few dumb rules or a soul contract.”
Alastor still doesn’t seem thrilled by this. “I don’t know that I agree,” he says slowly. “After all, even in the scope of this whole family business, I’m—that is—you seem to view me as a father figure, specifically.” He seems flustered at admitting to this genuinely. It’s almost funny compared to how he’d gleefully sung about being someone she could call dad in front of her actual father, just to get under his skin. “And it is not the role of a parental figure either to bring problems to their...children.”
He says the last word like he can’t quite wrap his head around it connecting to himself.
But Charlie shakes her head again, very firmly. “Maybe if I was really little,” she agrees. “But I’m an adult. That’s something mo—Lilith didn’t seem to get. Dad struggles with it too. And it’s okay if it’s weird for you as well. But I’m grown up. I still like feeling safe around you, and having somebody I can rely on. Somebody who fixes problems or protects me or my dreams if I’m in danger, and supports them even if they don’t agree. That means a lot to me. But that doesn’t mean I can’t help you, too.”
Alastor looks unsure.
“You don’t...have to be a father figure, either,” Charlie says. “I know that’s putting a lot of pressure on you too. I’m not expecting you to be my dad. I already have a dad. I just...trust you a lot, like I trust my dad, or like I used to trust my mother. You did so much to take care of me, especially in The Beginning. I felt safer in there when you were around. You were kind and gentle even if you had every right to be angry. I still feel kind of confused when you’re not around right now, because it kind of feels weird to not have the monster under my bed there ready to bite anything that comes for me.”
Alastor’s ears flick upright in interest, although his expression is puzzled. “The monster under your bed?”
Charlie flushes. “Shit. Um. I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”
“Well it’s out now,” Alastor says, but he’s grinning, and it looks genuine. “Do go on, my dear, now I’m curious.”
She gives him a sheepish look. “I kind of started thinking of you like that, in The Beginning,” she admits. “I used to be scared of things under the bed, or hiding in my closets. Sometimes it was monsters. Sometimes it was angels. And The Beginning was so scary, pressing in like that...it felt like something was always ready to pounce.”
“I know what you mean,” Alastor says softly. “I felt it myself.”
“But, um...that first night, when I made it back from The Beginning, and you took care of me. I felt safe. Because you were scarier than anything out there. It felt like the monster under my bed crawled out and threatened to fight off anything that came out of the other dark places for me.”
She covers her face with her hands, embarrassed. “Sorry. That sounds so stupid when I say it out loud.”
“Oh, not at all, my dear,” Alastor nearly purrs. She takes her hands away and looks at him, and can’t quite describe the expression on his face. His grin is wide and toothy and dangerous, something unquestionably belonging to The Radio Demon. But there’s something fond, almost pleased, in his eyes. “I rather like the title. I think it’s one I could wear with pride.”
“Oh,” Charlie squeaks. So apparently now she has a dad, a mother she’d rather not, a bunch of uncles and aunts, and a bed monster. “Um, I’m glad you like it?” And since they’re changing the narrative slightly, she seizes the opportunity. “But monsters get to ask for help, too. If they need it.”
Alastor sighs. “I will...do my best to keep it in mind, my dear. It is an adjustment.”
That’s the best she can ask of him for now. They’ve been through a lot today, and it’s starting to get overwhelming. “Okay. And there’s one other thing I want to add, too. Husk said there’s a way to put a kind of order term into the contract so binding orders are really clear. I don’t want to keep accidentally giving you orders because I’m trying to ask you to let me help you, or something like that.”
He blinks for a moment, but then snorts. “And here I was, thinking you’d already adjusted to having an owned soul.”
“No!” Charlie says fiercely. “I would never do that. I just never realized how much we say things that sound like orders when they’re not intended that way. So I thought it’d be easier to make it obvious when I’m telling you to do something. Which, to be clear, I don’t want to do at all. So this will make me really think about if I’m forcing you to do something.”
And she means that. She doesn’t want to casually start giving Alastor orders. He’s not a servant or a slave. She might use that power over him in an emergency—something like Alastor you’re bleeding out and you will let my dad heal you, or Alastor tell me the truth are you injured right now—but for nothing less than a real need, for his safety or her own.
“Fair enough,” Alastor says. “It’s an easy enough rule to add.”
And he shows her how, with a tricky form of wording. Charlie wants to choose ‘I order’ as the trigger phrase, because it makes it very clear that she’s telling Alastor to do something. But Alastor suggests otherwise, mostly for concealment.
“If we’re out in public, and you must give me an order, it will be quite clear I am your bound servant the moment you say it,” Alastor says. “And that will make both of us targets immediately. No, it should be something more concealable. Something we both know, something that will magically bind, but something not obvious, and not something you would say offhand.”
In the end, they go with ‘aggressively kindly.’ Charlie’s been seen in public attempting to give people besides Alastor orders with this particular phrase, and nobody will bat an eye if she tries to use it on him too. She already had tried earlier, when they first made it back to the Something. He can hem and haw and complain for appearances’ sake, since he isn’t bound to behave a certain way, but still do it without anyone catching on.
“Though it is almost insulting to capitulate to such a pathetic phrase,” Alastor grumbles. “Charlie, dear, we’re going to have to work on your presentation and political presence. It’s terrible.”
Charlie flushes. “Do we need to? It’s so mean.”
“Having a backbone and utilizing the authority of your station is hardly mean, Charlie,” he says. “Especially if you are actually using it to protect those you call your people.”
“I don’t want to be like my mother and do things my way like that,” Charlie says.
“There are ways to use your authority in a less cruel and conniving manner,” Alastor says. “Given I how have free reign to train you and give suggestions, it’s something we can work on.”
“Later,” Charlie says after a moment. “I am way too tired to deal with it right now.”
“That, at least, is a fair statement,” Alastor agrees. He does look rather exhausted by this whole thing, and Charlie can’t blame him. She’s mentally and emotionally wrung out after going through that poison-filled thing disguised as a contract.
“Is there anything else we need that you can think of?” Charlie asks.
“I think we’ve done quite enough for today,” Alastor says. “We can make further amendments later, if needed. If I think of things, I shall certainly speak to you about them.”
“Good! Because you’re totally allowed to do that,” Charlie says. “And I promise, if I come up with anything else, I’ll talk to you about it first.”
“Very good.” Alastor glances at the clock. “And perfect timing! If I hurry, I can still make dinner. I’m suddenly feeling like spending some time in the kitchen.”
Charlie is relieved. Alastor’s been avoiding everyone, and that includes avoiding his favorite hobbies. If he’s willing to try now, that means he must feel better about where they stand with each other. She’s happy to see it.
But there is one more point of business. “Wait.”
Alastor pauses. “Is there a problem, my dear?”
“Not a problem. Just...something I wanted to say.” She takes a deep breath. “I know...that she forced you to be here. And you didn’t want to be. We got rid of that order, but I just wanted to say...you don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to, Al.”
He freezes.
Charlie carefully looks at the desk as she puts away the soul-bond tablet. She’s a little afraid of meeting his eyes. Like he might be gone when she looks up. “I don’t want to hold you here if it’s not where you want to be. That’s not what the Hazbin Hotel is about. And I know you don’t believe in redemption.”
“Are you throwing me out, my dear?” Alastor asks.
She looks up at him in shock. “What? No! I meant what I said before. I missed having you here. I looked for you when you disappeared, and I was scared for you. And if you want to leave, I’ll miss you when you’re gone. I’ve always genuinely valued your input and help, and you’re really good at being a hotelier, and protecting the hotel and my dream.”
She sniffs a little as she looks back down at the desk. “But I’m just saying. If you have other places you want to be or other things you wanted to do, that my m—Lilith never let you do...that’s okay. You can go do them. And I’m not going to force you to stay here against your will. Just...if you do go...please talk to me, if you end up having a problem with the hotel later? I don’t want any fighting.”
There’s a rustle of cloth on the other side of the desk. For a moment, Charlie is so certain that the moment she give him the right to run, he had. And she wouldn’t blame him if he did. There’s probably a lot of bad memories to be had at the hotel for him, if Lilith was forcing him to be there.
But then to her shock, Alastor is around the desk, next to her. He gently lifts her chin, so she can see his face. His smile is surprisingly soft, despite his massive, sharp teeth, and that same fond expression he had when he heard his monster under the bed title is back.
“I believe I told you before that I hate repeating myself,” he says, with a shocking amount of patience. “But since it’s been a hard day, allow me to remind you. I told you in The Beginning that it was a burden to be here at first. It isn’t now. It’s been a rather entertaining experience, all things considered. I certainly haven’t been bored. And you are in desperate need of a hotelier to fix your father’s horrid interior design. So I would not be opposed to staying, if you’ll keep me on staff.”
And that means a lot, because it’s the truth, and it’s genuine. Charlie knows it now, because she’s seen the contract, she’s fixed it, and there’s nothing at all compelling Alastor to stay. He could walk away. He has every right to talk away. The fact that he wants to stay is such a relief.
Charlie can feel her eyes getting hot, and her vision starts blurring. “Can I hug you?” she asks. “You don’t have to say yes,” she adds hastily, “I know that—that she touched you a lot when you didn’t want it, it’s okay to say no, I just—”
“Oh, Charlie,” Alastor says, with an almost exasperated yet fond drawl. “Do quit babbling and just get it over with already, will you?”
He doesn’t sound tense or frustrated. He doesn’t flinch when Charlie leaps out of her chair or throws herself at him. He isn’t shaking when he puts his arms around her in return, even as she squeezes him tight and sniffles into his coat.
“It’s alright, darling,” he murmurs into her ear. “There’s nothing to cry over. You’ve fixed things. Better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m sorry I can’t do more,” Charlie says. “But I promise I’ll do my best.”
“I could hardly ask for more,” Alastor says. “And...I rarely say this, and don’t expect me to ever repeat it in front of others, but...thank you, my dear.” His claws tighten just a little against her, but he’s careful even now not to cut. “For being kind. Even to a monster such as myself. And for protecting my mother, even if you’ve never met her.”
“I hope I get to some day,” Charlie says.
“If your talks go as you hope, I’m sure you will,” Alastor says. “I think she’d love you.”
Charlie squeezes him one last time before letting go. “I hope you know, Al—I’m never going to make you burn any bridges again. And I don’t really care about the Radio Demon image. I know some of those bridges can’t be fixed, but...if you wanted to start building a few new ones? The hotel might be a good place to start.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Alastor says.
And Charlie has the distinct feeling that this time, he really is considering it.
Charlie hopes that, after reworking the contract, Alastor will be a little more comfortable interacting with her and others. She hopes he’ll start slipping back into their lives bit by bit, at his own pace.
Charlie does not quite expect Alastor’s own pace to be immediate. But then, in retrospect, he’d been isolating himself from everyone after The Beginning, largely because of the stipulations in the contract. He’d probably been desperate for any sort of immersion back into the Something.
It starts with dinner, just as he’d claimed. He’d gone all-out for a full New Orleans spread, and the dining table is practically groaning with dishes by the time he’s done.
“I’ve missed spice,” he hums appreciatively, from the head of the table, when everyone gathers for a meal.
The others seem cautious about how to approach Alastor. They’d been chasing “him” for weeks for supposedly kidnapping her. Even after being told he wasn’t really responsible for it all, he hadn’t done much to change their impression of him by disappearing for almost a week. To see him sitting at the head of the table now, as if nothing had ever gone wrong, is almost certainly jarring for them.
But Angel Dust is the first to break the awkward silence as he says, “Damn, Smiles—gotta say, I really missed yer cookin’ these past few weeks!” He spoons up a heaping helping of everything, before spearing a bit of sausage and popping it into his mouth with a suggestive eyebrow wriggle.
Alastor ignores the suggestive action completely, but gestures grandly at the table. “And I’ve quite missed the opportunity to cook! There aren’t many ingredients in the Nothing, you know. Only fruit. Not much to work with at all. Can’t even stew it or bake it! A true travesty.”
“It wasn’t even made for that,” Dad grumbles. Charlie can’t help notice that he helps himself to a little of everything too, though.
It’s a good dinner. Alastor is especially lively, and there’s music playing from one of his radios that he controls. The food is good, the conversation is nice, and the company is wonderful after the table has been missing one for so long.
It had taken over a month, since the Battle of Hazbin Hotel, but they are finally, at last, a full and complete family again.
And after that, things start getting...better.
Not perfect. There’s no way for things to be perfect with what Charlie’s gone through. She still wakes with bad dreams, especially if Vaggie isn’t cuddling her. She still struggles if sensory things get too overwhelming—too loud, too bright, too dark, too smelly, too many people. She still hasn’t worked up the nerve to even try to go out into the Pentagram, because it’s all too much.
But things start getting a little easier. She can handle things for longer periods of time before she needs to retreat for a break. She’s exploring more senses and getting used to more things. Being alone in a room for more than a few minutes doesn’t send her into a panic attack anymore. She’s starting to really understand that she’s not alone, she’s in the Something, and people will come for her.
She still has to sleep with the lights on, because the dark scares her so much. Dad made her some fairy lights and a few night lights that keep her calm. Vaggie starts collecting an impressive playlists of lullabies and folk songs in all kinds of languages, Earthly and Hellish, to play every night without complaint. It’s become a habit for almost everyone by now to sit next to her at a meal or on the couch so she can lean against them or hold their hand or (if they’re fluffy) snuggle them. They’re all so understanding and so willing to help her and it’s wonderful.
And Alastor is there now, too.
He’s always there when she needs him. Like a shadow. Or like the monster under her bed, no longer hiding. Better than anyone, he can tell if something’s overwhelming her, or if things are becoming too much, or if something’s sending her back to The Beginning in her head. She never forces him, but he always arrives when she needs him somehow, and escorts her to a safe place to calm down. Or he knows what to do to fix things—like turning on the lights, or chasing off Sinners at the door making a racket, or reminding her that The Beginning lies.
In the worst instances, he sings the Song. His lullaby. And when she asks him for a permanent copy, he seems surprised. But a record appears on her bed that night and an old record player appears near her nightstand, and it’s the Song, for her, forever.
She cherishes that Song. Even Vaggie learns how important it is to her, and she plays it on Charlie’s worst nights, and it always works.
She’ll have to ask Alastor if he wants her version for himself, too.
Alastor starts interacting with the others more. Many of his survival quirks, and hers, start to slip away as time passes and they stay firmly in Creation. Less sound effects, less talking to themselves, less zany behavior. Alastor speaks in riddles less, and Charlie doesn’t have to interpret for him to others.
They’re getting used to being again. Being around people. Being alive (or once-dead). It feels good, to find their way back to where they were—changed, but stronger for it in many ways.
But sometimes they find time to themselves too. Time to reconnect and continue the traditions they’d built in The Beginning, because they might have been survival mechanisms but they still meant something. They keep giving each other lessons in different languages, Human and Hellish. Alastor continues training her in magic, and at his insistence, this also now includes how to properly use and hide his soul.
“I know you don’t intend to use it for cruel intentions,” he says, raising a finger when she tries to protest. “But I would be quite devastated if you had the power to protect yourself at your disposal in a rough moment, and chose not to in order to prove some kind of point. Don’t devastate me, Charlie, dear. My mother’s soul rides on you too, after all.”
Charlie hates that she knows he’s manipulating her. But she’s glad he has the ability to, and everything that makes Alastor himself isn’t locked away anymore. It’s very him to say he’s worried about her in the most round-about way possible, or to somehow find a way to guilt trip her into actually using a soul contract.
Her favorite bonding moments, though, are when they dance again.
It starts with Alastor gently-but-firmly re-introducing her to the ballroom as a sensory test of will. She’d been afraid to go there since her stupid breakdown, but he gives her a firm nudge. And it turns out, with all the lights on and the darkness dispelled, it’s actually quite a pleasant place to be. Charlie can’t wait for the day they can throw parties or balls or events here.
But it’s just as pleasant with the two of them, when it’s lit up and shining, when the chandeliers cast glittering rainbows into the walls. Alastor fills the place with jazz music, and they practice all the dances he taught her. And it’s so much more fun when they don’t have to adjust the steps for a dragging soul chain, or worry about the not-ground under their feet, or always have that faint anxiety that comes from the crushing darkness pressing in.
They have fun. Alastor’s grin is real, and his laugh isn’t manic. Charlie feels more herself than she has in a long time. They’re moments that are full of sensation, but they’re not overwhelming.
It makes her feel like things might be better.
But the moment she knows it’s better, when she knows everything will be okay again, comes about a week later.
It’s another little evening get together and sleepover party, just like the week before. Angel Dust had suggested trying them regularly so Charlie could get accustomed, and she’d agreed. She’d been sort of distracted for the last one, but it had seemed like a nice idea. It was low key and quieter, let her adjust to people without being too taxing, and still fun.
Everyone had been invited, just like last time. And almost like last time, everyone shows up, including Cherri Bomb. And Alastor.
No one had expected Alastor. Angel had invited him, this time by word of mouth, since he’d been around at breakfast. But Alastor had never really bothered to attend social events before, and nobody had really anticipated he would after The Beginning, either.
So almost everyone is shocked when he arrives with a book in hand, and settles himself down in his favorite wing-back chair. “I’m not interested in the picture-show,” he says bluntly. “But I suppose a little community can’t hurt.”
Nearly everyone looks stunned, but Niffty is the first to gleefully say, “Oooh, Alastor’s here too! Do you want one of the cookies I made? I made so many!”
“Just one, then,” Alastor says. “I’m not a fan of sweets, but I can’t pass up your work, Niffty, dear.”
This is enough to break the silence and have the others welcoming him too. He hadn’t dressed in pajamas like the rest of them, and he’s lightly mocked for it, but he snipes back with his own sass and seems to be delighting in it. Even the bickering between him and Dad seems more friendly than usual, like they’re enjoying arguing.
The others don’t see it and don’t get it. But Charlie knows why, now. She has a feeling Alastor had never participated before because Lilith always kept him isolated. What was the point in bonding with anyone if that bond would be broken if he got too close?
She’d said the hotel would be a good place to start, building bridges. It seems he’d taken it to heart.
She decides to push a little further. Just a tiny little bit. “Al! Since you’re here, can you do my hair?”
Angel Dust raises an eyebrow. “Him? He does hair?”
“He did it for me in the Nothing,” Charlie says. “He’s really good at it! But I never got to see it, since there were no mirrors. I can now, though, and you did promise me you’d do it again so I can see it…and it is a sleepover thing, doing other peoples’ hair...”
Alastor gives her a look. She pouts at him, making her eyes big and hopeful. He rolls his eyes, but says, “Oh, fine. But I’m not sitting on the ground. I have a chair and I intend to stay here.”
“That’s fine!” Charlie says. She eagerly drags over a pillow to sit on, flops in front of his chair, and sits back against his legs. “Is this okay?”
He freezes for a moment. And just for a moment, she thinks she might have pushed maybe a little too far.
But then he says, “Well enough, my dear. Did you have a preferred brush, or hair things? May as well do this properly, now that we have access to the actual materials.”
So Charlie eagerly pulls her spare brush and colorful hair pins and ties from her little storage-spell, setting them on the side table next to his chair. Alastor hums idly as he takes the brush, removes her enchanted hair tie, and sets to brushing her long hair out for her. He’s just as gentle with a brush as he is with his claws, and never pulls her hair, even when he’s working a tangle out.
“Well?” he says off-handedly. “I believe you were all planning to watch a picture-show, and not me. Or is this the new form of entertainment?”
Charlie glances over, and realizes everyone is in fact staring. She decides to take pity on Alastor and offer some kind of distraction, because this is probably a little more vulnerable than he’d like to look in front of others, even if he had every right to refuse and was doing it of his own accord. “Right, what movie were we watching first?”
Everyone jumps, but that gets them moving. Soon enough snacks have been passed out and some kind of animated musical is on screen. It’s cozy and calm and fun, the air smells like popcorn but not too strong, Dad’s got fairy lights dancing above so it’s not too dark, and the sound is just right. The feel of Alastor combing through her hair is soothing, and everyone is here with her, and she’s safe and loved.
Things feel right again.
Alastor picks up on the tune from the movie and hums along absently, even if he’s not watching. He starts parting the strands and twisting the braids into place, turning her head gently on occasion. She feels perfectly safe with his claws combing past her throat to catch stray strands of hair, or running along her temples or at the base of her skull. The braid grows longer as he starts to twist it gently around her head, plaiting and pinning, finishing it off with her enchanted tie. His hands still work around her head for a bit, which is new, but she lets him with complete trust.
Eventually, he produces a mirror and holds it out to her. “There you are, my dear. Satisfactory?”
It’s gorgeous. The crown braid wraps around her head, spiraling around her skull. He’s pinned everything in place with the hairpins she gave him. But he’s also added some additional decorations; little red flowers and gold ornaments worked into the braiding itself, to accent it and show it off. The colors aren’t too strong and the gold ornaments gleam just right in Dad’s fairy lights.
“It looks amazing!” Charlie says, bouncing in place. “Oh, I wish I could have seen all of them before.”
“Well, I didn’t have the flowers before,” Alastor says mildly. “Or the pins. I imagine decorating your hair with tree would have been a bit less attractive and much more like a rat’s nest.”
Given it would have been the Tree of Will, Charlie’s not so sure of that. But she still appreciates it anyway. “I still love it,” she says. “Guys, what do you think?”
“Give us a spin,” Angel says, as Husk pauses the movie. “Show it off from all angles, Toots!”
So she does, climbing to her feet and doing a slow twirl. Angel whistles appreciatively, Niffty claps with an excited giggle, and Vaggie’s eyebrows raise to her hairline as a faint flush crosses her cheeks. Charlie can’t help but grin. Thank you, Alastor.
Even Dad looks like he’s fighting between complimenting her, and thus Alastor, before he finally gives up. “You look gorgeous, Sweetheart!”
“Ever consider a job as a hair stylist, Smiles?” Angel asks, grinning.
Alastor scoffs, waving the thought away with a flip of a wrist. “I rather enjoy my current duties,” he says. And although he doesn’t have to say anything further, the brief eye contact he makes with Charlie is enough to tell her exactly what that means.
“Do me next!” Niffty says excitedly. “Do me, do me!” She scurries over and settles on Alastor’s lap, waving her legs excitedly.
“Oh.” Alastor blinks. “Well, it’s a bit short for the style Charlie has, darling, but I’m sure I can do something else with it.”
“Hey, can I get in on that?” Cherri asks, raising a hand.
Alastor blinks. “You...want me to style your hair too?” he asks, a little bewildered. “It’s certainly long enough, but why?”
“It’s a sleepover! Like she said, that’s what you do at sleepovers,” Cherri says, jerking a thumb at Charlie. “‘sides, I might be a badass, but a girl likes to get pampered now and again without some asshole tryin’ to cop a feel.”
Alastor’s eyes widen for a moment, and he blinks again. Charlie remembers the story he told her, about how he’d helped the women at the nightclubs out specifically because they trusted him to not take advantage of them while he did. It must be why he says after a long, bewildered moment, “I...suppose I can, if you so desire.”
“Great! I’m next after Niffty, then,” Cherri says, helping herself to a handful of popcorn.
“Oh! Vaggie, you could too, if you want!” Charlie says excitedly.
“Oh. Um. Only if he’s okay with it,” Vaggie says.
“I suppose, if it’s the proper thing to do at a sleepover,” Alastor drawls, with an air of being put-upon that Charlie can almost certainly tell is for performance’s sake. “But you will all be sitting on the floor for it. Except Niffty, of course.” He pats her on the head, where she’s currently still sitting on his knee.
“Braid!” She says excitedly. “Make me look good for the bad boys!”
Which is how Alastor ends up spending the evening doing the hair for all the girls at the slumber party. He acts like it’s taking time from his book, and like the end results are nothing special. But Charlie can tell his smile is a real one, and not the habitual one he still wears. He somehow manages to produce little explosive ornaments to compliment Cherri’s hairstyle, and weaves Vaggie’s ribbon into hers, and they all have their own flowers. Even Niffty gets her own little knife-shaped hair pins for her less elaborate style. Alastor seems content, no matter how much he complains about the films or the snack foods.
And that’s when Charlie knows: things are going to be okay. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. She’s back. She’s safe. The lies are dispelled, and her family loves her. Alastor is okay, and getting better, and maybe even trying to build some bridges of his own.
Things are going to be okay. Eventually. And that’s what matters most.
It takes Charlie another week before she finally decides what to do with the seeds.
The pits for the Fruits of Will she’d first eaten have been sitting quietly in her nightstand drawer since that first night that she saw them. She hasn’t been ignoring them, exactly. In fact, she’s felt the weight of them heavy on her heart, ever since realizing she’d been the one to bring them back to Creation. But there’s been so much else to focus on—getting used to existing again, and Alastor’s Deal, and reaching out to all the people who had helped her. There just hasn’t been much time for it.
And if she’s honest, she’s been a little afraid to touch them, knowing what they really are now. Knowing what they’d done to her.
But she’s ready to face this. And she has an idea of what to do with them now. So she takes the pits from her nightstand drawer, puts them in her pocket, and looks for her father.
Dad has been busy since they returned from The Beginning. He always makes time for her when she needs him, of course. He’s careful to check in with her every day to make sure she’s okay and recovering well and to ask her if she’s feeling off from the whole thing. But when he isn’t doing that, he’s been orchestrating an afterlife-wide manhunt for Lilith Morningstar.
Everyone is looking for her now.
Everyone knows she was responsible for kidnapping her own daughter, and blaming it on others. And not just in the Pride Ring, although the story is spreading far and wide on Vox’s news stations. Regardless of his broken friendship with Alastor, the news that the Queen of Hell had vanished the princess is too juicy a bit of gossip to pass up.
Every single one of the Goetian families have been warned about the penalties of assisting or hiding Lilith. Somehow, Dad has put that same imp assassination agency that Prince Stolas had hired on permanent retainer for any information on (or successful killing of) Lilith. It’s been made unquestionably clear that the King of Hell will brook no tolerance for harboring his former Queen in this matter.
But it goes even deeper. Every single one of the Sins is on standby in their own Rings. They all know better than to help Lilith, and most of them expressed disgust and fury when they heard what she’d done to her own daughter. There are warrants out for her arrest in each Ring, with high rewards to incentivize even the greediest of Hellborn.
Heaven had also been notified. Sera had begun her own investigations into Lilith’s Heaven-based contacts to prevent this kind of mess from ever happening again.
Lilith had nowhere to go. Dad had cut off her support network as swiftly and as coldly as Lilith had severed Alastor’s. She still has owned souls, but Dad is working his own angles as the Sovereign Sin of Sinner Demons to find them and break those chains, too. He’s slowly tightening the noose around her neck, and one of these days, he’ll finally catch her.
A part of Charlie is still horrified at the thought. The idea of her father turning so cruelly on her mother used to haunt her dreams when the divorce was first happening. And a part of her still misses the memories of her mother, of the person who was kind to her and inspired her and taught her things.
But mostly, she’ll just feel happier and safer when Lilith is finally caught. When she can’t hurt Charlie or Alastor or Dad or any of her other friends anymore. When it will be over.
Dad’s still busy with all of it, but things have gotten a little easier for him now that he’s managed to wrangle the Sins, the Goetia, and Heaven on board. So she’s relieved to find he’s in his suite when she goes looking for him, instead of out dealing with the complicated Hell things.
“Charlie! Is everything okay? Are you feeling alright?” Dad greets her at the door, and almost immediately cups her face and presses fingers to her temples to check on her magically when he sees her expression. “Did something happen? Do you need help?”
Charlie shakes her head. “I wanted to talk. About something important. And, um, give you something.”
He blinks, but waves her in. His suite is in the apple-shaped part of the tower, and it’s more like a large condo in its own right. He takes her to the living room, settles her on a comfy chair with soft pillows, and snaps his fingers to summon a tea service and some sweets. “Alright, sure. What did you want to talk about, Sweetheart?”
Charlie takes a deep breath, and sticks her hand in her pocket. Before she can chicken out, she grabs the pair of seeds and holds them out to him in her palm. “I wanted to give these to you. Well. Give them back to you, I guess, is more like it.”
His eyes widen, and he freezes perfectly, inhumanely still. After a moment, he whispers, “How did you...where did...how.”
Charlie swallows. “They’re from the first two fruits I ate. I put the pits in my pocket without really thinking about it. I forgot they were there until we got out of the Nothing, and Vaggie emptied my pockets for me.” She bites her lip. “I probably should have given them to you a while ago, but so much was going on and I didn’t know how to feel about them and—”
Both of Dad’s hands closer around hers and the seeds. “Sweetie, it’s alright,” he says. “You don’t have to be sorry about anything. I know it’s a lot to adjust to.”
Charlie nods slowly. “I couldn’t think of what to do with them,” she says. “I thought maybe we could plant them together, but they can’t grow in the Something. You said you couldn’t bring the tree to Creation. But I didn’t want to just throw them away either. They seemed too precious for that. And you talked about it like it was alive.”
She breathes in at how stupid that sounds.
“Um, I mean obviously it was alive. It’s a tree. But like...more than alive. Thinking. So I couldn’t do that either. But I thought maybe you’d know what to do. Or maybe just want them as a memory or a keepsake. It seemed special to you. So. Um. Yeah.”
She feels a bit stupid at the end. She doesn’t really know where she planned to go with this. Just that this was the only solution that felt right.
He seems to understand though. He turns her hand, tipping the seeds gently into his own palm before taking his hand away. Dad cradles those two tiny little star-shaped pits like they’re something precious. Special.
“Are you okay, Dad?” she asks, after watching him gaze down at those two little seeds. She can’t quite identify the expression on his face. There’s so many things there. Sadness, nostalgia, grief, pain. But also hope, and fondness. It’s complicated, but Charlie thinks she gets it.
“Y’know, back in the day, I got in a lot of trouble for creating things that didn’t fit the order of the world they were designing,” he says softly, still staring down at those two little seeds. “I didn’t understand how much I was screwing up when I made this. Funny, right? I bred and grew the tree that taught humans good from evil, but I didn’t know my own gift would cause it. Kind of a catch-22, when you really think about it.”
Charlie watches as he runs a thumb gently over one of those seeds. “This tree...well, its mother, but same thing—I considered it my magnum opus at the time. The most fantastical, most impressive thing I’d ever created. The others, they molded physical things into creations. Maybe at a subatomic level, in some cases, and okay, sure, that’s impressive. But me? I took abstract, metaphysical concepts and made them real. Surely, it would have made them see me. I was so proud of that tree.”
He shakes his head. “I know better now. I know how much it fucked everything up. If I could go back and change it...for a long time, I figured I would have.”
“What made you change your mind?” Charlie asks, frowning.
Dad laughs softly as he looks up at her. “You did. Turns out, the tree was never my magnum opus. You’re the thing I’m most proud of ever having a hand in creating. I never could have met you and watched you grow into the amazing person you are now if I hadn’t made those choices.”
Charlie hunches her shoulders up a little. “But if it saved all those people—”
“Charlie, there’s no point in talking about it now,” Dad says. “I can’t go back anyway, even if I wanted to. And I’m so glad I got to meet you.”
He looks down at the seeds. “But...I’m glad you gave me these, too. The world was never really ready for this gift. And I don’t think it ever will be. I doubt they’ll ever allow it to grow again. But at least I have the memories.”
“Maybe they would,” Charlie says slowly. “You said it made how I thought about good and evil more...nuanced. I think maybe it helped Alastor change, too. Maybe it would help other Sinners.”
“Maybe. There’s no way to really tell. And I don’t think that Heaven or the elders would ever go for it.” He smiles down fondly at the seeds. “But the reminder is still good. And maybe someday, if things change enough...these little ones can grow in Creation again.”
He laughs, although the sound is a little sad. “It’s almost funny how your mo—Lilith wanted to use the tree to remind me of who I was after I’d fallen. And I guess in a way, she did.” He closes his hand around the seeds. “But probably not the way she was expecting. I’ve got my will back, but it’s because I want to support you, Charlie. More than ever. More than anything.”
Charlie sniffles a little. “In...in The Beginning, it was almost confusing,” she admits. “Because you were defending my dream, even though you didn’t believe in it at first...and she inspired my dream, but she didn’t believe in it at all. It’s like you switched places. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“I can see that,” Dad says. “And I’m sorry. I never meant to not believe you. Or not call, or text. Or to disappear before that. I...I’m starting to realize that she’d been working her way between us long before that. I left you alone for so long because she told me you were angry with me after the divorce, and didn’t want to see me, and...and I let it happen. I’m sorry. I should have seen it sooner.”
“Me too,” Charlie says. She’d been noticing similar things, when digging back into her memories. “I thought you didn’t want to see me either. If it hadn’t been for the hotel, I might never have reached out...and we might never have had this.”
“I’m glad you did,” Dad says. “And I’m glad I’m here. And I’m so proud of you, Sweetheart, and I want to do whatever I can to help you make this place work. Don’t believe your mother. You made the first change in ten thousand years around this place, and with the right support, I think you can change the worlds.” He laughs. “I mean, look how many people came together to help you! You even changed the hotelier’s way of thinking, and that sort doesn’t change easy.”
Charlie grins. “He’s really not so bad, Dad. You might be friends if you tried to get to know him.”
“My support has limits, Charlie,” Dad says. “But...maybe if he’s less of an asshole, I’ll consider it.”
Well. It wasn’t a no. And maybe Alastor would be more willing, now that he wasn’t on a leash and being punished for letting Dad through the door to begin with.
“I’m going to keep these as a reminder,” Dad says, gesturing to the seeds in his hand. “That creativity and will isn’t dead, and that fantastical ideas can still work. That there’s no point in moping and giving up. We can make this work. You can make this work, Charlie. I believe in you.”
“Thanks, Dad. That...that means a lot to me.” She smiles. “And maybe we can work on building more of our own relationship, too. Not with her interfering.”
“I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”
“Maybe...we can start with magic lessons?” Charlie asks hopefully. “I promised myself if I ever got out of The Beginning I was going to ask you so I could get better. If I could control my own powers better, or open portals, maybe I could’ve broken me and Alastor out before it came down to all of that.”
Dad sets the star-shaped pits gently on the table, and takes both of her hands. “I’d like that,” he says. “I’d be happy to teach you. Anything you want to know! We’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it all out. We’ve got time.”
And Charlie can’t help but smile. She can almost hear Alastor’s rambling in her head. Time is where Nothing isn’t, he’d say.
They do have time. They can make things work. They can make the Hazbin Hotel work, no matter what her mother says. Heaven can learn to work with her. They can make things better for Winners and Sinners alike, without starting a war. They can do this.
Hell might not be right, and it might not be fair.
That doesn’t mean that Charlie can’t be, or that she can’t change the world.
Lilith travels down.
Down, down, down. Down below the sky rune and the gaze of Heaven. Down below all seven Rings. Down past even the support struts of the Hellvator, down underneath even the lowest of Hell’s lows.
Down to the spearhead itself. The place of the First Fall. The place where she and Lucifer had first crashed down into the new realm that The Disobedience had created.
Very few knew of this place. Perhaps only herself and Lucifer, now. Even the Sins were young by comparison. When they’d been cast out of Eden and into Hell, he’d wrapped her tightly in his arms and in his wings and taken the brunt of the blows as they crashed down, all to protect her. His wings had broken, feathers flayed, skin torn, golden blood spilled as the height of the fall drove them deep, deep into the pit of despair they’d made. Like a well shaft, dug deep into the earth until it found water.
But they hadn’t found water there.
Lucifer doesn’t remember. He’d been so sick, so wounded when he’d fallen. Barely coherent, mad with grief, delirious with pain. Every part of him inside and out, tangible and not, had been broken fundamentally. That was the day, she thinks, that he stopped being hers. Her love.
Back then, she hadn’t known that. Back then, she still tried. She’d tended to him deep in that pit, even as she looked skyward. Saw the faint glimmer of Heaven, so far above. Saw the way the pit they’d driven deep into like a spearhead was spreading, forming cracks and caverns that would one day be the Seven Rings. Watched the changes even as she cradled his head in her lap and sang to him and tried to nurse him back to health.
When she stopped looking skyward, she looked around her instead. That was when she first saw the cracks into The Beginning.
Hell hadn’t spawned out of nowhere. They’d created the place with their disobedience, but it had expanded into Before Creation in order to make itself. Shoved Nothing away as it expanded and created things. Awful things, terrible things, but things that were real.
But there were cracks, then, when Hell was first growing. Places where one could slither through into non-existence if they so wished.
And very, very deep, something that had once been trapped in non-existence, there was also a Voice.
It had talked to her, in those very early days, when Lucifer couldn’t hear her and panted and suffered and hurt. Promised her ways to fix this. To fix everything. To gain revenge. To make this pit of suffering beautiful, in its own way. Beautiful and livable and powerful.
Lilith had never taken the Voice up on its offer. But she had learned from it. She’d made her own decisions and her own choices based on its hints and suggestions. She found a way to make Hell her own. Her’s and Lucifer’s.
She found a way to thrive.
But her empire is falling apart, now. Her dreams are crumbling. She’d fallen once again, from thriving to fleeing. Hell, the Hell she’d put so much effort into building up and strengthening, has turned on her. She can no longer slip her way back into Heaven, not without Adam, not with Lute furious over the broken deal and scrutiny brought to her Exorcists. Not with the Seven Sins—her own former husband among them—chasing her like rabid dogs after a fox. Not with the most capable of her servants cut away, and Lucifer slowly cutting the chains of the others one by one. Not with warrants and rewards everywhere for her arrest. Not even with The Beginning itself cut off from her, because she’d felt the warding the moment she stepped through, and she knew Lucifer was watching there, too.
Lilith is not a quitter. She did not spend thousands of years building this empire only for Lucifer to finally grow a spine and steal it back. Only for her own daughter, the one she’d struggled so hard to protect, putting herself in danger for a foolish dream of redemption.
Heaven doesn’t listen. Heaven never listened. It was beautiful, but like Hell, things could only be gained there for a price. The only difference was that Hell didn’t ever pretend to be otherwise, while Heaven wore its shiny patina of goodness to hide the rot underneath.
No. She will not give up so easily. She will not let her daughter, the only good thing Lucifer had ever given her, walk herself blindly into danger.
So she does the one thing she has left. She goes back to the Voice, the one that offered her help so long ago. The one that even Lucifer didn’t know about. The one that nobody but herself knew was here.
She does not come unprepared. As she steps to the center of the spearhead, the place where she and Lucifer had finally stopped falling, the place that still bears his six broken wings imprinted into the stone, she reaches into her bag. She removes an angelic steel knife, and a small vial.
Lilith is straightforward as she prepares the offering. She cuts her palm, allowing her blood to dribble over her skin. She tips the contents of the vial into her palm, letting the holy fire ashes of her Tree of Will soak with her life essence. The metal slag that’s all that’s left of Lucifer’s wedding ring, too. She soaks it all, and lets it dribble through her palm to the rough stone of the spearhead, where she and Lucifer had lain in a daze thousands and thousands of years ago. Where she first heard the Voice.
She says, “I have come to make a Deal.”
And beneath her, the ground shimmers. The shadows cast by Lilith’s lantern melt and grow, shivering unnaturally. Red eyes open in the darkness, where Lucifer’s head had once lain, surrounded by a halo of broken stone-wing imprints.
And the Voice of the Root of All Evil purrs almost gleefully, “Why, Honey, I thought you’d never ask.”
Notes:
Can you believe we made it to the end? And, hey, Season Two is just about here! I hope I was able to make the wait a little more bearable for you all :)
I put a ton of work into this fic, so please, let me know what you thought!