Chapter Text
The Night of the Battle
…
The air is suffocatingly thick.
Alastor is upright– just barely. Filling his ragged lungs requires an effort almost as strenuous as keeping his knees from buckling. With each smokey breath he manages to steal, a fresh wave of metallic floods his tongue, and he gags around the blood, trying not to let the meaty clots choke him.
The stench his exposed intestines creates is overbearing.
As he takes another heavy step, the muscles in his abdomen jerk, and a cascade of blood begins to pour free.
Grunting, he buries his forearm into the weeping laceration until it burns, trying to keep what finite reserves of blood he has left within his body from spilling; but there is too much. Gore washes over his arm and dribbles onto his shoes, painting his fingers in a sick reminder of his own mortality.
Just as the last had receded, another tug of pain ripples through him, distorting the edges of his vision with a magnetic strength. It sends him off-kilter and finally, he fully buckles over, collapsing to his knees onto the dirt and bits of shrapnel that dig into what parts of his skin is exposed by the rips in his pants.
He can hardly bring himself to care. The pain is a drop in the ocean compared to the way each new breath tugs at the torn edges of his abdominal wall, ripping it open further like tissue paper.
“Ha-ahhh…ah…René…” he calls.
He tries to lift his head, but the world is spinning which causes him to retch, the feeling of his muscles ripping as his body involuntarily spasms causing him to retch more. It is a fruitless, reinforcing cycle: moving. Breathing. He lets his body collapse fully into the earth, screaming as his stomach makes contact with the ground, and using what trembling strength he has left in him to turn himself over onto his back.
“René,” he calls again for his shadow, coughing and retching.
“Ahh… René…”
He doesn't know where he wants to go. Just not here– anywhere else but here. He doesn't want to be found here, of all places, in this state. If he could make it to Rosie's Emporium–
His throat begins to fill with blood.
He's not making it to Rosie's. He knows.
“Oh dear, oh dear! Ah– must be all that caffeine! Terribly sorry, dear. Allow me.”
Alastor's body blinks, watching the faded memory being projected before him like a flickering picture show that had been played one too many times to retain its original quality.
The fine china is too shallow, that had been his excuse. Meant for decoration much more than drinking. Secretly, he thinks he may have done it on purpose. A subconscious act of rebellion against the wretched leaf water Rosie had forced upon him with a cloying insistence, topping him off just as he'd finish choking the last batch down.
He supposes cup number four was the final straw.
“Oh no ya don't, mister!” Rosie says, standing to remove the wet china from his grasp as if it were radioactive and setting it atop a round table between his chair and another, not caring that it would surely leave a ring stain on the old wood.
“You're in my house, Alastor, and guests don't clean in my house, no matter how clumsy they are!” she tuts. “Ah, look at the mess ya made! C’mere.”
Before he can protest, a cloth is pushed against the side of Alastor's jaw, dabbing it gently. He stiffens then, for two reasons. The first being that he is unacclimated to such sudden intrusions of his personal space. And the second because, as he was taught as a young boy, a gentleman always resigns his own messes and must do his best to fix them with the least amount of friction and fuss possible. It feels wrong to have a lady, even one as close to him as Rosie, treating him like this.
But, oh, it is so peculiar– as Rosie had fusses with his hair, his face– adjusts his monocle in that fruitless way of hers– that he actually starts to feel almost…oh, what’s the word?...sentimental. A part of himself he’s used to keeping on lockdown, past all the bristle and thorns, only bringing out for special occasions, as if it’s a particularly expensive piece of jewelry he cannot risk wearing out; pretty to have, but easy to be used against you.
Rosie wouldn't use this against him, he knows that, and she has always been such a… motherly individual, in his afterlife. But still, he doesn’t say anything, just sits pliantly and lets her work. And, well, if in this moment he’s been reminded of a much more motherly figure he hasn’t allowed himself to think much of in the many years since he'd died, that is between him and his irritating sentimentality.
The cloth is pulled back, and his reverie with it. Black sockets he'd learned to find infinitely charming gazing gently at him.
“Awh, look at you! Oh, Alastor, you should'a told me ya like bein’ pampered!” Rosie squeezes his cheek, tugging at it affectionately.
He allows it. Only for Rosie.
He is brought back from the brink of death with a pained groan when his abdominal muscles begin to uncontrollably spasm, as if looking for their better half. With his heavy breathing, he sounds much like the quarry he used to hunt, back when he was alive. The bullet didn't always kill them so swiftly, and many times he'd watched the light drain from a living being’s eyes before finally executing mercy in the form of a shotgun barrel between them. Man, deer, it didn't matter to Alastor. They had all been the same to him, in the end. But it would seem now, in a cruel twist of unluck, their tortured spirits have returned with a vengeance, ensuring his last moments are as agonizing and humiliating as possible.
Oh, but it is poetically cruel, to die like this, buried with the remains of some bored aristocrat’s failed passion project. He knows how this will look in the papers once his corpse is discovered. Alastor, Radio Demon, the terror of the Pride Ring, reduced to some bleeding heart; a martyr who’d died failing to protect a fucking charity.
It is ironic, it is laughable. But strangely enough, Alastor doesn't feel much like laughing.
Another groan– closer to a moan– then the muscles on his neck are straining as he buries his cheek into the pebbles, letting them draw more blood from his skin. It doesn't matter now– however much blood he loses. Alastor is dying. Alastor is dying and he hates that he knows it; he hates the dread that comes with knowing.
There is no Rosie here, no one to clean his spills or dress his wounds. No one to pamper him or right his shameful mistakes. This is his doing. That damned contract, the single worst slip of his afterlife. The way it has consumed him– mind, body, and soul– so rapidly, feasting upon his freewill like a pulsating tumor of greed. An eternal reminder of a momentary lapse in judgement. It had seemed so easy at the time, so convenient to just take it.
But there is no easy way to the top; not unless you were born into it. He has always known this. He thought he did.
Now as punishment Alastor will spend his dying moments hating himself for becoming what he's always hated in others: a brute. A crook. A sell-out, no better than the one on television.
“René…”
Oh, Lord. He has never been a praying man, the Heavens had never done anything for the poor, colored bastard son, and they certainly hadn't grown acquainted once he'd died.
Something much thinner than blood rolls down his cheek.
Oh, fuck it.
“Please, please,” he gasps.
“Not now, not here, not after everything I've–” he chokes. Cut short by phlegm and blood, Alastor resumes hacking, attempting weakly to turn his body over onto its side so he doesn't asphyxiate.
He doesn't even know what he's praying for– an angel, maybe? Not an exorcist, but a true one as foretold in the Bible– something benevolent he can sink his teeth into.
“Please.”
It must not have been. Either he had prayed wrong or Heaven is wholly, cosmically evil. Because the creature that finds him splayed in the bones of the Hazbin Hotel is the farthest thing from holy.
“Holy. Shit.”
He is Hellspawn, through and through.
He is powerless to the cables that slink forward, snaking across his body and underneath his arms as he is elevated into an upright position. Then up. Then up.
“Vox,” he grits.
Vox's screen brightens, and Alastor is begrudgingly impressed that another sinner beside himself can even smile that wide. It’s almost comical how needy he still is for Alastor's approval after all this time. Or it would be, if laughter didn't threaten to spill his viscera onto the dirt like a sack of wet spaghetti.
“Alastor, wow.” Vox whistles. “Look at you.” Alastor's hands are slapped together above his head, and he impotently squirms before something cold, rigid, and electric prods against the open gash in his belly, causing him to expel a vile cocktail of stomach acid and watered-down blood down his chin.
“Whoops!” Vox laughs. “Think I pushed the wrong button.” The cherry red cable retreats behind Vox's back, leaving Alastor hanging limply in the air. It's all he can do to lift his head to stare daggers into Vox's grinning face.
He hopes it hurts.
“Aww, did I hurt you, Al?” he coos, clasping his hands in front of his chest. “I'm sorry. Say, it's been such a long time since we've last seen each other. Remind me again which one I need to press to hear you scream.”
Suddenly, Alastor is lifted higher towards the dark sky; and for a moment he can almost believe he is flying before his spine collides with the lower half of a brick wall and all the oxygen is torn from his lungs. Collapsing to the ground on his elbows and knees, his eyes are blown wide while he gasps desperately for air.
This position is harrowingly familiar, only an hour ago had he been reduced to a sniveling, humiliated peon at the feet of a different, far more powerful brute. But instead of a smarmy angel cackling above him, there now only stands an infuriatingly cocksure televangelist. Hands on his hips, he's probably waited for this moment his entire afterlife.
Alastor wishes he could say something about that; use his silver tongue and barbed wit to his advantage in this moment. But for the first time, he finds he lacks the vocabulary to describe its utter horridness.
He vomits instead.
“Christ! Put a lid on it, will you? You're like a fuckin' fountain.” He is lifted limply to his feet. Too exhausted to resist, he tries anyway, thrashing his legs and tugging his arms against the wires twisting around his limbs, fighting a losing battle he's in no position to fight.
Alastor is dragged forward, his shoes leaving pronged trails in the earth, only stopping once Vox is satisfied with the lack of distance.
“Saw the fight,” he says as Alastor glares. “Saw the whole thing. You should've told me you have a humiliation kink earlier. I would've helped.”
He drags his claws along the inflamed edge of Alastor's wound, the sting from it causing him to suck in a line of air through his teeth, but he screams bloody murder when Vox decides to experimentally stick a finger in.
Vox covers his mouth, muffling his agony. “Shh, shh. Wouldn't want your little princess to hear you, now would we?”
Charlie's alive?
“You're disgusting,” Alastor sneers once Vox removes his hand and he'd caught his breath.
The barb makes Vox drop his smile, but only for a second. All too quickly is he back to looking Alastor up and down like he's a fresh cut of prime venison hanging in the butcher’s window. Still, a win is a win, and in this moment, Alastor will take anything he can get.
“You're not exactly in the position to be calling anybody disgusting, sweetheart. Look at you.” Vox begins circling Alastor like the supervillain he believes he is. Alastor rolls his eyes. “The great Radio Demon, reduced to a coward who runs in fear when he gets a little scratch. You put yourself in this position, Alastor, not me. I'm just enjoying the view.” As he finishes his little monologue he wraps a hand around Alastor's waist and pulls him flush. Alastor grimaces and cranes his head back as far as it'll go, determined to treat Vox like the putrid odor he is.
“While I hope this little moment is vindicating for you, I think we both know it speaks more to cowardice who was willing to get their hands dirty despite the risks, and who wasn't.”
Alastor's head snaps ninety-degrees to the side when Vox slaps him.
“Oh, yeah? And maybe I'm just smart enough to not stick my hands in places they don't belong,” Vox sneers, grabbing his chin and pulling Alastor forward.
Despite himself, Alastor chuckles. “Oh, so he's a coward and a liar.”
Vox slaps him again.
“D-D-DO YOU KNZZ-OW HOW EASILY I COULD FU-FUCKING E-END YOU RIGHT NOW?!” Vox barks, digging his claws into Alastor's lower mandible as he glitches, shuttering between his face and bright, vertical multicolored bars and dark blue screens with walls of white text running across them that include Alastor's name, which otherwise disappear too quickly for him to properly read.
“Best hurry,” Alastor goads. “You wouldn't want to –” he hacks, making Vox release the grip he has on his face and step away as blood splatters from his mouth like viscous flecks of paint. “... wouldn't want to miss your big moment, who knows when you'll find an opportunity like this one again!”
When Vox doesn't answer, he glances up to find him looking at Alastor with wide, shocked eyes, his brows close-set, knitted together. Realizing he's been watched, Vox shakes his head, schooling his expression back into something acceptable.
“Actually,” he says cooly, stepping back into Alastor's personal space. “I think I just thought of a better idea.” Vox uses one hand to gently push Alastor's hair out of his face while using the backs of his index and middle finger on the other to smear some of the blood on his chin away with sadistic tenderness.
“Let's make a deal. I'll save your life, if you agree to join the Vees.”
Alastor stares at him, dumbfounded.
“And I'd get your soul, of course.”
After a beat, he erupts into laughter.
“Oh, oh Vox!” It hurts. Horribly. But he can't help himself. “That's– ah! Twenty years, and it's still just as funny a joke as the first time!”
As he laughs, a static charge builds in the air like lightning about to strike wet earth, his hair standing on ends as an excited tingling spreads from his hooves up to the tip of his nose. He opens his eyes the millisecond before Vox's weight slams into him like a truck and they both go down, Alastor striking the ground back-first while Vox lands on top of him before scrambling to his knees and pinning Alastor's wrists beside his head.
“IT'S NOT. A JOKE!” Vox yells, so loud it sounds as if he's blown out his speakers, Alastor's exposed skin a conduit for the electricity sparking between his antenna with bright, turquoise intensity; painting Alastor's face in a turbulent chiaroscuro.
His body goes rigid, unable to look away from the black and red, red and black spiral pulsating through Vox's left eye, dragging him in.
He doesn't even think Vox realizes he's done it.
“WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS?! ACTING LIKE YOU'RE S-S-S-SSZO MUCH BETTER THAN ME!” Vox's fingers dig into his wrists. His hands are shaking. “I BUILT AN EMPIRE. YOU CAN'T EVEN GET MORE THAN FIVE LISTERNS TO SLEEP THROUGH YOUR SHOW. YOU WORK FOR A FUCKING HOTEL. I OWN EVERY OTHER G-G-GGGODDAMN HOTEL IN THE PRIDE RING. EVERY BILLBOARD HAS MY FACE ON IT, EVERY STREETLIGHT, EVERY PHONE, IT ALL WORKS BECAUSE OF ME. I SEE EVERYTHING. YOU'RE NOTHING COMPARED TO ME. SO WHY–” Vox lifts Alastor's shoulders off the ground and slams them down again. “THE FUCK ARE YOU LIKE THIS?!”
He laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs but it sounds more like he's crying.
“No. No, no, no. I…I own you, just like I own everything else in this shithole city. Your soul is mine, Alastor, it was fucking made for me, you just haven't realized it.”
The energy spewing from Vox's eye increases, and Alastor begins to feel dizzy.
“But don't worry, I'd be happy to show you.”
…