Work Text:
When blood pours freely enough, you can hear the seeping stream. Alastor drags his ragged carcass an inch over rubble as Charlie suffers in sympathy for the angel a body length away from him. He glances back to gauge the attention on him as he behaves like a bisected earthworm in the open hellish air, and the princess looks like she is going to burst a blood vessel with face-twisting concern, but her eyes are all for the little girl from Heaven.
—Good!
But ah—he hauls himself another pathetic inch on the arm with all its meat, shaking to brace his leaking chest off the ground—ah, the pain—the fucking pain. His arm feels like it is caught in the moment of ripping, a shooting, tearing agony that sends hot pins and needles racing up and down his bones, the only thing he can sense up to his shoulder. He sees Charlie and the angel, but he smells wet, vegetal decay; he hears throaty growls and bloodthirsty barks.
Focus! Sights set on an achievable exeunt with a scrap of dignity, Alastor jerks his head back around and scrapes his way to a body-and-a-half of distance. His shadow blooms beneath his face, a body-and-a-half times larger than life, you fearsome nuisance you, and its mouth pulls into a dramatic frown.
Alastor's eyes widen, his ear muscles tug, and his various agonies rush to his head as he briefly breaks the focus and rhythm dragging him to safety. He grinds his jaw tighter, pierces his teeth straight through his bottom lip, and army crawls on.
His shadow squints, jagged maw doing a puppet show of distress. Charlie is still close enough to see the wretched thing if she but turns her head, but he can hear her losing her mind over the angel Emily—maimed herself to rip him free from the fucking robot shark—so he doesn't have to look to assure himself she won't see this horrendous, galling, weak display.
Light strikes the ground where tears carve a path down his shadow's face.
Alastor snarls at it, reaching for the force of will to banish the intractable thing and finding only searing pain seasoned with panic. Infuriating, that even at his most unfettered—or because of it—he is not completely his own master without a fully functioning staff to channel the power fritzing frantically through his being. He can only watch his shadow's shoulders heave in subsonic sobs, feel his own smile twitch and twist and try to mimic.
No. Alastor wrenches his gaze off the ground and begins using both arms to pull his screaming mass along faster, simply not allowing the crippled one to buckle. He rips his mouth open to pant, bottom lip in bloody tatters. This is no time to let his whining shadow win. This is victory, it's right there, his chains are off and he can taste his independence and that does not come with wispy-eyed allies to help you up or let you down.
He can get to his victory if he can wrestle his cadaver back under his power, and so he cannot pay his shadow overmuch mind as it shudders and cries and rends hair from head. That path—allowing its wallowing to entrance and ensnare him—lies psychotic break, he knows. He cannot let his eyes slip down to witness his own true suffering. He cannot look back as his shadow reaches a clawed, grasping hand toward Charlie.
Alastor growls, finds his fury, and crawls on.
The portico of the tower provides ample shadow for reprieve. A newly whole staff gathers his frenzied, fizzling power into a deep and directable reservoir. The power of friendship, maddeningly, saves the Pride Ring and every miserable soul that calls it home from vaporizing into nothing more than a bad memory.
And as Overlords and do-gooders alike depart the mess Vox has made of the Entertainment District, Alastor's ears swivel toward something tragically like a wheezing quack sounding among the rubble. The way his eye twitches in recognition of that particular squeak is simply a biological imperative, but the way his smile unfurls into something a little more wicked comes straight from the soul. Alastor sinks into an inky puddle that swiftly streams toward the source of the squeak. He lets his shadow unspool first, its grin stretching wide in response to the king's "Ugh, fucking…you."
"In a mood, sire?" He rises from the shadows, eyes raking over Lucifer like a dinner table laid out in feast. "You would be susceptible a man cold, wouldn't you? Men above a certain caste simply don't know what to do with a little suffering."
"A little—pff, a little suffering?" Alastor imagines Lucifer's golden hair, dusted with atomized cement and lacking its usual sheen, fluffing up like the neck ruff of an agitated chicken. "I just had my very essence sucked by a death ray. I was harvested for my juices."
Alastor is pleased to see the defiance wilt from Lucifer at the look he treats him to, meaning he won't have to verbally express his distaste for the king's juices.
"Hmm, so what I'm seeing is the shriveled husk of Hell's mighty king? I must say, it's a good look on you, my liege." He slathers on the scorn like butter on a biscuit, thoroughly enjoying seeing Lucifer so…diminished. Disheveled, yes, the scuff marks and bloodstains that any poor sap on the street might sport after a skirmish, but there's something more delicious to Lucifer's personal aftermath. The king always carries a certain weighty presence, and just now it feels more pathetic.
"May the shards of your glass house slit your wrists, sinner." Lucifer says it tiredly, but the sharpness of the jab injects Alastor's grin with a little extra pep. "You look a fucking mess. Did someone literally take a bite out of you?"
He stretches out a hand as if to poke Alastor in the glistening meat of his arm, still slowly dripping hot blood, and even though he has no hope of reaching from his piteous position on the ground, Alastor crosses his arms behind his back and angles his good side toward the angel.
"Ha. How's it feel on the other side of the menu?" Lucifer's arm thumps dully on the ground, hand loosely curled like a corpse. His head starts listing to the side and he yanks it back upright; Alastor's eyes narrow at the display, but it seems no matter how weak the king may be he has strength enough to yap. His forked tongue flickers past pale lips, which twitch in a tired half smile as his eyes drift shut. "Still got that honker of a chest wound, too. Smells like holy shit, hah hah…"
Alastor's microphone shrieks the compressed screams of a thousand tortured souls. Lucifer's cringe looks annoyingly disgusted until the feedback abruptly cuts out and Alastor tips his head with a sickening pop.
"I beg your pardon—"
"Then beg," Lucifer damn near slurs like a dopey drunk. Until Alastor's shadow surges around him and hoists Lucifer into the air by the back of his collar. He dangles there, inches from Alastor's no longer amused face, scrunched in a ball like a scruffed kitten. Eyes wide and mouth pinched shut, for fucking once.
"I never took you for a consumer of televised brain rot."
"Eh?"
One has to admire Lucifer's ability to test Alastor's patience, even at diminished capacity. Out of charity, he speaks in the slow enunciated syllables of an adult addressing a mule-kicked child. "How do you know about my chest?"
Lucifer looks stupid for a second longer, then does another spitting 'pfft' and drops the tension in his limbs. He still hangs feet above the ground, swaying slightly like a dead fish on a line.
"I been knew about your chest," he says, looking impressively disinterested for one so literally caught—and Alastor sees past it, knows Lucifer must be thoroughly disadvantaged to not simply poof himself out of his shadow's grasp. "Smelled it on you the second you crawled back to the hotel—after we rebuilt it without you, Mister Usele—"
Alastor's shadow rattles him like a maraca as his eyes blacken and his grin glows. If Lucifer knew, knew and still harassed and harangued him for seemingly abandoning his post the moment things got frisky—well, Alastor can hardly harness any indignation for a move he himself might have played were their positions reversed, but it's still annoying for all that it piques his interest.
Though it certainly soothes the sting, the karmic retribution that yes, perhaps Lucifer has been privately reveling in Alastor's suffering all this time, but now here he is on his hook, grey and queasy and limp and quite possibly weaker than Alastor in a once-in-an-afterlife turn of events.
With a blink, Alastor clears the eldritch from his eyes and fixes his smile into something more merry and less maniacal.
"Well then!" Alastor pulls his staff from the ether with a sharp green crackle and a jaunty spin, then points it at the pathetic excuse for celestial power, who is looking less and less celestial by the second. He uses the head of his microphone to lift Lucifer's chin and his attention, pleased with the mean glint it provokes in his eyes (once they stop their dizzy spinning). At least there is consciousness yet left in that daft, cavernous skull—he'll need it to suit his purposes! "Since it appears we see each other's positions quite plainly, might I suggest we're on equitable footing for a deal?" His other hand sweeps out in offering; he flexes his fingers, drawing Lucifer's gaze with a bright green glow.
"Uh," it cannot be said the king articulates, "You can't be for real." Alastor's steady, unchanging grin seems to imbue a little more life in the man, which he uses to scoff in his face. "You're literally—no, of course you are. You want to make a deal with the devil." He blubbers out a stupid, patronizing laugh that Alastor waits through—goodness, he's gracious!—clacking his claws along the length of his staff to demonstrate his patience.
When Lucifer sobers up, he bats away Alastor's microphone and gives him a sort of pitying look that has no business on the face of someone suspended by a shadow. "Looook, bellhop. There's really no position you can get me in that'd make me wanna shake that hand. You don't see me plainly," he finger quotes. "In fact, you don't even know how ridiculous the idea that you even could really is."
Alastor hums in polite consideration, accepting the invitation to thoroughly examine the king. He takes his time, raising one brow and finding room in his smirk for a condescending little frown, until Lucifer starts twitching beneath his regard. Until he's suffering no illusions about the image he is presenting, not only to Alastor, but to any lurking voyeur that may care to stumble across the left-behind king.
He really is looking wan. Lucifer already has the dubious distinction of being the whitest man Alastor has ever had the misfortune to meet, but his skin usually carries a porcelain, luminous quality that shimmers like a mirage when viewed from the corner of one's eye, just out of focus enough to get caught in the act of pretending to be something a feeble mortal mind can comprehend. Now, he's tinged dull and grey, with a sickly yellow undertone that would put anyone born on Earth in palliative care. Patches of golden blood dry on his suit where Vox's machine pierced him, looking like he's pissed himself in odd places. Alastor licks his teeth and wonders how deep in the meat the prongs tenderized him.
Lucifer stares at him with a pouting poker face. "I'm. Fine."
Just what he wanted to hear—Alastor does so appreciate it when a stage mate knows his lines. "Weeell, if you say so…" Alastor coos, quickly sweeping the skies for any sign of VoxTek drones. It appears they are as offline as his dear old pal, so he takes a moment to enjoy the shiver of glee for what he gets to do. Oh, he wants to remember this. "Prove it!"
With a silent cackle, his shadow launches Lucifer into the sky. The way his scream loses volume as he gains height is hilarious and Alastor greedily captures the recording. It's well worth the stabbing pain in his chest as he howls his laughter. He wants Lucifer to hear his enjoyment as he shoots up, up, up, slowing to a breathless apex at the tower's neon V's before gravity stakes its eager claim.
Lucifer's wings manifest as he begins his fall, bulky, unwieldy things that struggle to catch the wind in any helpful way, simply ripping at his sockets and ruffling his feathers instead. He tumbles ass over horns as he plummets—Alastor sees them sprout from his head, top hat lost to the wind, spaded tail whipping like a banner in the air. He's not screaming anymore, and Alastor finds himself holding his breath too, waiting to see if the king will catch himself before he reaches the unforgiving end of his impromptu trip.
Twentieth floor, tenth floor, five, four, three, two—he's really not going to—
Lucifer hits the ground with a calamitous impact, wrinkling the concrete beneath Alastor's feet. He stumbles back from the brand new crater outside Vee Tower, hardly distinguishable from the rest of the day's destruction. Dust chokes the local atmosphere, and Alastor waves it away impatiently; he wants to see, let him see the suffering he has wrought. He knows it is great, for he feels a surge of vitality. He peers through the slowly settling haze and the first shapes he can pick out are the massive crimson and white wings splayed out in odd angles, feathers bent every which wrong way. His shadow grows over the form they frame, small and crumpled and beneath him.
Lucifer lies silent and still, face down in the angel-shaped depression in the ground. Except—no, as more of the dust clears away, Alastor can see shudders ripple through his body. As the last of the pulverized gravel pelts the ground, he can hear shaky, abbreviated gasps that quickly graduate into desperate wheezing heaves. Alastor tilts his head. He wants to see Lucifer's face. He pokes him in the back with the end of his staff.
"What was that?" he prods. "Something to say?" Lucifer continues to make like an ostrich, head buried in the dirt, and Alastor rolls his eyes. "Oh come now. I have it on good authority that you've had worse."
"Fuck you." It's barely audible, and Alastor's ears strain forward in excitement. Lucifer's neck creaks slowly, til just one eye and the corner of his mouth are visible. Tears cut a line through the grime on his cheek. That single eye burns. Alastor gasps. He is transported to the Musée Fabre in a dizzying rush. The sight before him is nothing less than beautiful.
"Fuck you," Lucifer repeats, choking on another gulp of air just to croak it back out again. "Fuck you, damn you."
Sadistic bliss surges like heroin through Alastor's veins. "Oh, Your Majesty. Look at you." His simper simmers, steaming intensity building in his eyes, his voice, the static humming in his bones. "If an angel falls from the heavens and no one is around to hear it scream, does it even make a sound? Where are your legions? Where is your daughter? If I hadn't been here to offer my hand, would you have just laid there, broken and empty and useless? How would you make it back to the hotel—would you crawl? Would you even come back at all, when not one soul in residence gives a damn whether you live or die?"
Lucifer's breaths come like those of the actively perishing—wet, shuddering sips of oxygen punctuated on either side by long failures to exhale. And Alastor—Alastor knows how to press an advantage. Alastor's favorite part is stepping on a wound to make it bleed harder. The pain he sees on Lucifer's face looks like what he feels in his chest, and it hurts so good.
He bends at the waist to bring his face a mere foot from Lucifer's, which turns to meet his gaze head-on, magnetized. Tears positively stream from the angel's eyes, as fast and free as the blood had from his shark-mangled arm. Alastor's grin stretches impossibly wider, threatening the stitches that glow at the corners.
"Oh, I see you, Lucifer," he crows in delight. "I saw you tap dance into an idiot's bear trap—I told that idiot there was no need to dress it up with more than the flimsiest suggestion of your daughter's regard. I saw Charlie cry tears of joy over that winged snake while you collapsed beside her. I saw you every day at the hotel, putting on a circus act of chumming it up with the people Charlie cares about, like you could give a shit about them, like they could be family to you, you who are so utterly removed from their petty concerns and triumphs you may as well be surveying them from a different stratosphere. Oh dear, oh darling, I may be the only one who sees you. They may be sinners, but you're something worse. You're alone."
Lucifer's eyes widen with the killing blow. They're swimming in misery, and Alastor drinks it in. Oh, the cream on top of a day of treats is sweet. After weeks, decades, lifetimes of persisting under the boots of those who think they are his better down to their very atoms—oh, to drag God's favorite down to his level may taste better even than breaking his chains. Delicious.
Alastor is nearly as out of breath as Lucifer now, panting, rabid with gratification. It makes his lungs burn behind his ribs, still cracked along the path of Adam's axe to this day, but the pain is invigorating, damn near transcendent. He swallows the saliva gathering in his mouth, along with the urge to bite, and tries to collect his civility. Finesse, he thinks, You've broken him down. Now seal the deal.
A feather, a small, fuzzy white covert, drifts down between them. Alastor's eyes cross to track it, and he snatches it from the air and holds it before his nose. His manic grin shrinks as he rubs the feather between his thumb and forefinger. It's soft.
"But don't fret too much, Your Majesty," he murmurs, eyes on the feather. Released from his gaze and his torment, Lucifer's breath hitches. Alastor's subdued tone is a lifeline he can reel the king in on, he knows it. He knows he can play the devil like his famed fiddle, if he's careful. If he's willing to slice a strip of flesh from his own thumb and hook it as bait. "Your sorry situation stems from your greatest strength, you know. And it's just that—your strength. No one ever expects the most powerful person in the fight to need a crutch for the long walk home."
And because Lucifer knows that it's thread and not ribs holding his chest together, because he can smell the divine rot creeping through the offal inside him, Alastor does not have to say the words for him to know he speaks from experience. Because Lucifer knew and offered no help, this is all fair game. Alastor can hear the understanding in the first gasp of air Lucifer swallows since Alastor's voice turned low. He vanishes the feather in heatless green flame and confirms the comprehension in the angel's eyes.
So close now. Alastor can't help but allow his smile to show a little more teeth. "I'll be your crutch, my liege. You may lean on me, and I shall protect you til we are through the hotel's wards—and make no mistake, you will need my protection. Vox played his hand close to his chest for all that he did it on camera; don't think the man can't play with fine print when he's working with all his wits. But if you stumble home alone, you're sure to run into sinners out there who will see how weak you are and wonder whether you won't raise a hand against them, or can't. Not that the distinction will matter, when it comes down to defending yourself from the wrathful masses who call you king. I'll keep you safe and get you past the wards, where you can recover to your full might and glory, and in return you'll owe me your first act upon recuperation—healing my damned angelic wound."
The static in his voice outlasts his words and arcane symbols of his ancestors burn in the air among more feathers, crimson and white, finally floating down to their level. Alastor extends his hand, glowing poisonous green. Ghostly shades of deals gone by skitter up his arm, their hollow screams playing from the microphone crossed behind his back. His corpse heart pounds, threatening to collapse his rib cage at its fault line. "Do we have a deal?"
Lucifer swallows, shuts his eyes, shudders. But when he opens his eyes again, the tears no longer gather in his lashes, and Alastor sees in them something curious. Not the hopeless resignation of a soul ground beneath his heel, but something disconcertingly like—recognition.
Lucifer takes his hand, and shakes.