Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Alastor was not overly familiar with Hell, given that he’d fallen into it not even a year ago, but there was one thing he knew perfectly well. Wherever he’d faded into was not somewhere he was meant to be.

It could be assumed that it was some sort of shadow-realm, given that he’d been trying to make a quick exit from Rosie’s nicely carpeted living room without making too much of a fuss. After all, the best way to avoid questions was to leave the moment his body decided to attempt to eject everything from his stomach. Alastor had thought that the strange affliction that seemed to hound him since his untimely death had finally chosen to leave him be, but, clearly, luck had abandoned him. 

And now, he found himself in a curious predicament. 

An oppressive darkness pushed at his body from all sides, and while he was accustomed to the weight of shadows, these did not feel the same as his own. Alastor’s shadows were under his command, little more than an extension of himself. What he was surrounded in was… watchful. Perhaps even wise. Most definitely old, at the very least.

Which were ridiculous conclusions to come to about the simple absence of light. And yet, the feeling of eyes upon him was impossible to shake. 

Something had pulled him here, he was sure.

With the ache in his stomach chased away, presumably by the cooling shade, there weren’t many options besides searching for an exit or waiting. So, to the first, less terminally boring end, Alastor pushed forward through the shimmering gloom. A single step had the deepest patches of shadows skittering, running in rivulets from his boots, pooling several feet from him. He tracked their movement, watching with ravenous interest as from them, a shape rose. One that looked suspiciously like a chair. 

And not just any chair. 

A throne. Grand and imposing, perched in the void and made of a mind-bending lack of anything purely physical. 

Curiouser and curiouser. 

Who would inhabit a realm of nothing only to build themselves a throne? It undoubtedly spoke to an inflated sense of self grandeur. That, or someone was particularly bitter about their lack of authority.

Alastor took another measured step, an ear flicking with the abruptly realised lack of sound. It was quite unnerving. There was only the occasional blip of static bleeding through what must have been crevices in the realm, similar to the one he slipped into. 

His movement caused no one to appear to claim their ostentatious seat, so Alastor took one final step. And with it, he made the mistake of pulling his eyes from the centerpiece in search of anything to sate his desire for entertainment. When he returned his gaze, having found nothing else of significance, there was a figure, cloaked in wispy, white robes, primly perched in the centre of the abyssal throne. 

Alastor froze, the iron control he’d fostered in life still being relearned by his flighty, cursed, hellish body. His ears pinned back while his heart picked up pace in his chest. The prey instincts that drove some withered section of his brain insisted that his utter lack of movement could prevent whatever perceived predator was in his midst from seeing him.

Of course, that was naught but a false hope.  

“Hello,” a voice drifted to him, lilting and high, echoing around the sheer nothingness surrounding them in a discordant manner that had Alastor’s tail flashing, even pinned down as it was. “Oh, my, aren’t you a fascinating one?” Her head tilted and she tsked, then said, “You don’t have very good manners, do you? Not even a greeting?”

Alastor bristled at that. He forced his ears into their upright position, pulled his shoulders back, and tucked his hands behind his back. The barb aimed at his decorum was most unwelcome, and he’d love nothing more than to show this woman just how unwelcome it was, but, whoever this was was old, and, more importantly, powerful. It wouldn’t do to make any less than a remarkable first impression. Though, perhaps that ship had sailed with the initial cowering. Still, he chose to try. 

“Hello,” Alastor called, still a good distance from the woman and her throne. “I didn’t think anyone else would be here.” 

It wasn’t a complete lie, but it wasn’t the full truth, either. He’d thought he’d wandered into an empty pocket, but the appearance of the throne had quickly dispelled that idea.

The woman set her chin on her fist and giggled, a horrible thing that sent shivers up Alastor’s every limb. “You’re funny, little deer.” 

Alastor kept his face from scrunching, but only just. He was certainly a deer, none could protest that. But ‘little’ was… off-putting, to say the least.

“Not many make it in here, and none survive for long,” she continued, in a casual manner that belied the meaning of her words. She shifted in her throne, leaning forward in a motion so fluid, it was dizzying. The edges of her form were blurry, as though she wasn’t quite real. “Tell me, who are you?”

Her unexpected, saccharine tone gave Alastor the sickening sense that he was in some sort of trap. That something was closing around him and it was barely out of his vision. And between her jaws did not seem a pleasant place to reside. Best to tread lightly, then.

“Alastor,” he said, sweeping into a dramatic bow. “Pleasure to meet you.” 

It was not, in fact, a pleasure to meet her, but he could play the part as well as any.

The woman hummed. She raised an eyebrow, a false film of interest settled upon her features. “And what silly title have you claimed, overlord?”

Oh, how fascinating. She could read into a soul. Or those one owned. Or something of that nature.

“The Radio Demon,” Alastor told her. He saw no point in beating around the bush, not if she knew half as much as he thought she might. And, as he was nothing if not willing to push a boundary or two, he bit the proverbial bullet and asked, “How did you know of my status? I don’t believe I extended that particular information to you.”

It was a dangerous game he was playing, asking questions. Alastor could feel it, scraping up the back of his neck. The jaws around him crept closed.

The woman laughed, every bit as hair-raising and awful as the first time. “I know much more than you’d think I could, pet.” She pushed herself out of her seat and the throne melted into wisps before blending seamlessly with the rest of the pitch darkness around them. She stepped toward Alastor. 

Alastor refused to give in to his instincts and step back in response. He lifted his chin and leveled his countenance, a tactic he used so often that it was little more than a reflex. Though he wouldn’t place his bets on it working with this competitor, he would not back down, especially not to someone who called him ‘pet’. How loathsome.

In response to his silent posturing, the woman continued, “I see far too much, despite this void I am trapped in.” She gestured widely to the space surrounding them, her head tipping back to stare into a ceiling that did not appear to exist. When she lowered her gaze, it was… fuller. As if she’d gained something from her brief contemplation of absolutely nothing.

Alastor tilted his head, ears dropping to one side. He narrowed his eyes, studying her. He was tempted to ask. Tempted to push. Tempted to see how much power this woman could hold. And whether it would snap back at him.

He leaned forward, his inquisitivy pricking at him like an incessant cactus. And he relented to temptation. 

“And how do you do that?” he asked, a glimmer of hunger slipping into his voice, unbidden.

She stepped toward him again. She was small, shorter than him, but he knew that she would prove to be a formidable opponent if the situation devolved. She could overpower him, he was certain of that. What a shame that Alastor was not one to surrender willingly. It would have surely been the smarter move.

“I’m not unlike you. I take souls, and through them, I watch,” she answered.

What an intriguing way to frame it. Perhaps Alastor could learn a thing or two from this woman. 

The mention of stolen souls was the well-known tipping point where most would have cracked. Would have broken into a dead sprint for the nearest exit. After all, one of Rosie’s first warnings upon deciding she enjoyed his company was that of the importance of keeping your soul within your possession. But, Alastor was captivated, enthralled with the opportunity for more.

So, he asked, “Who… are you?”

“Finally,” the woman breathed through a smile that was far from nice. Hardly even a smile, really. More of a baring of teeth. “You’re asking the right questions.”

The veil of polite etiquette fell, and she… phased forward, her body moving quickly enough that it appeared to smear, bleeding colour into the darkness. She took his jaw in her hand. A sharp peal of high-pitched static pierced the still air around them, shock and outrage driving it from Alastor’s frequency. Her skin was glacial, biting into his. He was pulled down to look into glowing, milky eyes. There was the stray thought that if he didn’t know any better, he’d say she was blind. 

And then, as if holding him in her hands wasn’t enough of an agitating insult, she began pushing him down with surprising physical strength. Alastor sank to his knees, unable to keep them locked against the pressure. He’d rather they’d have snapped than buckled. Dials ticked in his eyes, the rhythm echoing in his head. He scowled, though only as much as one could with a stitched in smile.

“Down, little deer,” she said, a nasty grin on her face as something manic pulsed in her sadistic stare. “I am The Root of All Evil, and you have made the grave misstep of wandering into my prison.” She took the base of his ear between her freezing fingers, and her deceptive gentility did nothing to prevent Alastor’s distasteful flinch. Her icy breath sent the fur on-end as she said right into it, “And you’ve brought me another soul as a treat.”

What?

Alastor blinked, fury subsiding, snarl dying in his throat, antlers shrinking back from where they’d grown. His mind stuttered, thoroughly thrown for a loop. His eyes slid left, then right. There was no one there other than him and The Root.

The Root’s gaze bore into his, searching for understanding. With nothing but confusion found behind his eyes, she began to laugh, and what started as a small tittering grew into a deranged cackle. She threw her head back, and when the fit was over, she used the hand that wasn’t violating his person to wipe a tear from her face. 

A tad dramatic for Alastor’s taste, but a good ploy, nonetheless. If he wasn’t pinned and undeniably overpowered, he would’ve rolled his eyes.

Instead, Alastor blinked again, a move that proved to be a mistake when he found that The Root had leaned down into his space, the tip of her nose practically touching his and her long, bluish-white hair hovering just within his peripheral. He tried to pull his head back, but there was nothing to be done. 

She whispered, in a droning death knell, her pale vision burning along every inch of skin it touched, “You’re carrying something precious. Something I need.” 

In a disgusting display of patronisation, she raised her hand between them and tapped Alastor lightly on the nose. His face screwed up in blatant displeasure, and an unsettling giggle was her only reply. 

Then, she delivered a crushing blow. 

“Someone I need.”

And, as a response, in what even he would consider a comical scramble for any semblance of an upper hand, Alastor said something stupid. 

“You must be off your rocker.” 

It was light, and jovial, and so deceptively unafraid. Or, it would have been, had he been talking to nearly anyone else. He knew that The Root saw right through him, but keeping up appearances was important just the same. Even when one was royally fucked.

“I’m afraid I don’t even possess the proper equipment for what you’re implying.” What he said was, once again, both true and not. He hadn’t in life, but death had a twisted sense of humour, and he bore no small amount of the expense.

The Root shook her head, tutting in a mockery of Alastor’s own unbothered front. “I think we both know that isn’t true.” She pulled away from him, but left her hand on his ear. She twirled the loose fur at the tip around her finger as she circled him, not unlike a wolf around a fawn. “I’ve had an eye on you. I knew you’d come in handy, even before that final night in the bayou.”

Ah. She’d seen everything, then. Alastor had not told a single soul what occurred in the deepest pits of his life, let alone the differences in his physical form. The reminder was most unwelcome. It had all been… unpleasant, and he did not wish to return to the memories. Better to let them rot among the fetid waters of suppression. 

The Root spoke again, preventing him from tipping into territory he did not wish to be in, “Have you ever thought about why that seal you tried when you first fell didn’t take?” 

The words bounced between them, and the sound of the echoing void was beginning to grate along Alastor’s mind. The lens of sense began to fall over her previous statement regarding the place’s survivability. 

Alastor hummed, refusing to give up the very last dregs of his dignity. It was the one thing remaining in his hand, though his grip was admittedly tenuous. 

“Not particularly,” he lied. Nonchalance was as good a shield as any, and it wouldn’t do to simply give the game away. Though, by this point, he was sure it didn’t matter much. 

The Root slid to a stop behind him, her hands landing on his shoulders. Alastor glanced down at them to find miniscule crystals of frost creeping from her fingertips, clinging to the fabric of his coat. 

“I could give you the power to complete the spell,” she offered, and it was sweet. Cloying, really. An obvious attempt at manipulation. Far too obvious.

Alastor scoffed, and this time, he did roll his eyes. If she thought that the promise of little more than a drop of power would entice him, then-

“And enough to ensure your continued safety.”

Alastor’s ear twitched. His brow wrinkled without his permission. He was perfectly capable of ensuring his own safety, of that he was certain. Why, just last week he’d eviscerated three considerably powerful overlords for daring to join the commentary on whether or not he possessed a tail. Of course, he did, but that was beside the point. 

The Root huffed, an amused streak creeping through it that tickled along his fur as it crawled up the back of his ear. “You are a stubborn doe, aren’t you?”

Composure was becoming more difficult to hold on to with every demeaning word. The thread holding his propriety was fraying, and it was fraying quickly. Alastor’s mouth parted in what was typically a deadly grin. The urge to draw blood grew once more, forming into the familiar beast that paced back and forth in his chest. He pinned it in place and called upon the last few scraps of his patience. 

“I’ve been told as much, yes,” Alastor replied, through teeth grit so harshly, he could taste the tang of iron. 

The Root hummed, then said, “And if I told you that the fawn in your womb would bring you nothing but trouble?”

Alastor tilted his head. He knew the answer he’d truly give, but he was playing a game of life and death, and his answer was not the one that mattered. In an effort to hedge his bets, he told another of his half-truths. 

“I’d say better to cut it out and be done with it.”

That was not the answer she wanted to hear. 

If Alastor had thought that being forced to his knees and toyed with like a mouse in the paws of a cat was the worst The Root could, or, rather, would do, he’d have been immeasurably wrong. Her face twisted into something indescribable, something so awful that even Alastor, near-eldritch horror that he was, could not properly perceive it. It was what he imagined looking into the face of a spiteful god may be like, though he couldn’t prove it. 

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” she said, and her words were twisted, woven with indecipherable screams and pleas. The knowledge that they belonged to those who had displeased her somewhere in their unfortunate lives was dropped into Alastor’s mind with no preamble. 

The Root’s form shifted, her slight, short frame growing into an almost blinding orb of white light, one that pulsed and fluttered and writhed. Bands of what appeared to be ancient runes slid into their places as rings surrounding her, and they constricted and loosened as they pleased, a dizzying thing to watch. A pressure ebbed and flowed at the back of Alastor’s skull, as if someone had found a conveniently placed rock and was now slamming it into the base of his head, over and over in an unbearable rhythm. Anxiety and pure, unfiltered dread flowed freely into him, both uninvited, both impossible to rid himself of. 

This was not something he was equipped to handle. He was the terror. He stalked and killed and ate. He was always the predator. Never the prey. Not anymore.

But, the pressure grew, the fear grew, and his tightly woven, yet loosely held sense of self shattered under the weight. In that moment, he would have done anything to avoid becoming one of those faceless, nameless voices, to avoid fear, to avoid a death that would be much more permanent. 

Somewhere past the cacophony, he wondered if this was what people called ‘getting a taste of your own medicine’. 

He laughed at his own thoughts, loud and deranged, and somehow, in a way that was fully unholy, the creature in front of him smiled. He laughed again, his mind refusing to comprehend any longer.

“It seems your blood is not as potent as I’d hoped,” the thing said, words compounding and shifting into each other. “I suppose a drop of mercy can be had.”

And with that, she shrunk to a more manageable size, the rings collapsing and folding into each other before disappearing with a pop that left Alastor’s overly sensitive ears ringing. She wasn’t quite the same as she was before, but she was humanoid, even if she tipped into an uncanny territory that raised Alastor’s fur and set his shoulders in a horribly tense position.

The Root’s re-formed hand slid toward him, causing that ancient, primal fear to spike in his chest. All she did was settle it in his hair. His head was tipped back in a frighteningly soft way, and his eyes met white, scarred ones. He stared into them, seeing lives and deaths, violence and peace, the beginning and end of the universe at once. 

Too much. Far too much for his mortal mind.

“I’ll tell you what, stubborn doe,” she said, and her voice was disjointed, the words barely coming out in the correct order, “there is a deal to be made, here.”

Deal… 

The word brushed against something in Alastor’s fractured psyche. Something important. A warning. Rosie’s warning. 

“What-” Alastor’s voice stumbled, tripping uselessly over a single syllable. He pushed out, “What do you want?”

Surprise flickered across The Root’s ethereally glowing face, as if she didn’t expect him to be able to speak. Then, it smoothed out into a sickening expression of exploitative pride.

“I want the child,” she said. Her fingers raked through his hair, a move that was far too comforting to come from a thing as disturbing as her.

“Why?” he asked, nausea bubbling in his gut. Something blinked in his head, a light on some buried switchboard. Caution, it said. Questions can be dangerous. 

“That is my concern.” Her halo of light flared, and Alastor recoiled, mind having hardly begun to heal from her all-too-recent display. The glare died, and her false kindness returned. Her voice was soft with repulsively manufactured regret when she said, “Of course, I will also require your soul.”

The jaws around his throat tightened, tips of the teeth grazing his skin.

“And what- what are you offering in return?” Alastor panted out, his ability to think and speak slowly recovering. 

Time. If he could buy himself time, perhaps he could find a door, a way out.

“Power,” she answered. She slid a sharp nail down the side of his jaw, and he shuddered. “And… a shield, to prevent any… wandering eyes.”

Wandering eyes? Who would have an interest in him? She had mentioned safety earlier, hadn’t she? Perhaps the two were connected. 

So, he asked the only logical question he could. 

“Whose wandering eyes?”

The corners of The Root’s mouth ticked up, those smoldering embers of pride sparking. “You’re quite put together for a mortal subjected to my true form. It’s almost… impressive. As is your ability to eventually ask the correct questions.”

Alastor’s exhausted mind struggled, skipping like an old radio, but the words were processed, and, in what was a pale shadow of his usual demeanour, he raised an eyebrow. This woman certainly had a way of running circles around the point.

“The child you’re carrying will be very powerful,” she said, her thumb brushing gently along the crest of his cheekbone. A glint appeared in her eyes, as if her next words were a particularly enjoyable royal flush. “It would be a shame if someone such as Lucifer were to notice.”

Confusion wrinkled Alastor’s brow, his head tilting as much as it could with The Root’s hand still intertwined with his hair.

“I doubt he’d take kindly to someone usurping his throne. Or his heir.”

Understanding dawned on Alastor like a destructive comet on the horizon. Any hope of a back door withered and died, nothing but dust on a dry wind.

The jaws snapped shut.

And with them snapped what few strings were left of Alastor’s resolve. The Root would not allow him to simply rid himself of the thing within him, that much was clear. And he could not risk Lucifer’s wrath. In the best case, he’d hand the still-screaming thing off to her as soon as it was born and be done with it. He’d be on a detestable chain, but those could be broken, he was sure. Even ones connected to things as old and powerful as her. He could handle it. He always did.

His likely regrettable decision made, Alastor took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and sat up on his knees as much as he could. He lifted his chin as the fingers fell from his hair. The Root stepped back, allowing him the miniscule dignity of standing as he threw his soul to the wolf. His rise from the floor was graceless, coordination as wrecked as his mind, his self respect, his pride, his freedom. 

Her hand hovered between them, vacant and waiting.

Against all warning, against all self-preserving instinct, and against nearly all rationality, Alastor thrust his open palm toward the being towering above him. 

“It’s a deal.”

An impossibly frigid hand wrapped around his, spreading fine, needle-like crystals of ice up his arm and along his shoulder. He inhaled sharply, and his exhale was nothing but a puff of vapor. The cold dropped into his stomach like iron, a weight settling there like nothing he’d ever experienced. 

And then that voice came, laden with poor souls who’d made even poorer deals. 

It didn’t reach his ears. Not like it did before. No, this time, the words dripped directly into his mind, each one jagged and sharp, slicing away at what precious few shreds of his sanity had been rebuilt. 

“Wonderful,” it said, “Although, I seem to have neglected to mention a detail or two.” 

Satisfaction, though not his own, flooded Alastor’s mind, sliding along a bridge that had been formed with the deal.

The Root said, “You’ll need to keep her.”

Alastor’s ears twitched in irritation as his eyes narrowed. He barely opened his mouth to protest before The Root’s voice scraped along his still-healing nerves and he cringed into silence. 

“This realm is not built for things of existence. I cannot keep her here. Not without risking damage to what I need. You will raise her, and you will raise her well, doe.”

A sharp squeal split the air, and Alastor winced at his own reaction, squeezing his eyes shut and pinning his ears, as if that could shield him. The pressure in his head returned, climbing steadily higher, and, in a moment of detestable weakness, Alastor said, “Yes. I understand.”

And with that, everything stopped. The pressure receded, the ice vanished, and the gritty static of the unrestrained void dropped away. The only trace that remained was the diminutive kernel of frozen fear nestled deep in the alcove of his spine. 

The abrupt lack of stimulation sent Alastor reeling, and it wasn’t for another few seconds that he opened his eyes and found himself staring into the brick wall of a dark, dingy alley. He was slumped on the dirty asphalt of the street, back pressed into more bricks, ones just as uncomfortable as they looked. 

Alastor’s shoulders finally fell, his weight collapsing into the solid presence of the wall behind him. Relief, smooth and warm, slipped along his tired nerves. What an odd thing, to be relieved at finding yourself in Hell.

Move, he told himself. Get up. Go find Rosie. Sort out this utter mess you’ve made. 

Alastor did not move. He sat, a mere bundle of clothes and flesh in the alley, for much longer than he’d ever ordinarily allow himself to. 

Until a steel door banged open beside him, out of which a very inebriated sinner stumbled. The man took two unsteady steps before tripping over Alastor’s extended leg. Alastor barely felt the impact.

“Hey- wha’s… wha’s in m’ alley?” came the wretched sound of a drunken sinner. 

The words, though they were heard, meant nothing to Alastor. So, they went ignored.

“Ohhhh, a pretty- pretty deer,” the man drawled. Then, he turned to the door, flung it wide open, and called inside, “Boys,” a horrible laugh echoed across the brick, “got a pretty thing out here! Come- come help me- help me…” a frustrated grunt, “y’know what I mean!”

The next thing Alastor truly registered was hands in the lapels of his coat. Clumsy fingers attempting to undo the buttons. Loud, drunken laughs, more than one. 

The beast within him, drained as it was, hissed and spit and told him he should tear them apart. Should teach them a lesson their worthless, pathetic souls would never forget. Make them into pretty embellishments on every broadcast.

But, he was exhausted. Had so little power to pull from. His mind a messy tangle of existential horror and the burning chain clamped around his neck. 

Not to mention the child.

The child. 

And it had happened before. More times than he’d ever admit, if he peered into the hated well of honesty. 

What were a few more times in Hell? Nothing, truly. Nothing at all.

So, he sat there, deep in his utter lack of motivation, his overwhelming apathy, perfectly content to let this be another night he added to the swamp, to the box he’d never open. 

Although, he couldn’t help but notice, as uncoordinated hands skittered over his face, the buttons of his shirt, the waistband of his pants, tugged roughly at his ears, something seemed to care. The beast was entrenched in slumber, but elsewhere, there was a shred of ire, of passion, of pure, hearty bloodlust. 

The kernel of frost in the pit of his stomach began to tremble, expanding outward, until-

Until a drop of something warm and wet hit his cheek. 

Disgusting. 

He reached up to wipe it away. They didn’t even offer him the courtesy of-

Blood.

It was blood.

Now, where did that come from? He hadn’t done that, had he? He couldn’t recall…

His senses slammed back into him in a horrid rush, ears ringing. The smell of iron hung heavy in the air, as soothing to Alastor as it was unsettling. His eyes focussed, and he saw nothing short of absolute destruction; a pool of gore, blood tracking cracks in the asphalt and splattered on the walls while the nearby windows were shattered, the metal door torn from its hinges and shredded into fine strips.

There were bodies, three of them, strewn about the street. And when Alastor looked up, another hung from the sharp spikes of a street lamp, skewered in multiple unsavoury places. He watched as another drop of blood formed, clinging to the wrought iron of the lamp before plummeting and landing with a wet splat on his forehead.

Fascinating. Who had-

Ah. 

A shadow hung in the mouth of the alley, guarding the yawning opening that led to the main road. It was grinning, sharp and angry and much like him. In fact, with the ears, the antlers, and the stature, it appeared to be him. 

Alastor tilted his head. The shadow copied him with a half second delay. He let his ears drop. Again, the shadow followed. 

Alastor hummed. He picked himself up off the ground, his energy restored with a snap of pure curiosity. The shadow stayed put, but he could feel its glowing green gaze tracking every move he made as he approached it. 

His eyes flicked up, to the body hanging from the only source of light nearby. He gestured to it, and asked, “Was that you?”

The shade nodded and made a rumbling, chittering sound, like the clicks and pops produced by a poor receiver. Alastor turned on his heel and waved at the other crumpled mounds of flesh that could have once been sinners. 

“And those?”

Again, pops and clicks. 

A near-silent whoosh echoed behind him, and the shadow rose from the asphalt in front of him. It tilted its head, its antlers branched out to an impressive degree and its smile fallen to a mere line. It extended one clawed hand toward him, and, despite what may have been his better judgement, Alastor met it with his own. His palm pressed to an odd sensation of nothing but cool. If he pushed any harder, his hand might’ve passed right through.

The word for it was, perhaps, ephemeral.

“Why?” he asked it.

And, in answer to that question, it did the strangest thing, yet. It frowned. How interesting that his shadow could frown and he could not. 

It chittered again, then pulled away from his hand and flicked its own up and down the length of his body. When Alastor’s only response was the furrowing of his brows, it huffed without sound and brought its arms together in a pantomime of… a cradle. 

Alastor hummed again, and asked, “You’re to protect the child?”

The shade tilted its head left and right, as if saying sort of. 

Alastor recalled The Root’s earlier words, ‘And enough to ensure your continued safety.’

“Myself, then?”

Another gesture to mean sort of. 

Alastor tsked. This road of conversation clearly led to nothing but the same answer. He tried a different path.

“Do you belong to her?”

This time, he got a firm shake of the head. The shadow pointed to itself, then back to him. A luminescent green trail followed the tip of its finger, creating a thread between them. It was his, and his alone.

“Were you created by her?”

Another shake of the head.

“Where… did you come from?”

A shrug.

Hm. Alastor’s eyes drifted along the creature in front of him, cataloguing the shade. It appeared as though he had acquired a companion. He glanced behind the shadow’s shoulder to the puddles of various organs. And a rather ruthless companion, at that. One could even call it useful. 

As Alastor studied the remains, thoughts of what to do pinging about, an idea sprung forth. A clever, devious, powerful idea. Something that would earn him respect. 

He pulled his attention back to the shadow, and asked, “I don’t suppose you kept their souls?”

The shadow’s grin cracked into an eerie thing, and it nodded fervently. It held out its hands, and from them, four ghostly white orbs rose, twining around its fingers in a frantic manner. Each time one made to escape, it was wrangled by a loop of ethereal green, pulled back into an existence it longed to leave behind.

 Alastor’s grin stretched to meet his silhouette’s, and he said, “Wonderful.” Static rose in the air, prickling along his skin. “After all,” his voice continued without the assistance of his mouth, his teeth flashing with light and painting the dim alley in gold, “an example simply must be made.”

~~~

Four months. 

Four months since Alastor had trapped himself in a cage. Four months since his first broadcast that consisted of nothing but damned wailing. Four months since he’d spoken to anyone but a victim. 

And only two months since he’d started to… show. 

He’d become somewhat of a recluse, due to the way the protrusion sat so starkly on his thin frame, rarely leaving his house on the outskirts of Cannibal Town. The one exception to his solitude was to amuse himself by tempting unfortunate men into presenting him with delicious opportunities for bloodshed. Though, those excursions had dwindled when he realised the sole reason he was attracting attention was because of his… situation. 

Alastor found it repulsive, the way they leered at him, as if he were some sort of easy target. He found it more repulsive that the issue would grow worse with time. It caused an itch in his teeth, one that asked for brutality; but, despite his instinctive desire to simply slaughter anyone who laid that sort of eye on him, he understood that the further he progressed, the less advisable that response would become.

So, he hid in the safety of his home, leaving exclusively in the event of needing something to eat, which was an increasingly common occurrence. Ever since his stomach began to cooperate, he’d been absolutely famished, as if his body were making up for what it had lost. And, on top of that, to make matters all the more complicated, the… thing within him accepted little besides meat. Fresh, preferably raw, barely dead meat that came from two sources: sinners or twisted, Hellish deer.

And so, when Alastor checked his stock that morning in search of just a morsel of something satisfactory only to be faced with a great deal of nothing, he resigned himself to a quick venture outdoors. If he was lucky, something, or, rather, someone would practically be on his doorstep. 

He clambered out of the root cellar in his basement, his shifting center of gravity and the still-unusual sensation of hooves hindering his ability to navigate the shallow steps. It was irksome, struggling to do something as simple as walk. But, even with the infuriating difficulty, he made it to the front door, where he shoved his cursed hooves into a pair of shoes, whichever were closest. There was a possibility they didn’t match. Alastor didn’t care. 

He thought perhaps he’d ‘woken up on the wrong side of the bed’, as it were. Every light was too bright, every sound too loud, and every minute annoyance was dialed to an unbearable degree. It was as if the world saw fit to cast a cloud over this day, and Alastor did not appreciate it.

He yanked his loosest, longest coat from the coat rack, then flung the door open and stalked out of it. It swung quietly shut behind him, not even giving him the gratification of a good slam. He tugged the heavy, woolen coat on harshly, claws scratching against the fabric in a way that was almost enough to afford him a drop of calm.

Violence.

He wanted violence.

And violence meant that the small, convenient herd of deer in the clearing surrounding his home would not do. It wouldn’t do at all. 

He craved a hunt. A proper one.

Alastor growled at the herd, which did nothing but cause their tails to flash. He fended off the instinct telling him to do the same, to warn others that didn’t exist. He descended the steps of his porch, then leaned forward and snapped his teeth in their direction. The deer scattered at that, darting into the gnarled, drooping trees of the forest. 

Alastor huffed. It seemed his frequent bouts of stalking and eating the local deer were beginning to leave an impression. Good. He’d hate for those less strenuous hunts to become boring. 

With his petty, unnecessary territory dispute settled, he dropped into shadow. He flew along the forest floor, minding even the slightest seam, unwilling to pay a visit to The Root. He was not in the mood. She would drag him in eventually, he was sure, but if she wasn’t calling, he wasn’t going to answer.

Alastor slid into the familiar streets of Cannibal Town before he swung to the right, closer to the Doomsday District. Suitable prey was easiest to find there, though it was farther away. Not to mention that he doubted Rosie would appreciate him eating her citizens. 

He pulled himself from the void on the lip of the district, where caution was useful, but not required. He had no patience for caution today. The dark static encompassing his vision faded away at a leisurely pace, and it was disorienting to find the streets entirely devoid of sinners. 

Alastor blinked. He tilted his head. Slow days were rare in Hell, but not impossible. This, however, seemed to be more than a slow day. He sunk back into shadow, zipping about the asphalt, this time using his silhouette to search each alley and side road. There was no one. 

Or, at least, no one outdoors.

Curious, Alastor slipped into a high-rise, concrete apartment building. He chose a door at random and slid under it. There was no one in the living room, kitchen, or cramped dining area. He went down the hall, and, again, slid under a random door. 

Trembling breath gave away the room’s occupied state immediately, loud and bothersome to Alastor’s ears. There was a single soul, crouched in the very corner, tucked behind a flimsy twin bed. 

They were muttering to themselves, something about angels and death.

Nonsense, Alastor was sure. He wasn’t convinced angels existed, let alone deadly ones. No, if they did exist, they’d be insufferable, cotton candy things, floating on their pretentious clouds.

He heaved a sigh, writing this particular apartment off as containing no information besides the ramblings of a fool. 

He left the unit and tried the one across from the first. 

That one, too, appeared empty. Still, he popped into each room, and, once again, found the sinners that lived there crouched in the bedroom, tucked into a closet with the door pulled firmly shut. There were two, a parent and a child. 

How the child existed, Alastor couldn’t say, but that was not his concern. His concern was the way the parent was clutching their child, the way they stroked their hair, the tears tracking down both of their faces. 

The fear was his concern.

What reason for fear did sinners have? It was Hell, and yes, there was anxiety, anger, pain. But rarely fear. Especially not this fear. Not the sort that comes with the promise of an unending death. Not mortal fear. 

Alastor’s curiosity shriveled and died in his chest. Whatever these sinners were so terrified of was not something he was willing to discover. He sped out of the apartment and then out the main door, exiting the building to the unchanged empty streets. 

As he scanned the slice of city for any signs of normalcy, the idea occurred that this could be an affliction contained to this particular district. With that in mind, he turned and headed back toward Cannibal Town. 

Rosie would have answers. 

She had to.

There had to be a reason for all of this, after all.

He made it only a few blocks before a streak of blinding light forced him out of his comfortable, nonexistent state of being. He was thrown from the darkness, pushed forcefully into reality. His ears squealed and his eyes blurred, senses rebelling against the sudden onslaught.

Somewhere above him, a woman yelled, “That vile thing is pregnant! How?”

A muffled response from a man, quieter, “Fuck, Lute, I don’t fucking know. Just kill it.”

Dimly, the notion that he was said ‘vile thing’ registered, and, without knowing what he was doing, Alastor was up and running, pulled along by that icy grain in the back of his spine. He was yanked this way and that, then shoved unceremoniously back into the void, where he continued to be piloted around. His stomach began to revolt, the nauseating movement so far from the painstakingly practiced way he typically navigated his shadows.

‘Hush,’ a voice echoed in his mind, increasing the urge to vomit, ‘Do you wish to live, doe?’

The Root. The Root was dragging him along, pulling him wherever she pleased. Alastor hissed into the darkness and bared his teeth, memories of his last visit to her floating through his scattered thoughts. 

‘Don’t be so dramatic, little one,’ she said, ‘I’m to ensure your safety, remember? I’m just doing what I promised.’

Horrifically, she was correct. But, he could not go back to that void, not yet. Not when it was all so fresh. Four months had done next to nothing to help him forget that day, and he did not want a repeat.

‘Fine.’

In a rude, abrupt accessory to her response, Alastor was ripped from the shadows and spat out into an alley, one he didn’t recognise. He stumbled, bare hooves slipping on smooth cobblestones. He caught himself on the nearest wall, narrowly managing to remain upright.

Past the haze of pure, prey-driven panic that was digging into his bones, he had the sense to wonder when in the world he’d lost his shoes.

Distantly, the voice of the woman from the Doomsday District called, “Find it! Cut out the demon spawn before it has a chance to breathe!”

Then, the man again, “Jesus, Lute. Bit much, don’t you think?”

The woman – Lute – only growled. 

Alastor’s ears twitched toward the source of the voices, pinning when the sound of heavy wingbeats drew closer. He curled into himself, arms wrapping around his midsection. His feelings for the fetus inside him were not strong, barely even apathetic, but the threat of being cut open, of having it torn from him before it even existed, sent something instinctive in him into a thrashing, hissing panic.

He sank into a crouch, head bowed and eyes closed so tightly that sparks wriggled in his vision. If he let his thoughts out of his grasp for more than a moment, they strayed into memories. Ones of soft dirt and sharp roots under his feet, his shoulders hitting the rough bark of twisted trees. Of a bayou that was once his home and was now a place to be buried and forgotten completely. 

He couldn’t make sense of the babbling of whoever was chasing him anymore, and it dialed in and out of his hearing. Each time it faded in, it was louder. They were closing in.

Run. He had to run. Had to keep himself safe. Had to keep the child safe.

Alastor surged upward, very nearly losing his balance, then darted out of the alley and crept along the towering walls of skyscrapers, attempting to avoid being spotted. He moved like that for a handful of streets, mind phasing in and out of a different chase, a different life, before the deepest recesses of panic wore off enough for him to remember that he had a much easier way to travel. His next step let him flow into the ground, where he allowed his silhouette to take over, his muttering mouth relentlessly repeating his simple request.

“Take me to Rosie.”

If he’d been running on more than just high emotions, adrenaline, and panic, he would have stopped to weigh the consequences of that action, but all higher functions had been allocated to one thing. Survival. 

Alastor’s shade obeyed, and it was in less than five minutes that he found himself lying face-up on the cold, polished tiles of Rosie’s Emporium. He blinked at the delicately carved ceiling a few times, then shut his eyes and listened, unpinning his ears in an endeavour to hear through the glass of the windows.

No wingbeats. No furious screeches from Lute. No casual responses from the man who followed her.

He was safe. 

Or, as safe as he could be in the midst of whatever the fuck was happening.

Alastor opened his eyes again and swung them around the main lobby of the building. Not a soul was there. 

With the reassuring lack of an audience, he took several heaving breaths, his heart pumping wildly. Little by little, his body began to believe that it was intact and protected, and a calm crept over him like a tide until he was overwhelmed with the urge to sleep, possibly for days. 

But, beneath the adrenaline crash and the coddling hands of rest, the drone of hunger pulsed on, his running and power usage having only made it worse. And that… well, that was just positively infuriating.

All of this utter bullshit, and in the end, he still wouldn’t get the satisfaction of a hunt. 

His singular consolation prize was that he was in the correct place to get his hands on fresh meat, regardless. 

Though, to do that, he’d need to get up. And that was so much less appealing than merely falling asleep on the floor. His eyes drifted shut, and he resigned himself to going hungry and waking up with a previously-thought-impossible additional layer of irritability.

Of course, he didn’t quite manage to drift off, as that would’ve been too indulgent for this catastrophe of a day. No, instead, he was interrupted by a loud, dramatic gasp.

Alastor’s eyes flew open, fixing on none other than Rosie looming over him, hand over her mouth and her face skewed with worry.

“Alastor!” she exclaimed, and he fought the hiss bubbling from his throat.

Too loud. Much too fucking loud.

He raised a hand to his forehead, gracelessly pushing it into a blooming ache that stemmed from his temple. The ache grew as Rosie spoke again at that horrid volume.

“Are you alright?” She crouched beside him, her maroon skirts fanning out around her with a fwoosh. “There’s an extermination out there! What were you thinkin’, comin’ all the way here?”

Extermination. It was a fitting word, Alastor supposed, for the thing he’d just escaped from. The fear of the sinners in the apartments slotted into place. As did the muttering about angels. 

His curiosity prodded him, questions forming in the back of his head. Alastor shooed them away. Information could be acquired at a later date. All he wanted at that moment was the largest cut of whatever sinner Rosie had in stock and a bed.

So, he ignored her second question entirely and answered the first.

“Hungry.” The word was deep, entrenched in static, and hardly comprehensible. 

But, it was a word Rosie was thankfully familiar with, and her only response was to shoot him a strange look before she rose from the floor and disappeared from his view. 

She might have been gone hours or minutes. Alastor couldn’t tell. His sense of time seemed to be magnified, both slipping away and dragging out. 

When Rosie returned, a plate in her hands, he watched her approach, stare flitting between the fine china she carried and her open, bewildered expression. He wished she had the forethought to bring something less valuable, as his surely unsteady hands were not entirely reliable.

Rosie crouched beside him again, then wormed her unoccupied hand under his shoulder, pressing it flat to his back. The beast woke in his chest at the unsanctioned contact, very much alert, though it was not yet aggressive. He felt the frost in him twinge, and from the way Rosie stiffened with a barely audible gasp, he knew his shadow had sprung from its usual inanimacy. But, even with her rightfully wary eyes trained on the grinning shade behind him, she helped push him into a position that was just upright enough to eat without choking. 

It was an easy thing for her to do, as if he weighed next to nothing. He found it odd that despite carrying a whole secondary life, he was still so light. Surely, he should be more difficult to lift, especially with how far he was into this… pregnancy. Or perhaps the deciding factor was Rosie’s surprising strength rather than anything to do with himself.

Alastor blinked and tore himself from his head, finally breaking the stare that had been boring into Rosie’s face. He lifted his hands to find that they were, indeed, trembling. He placed them palm-up on his lap, and the plate was lowered into them.

The smell hit him first, wafting to him on some unaddressed draft. His mouth began to water.

In the few seconds it took for Rosie to offer him the silverware she’d pulled from her skirts’ pockets, he’d already speared a neat cube of meat with a claw and popped it into his mouth. 

“Oh,” she said, a vaguely stunned tone to her voice, “I suppose that works.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Alastor watched her watch him for a few seconds, utensils in hand, before she seemed to remember that staring was rude. She tucked the fork and knife back into the plush folds of her dress and turned her head, pretending that the stained glass she looked at every day was much more interesting than it was. 

Alastor devoured the pieces of expertly cut meat, and with the consumption came a sharp, bodily awareness. A sense of not-quite-embarrassment trickled down his spine, and his ears twitched as he prevented them from falling to an awkward angle. His ideals of decorum were swiftly recalled, and he realised that his relationship with this woman whose home he’d barged into and who he’d immediately demanded food from was scarcely there. It certainly wasn’t polite behaviour, much less an example of who he’d been raised to be.

He tried his best to catch her eye in an endeavour to apologise with nothing besides the pleading look on his face. If his hindbrain would allow it, he’d pause his voracious, undignified feast and apologise in a more acceptable way, but that was not currently a play in his hand.

Only once everything was gone from the plate, including any traces of blood – which, mortifyingly, he’d licked from the ceramic – did he feel as though he could speak. 

The first words out of his messy, bloodstained mouth were, “I deeply apologise.”

Rosie finally turned back to him and said, “Oh, that’s- that’s alright, dear.” Her head cocked to what appeared to be an uncomfortable degree, and she continued, “It looks as though you… needed it.”

It was difficult to trace her gaze, as her eyes were nothing but voids, but Alastor made his best approximation and found that it landed around his midsection. Where his coat had fallen open and not a thing but his tight undershirt was between the outside world and the obvious curve of his stomach. He curled into himself, absolute humiliation causing the shadows to pool around him, ready to drag him back to his house, which he was wholly considering never leaving again.

“Hey!”

Rosie’s shout paused his attempt to leave, and he sat there, half real, half not, as she said, “You are not going back out there! Not in that state!”

Alastor heartily disagreed. The shadows began tugging at him anew. He would go back out there, back out to the barren streets, and this time, he’d stay hidden. 

Except… the angels had pulled him from the shadows once. If they did it again, he’d be caught, and if he was caught, they’d-

“Cut out the demon spawn!” 

Lute’s voice rang in his head, a perfect copy. It was tinged with static in a peculiar way, and Rosie’s hands on his shoulders, physically pulling him from his half-gone state, had him thinking that perhaps he’d played that particular audio clip aloud rather than to himself. 

“No,” Rosie said, firm and inarguable. “You’re gonna stay put if I have to tie you to somethin’, you hear?” A few seconds of silence passed, then she said, “Alastor?”

Alastor hummed, the only acknowledgement she’d get out of him. He was not pleased with this development. Not one bit. After all, the best way to resolve an awkward moment was to leave. And this was most definitely an awkward moment.

“I’m not tryin’ to embarrass you.” 

Fingers slid along his jaw, and Alastor had to push the memory of The Root doing the same into the corner of his mind. His head was tilted up to look at Rosie, who was crouched in front of him, worry pinching her expression. His blank, unfocussed eyes settled somewhere between her brows. 

“But… Alastor, how did this happen? And why in the world were you out there?”

Alastor decided to answer the easy question first.

“I was hungry,” he said, simply. 

Rosie raised an eyebrow at him. 

He continued, “I had nothing left in my food storage.” 

Rosie sighed and shook her head. 

“I didn’t know about this… extermination,” Alastor snapped, addressing the crux of the problem.

At that, Rosie blinked, genuine shock on her features. “How?” she asked. “Everyone knows about the exterminations. You said you’ve been here since December of ‘33! They’re always on January 1st.”

Alastor hesitated, mouth opening and closing a few times. Eventually, he said, “I was… on the outskirts, at first. It took me weeks to find any signs of others, let alone Pentagram City.”

Rosie stared at him for a bit before she nodded, seeming to find that excuse acceptable. Then, her face softened, and she asked the question Alastor might rather die than answer.

“And… the pregnancy?”

Alastor scoffed and tore himself from her grip, gnashing his teeth at the floor. Why she thought this was worth any of her concern was beyond him. Could she not leave him be? What difference did the existence of an unwanted child make to her?

Although… perhaps she had information that could be of use to him. She must know someone with a child or two. Cannibal Town was full of families, and Rosie was close with the majority of her people. 

Was the information worth it? Was her guidance worth a conversation that made him want nothing more than to set himself on fire?

Of course it was. 

Alastor knew next to nothing about children, though he had more knowledge on the subject of birth than others might assume. He couldn’t be expected to adequately care for one, not on his own.

So, Alastor took a heavy, ragged breath. He swallowed down the sharp, stinging pride in his throat, and he said, in a rough, stuttered whisper, “It wasn’t… wanted. I didn’t even think it was possible for me to… end up in this situation.” Rosie’s hand settled softly on his forearm, offering comfort that felt more like judgement. He avoided her attempts to catch his eyes as if it were his profession. “It wasn’t possible. I didn’t have- I lacked the right… equipment.” 

There was a long, prickling moment of quiet. Alastor’s jaw worked without producing sound, straining muscles he should be accustomed to using. 

“I assume Hell took care of that,” Alastor finished, in a voice that was hardly audible.

Rosie let the explanation linger, wafting in the air like cheap perfume. The silence bit at Alastor’s skin, tearing patches of him away to leave him a sad, detestable thing slumped on the floor.

“And when you say it was unwanted, you mean…” Her words were unbearably tender, full of the pity that Alastor had been so desperate to avoid. 

He hated it.

But… 

But, her hand was warm through the fabric of his coat, her voice so kind and steady, and it stirred memories of a safer place, a safer person. And that small, miniscule reminder was all Alastor needed to give in and fall toward her, burying his face in her silky dress with a tiny, upset whimper. He nodded, the smooth rustling of her skirts echoing in his ears. 

“Oh, Alastor,” Rosie breathed. Her gentle fingers slid into his hair, combing it away from his face while her nails scratched lightly at his scalp. It was so… soothing. So soothing, in a way that Alastor hadn’t had the privilege of in years.

He squeezed his eyes shut, willing the tears forming in them to vanish, to quit exposing every last piece of him. They wouldn’t stop. He tried to pull away, but Rosie pinned him in place with a hand to the back of his head.

“No, no, it’s okay.”

“The silk,” Alastor murmured, voice cracking miserably. 

Rosie heaved a sigh, her chest rising and falling beneath him, breath tickling the tips of his ears. “It’s alright. I have others.”

How pathetic he was, sobbing into the lap of a woman he scarcely knew after giving her the barest details of the wretched things he hadn’t had the strength to stop. He was even ruining her clothing in the process. Why she was still tolerating him at this point was not something Alastor could begin to fathom. He would have lost his temper ages ago.

“I’m sorry,” Rosie said, and Alastor fisted his hands into the material below them. “I’m sorry that it happened at all, but I’m more sorry for makin’ you tell me.” Her fingers stopped in his hair. “I shouldn’t’ve pushed.”

Alastor’s only response was to shove his head up into her hands, wanting the light serenity of her touches to come back. Her apology was unnecessary. He’d never have blamed her in the first place.

“Would you like to rest somewhere more comfortable? I have guest rooms available,” she said, and she heeded his request for that horrible thing called affection, resuming her soft petting.

Alastor nodded again.

There was shifting around him, then a pause. Rosie said, “I could carry you, if you want? The room is upstairs.”

Could he make it up the long flight of marble steps? 

No, almost certainly not. 

It looked as though he’d found a new low to sink to, asking a lady to carry him up some stairs like a thorny, wilted flower. 

He nodded once, a sharp jerk of his head. 

Arms closed around him, one draped along his upper back and the other beneath his knees. He was lifted, and his head dropped against the padded shoulder of Rosie’s bodice, temple pressed to the deep red silk. Somehow, tears still crept from his waterline, dripping down to bleed colour from the fabric. It was melancholy, watching all those fine threads become unwearable.

Rosie started up the steps, each one rocking Alastor back and forth in a lulling motion. He faded into a state of not quite awake, not quite asleep, at least until he was set on a bed. The close contact was dropped, and another of those pitiable whines fled his mouth. He didn’t want the touch to stop. Not when it was safe. 

“Okay,” Rosie muttered under her breath, “Let’s get that coat off, alright? Wouldn’t want you to overheat.” 

Alastor made a vague noise of acknowledgement. She tugged the lapels away from his collarbones and he dutifully pulled his arms from the warm sleeves. The cool air of the room hit him and he shrank in on himself to get away from it, which made Rosie tut. There was rustling at the end of the bed, and the sheets below him shifted. 

The sound and movement abruptly stopped, and Rosie said, “Oh, the blood. One second, I’ll be right back.” 

Alastor heard a drawer to his left open, then shut. A doorhinge squeaked, though he never heard the click of it closing. There was the sound of running water, and not long after, a warm, damp cloth was pressed to the corner of his loathsome, stitched-in smile. His eyes fluttered open and he raised his hand to try to take it, but it was gently pushed aside.

“It’s alright, I got it.”

Alastor didn’t have the energy to argue. 

His face was delicately wiped clean of the blood from earlier, like a mother would do for her child. Rosie’s eyebrows were pinched in attentive concentration the entire time, the incandescent bulb behind her haloing her in golden light. 

When she deemed her self-appointed job complete, she lightly guided him to lie down. A thick comforter was pulled up to his shoulders, and Rosie patted him on the chest before turning and heading for the door, finally content to leave him be. Her hand fell upon the handle. She hesitated.

“You know,” her voice floated to him, hushed and dreamlike, “I can help you out. With the… with the baby.”

“Yes,” Alastor said, almost before she got the words out. “...Thank you.”

A moment of peaceful silence.

“Of course.”

Rosie opened the door, then shut it quietly, closing him in a bubble of carefully created calm. Alastor turned onto his side, one arm wrapped tightly around his abdomen. He stared into the wallpaper, gilded filigree patterns peeling away from it to dance with the thoughts in his head.

He made a decision, one that was hasty and inadvisable. 

“I will love you,” he whispered to the open air. It was harsher than a declaration of love should be. “Even if it pulls me apart.”

It was an awful promise to make, full of words he never should have spoken. But, for the first time, he didn’t quite care. He hadn’t asked for the child, hadn’t hoped and prayed for a miracle like so many others. It didn’t matter. It existed, and, ultimately, deep in a place he’d never admit he had, a singular grain of affection for the thing had taken root. 

Besides, there was a miniscule chance that perhaps he believed that a child should be loved. Even an unwanted one.

So, he made the promise, regrettable as it may be. 

And he intended to keep it. No matter the cost. 

~~~

January, February, March, April, May, and half of June all ticked by in a horrible crawl. It was five and a half months of being sequestered away with overwhelming emotions, physical pain, and detestable changes to his body. He’d somehow produced breasts, for God’s sake! Not to mention the cravings. Good lord, the cravings. They’d gone from the acceptable choice of fresh meat to the horrid one of any and everything sweet. Alastor had never consumed more sugar in his entire existence, and it was a wonder that his teeth remained firmly in his head.

His only guiding light had been Rosie, who had exceeded every expectation her offer had set. If Alastor believed in such things, he’d have named her godmother ten times over. As it was, they’d settled for naming her Aunt Rosie, which was a much more tangible and reasonable title. 

Sometime around March, the seed of affection Alastor had dredged up from within himself had sprouted, leaving him an anxious, weeping mess for nearly two months. Every day, the question of ‘am I good enough’ was posed, and despite his steadfast attempts to ignore it, it was annoyingly persistent. It had led to a nursery, which he and Rosie put together in swathes of dark wood and soft, pale greens, reminiscent of what Alastor remembered of his own childhood room. It was comforting, though the nostalgia did not help with the bouts of crying.

Throughout the spring, the essentials of childcare had slowly begun to take over his home. Bottles in cupboards, cloth diapers in drawers, toys scattered about wherever they’d fit, picture books replacing the ones he’d never read, there was even a pram he’d likely never use shoved into the very corner of his entryway. 

And the clothes. A truly unbelievable amount of clothes in an unbelievable amount of sizes.

“She’ll grow out of ‘em quick, Alastor,” Rosie had told him. “Babies aren’t known for takin’ their time. It’ll go by faster than you want it to.”

That had, of course, caused more tears. Because Heaven forbid he be able to keep his emotions in check.

Then, there was the time in April that Rosie had asked how long he’d been pregnant. 

He was draped along the plush sofa in her office, half asleep, listening to the soothing sound of the treadle of her sewing machine, when she broke the comfortable silence.

“Do you know how far along you are?”

Alastor’s ears perked up from their lax position, and he cracked an eye open. It took a few seconds for the words to register, and when they did, he found he had no real answer.

He said, “Well… I’m not entirely sure. The nausea and vomiting began a few months after I arrived here, and that’s all I can say for certain.” 

Rosie hummed, and he watched the thin, lightly patterned cotton she was working with flow through her hands. 

“If you conceived the moment you fell, you’d be nearly five months overdue,” she said in an idle remark.

How curious. He’d never thought of it that way, but she was right. He glanced down the length of his body, to where the child in question resided. It was difficult to tell, with his general lack of padding, but it didn’t seem to be large enough to house something fully grown.

“And yet, it looks as though I have further to go,” he said into the passive air.

Rosie made a noise of agreement, then said, “Perhaps it’s more like a Hellborn pregnancy. It’d make sense, y’know.”

Alastor rolled the idea in his mind, debating whether it was worth the effort of research. Not that he could be bothered right that moment. He did nothing but give a lazy shrug before returning to his dozing.

He’d purchased a book on the subject within the week and promptly allowed it to sit on his bookshelf, never opening it once. He deluded himself into the naive belief that if he had no knowledge, nothing could happen, and that the issue would simply resolve itself.

He was wrong, of course.

June eventually crept across the landscape of Hell, and with it came odd, unappealing instincts. The beginning of the month was actually anything but strange, and the sheer lack of any upset beyond his decreasing mobility was starkly noticed. Alastor had felt almost like his usual self, in fact. The relief it offered was wonderful.

But, such good things could never last, and on the 13th of the month, he began to pace relentlessly. And it was done everywhere. The carpet of the bedroom and the nursery, the hardwood of the entryway and the living room, the tile in the kitchen and the bathroom. Not even the packed dirt of the cellar or the thin carpet of the radio tower was spared. 

When his wretched hindbrain deemed that job finished, he started outside, the muggy heat of an approaching summer turning it into horrid work. He walked the same path round and round his house, his clearing, his territory so many times, he was shocked that there weren’t hoofprints permanently carved into the ground. 

It consumed his weekend, from Thursday to Monday, each day filled with unending pacing, his tail held at a peculiar angle that created a strange bump in his pants the entire time. 

By Tuesday, other instincts had taken hold, and those involved gathering every scrap of fabric in the house and burying his face in it before scrubbing it along the length of his jaw and neck. It was presumably some ridiculous attempt at scenting. 

And then, when every inch of every blanket, every item of clothing, even every towel was drenched in a scent that Alastor couldn’t truly pick up, it all began… pooling. The towels were scrunched and twisted into pinwheels, each one laid on the soft carpet of his bedroom in a wonky ring. Blankets were laid flat in layers upon layers in the center, until it formed a plush, cozy divot that covered all available floor space. The clothes came last, most of which were intended for the child, woven with considerate care into the edges of his forming nest.

It was inane. Absurd. Laughably moronic.

Alastor despised how settled it made him feel, how grounded. It was impractical, having everything spread out along the length of his bedroom like this. He hated that he couldn’t make himself dismantle it. 

He slept there, naked on the floor, wrapped in an old, faded quilt, for nearly two full nights. Halfway through the second night, barely past midnight, he woke, groggy, disoriented, and thoroughly irritated. 

His stomach had been… not quite upset, but unsettled the day previous, and now, it ached and burned and pulsed, minute spasms rippling along the skin. Every bit of downy fur on him was fluffed up, ruffled as if in anticipation. Alastor shifted, squirming in the cocoon he’d wrapped himself in to sleep, and discovered that there was a not insignificant amount of wet soaking the cotton beneath him. 

Ah. This was labour, then. 

Alastor wormed an arm out of his warm haven to scrabble at the rotary phone he’d dragged into the room with him. He was not going to do this alone. He picked up the receiver just to drop it at his side, then clumsily dialed Rosie’s number without looking.

She picked up almost immediately. Why she was in her office in the middle of the night, Alastor couldn’t say, but he was grateful for it regardless. 

“Rosie,” he said, and it came out in an undignified whimper due to the muscle spasm – contraction – that took over his body.

There was a moment of silence on the other end. Then, “I’ll be right there,” and the line went dead.

Thank goodness that was a short conversation. Most of Alastor’s brain had already fled, running away in the wake of whatever was about to force its way out of him. He glanced at the ornate wall clock, which read 12:47. If he was very, very lucky, Rosie would arrive within a half hour.

She was pounding on his door at 1:03. He imagined she’d left a trail of carnage outside to get to the house so quickly. He’d have been impressed if he had the capacity. As it was, all of his expendable energy went into concentrating enough to call upon his silhouette, who disappeared the moment it existed and swept under the door. 

The pounding quieted. Alastor angled his ears and heard low muttering in the entryway, though he couldn’t make out the words. The murmur of shuffling and the light taps of Rosie’s shoes on hardwood drifted about his awareness.

“Alastor?” Rosie said, and it was right outside his bedroom door, closer than he’d pictured her.

Alastor let out a pathetic little whimper, which gave Rosie all the permission she needed. The door swung open gently, and the rustling of heavy satin flicked a switch in Alastor’s mind, one that allowed him to cease to exist as he was.

After that, nothing much was remembered but pain. Burning, aching, horrible pain, in so many places, some of which he hadn’t known to be attached to him. Rosie was there throughout the whole ordeal, and he was sure she spoke to him, soft and sweet and encouraging, despite his inability to recall any specifics.

And at the end of it all, there came sharp, piercing wails, louder than any other infant Alastor had ever had the displeasure of hearing. The world slowly filtered back into his reality, colour and light and sound trickling into every sense.

He distantly heard Rosie say, “Well, there’s no need to worry about her lungs.”

He thought he made some vague noise of agreement, but he couldn’t be certain. 

“Here,” Rosie said, and then a tiny, warm, disgustingly damp thing was pressed up against his chest, smearing amniotic fluid into his fur. His hands shot up to cradle it, finding it far too miniscule to warrant the sort of agony he’d been in. Was still in, truth be told. 

“Small,” was the only word he could work past the rawness of his throat. He must have been screaming at some point.

“Yeah,” Rosie said. “She did have to squeeze her head through those tiny hips of yours.” It was light and teasing, and it got the smallest huff of laughter to bubble from Alastor’s exhausted, bleeding body. 

And then, a spike of dull pain lanced through his pelvis, far less than what he’d been experiencing, but enough to have him pinning his ears. 

“I- I thought it was over,” he said, staring up at Rosie with watery, pleading eyes, as if she controlled what his body did. 

“It is,” she soothed, “The hard part is over, but there’s still the afterbirth, sweetie.”

Alastor groaned and adjusted the little, screaming being on his chest before carefully rolling onto his side. His tail tucked protectively over all the sorest parts of him in a vain attempt at halting what had already begun.

It didn’t matter. The afterbirth was pushed out, bit by bit, using muscles that were already so severely overworked. His poor quilt was ruined, soaked in blood, sweat, tears, and now whatever traces of amniotic fluid were left in the sac that fell out of him with a disgusting squelch. None of it would ever wash out, he was sure. 

The moment every last trace of the pregnancy exited his body, a blessedly cool film settled over the front of his pelvis, soothing the raw, inflamed skin. Alastor made a loud, strangled sound of relief, at which Rosie jumped.

“What?” she asked, a touch of panic gilding the edges of her voice, “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Alastor rasped out, “Feels nice.”

Rosie tilted her head, squinted her eyes, and said, eloquent as ever, “What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”

Alastor giggled, mildly delirious, “The seal. It’s cold.” Rosie still looked confused, so he attempted to clarify by saying again, “Feels nice.”

“What seal, Alastor? I have no idea what you’re sayin’.”

Alastor didn’t have the mental fortitude to explain it all, so he just lifted a few fingers from where he was cradling the child, waved Rosie off, and said, “Oh, never you mind.”

“...Okay. Whatever.”

One of his favourite things about Rosie was her ability to keep her lack of a nose out of his business. It was greatly appreciated. 

There were a blessed few minutes, then, in the middle of the first hour of his daughter’s life, where there was nothing but peace and quiet in the room, affording Alastor a much-needed break. 

Until, of course, the baby fisted her tiny, surprisingly strong fingers in the thatch of fur that guarded his chest and yanked. 

Alastor yelped, which startled the baby and caused a resurgence of tears. His hands flew frantically to her, cradling her close before he sat up and, again, as was usual these days, looked to Rosie in desperation. His head swam with all of the rapid movement, blood loss making everything cottony and far away. He assured himself that it would pass. It wasn’t as if he could die from something as mundane as childbirth.

Rosie hummed, her tone mildly amused, and said, “She’s probably hungry.”

Alastor nodded once, a detached sort of embarrassment settling around him. He could have guessed that a newborn would need to eat. Slowly, he lowered his gaze to the parasite in his arms. 

He hadn’t truly looked at her yet, and as he watched her little ears twitch and her eyes scrunch and her absolutely miniscule chest rise and fall, a deep, beautiful, terrifying love hit him squarely between the eyes. It wasn’t particularly soft, and it certainly wasn’t sweet, but it was what he could offer, and surely that had to count for something. 

She looked so much like him. So much like what he’d seen in the mirror the entirety of his mortal life. Although, there were the additions of those towering black and red ears, the tail twitching under his palm, and the hooves that he could swear had bruised his ribs from the inside. And her eyes were blue. Bright, piercing, and surely not something she’d gotten from him. He wondered where they had come from.

A cool hand pressed to his upper arm, and a sharp squeal was the only warning Alastor gave before his teeth snapped shut on the empty air where Rosie’s hand had been not even a second ago.

“Woah,” Rosie said as she pulled away, eyes wide, “Alright, message received.”

In the recesses of his mind, Alastor knew he should apologise. Instead, he pulled the child in his arms closer and hissed. She was his, and no one could have her. Not even his uncommon respect and begrudging fondness for Rosie could heal him of that distinctive notion.

Rosie lifted her hands in surrender and stepped back. “I can leave, if you like,” she offered, mild concern colouring her tone, “but you really do need to feed her, and it might be difficult to get a latch.”

The longer Rosie remained in the room, the more of an itch built in Alastor’s teeth. His lips parted in a smile that wished it could be anything else, a faint wash of gold settling over everything in front of him. One word was dumped directly into the air, the glow flashing with the single syllable, “Latch?”

Rosie raised an eyebrow, tilted her head to where he clutched the child, and said, “You know that the milk doesn’t just appear, right?”

Ah. Yes. Alastor had never been privy to that particular first, despite all of the other aspects he’d been more or less prepared for. 

“How?” Another wax and wane of the golden light hit Rosie’s pale face and dark clothes. 

Rosie took a half-step toward him, halting when a sharp whine cut through the air. She huffed, as if he were being unreasonable. 

“It would be easier if I could touch you, Alas-”

“No.” The light grew stronger, reflecting off the wallpaper and ceiling.

Rosie’s eyes flicked quickly between Alastor’s face and the small bundle in his arms. Her eyebrows pinched, and she said, “Careful with all that fur. She could suffocate.”

Alastor’s neck might have snapped with how quickly he shifted his attention downward. He pulled his daughter away from his chest and fluttered his claws over her with a near-uncanny amount of gentility. Her little face was scrunched, ears twitching wildly, as if she couldn’t control them. She was breathing. She was alive. He took that truth and wrapped it tightly around the icy crystals of anxiety that had pushed into his skin. Alastor watched as droplets dripped from the corners of her eyes, his own overly-sensitive ears picking up little hitches in her breath that signalled her willingness to burst back into tears. 

Why? Why was she crying? Alastor needed to know, he needed to fix it. 

A firmly balled fist was flung into his fur again, and he remembered. She was hungry. 

And he didn’t know how to fix it. 

Alastor shut his eyes, blocking out the image of a child reaching for him in unbearable dependency. He pulled her closer again, though it was still farther from him than he’d like. He wished he could tuck her back inside him, where she would always be safe and cared for.

He took a brief moment to himself, instincts soothed by the weight of the child in his arms, to scrape along the depths of his mind, gathering every bit of apprehension he could find. When the full extent of the clingy, desperate emotion had been collected, he unceremoniously shoved it into a box and flung that heavy box into the dark waters of the bayou within him. He had no use for anxious nonsense. Not when something so small needed him. 

A sudden voice caught his oddly split attention, slanting up at the end like it had spoken a question. Alastor zeroed in on it, ears angling toward the source. 

When it repeated, he heard it, “Are you alright?”

Rosie. 

She was still there. 

Good.

Alastor finally opened his eyes to find her hand much closer than he’d expected, extended and ready to settle atop his shoulder. He leaned into it, giving his assent. It landed, a warm presence that he didn’t mind as much as he thought he should. 

He drew in a heavy breath, then said, much smaller and in a much more usual manner, “I suppose I could use… a few pointers.”

Thirty minutes later, as the baby was suckling away with contented little puffs of breath, Alastor could say that if he’d never had reason to breastfeed, he would have been perfectly happy. The physical sensation of a mouth upon his chest was so very violating, despite the offender being a newborn. His newborn, for that matter. Not that his opinion held much sway in the issue. She would need to eat, and he was perfectly capable of providing.

Rosie sat beside him still, angled toward the girl he held. As Alastor watched her, a small shade of… something passed over face.

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but it snapped shut again without a hint of sound. She stared a little longer before asking, “Do you… have a name for her?”

A name.

Alastor felt the unusual urge to hit himself. He never once paused to think that the child would need something so simple as a name. He looked away from Rosie and to the person in question, whose mouth had stopped moving and whose face had relaxed into the visage of peaceful sleep. 

Names cycled through his mind. Diana. Margaret. Grace. Beatrice. None of them fit. None of them slotted into place when thought of in tandem with the girl before him. A low, frustrated growl slipped from between his teeth, the vibrations in his chest causing the baby pressed against him to squirm. Her sleepy eyes popped open for no more than a handful of seconds before slipping back into slumber, as if she’d felt the need to check on him.

Of course, there was always…

“Victoria,” he said, quietly.

There was a beat of silence.

“That’s a beautiful name, Alastor,” Rosie said. 

Alastor assumed that was the end of it. 

Then, “Where does it come from?”

Alastor considered lying. For what purpose, he didn’t know. There was little harm in the genuine answer. 

He told the truth. 

“It was my mother’s name.” 

His voice came out slightly strangled, emotion he did not permit suffusing it. Rosie’s hand landed softly on his forearm, right below where Victoria’s hooves rested. Alastor’s eyes did not move from his daughter. 

“It suits her,” Rosie whispered into the hushed air, warm and vaguely maternal. 

Alastor shifted his hand to run his knuckle over the side of Victoria’s face. She was so much more to him than he thought she’d be. 

“It does,” he agreed.

Victoria. A name he’d always paid such respect to. His mother’s, and now, his daughter’s. 

A long-awaited wave of thought broke within him. It was noticed with calm acceptance, as if it were nothing more than a simple fact. 

He might someday be willing to die for this child. 

And with the unanticipated approval toward that thought burning in his gut, Alastor had achieved what he’d have previously called a flight of fancy. He would sacrifice anything, anyone, for her, with so little hesitation that it almost concerned him. 

He had found one singular thing worth fighting for besides himself. It was terrifying. It was something he’d never wanted. And yet, he’d rather be tortured for an eternity than take it back.

~~~

Only three days after the birth of his daughter, Alastor had a broadcast scheduled. 

He’d barely been able to get Victoria to sleep without him, and that was after hours of providing attention, foregoing his own rest to prioritise hers. He was running on empty as the clock crept toward 6:00, his usual starting time. At 5:45, he finally dragged himself from the side of Victoria’s bassinet, hoping that against all odds, she would remain asleep without him attached to her side. 

When the soft click of the shutting door did not cause distraught wailing, Alastor breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the first time he’d left the nursery alone since her birth, but it still felt wrong to not have her in his arms. He’d grown so used to her presence in such a short amount of time.

Alastor leaned his forehead against the grain of the wooden door, the cool lacquer chasing away the knot of pain that rested behind his eyes. He should skip the broadcast. He knew that. He knew that a good few hours of sleep would do much more for him than putting on a show, but appearances needed to be kept. Hell could not know about the infant, nor that anything at all was amiss. 

So, Alastor pulled himself from the door. He turned away from the nursery and tried for a confident stroll down the hallway that was really more a series of halting missteps. Everything had healed from the birth, but a bone-deep soreness remained, nipping at his heels each time he attempted anything more strenuous than lifting Victoria. 

Slowly, he ascended the spiral staircase at the end of the hall, pausing on the landing to catch his breath. When his chest reverted to a smoother pace, he pushed open the heavy door that led to his radio tower. He stepped into the room and let the door make a soft thunk as it fell shut.

His broadcast setup greeted him, familiar and wholly welcome. Alastor exhaled sharply, a sense of control slipping over him that had been sorely lacking ever since he’d been conned into giving away his soul.

This, he could do. This, he could control. This was where he very much belonged. 

Alastor sank into his wheeled chair, pulling it close to the desk. He glanced at the clock on the wall. 5:56. Not enough time to properly prepare, but it would do. Without much thought going into the movements, his hands flew over dials and switches, his eyes seeing what he was doing, but not truly registering it.

Before he knew it, the clock read 6:00. He reached for the switch that would allow him to be heard across the pentagram. He hesitated. 

Briefly, he considered abandoning the tower and fleeing to his bedroom to sleep. 

He promptly chased that idea off, reminding himself of all of the reasons he had for ensuring his image was at least semi-maintained. 

Safety. Security. Power, which guaranteed the first two. 

And Victoria. She was the one true reason. 

If he allowed himself to forgo this broadcast, sinners would come sniffing for scraps of the surely near-dead Radio Demon, and in doing so, they’d find him vulnerable, a child in his care. He would not give away that pressure point. He would not put his daughter in danger. 

He flicked the switch.

Alastor felt his presence expand, waves reaching clear across the city. It was satisfying. He’d missed this more than he thought he did. 

His mouth started running, every word picked up by the microphone clutched in his hand as he allowed himself to sink into a sort of auto-pilot, simply doing whatever was next on the list in his head. As he spoke and put on a record and spoke again, he began to find the monotony oddly appealing.

The next time Alastor glanced at the clock, it read 6:30. He would need to end the show earlier than he’d prefer. He was certain that Victoria would not remain asleep for a full-length broadcast. 

An hour, he decided. An hour would do. 

Alastor did not make it to the end of the hour. 

He made it to 6:53.

That was when the bubble of waves he’d encompassed the city in was rudely and abruptly snatched from between his fingers. 

Alastor’s voice died in his throat, mouth left open in shock. 

What the fuck just happened? He was the only one in Hell with airwaves, the only one with control over this dominion. And he’d held it for a year and a half. Why would an opponent choose to wait? Their patience had done nothing but allowed him to-

Piercing wails split the air, feedback screeching through the tower.

Victoria. 

She’d taken the broadcast from him, not some random sinner. And now, she was making her displeasure known to all of Pentagram City and then some. 

Alastor needed to shut off the waves, needed to keep her under wraps. He hit the switch to cut the broadcast, but nothing happened. He flicked it again, on and back off again. Nothing changed. Feedback and the hearty sobs of an infant still filled the space around him, making it so very difficult to think. 

Alastor’s hands flew up to his hair, burying into the roots and pulling, the pain dulling a modicum of his overstimulation. 

If he couldn’t cut the feed from here, he’d have to take care of the other end. 

He abandoned his tower, diving into the shadows for a mere second before reforming in Victoria’s room. The cries were quieter there, due to not being amplified by his equipment. 

Alastor peered into the pale green bassinet, where Victoria was meant to be resting. Her little face was flushed red, eyes pinched shut and fists flinging uselessly about her cot. His hands hovered for a moment, unsure of what to do to rectify the situation. 

Victoria’s eyes shot open, her bright blue gaze cutting into him. Her cries grew louder. 

Alastor finally moved. He reached down into the cot and scooped her up, hand on the back of her head. He pulled her close to his chest, bouncing her gently, pathetic shushing noises dropping from his mouth. 

“Victoria, please,” he whispered to her, “you must stop crying.”

Victoria did not stop crying.

“Please, my fawn,” Alastor begged, ready to do nearly anything if it would just stop the tears. 

One small fist whacked against his chest, and Alastor had a moment of clarity. The last time she’d cried like this was the day she’d been born, when she had been hungry and he hadn’t known what to do. 

With no other arguments to be made, he secured Victoria with one hand while he used the other to pop open the buttons of his shirt. He moved the fabric just enough to get it out of the way, exposing his chest. He shifted his daughter into the position Rosie had so patiently shown him, then twisted his fingers into his fur, pulling it away from where Victoria needed access.

Her tiny mouth opened and closed on the skin of his breast, searching for his nipple, but unable to find it. 

“Oh, come on, sweetheart,” Alastor murmured to her, his wavering hands trying their best to help her latch properly. 

It took far longer than Alastor had the patience for, but with enough persistence, Victoria eventually managed to start a flow. The sobs in the airwaves wound down before falling away to nothing. Alastor searched for the thread that still bound him to the broadcast he’d started, and when he found it, he cut it away.

He took a deep breath, focussing on the little squeaks of his fawn and the puffs of air brushing against his fur and skin. A misplaced anger bit at him, telling him that it was Victoria’s fault, that she was the reason they were now unsafe. He snatched it and shoved it aside, unwilling to blame his daughter. If anyone was to be blamed, it would be himself. He should have had the foresight to know that she would have a similar set of powers to his own. It was his own shortsightedness that caused this, not the infant who was only using what she had to get what she required.

He should have cancelled the broadcast.

Victoria’s mouth fell away from his nipple, and he heard and felt the way she readjusted her tongue and lips to a more comfortable position. Her breathing evened out into sleep, and Alastor knew she needed to be burped, but he really could not justify waking her again. He lowered her carefully, so carefully, into her cot, praying to nothing and no one that she would not wake up. When he pulled his hands away and she remained asleep, he released a measured breath.

He watched her for a while, content to gaze at her rising and falling chest. He stood there, shirt still open and hair still messy, staring, until the gravity of what had happened began to sink in.

Well, then. 

Alastor supposed that Victoria was a secret no longer. He had, in one fell swoop, undermined every plan he’d had. He raised a hand to his forehead and pressed the pads of his fingers into his temples. He fought the urge to groan, reminding himself that any stray noise could and likely would cause Victoria to rouse from her sleep. 

What a fucking nightmare. 

~~~

Six months after that disastrous broadcast, where he’d accidentally announced the existence of his child to the entirety of the Pride Ring, Victoria began displaying… odd behaviour. And though Alastor typically had little issue with odd behaviour, this one was rather personal. 

She’d started to bite when he attempted to feed her.

And it wasn’t a playful sort of bite. No, these were almost certainly attempts to eat. 

As expected as that perhaps should have been, it still caught Alastor by surprise. It had him asking himself such strange questions, ones like, ‘what does one feed a cannibalistic infant?’ ‘would blood suffice, or would flesh need to be involved?’ ‘could he simply get something from Rosie or would he prefer to do it himself?’

It all built to the last incident that Alastor was willing to tolerate. 

He had been feeding her as he usually did, sat in the rocking chair in the nursery, when she finally managed to take a piece of his flesh along with her milk. To his surprise, it hurt. Much more than he thought it should. It was such a small bit of skin, after all. 

He pulled her away from him immediately, a development at which she seemed to be shocked. Alastor tucked her securely into the crook of one arm so he could use his other hand to feel blindly around his breast, hissing when his fingers found the sore spot.

He looked down at Victoria, who was clearly gearing up to begin crying. 

“Oh, no, Fawn,” Alastor said to her, “You cannot bite me.”

Victoria pouted up at him, as if asking, ‘why not?’

Alastor huffed a laugh, then said, “We’ll have to find you something more suitable, won’t we?”

So, Alastor found himself in Rosie’s crowded parlour, Victoria hidden against his chest in a bundle of blankets. Of course, everyone who saw him knew what was there. It’s not as though Victoria had remained a secret, despite his best attempts. Even still, not a soul approached him, or, indeed, acted as though anything were amiss at all. He was treated as nothing more than a face in the crowd, a feat which was surely Rosie’s doing. 

With little fanfare, he stepped into the long line snaking from the main counter, the din of chatter wrapping around him. It wasn’t the most unpleasant wait in the world, if Alastor were honest with himself. There was no riveting conversation, no attempts at unnecessary propriety, and he found himself enjoying the tranquil moment of peace he shared with his daughter. 

He’d nearly reached the front when Rosie finally spotted him. Her mouth dropped open mere seconds before her eyebrows pinched, a look of consternation settling over her delicate features. 

“Alastor!” she cried, lifting the flip-up countertop and gently pushing the poor soul who she’d been helping aside. “What’re you doin’ here?”

A fist popped out of the plush cocoon secured to his torso at the sound of Rosie’s voice, Victoria stretching her limbs out to make herself known.

“Oh, and you brought the little miss!” Rosie said, face softening into pure, unadulterated affection.

Alastor supposed that was wont to happen when one helped bring a life into the world. An attachment was likely the least to be expected. 

“Yes, I did,” he replied. Rosie threaded her arm through his and began leading him away from the crowd, into a more private area. Alastor let the conversation lull before he continued, “She’s actually why I’m here. I have something to discuss with you.”

Rosie half-turned her head toward him, mild surprise and strong curiosity on her face. She pushed open the door she’d led him to, then untangled their arms to allow him to sit while she closed the door politely behind her. 

“Tea?” she asked, the perfect picture of proper decorum.

Alastor shook his head. “No, thank you.”

Rosie shrugged and snapped anyway, a tea set materialising from nowhere. “Suit yourself,” she said. The ceramic pieces floated to the small, round table by the window and set themselves down on the gingham tablecloth with a muffled clink. 

Victoria made a mellow snuffling noise at that, which put Alastor’s ears on alert without his say-so. His hands instinctively flew to her, ready to soothe away whatever cry came out of her. When nothing happened beyond a tiny shuffle, he heaved a sigh of relief and dropped his hands. 

He looked back to Rosie, who had taken her seat and was now watching him with an open, wistful expression. Heat crept up the back of his neck, the weight of her eyes on him pushing the displays of affection he wished to show his daughter into the background of his mind. 

Alastor cleared his throat, then brushed off the feeling of perception and strolled to the remaining seat. Rosie waved a hand and it pulled itself out for him. He inclined his head to her in thanks and sat down, unconsciously adjusting the fabric pinned to him to allow Victoria to see him. 

“I remember when mine were that little,” Rosie said, out of the blue. 

Alastor latched on to the statement. He hadn’t known Rosie had had children of her own. 

Her face fell, and she muttered, as if it weren’t for Alastor to hear, “If only they stayed that way.”

Alastor did the polite thing and ignored that he’d heard it. Instead of continuing that thread of conversation, he tapped a finger on the table to break up the silence and said, bluntly, “She bit me, Rosie.”

Rosie only nodded, as if she’d expected that. “I did wonder if that would be an issue,” she said. “Do you have a plan for it?”

Alastor shook his head. “No,” he said, “I was under the impression she would be more of a… usual child.”

Rosie burst into fervent laughter at that, her hand abandoning the tea pot she’d been about to pour to rest over her heart. “Oh, Alastor,” she said, “surely you’re joking.”

Alastor did not laugh. “No,” he said, “I am not.” He sniffed and lowered his gaze to where Victoria’s peacefully sleeping face rested. His eyebrows dropped from their defensive position and he could feel a bone-deep softness take over him at the sight of his daughter safe and sound, tucked against him and wonderfully content. 

Rosie’s laugh abruptly cut off, a slightly choked wheeze left hanging in the air. There was a pause, then Alastor heard the tinkling of ceramic and the sound of liquid rushing. The light chiming of a spoon hitting the sides of a teacup echoed in the large, mostly empty room. The next time Rosie spoke, it was with much more care in her voice. 

“So,” she started, and Alastor finally looked away from Victoria. He found that Rosie had sobered herself, and that a vaguely apologetic film had settled over her countenance. “Have you tried blood? It might satisfy the craving without upsettin’ her stomach.”

Alastor hummed and said, “That’s why we’re here. I was hoping you’d have something to give her, as hunting for it myself is… less than feasible right now.”

He couldn’t go traipsing about, stalking and killing sinners with a baby strapped to his chest, now, could he? He was well aware that he could always leave her with Rosie and she’d be well taken care of, but something instinctual in him howled in rage at the idea. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Rosie – she’d kept his many secrets and had never asked for anything in return, after all – but rather that he didn’t trust Hell as a whole, which was a generally advisable stance to take. 

Rosie nodded again. “One moment,” she said, and she rose from her seat and bustled out of the room.

The burden of sociability dropped from Alastor’s shoulders, and he tipped his head toward the window, letting it take the weight of his body. He’d never been more exhausted in the entirety of his existence. Just the simple act of leaving the house took more than an hour to prepare for, and nothing altogether exciting or nerve-wracking had even occurred. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like with a toddler. 

Especially Victoria as a toddler. He’d barely kept up with her cries as an infant. He was not looking forward to her surely endless demands for attention and the budding of her already-headstrong personality. He’d never believed that infants could have something so complex as a personality, but his daughter had quickly proven him wrong. 

Alastor allowed himself to close his eyes. The glass beneath his temple was cool and soothing, leeching away the frenetic pressure of hefty responsibility. If Rosie took any longer, he might have fallen asleep. Sleep would’ve been so blissful…

The door opened, the cacophony of a full shop leaking into the calm air of the room before being shut out again. Alastor heaved a deep breath and pulled himself upright, turning to where Rosie had walked in with a paperboard box. 

“Here we are!” she said, bright and cheery. She set her box on the table, then put her hands on her hips. “Now,” she said, “there’s a good amount of blood in there, a few different types, but there’s also a couple small pieces of meat, just in case you’d like to try.”

“Thank you,” Alastor said, reaching out and dragging the box closer to him. He lifted the lid to find exactly what was promised. He reached into the container and pulled out a glass bottle filled with blood, which he set on the table, leaving his hands free to dip into the bundle secured to his chest. 

“Oh, yes,” he said to Victoria, in a voice much softer than he used for anyone or anything besides her, “I know you’ve been hungry, Fawn. I do believe this will help.”

He steadfastly ignored the saccharine look on Rosie’s face. He almost wished she weren’t there. Almost. 

Alastor adjusted Victoria in his arms, settling her into the dip of his elbow. She was awfully small for six months of age, only about half the weight she should be. Then again, she was undoubtedly on a much different developmental timeline than any human child.

Perhaps Rosie was right to laugh at his delusions of normalcy.

Alastor blinked a few times, brushing the stray thought away. He refocussed on Victoria, who was now reaching up to the bottle hovering above her. She knew very well what it meant, and she was always eager to be fed. Alastor let out an amused huff and lowered the bottle to her ever-seeking mouth.

She latched onto the false nipple almost immediately, which made Alastor scoff and say under his breath, “Of course the bottle gives you no struggle.”

Rosie quietly snorted from across the table, the sound allowing Alastor’s stitched in smile to settle into something a bit more real. 

The moment the blood hit Victoria’s senses, her ears perked up, bright blue eyes going wide at the novel flavour and texture. Her jaw began to work harder, trying to pull more than the bottle would allow.

“Slow down, sweetheart,” Alastor said, pure fondness layered over each syllable, “You’ll certainly upset your stomach at this rate.” 

As if she’d listened to him, Victoria calmed her frantic drinking and reserved herself to a more manageable pace. She blinked up at him, wispy lashes fluttering against the smooth skin of her cheek. Something sweet and sharp pushed into his chest at the sight, a swell of love tinged with melancholy sweeping into his nerves. 

Rosie’d been right. She was growing too quickly for his liking.

Alastor let out a little sigh, then said, “Thank you, Victoria.”

For a moment, tranquility draped itself over the room, the three of them sealed away from the world in Rosie’s parlour. The inexplicable urge to fill the silence scraped up Alastor’s throat, and without any real input from him, he began to hum. 

It was an old song, and not one he remembered the origin of, but it brought him a sense of comfort. He hoped it would eventually bring Victoria the same.

Rosie was the one to gently break the hushed air.

“It’s sweet that you thank her,” she said, in a manner that was oddly contemplative.

Alastor seamlessly slid his hums to the radio perched on the mantel of the fireplace across the room, leaving him free to reply. “I read somewhere that speaking to her as if she can understand me will help her learn to speak herself.”

“...You truly care for her, don’t you?”

Alastor let the question simmer. Of course, he knew the answer was yes, but to admit it aloud to another was quite different to thinking of it privately. 

Still, he allowed his voice to drip with perhaps-misplaced honesty as he said, “Yes. I do.”

Rosie nodded and allowed the placid air to return, nothing but the sound of Victoria feeding and the continuation of Alastor’s obscure series of notes floating throughout the space. Alastor found it to be a much nicer evening than it likely would have been if he’d stayed home. 

Until-

“Y’know…” Rosie said, a sly edge to her tone. 

Alastor sighed internally. He just knew that this was the start to a conversation he’d rather not have.

“Since you brought up her speech development, I have to ask,” she continued, only a touch of soft concern seeping into her words, “Have you given any more thought to what you want her to call you?”

Ah. This again. His smile fell to naught but a thin line. 

Rosie had been hounding him about it for months, insistent that he needed to choose a title. She’d also made it expressly clear that she would not judge whatever decision he made. He simply… didn’t fully believe her.

The truth was that he’d selected a title the moment The Root had revealed his pregnancy to him, subconscious as it may have been. He knew that his hesitation to tell Rosie really was misplaced, and that she was being sincere in her statements. It was just so… strange. 

After all, what sort of man wished to be a mother? Surely not an ordinary one. 

Though, what in Hell was ordinary? What weight did ordinary hold in a realm that could simply reshape any soul it wished to?

Alastor opened his mouth. He closed it again. 

Rosie’s hand slid across the tabletop, palm up. It was an invitation that would go ignored.

“You’ll have to pick one, eventually, Alastor,” she told him, as if he didn’t already know that. She let the silence drag out, clearly unwilling to let the matter rest. 

Alastor was tempted to leave without another word, allowing her to remain in suspense forever, but he knew she’d never forgive him, and he enjoyed her company. So, he rolled his eyes and pinned his ears, a deeply petty move, and ground out through gritted teeth, “Maman. She’ll call me Maman.”

In the wake of the confession, he averted his eyes from Rosie, but even in his peripherals he could see the massive grin that took over her features. He felt heat rush to his face, staining his skin an embarrassing shade of red. 

“That’s wonderful, Alastor,” she said, horribly sincere. “That’s wonderful.”

Alastor hummed non-commitally. It’d been a humiliating thing to admit, but at least she would stop asking. He tried to convince himself that the lack of pestering was worth the price. 

They left Rosie’s shortly after that, Alastor using the excuse of needing to store the meat he’d acquired before it rotted. He pushed away the dewdrop of guilt that welled at her crestfallen expression. He reassured himself that it was just Rosie and that she was perfectly capable of handling his… pricklier moments.

But, naturally, the bite and the lost shreds of his pride were not the only incidents to occur that day. 

Much later, in the middle of the night, long after Victoria had been put to sleep, a screech of interference ricocheted against Alastor’s being. He bolted upright, ears on high alert, skin prickling, dials forming in his eyes, and antlers cracking outwards. Something was very, very wrong. The interference rose to an awful pitch, grating along Alastor’s spine. 

Then, with such little fanfare as to be severely concerning, it dropped away completely. 

Alastor squeezed his tired body into the shadows, popping out in a somehow more disheveled state than before in Victoria’s room. Nothing immediately stood out as amiss. His ears dropped, eyes reverting to their normal state as the points of his antlers reduced to their usual amount. He sleepily wandered to her cot, lowering a finger to her to calm whatever had caused the sudden spike in the airwaves. 

Perhaps it had been nothing but a nightmare. Could children this young have nightmares? Alastor wasn’t sure. He found the idea of it… unsettling.

His ears pricked upward again when a quiet drip sounded in the room. Alastor followed the source of it, looking up to find a mess of blood and- were those intestines on his ceiling? 

Slowly, ever so slowly, his eyes trailed down to where Victoria appeared to be… suspiciously happy and awake for the time of night it was. She was clinging to his finger still, legs kicking as little grunts and snuffles of contentment left her mouth. Alastor glanced sideways, where he spotted something dark staining the foot of her cradle. He pulled his hand from her grasp and rounded the bassinet to achieve a better view. 

Sure enough, there were soot stains worked into the carpet at the foot of her cot. Alastor tsked.

“Now, now, Fawn,” he said, shaking his head lightly, “you know those will never come out.”

Victoria let out a squeal that Alastor decided to interpret as laughter. Despite his mock annoyance, his closed-lip smile spread into a much more authentic grin.

“Yes, those fools are quite amusing, aren’t they?” Alastor lifted Victoria from her sheets and held her, her tiny head resting on his shoulder. He set his cheek between her ears. “Yes, they are,” he repeated, “thinking they can come after us.”

He had been right, those six months ago. The announcement of Victoria’s existence had, indeed, led to many ill-advised attempts of either kidnapping or murder. None had succeeded. In fact, Alastor rarely had to take care of them himself. Regardless of her slow physical growth, Victoria seemed to have little problem defending herself. It was something Alastor was grateful for.

Victoria began kicking her legs, small hooves landing one or two shots directly into Alastor’s ribs. He let out an exaggerated oof. It hadn’t hurt all that much, but he found amusement in playing the part. 

“Careful now,” he said to her, “wouldn’t want any lasting damage to your maman, would you?”

The girl squeaked, an agreement if Alastor had ever heard one. 

It was the first time he’d let himself refer to him as her mother. An unwelcome rush of warmth filled his chest, brushing over bits of his heart that had never been touched.  

Yes, he decided. He very much enjoyed being Victoria’s mother.

He’d have to thank Rosie for her prodding later. And perhaps apologise for his unnecessarily dramatic exit earlier that day. 

~~~

Nothing much else beyond the typical occurred after that, though it was all on a dragged out timeline. Victoria began to babble, then speak, and concurrently, crawl, then walk. Everything about it was so blissfully… normal. As if neither of them were strange, cannibalistic deer, and as though they weren’t in Hell. 

However, when it had been eight years and Victoria was well past the developmental stage of an ordinary one-year-old, she began to ask for proper affection. Alastor always gave it to her, holding her close when she climbed up into his armchair, rubbing her back when she snuck into his bed and clung to him, holding her hand whenever it was slipped into his. Anytime she as much as opened her mouth to request to be carried, he swept her up before she could get the words out. 

In fact, he enjoyed doting on her more than he thought he could.

But, occasionally, and at a rate that steadily increased, he had… averse reactions. Ones he couldn’t control. 

There were times that her tiny, loving touches caused his skin to crawl and his mind to panic, recalling only the most horrific details of the life he’d lived on Earth. When it happened, he gently guided her hands away from him, but her big, watery eyes and her pinned back ears that came with her little apologies broke what was left of his heart every time. 

It all built to the second worst day of Alastor’s afterlife, the singular day below it being the one where he foolishly sold his soul. 

Victoria was sick. 

She was a snot-filled, coughing, wheezing mess, and she was phenomenally clingy. Every time Alastor left her, be it for water, food, or just a moment’s peace, her face fell into crushing misery. He could not stand it. He wanted nothing more than to soothe it away each time.

And he was fine, he was perfectly alright, until it had been three days of constant touch, and something in his nervous system broke. Every time Victoria’s little hands landed on him, it made him wish he’d never had flesh to begin with. 

The true breaking point came around as he was putting her to bed on the fourth day. He’d gotten her settled beneath her covers and was practically in the doorway when her thin, wheezy voice called from behind him.

“Maman, good night hug?”

Something shrivelled and died in Alastor’s chest. He thought perhaps it was his will to live.

“No, Victoria,” he snapped, much harsher than he’d meant to. He fought the urge to bury his hands into his hair and pull. Seeking his own pain was not something he wished to model for his daughter.

“...Oh. Okay.” 

It was tiny, and whispered, and so fucking dejected that Alastor despised himself for causing it. He wished so badly that he could wrap her in his arms and promise that it would never happen again. The thought of touching her gave him the strange desire to set himself on fire.

It had to stop. He couldn’t keep allowing her to believe that it was her fault, that she had done something wrong. And he could not – would not – explain to her the why of it all. So, that left one option: to scrape every last unpleasant memory from his consciousness and stick it in a box, then throw that box in the far, far corner of the bayou that lived in his mind to rot. 

He would simply forget about it all. Pretend it had never happened. Shut down each instance of stark remembrance in the cruelest way possible. 

To his credit, it did work. It was as simple as asserting control over whatever whimpering, broken thing resided in him and shooing it away, burying it under damp soil and leaving it there. 

Slowly, the flinching stopped. The pausing stopped. Victoria’s unnecessary, unbearable tears and apologies stopped. Everything went back to its idyllicism. 

Then, May of 1947 came around. A month that Alastor would find extremely difficult to forget.

The first two weeks of the month, he’d been… moody. It was a horrible term to apply to himself, but it was unfortunately apt. 

While the issue of his disinclination toward physical contact remained solved, every other sense of his had seen fit to rebel. The smallest sound sometimes felt like a gunshot. The only lights he could tolerate were lamps turned low. Any scent or taste that was slightly too strong was nothing short of unendurable.

Halfway through the second week of sensory torture, he found himself doing something familiar. 

He had once again gathered many of the blankets, towels, and clothes in the house and cobbled them together into a, quite frankly, shitty nest. It was on his bed this time, which was the least he could have asked for. He didn’t enjoy sleeping on the floor, even if it was covered in plush blankets. 

The urge was odd, but Alastor was more than certain that he wasn’t pregnant this time, so there was at least one brick in the dam that worked to prevent a spillover of panic. 

No, this time, his reasons came in a different form. 

He’d slept in on that fateful day, and Victoria had wandered into his room around noon, curious as to why her mother was still asleep. It was a valid concern, as Alastor was, and nearly always had been, an early riser, up before the sun most days.

The creaking of his door hinges – he briefly thought that he needed to oil them – woke him, and the pattering of hooves on carpet had him on high alert. A small hand landed on the rim of the mess of towels and blankets on his mattress, which caused a low, entirely involuntary growl to rumble out of his throat.

Victoria shrank back immediately. Alastor blinked at himself in surprise. 

He’d never had a reaction like that to her attempts to enter his space. Even before he’d solved the issue of his touch aversion, he’d never growled at her. It was… unusual, to say the least.

“Sorry, Maman,” Victoria said to the floor, hands twisting in her pajama shirt.

“No, sweetheart, no need to apologise,” Alastor hastily reassured. He would not let all of his attempts at treating her as she deserved go down the drain due to a bout of moodiness. “If anything, I should be apologising to you.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, then opened them again. He dipped his head to make proper eye contact with his daughter. “I’m sorry, Victoria,” he said, “I didn’t mean to growl at you. I’m afraid something’s come over me.”

Victoria looked up from the carpet and wound the fabric between her fingers tighter, shuffling her hooves just a bit. “That’s alright, Maman. I forgive you,” she said, soft and bubbly.

A sense of pride welled in Alastor’s chest at her articulation. A lot of work had gone into raising such a well-spoken child. 

The girl’s nose wrinkled in an adorable pout and she said, “Maman, why are you still in bed? You never made breakfast.”

Alastor could have kicked himself. There was not a single part of this parenting nonsense he could get right, was there?

“I’m sorry for that, too, Fawn,” he said, mind scrambling to think of the quickest way to get her something to eat. An idea popped into his head, and without truly thinking about it, he said, “Would you like to go to Aunt Rosie’s for lunch?”

Victoria lit up at that. “Yes!” she cried, and a small ache bloomed in the base of Alastor’s skull from the volume. 

He nodded and finally began to extract himself from the tangle of fabric he’d been cocooned in. “Very well,” he said, “would you like to go choose something to wear?”

Her eyes lit up and she left the room so quickly she was nearly a blur. Alastor laughed to himself. The easiest way to get her moving was to allow her a choice, usually what she wore. He’d never put much stock into the idea that parents knew their children best, but he certainly did now that he had one of his own.

Alastor swung his hooves out of the sheets they’d occupied and pushed himself out of bed. He stretched his limbs, arms reaching for the ceiling and hooves taking turns being lifted from the floor. Somehow still tired despite his many hours of sleep, Alastor traipsed to his wardrobe, pulling out the first presentable thing he found and slipping into it. He had to redo the buttons of his shirt twice, as he matched them to the wrong buttonholes more than once.

Was this what people described as brain fog? It wasn’t something Alastor had ever experienced. At least, not outside of significant blood loss. 

He’d just managed to secure his bow tie when Victoria came bounding into his room again, a silky maroon dress with white detailing clutched in her hands.

“This one, Maman!” she said, excitement glossed over every word.

Alastor chuckled and pulled the dress from her hands, undoing the zipper before laying it carefully on his bed. “Would you like to dress yourself, or would you like my help?” he asked.

Victoria’s eyebrows lowered in determination and she said, firmly, “I can do it myself.”

Alastor nodded, then sat down on the edge of his mattress. The relief that coursed through him was upsetting. He should not be so tired from the simple acts of getting up and getting dressed, much less standing for a short period of time. The fatigue, the sensitivity, the hazy head… it all pointed to an illness of some sort, though Alastor had no idea what illness that could be. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be contagious, as Victoria certainly would have caught it and she appeared to be perfectly alright.

He was pulled out of his contemplations when Victoria’s hand tapped gently on his knee. “The dress, Maman,” she said.

“Oh, yes,” Alastor said, and he passed her the clothing.

She slipped it on easily and even got the zipper most of the way up before giving in and asking, “Will you help me with the zipper, please?”

“Of course, darling,” Alastor responded as she turned around. He pulled the zip closed and fastened the snap at the top that prevented it from slipping while she played. “There you are.”

“Thank you,” Victoria said, the quiet statement loud in the silence that permeated the room. She spun to face him again and buried her head into his chest. Alastor’s arms smoothly wrapped around her, his hand resting softly on her barely-tamed curls. The tips of her ears tickled his jaw. “I love you, Maman.”

“I love you, too, my dear,” Alastor responded effortlessly.

Victoria pulled away from him, and it hurt more than it usually did, something within him deeply mourning the perceived loss. He longed to change them both back into their pajamas and tuck her into bed with him for a wonderful, peaceful day of rest.

But, he’d already promised an outing, and she was unlikely to let him go back on his word. And they both needed to eat and Alastor did not want to cook.

“Are we going to Aunt Rosie’s now?” Victoria asked, excitement creeping back into her tone. Her blue eyes were bright with enthusiasm, like little stars pulled down to Hell.

“Yes, yes, we’re going to Aunt Rosie’s now,” Alastor responded with a half-muffled sigh. He stood from the bed, joints popping in protest, and summoned his shade, who was always eager to obey if Victoria was involved. They had a strange sort of bond, the two of them. It was as though they could speak to each other in a way Alastor could not. 

The shadow immediately pounced on Victoria and made exaggerated kissing gestures all over her face, much like Alastor sometimes did while putting her to bed. Her sweet giggles filled the empty air. 

Alastor tsked, catching the attention of his daughter and his silhouette. He raised an eyebrow at the latter and said, “Would you care to take us to Rosie’s?”

It rolled its eyes at him, the tipping of its head over-exaggerated to properly express its annoyance. It nodded all the same, then disappeared into a patch of darkness on the floor. Alastor reached for Victoria’s hand, which easily slipped into his. 

He looked down at her and said, teasingly, “Ready, sweetheart?” 

Her reply was nothing but a sharp tug to his fingers and a pout. Alastor huffed amusedly and stepped into the shadows, pulling the both of them into a realm all their own. As always, any and every little seam was painstakingly avoided. The Root was very much unwelcome in the little life Alastor had built for himself. 

A few seconds later, they both resurfaced in one of the many private rooms in Rosie’s home, the one that had inadvertently become theirs to use. Victoria was pulling away from him almost before they were fully solid. 

“Come on, Maman,” she said, and the silhouette flowed onto her shoulders, its head popping up to frown lightheartedly at Alastor.

Alastor sighed again, sharply questioning why he’d suggested this outing in the first place. Surely they’d had something edible in the house. Not that it mattered, seeing as they were already there.

“Alright, alright.”

The shade bounded from Victoria’s form, streaking to the door and opening it to the upper main hall of Rosie’s Emporium. Hand in hand, Alastor and Victoria stepped out. 

Alastor pushed away the instantaneous urge to hiss. The lights were far too bright, especially in tandem with the full sun beaming through the tall windows, and he could already pick up the hefty din of chatter drifting from the shop downstairs.

Perhaps they’d just grab a bite to eat and head home, despite the impropriety they’d show.

Victoria dragged him to the steps, her joy far exceeding his own. Down they went, Alastor matching the pace of his daughter’s shorter legs. They landed in the crowded entryway, noise reaching a fever pitch that forced Alastor’s ears back, whether he wanted them pinned, or not.

He glanced quickly around the room, spotting Rosie in her usual place behind the main counter. Upon sighting her aunt, Victoria untangled her fingers from Alastor’s and ran to her, slipping under the hinged countertop to knock into her legs with a heavy thud. 

Rosie let out a small oof, and said, “Hello, dear! What’re you doin’ here?”

Victoria buried her face into Rosie’s skirts and said, voice stifled by the satin, “We came for lunch, Aunt Rosie.”

“Oh!” Rosie said, looking away from the child to shoot Alastor a mildly disgruntled look. “Well, I wish your maman would have told me. I could have had something prepared.”

Victoria ignored her passive-aggressive barb and tugged at Rosie’s dress. When she gained her attention, she held her arms up in a wordless request to be picked up. Rosie obliged, and swept her easily onto her hip. Victoria patted her on the shoulder, then leaned toward Rosie’s ear and whispered something that Alastor could not hear.

Rosie’s eyebrows lowered in response, and she extracted one hand to lift the countertop, freeing herself in order to march to Alastor. Her head turned on a swivel as she went, and Alastor followed her gaze, finding that the few sinners in the room who weren’t cannibals appeared to be… watching him. 

Alastor’s grin sharpened, putting every razor-sharp tooth on display. They did not look away. He narrowed his eyes, wondering why the healthy dose of fear that should have been instilled remained out of reach.

Rosie’s hand landed on his upper arm without announcement. A screech of feedback echoed with no warning and even less permission. Her hand felt as if it had burned him, the sensation searing unpleasantly up and down his limbs. 

Alastor shivered. He darted his attention to Rosie, whose eyes had blown wide in disbelief. Her hand closed tightly on his arm, her nails cutting into him even through the layers of his shirt and coat.

“Alastor. Listen to me. Go. Home.” Rosie’s tone was firm and entirely unnegotiable. “Now.”

Alastor tilted his head, confused. He said, “But we only just arrived. And Victoria-”

“Will be perfectly safe here with me. I will bring her back to you the second you call me,” Rosie said, grand promises crashing into the flames of Alastor’s utter bewilderment.

“Call you? But I could-”

“You won’t. Trust me. Leave, Alastor.” It was the firmest instruction she’d ever given him.

Alastor hesitated. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw the sinners that had been staring at him move. Rosie’s expression turned into something nothing short of pleading. The sinners inched toward him. The fur on the back of his neck stood on end. Distantly, he heard Victoria’s shaky requests for an explanation. They seemed… choked, for some reason.

He obeyed. 

He disappeared into the floor, and the last thing he saw was Victoria’s tear-streaked face peeking out from where it was set against Rosie’s shoulder. Guilt that was unwanted and unnecessary pushed itself onto his back, insisting that she would not forgive him for the abandonment. Alastor roughly shoved it aside.

He materialised out of the hardwood of his living room and shuffled to one of the tall, wing-back armchairs that sat before his hearth. He collapsed into it and let his mind begin to run with endless chatter.

Rosie had practically kicked him out, and she was awfully cryptic while she did so. She seemed to have some obscure piece of knowledge that Alastor did not, perhaps something related to the strange illness that had settled over him. 

The illness that was now causing him to overheat despite the lack of flames in the fireplace. He brought a hand up to pick at the knot holding his collar close to his throat, and he noticed that he was… trembling. 

A deep annoyance crept into his mind, directed almost solely at Rosie. She could have at least attempted to give him a modicum of context. In fact, she could have explained her reasoning to him in its entirety, and her decision not to was equal parts worrying and frustrating. 

What was so damning that she’d felt the need to be so vague? 

It was then, of course, as he had just settled on the path to an epiphany, that a sharp, painful wave of something completely unfamiliar and wholly nerve-wracking plunged itself into his gut. 

The heat blew into a flame that was far too large for Alastor’s comfort. Not that comfort was a thing he could find at all, as his skin was suddenly far too tight, pulling at his bones like it wanted to collapse them. His clothes, usually his shield, his last safety net, were horribly constrictive and itchy, and he needed them gone.

Alastor placed his hands on his armrests and pushed himself out of the chair. He listed immediately, pitching to the left and barely managing to catch himself on the mantel before he cracked his skull open. 

Something was very, very wrong with him. Much more so than he would have initially guessed. His thoughts slid slowly out of focus, bleeding into a honeyed state of mind, nothing important cycling through except his great desire to remove every article of clothing touching him. 

Alastor’s claws sank into the wood below them, carving gouges into the grain. He’d be upset with himself for that later. What he needed to do was make it to his… his…

Nest, something he hadn’t known was inside him cried. He wanted – no, needed – the warm, plush safety of the messy thing he’d assembled on his bed. Alastor took a deep breath, head spinning wildly. He dragged one hoof in front of the other, shifting his grip along the mantel to cling to his support. 

Every bit of progress he’d made was nearly undone when a hand landed softly on his upper back, unexpected and terrifying. An animal part of Alastor’s brain was thrown into panic, the urge to bolt rising so quickly it might have knocked him off his unsteady hooves. But, an arm wrapped around his chest, preventing him from moving. He was sure he wouldn’t have made it far anyway, what with his inability to properly walk. 

That left one option in Alastor’s near-empty head. To fawn. To go limp in his captor’s arms and allow them to do as they pleased, so long as they left him alive at the end of it. He collapsed, knees buckling, only to be caught by the other arm of whoever had found him. He was picked up, and he tilted his head back to find that it was simply his own silhouette. 

Relief coursed through Alastor’s veins, and he somehow fell further into the shadow’s arms. It chittered at him, face warped into concern. Alastor tried to reply, but all that came out of his mouth was a high-pitched squeak. The shadow tipped its head, clearly unsure of what to do with that. 

The small amount of Alastor that remained in his mind whispered that this entire situation was extremely embarrassing, but whatever had taken over his body drowned it out within seconds. All that was left was a creature, a product of the fever burning up every bit of him. 

Alastor squeaked toward the shadow again, trying his best to convey his desire to be taken to his bedroom. It shook its head at him, glowing green features pinched in an uncanny way. Alastor whined in exasperation and kicked his hooves in an attempt to force his shade into letting him down. Its grip tightened. It chittered again, uselessly.

Alastor screwed his eyes shut and forced out one measly word.

“Bed.”

Another soft trill, and then Alastor was being pulled into the comforting, cool world of shadow. The blessed temperature did not last long, and he was quickly pushed from the realm and deposited gently in his nest. The mix of scents hit his abruptly over-sensitive nose in a way that had him gasping. He pushed his face into the nearest pillow as his claws still plucked away at the buttons of his shirt, clumsy and unable to properly achieve what he wanted.

The shadow’s cool, half-unreal hand tapped him lightly on the hip, and Alastor obediently rolled over to give it the attention it wanted. It gestured to where his hands struggled and inclined its head. Alastor only whined at it, which it took as permission, and it slipped the buttons free with no small amount of consideration. The shirt was pulled from his chest, and the relief it brought made the rest of his clothing ratchet from severely uncomfortable to nigh unbearable.

Alastor grunted and sank his claws into the waistband of his trousers, shredding the fabric easily. The shade’s fingers settled over his and pulled them away from the destruction before hooking into what was left and dragging the material down and off. Alastor sighed in blissful relief, his skin finally reaching a point of equilibrium.

Of course, the sense of comfort was merely temporary.

Alastor squeaked again, this time in surprise, when he felt something disturbingly wet leak out from behind the seal that protected him. The one that he hadn’t thought to work an escape route into. He let out a confused, pathetic little mewl, his hand sliding down the length of his body to push curiously at the shield. Even in his altered mental state, he wrinkled his nose at the feeling of the warm moisture that crept from between his legs.

He looked to the shadow in despair, holding his fingers up to let the light gleam off the slick substance coating them. Its mouth dropped open in a pantomime of silent shock before it fluttered between his legs, dipping one claw into the barrier.

Alastor yelped at that and pushed the shade firmly away, unwilling to let it explore such intimate parts of him. His tail tucked to prevent it from making another attempt. It knitted its barely-existent eyebrows at him and gently took his forearms, pulling them to its chest and then pressing them back to the strange mess leaking out of him and onto the fluffy white underside of his tail. 

Alastor’s ears flopped to the side, his head tilting at an odd degree. He didn’t understand what it was trying to tell him. He shook his head, and the silhouette threw its hands in the air and dissolved into the bedsheets, attaching itself to where it usually belonged.

The moment its calming presence vanished, the heat, the pain, the need stabbed into the depths of his body, carving away pieces of him in a horrible, steady rhythm. 

He needed… he needed… something inside. Something to push out all of the awful, overwhelming sensation and replace it with something tolerable. 

So, he let his tail swish gently against the bedding below him as he pulled at the edges of the seal he’d sold his soul for, trying desperately to detach it from his skin. It held fast, as if it were one with his body. Alastor’s lungs pushed out an awkward, half-whine, half-squeak, an emittance that sounded as though he could be in the throes of death.

In a fit of pure, animal misery, Alastor shoved his fingertips down, to the one place he could access. There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation as he drove two of his fingers in with only the slick that dripped from the seal easing the way. It burned, and it was unpleasant enough for Alastor to hiss, but it also shifted the burn away from his skin and toward his core, where it could at least be dealt with. 

His addled mind disregarded the pain entirely, insisting that he push deeper, to where his… his womb resided. 

Had Alastor been of even slightly sound mind, he would have had the wherewithal to understand that that was, decidedly, impossible. Although, if he were in control of himself, he would never have taken this particular course of action in the first place. 

As it was, he obeyed his hindbrain’s bid, crooking his wrist to a near-painful angle and forcing his fingers further in, a movement that drew a horrid, breathy whine from the depths of his chest. Somewhere past the heady haze of… whatever this was, a part of Alastor recognised that this was very unbecoming behaviour. That piece was shut out with the slam of a door, locking what was truly him away from any semblance of authority in regards to his body.

Distantly, he realised that there were tears tracking down his cheeks, large ones that caused everything to feel irritatingly damp. He ignored them in favour of focussing on rather more important things, such as how to satisfy the ache within him without breaking his damn wrist. 

Alastor’s forearm shifted along his pelvis as he searched for a solution to his conundrum, and on its path, it slid over some small piece of flesh that sent sharp, uncomfortable, wonderful sparks of sensation through every nerve it could reach. His breath was torn from him, knees curling toward his chest as the strangled dredges of a gasp clawed their way out of him.

Whatever he had touched had been nearly painful. 

He found himself wanting more.

His left hand flopped gracelessly over his hip, the claws almost biting into skin before he thought to assert just a touch more control. He searched for that little piece of him, fingertips slipping along damp fur, and when he found it, he pushed against it. Another whine poured out of him, driven by a sort of satisfaction he’d never before cared to seek out. 

It didn’t take any significant amount of time for the thread of tension in him to snap under the stress his clumsy movements created. A flurry of white hot sparks rushed up and down his spine, and in their wake a sluggish sense of not-quite-clarity rose. 

His muscles dropped from their locked positions and he melted into the soft blanket laid over his bed. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths until he could scrape together enough rational thought to drag his shade from its hiding spot.

It appeared, hands on its hips like someone who’d seen fit to give a scolding, which it certainly seemed to be trying to do, if the irritated chatter was anything to go by. Alastor ignored its pitchy, static-covered warbling, which he wouldn’t have been able to understand even at full capacity.

“Water,” he told it, voice rough to the point of grating. It was rude, yes, but Alastor couldn’t find it in himself to give a fuck.

The shade crossed its arms and rolled its eyes, but melted and zipped under the door all the same, taking its ceaseless noise with it. 

Alastor heaved another deep breath, and this time it shifted his body enough to remind him that his fingers were still very much inside him. He ripped them out with no regard for his physical comfort, revulsion at his own actions pounding on the door that separated the two pieces of his mind. He turned delicately onto his side, his hips aching from the way he’d had himself angled.

Briefly, he sent a half-serious prayer to whoever might be listening that this horrible nonsense would be over quickly. 

Alastor knew he couldn’t possibly be so lucky.

~~~

Something shrill and awful was echoing from down the hall. 

Rosie’s head popped up from her pillow, vision blurry and every thought coated in fuzz around the edges. Her tired eyes slid up along the wall, to the clock above her vanity. 3:18. Her brows fell, and she wondered who had the nerve to be calling her at such an hour.

The ringing stopped. 

Her tired mind began to clear, and she picked through the haze to find the memory. She had told Alastor to call her when his heat was over. Only two weeks had passed since then, so he must have had a shorter cycle than most. 

Rosie pushed herself out of her bedsheets, hoping she could reach the phone before it started up again. Alastor was surely concerned about his daughter, and Victoria may have been a delightful child overall, but she did not play well with interrupted sleep. Rosie slid her feet into her slippers and padded out of the room, closing the door softly behind her. 

The hall was lit solely by the red lowlight of Hell’s bastardised moon, everything washed in shades of maroon and oxblood. Rosie glanced left, then right. On her right, at the very end of the hall, light spilled from the cracked door of her study. She sighed. Her hopes of Victoria remaining asleep were dashed. Rosie walked down the floral-patterned carpet, which she expected to lead to a grumpy Victoria with her hand firmly on the switchhook to prevent another call. But, as she drew closer, she could hear muffled speaking, and when she stopped just outside the door, a gentle conversation could barely be picked up.

Victoria’s voice was so small, so quiet, as she asked, “Maman, are you coming back?” Then, even softer, “I miss you.”

Silence from the other end. Then, a shaking breath before Alastor’s voice filtered through the speaker, “Yes, Fawn, of course I’m coming back.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, my love.”

“...Okay,” Victoria said, though her disappointment could be felt in the waver of her voice.

Rosie decided it was time to step in. She heaved a deep breath and knocked on the door of her own study. She waited for the girl’s hushed, “Yes?”, and pushed it open. The sight she found broke her heart. 

Victoria stood beside the desk, handset clutched in her hands as if it were a lifeline, cheeks streaked with tears that did not carry in her voice. Her hair was a mess from sleep and her old pajama shirt had buttons in the wrong holes. She looked the epitome of a miserable child. 

“Oh, sweetie,” Rosie whispered as she stepped into the room. She shut the door behind her to ward off any wandering souls. They were rare in her house, yes, but never impossible.

Victoria’s bright blue eyes darted between Rosie and the telephone she still clutched onto, as if she were afraid she was going to take the one connection she had to her missing mother. Rosie stepped toward her and watched as more tears began to crowd her lashline.

“I know it’s late,” she said, “but the phone rang.”

It was a thin excuse, and Rosie knew that, but she’d likely been awake anyway. She’d had trouble sleeping ever since she was separated from Alastor. 

“It’s alright,” Rosie said, calm and encouraging. She held her hand out and asked, “May I speak with him?”

Hesitation drew Victoria’s brows down, face pinching. “Will you give it back?” she asked.

“Yes, of course I will,” Rosie said. And it was true; she had no intention of forcing the girl back to bed. It wouldn’t do anyone any good anyway.

Victoria twisted her hands around the receiver, jaw set in a display of her determination to continue speaking with her mother.

Alastor’s tinny voice crackled down the line, “It’s alright, Fawn. Let me speak to Rosie?”

Her lower lip trembled a bit as she said, “Okay,” and quickly shoved the phone into Rosie’s outstretched hand. 

Rosie leaned down and wrapped an arm around her, palm rubbing her upper back in a soothing gesture. “Thank you,” she murmured into her tall ear. “Would you like to go sit on the sofa? I’ll come get you when I’m done.”

Victoria dipped her head once, temple bumping Rosie’s cheekbone, and extracted herself from the embrace. Rosie watched as she plodded with heavy feet to the aforementioned sofa, where she dropped wearily onto the cushions. Rosie half expected her to be restless, sitting without much else to do, but all she did was stare down at her hooves with glassy eyes.

Rosie tsked, but allowed her focus to shift to the person on the other end of the line. 

“Alastor?” she asked, and she received a hum in response. She considered, for a moment, if he’d deign to give her the courtesy of honesty. Likely not. She chose to ask anyway, “How are you?”

That got a short, mirthless laugh out of her friend. “Why, I’m just wonderful, my dear!” he said in a manner so falsely jovial that Rosie winced. “I’ve only spent two weeks in the grasp of the most horrendous thing I’ve ever experienced!” His tone fell flat as he said, “Now, when am I to gather my daughter?”

Rosie blinked. “Well, you can come get her whenever, Alastor,” she told him, “you know that.” She paused. When Alastor said nothing, she decided to push. “Honestly, I’m more worried about you.”

Alastor scoffed. “I am fine. How is Victoria?”

Rosie sighed. Clearly, he was not going to play her game tonight.

“She misses you,” she said. “She hasn’t been sleeping well, and she’s been crying. Especially tonight.”

She could barely make out the wounded wail of interference that she was sure Alastor tried his best to stop from echoing down the line. 

Without allowing time for any contemplation, Rosie took a deep breath and said, “It isn’t your fault, Alastor.” Then, even gentler, “You had no choice.”

“I know.” It was immediate, and sharp in a way that betrayed his inability to believe her, whether that be in full, or at all. “I’ll be there early tomorrow,” he snapped, and the line went dead.

Rosie pulled the phone away from her ear. She stared at the handset for a moment before she shook her head and placed it back in its cradle. She wondered how in God’s name anyone was to help that man.

~~~

It was, indeed, early when loud, insistent knocking began to echo through the halls of Rosie’s Emporium. In fact, it was 6:00 AM on the dot. Luckily, Rosie had been expecting Alastor’s arrival and had ushered herself and her niece out of bed and into their day clothes a half hour prior. 

Upon hearing the incessant tapping, Victoria’s tired face lit up, and she launched herself out of the small armchair that was placed in Rosie’s parlour just for her. She raced out of the room, and Rosie followed after her at a more reasonable pace. She stepped into the main hall to find Victoria heaving open the heavy front door with every drop of strength she had. She stifled a laugh as she went to help, and the moment the door was open wide enough, Victoria abandoned her task to instead tackle her mother. Alastor’s arms closed around her the second they could, and the way his shoulders fell from their tightly wound position did not escape Rosie’s notice.

“Maman!” the girl cried, and it was muffled as she buried her head into Alastor’s jacket. “I missed you,” she said, heartbreakingly soft.

“Oh, Victoria,” Alastor said, his voice rougher than it had been on the phone, “I missed you, too.”

Rosie watched as shimmering droplets began to drip from his tightly shut eyes. She elected to ignore them. It wouldn’t do to embarrass him, not when he’d been through such an ordeal already. Instead, she reached out a hand and settled it softly on his shoulder. He leaned into it, whether consciously or not, and she used it as an excuse to wrap her arm more securely around his shoulders.

She wondered – and certainly not for the first time – if he knew how highly strung he really was. Surely not, if one small, friendly touch was all it took to unravel whatever facade he felt the need to keep up. 

Slowly, with the delicacy he deserved but was often unable to accept, she pulled away from him. When he was once again standing on his own, with Victoria at his side, she asked, as casually as she found possible, “Do you want to come in? I can order breakfast.” 

She was sure her plans to needle him into a proper talk were transparent to him, but it was always worth a shot. However, her hopes were foiled when Alastor quickly shook his head. 

“Thank you, but I think I’ve caused you enough trouble,” he said. Victoria tugged on the end of his coat in a silent request to be held, and in response, Alastor’s fingers buried into her hair and began scratching tenderly along her scalp. His attention shifted to his daughter as he continued, “We’ll find something on our own.”

Rosie’s gaze darted over her friend as he spoke in whispers to the girl at his side, and she frowned at what she saw. His eyes were dull and had worse circles than she’d ever seen beneath them, his skin was oddly pale, and his ears – his best tell, not that she’d alert him to that – were low. Much lower than usual. 

It occurred to her that he hadn’t even looked quite this awful after giving birth.

So, as Alastor gave in and bent at the waist to pick up Victoria as she so desperately wanted, Rosie tried one last time. She said, gently as she could, “Are you sure, sweetie? I can pull somethin’ togeth- woah!”

She surged to catch him as he staggered, the weight of his daughter on his hip pulling him off balance. Victoria’s little black Mary Jane shoes hit the sidewalk, and she let out a surprised, animalistic squeak. 

Alastor’s claws flew to Rosie’s upper arms and dug in, easily ripping through her sleeves and leaving shallow scratches on her skin. His head dropped onto her collarbone, the tip of his closer ear barely brushing her temple. Rosie turned just enough to mutter into it, “You are not okay, and you are comin’ in for breakfast.” She paused for a response. When she didn’t get one, she dropped the grace she’d been allowing him and hissed, “Got it?”

Alastor huffed, and his breath was warm, even through Rosie’s calico cotton dress. “Fine,” he snapped in a low voice.

Rosie gave a light scoff and rolled her eyes. He was always such an ornery thing, and she was sure the heat hadn’t helped. She slid her arm along his upper back while he reached for Victoria’s hand. The girl took it carefully with wide, concerned eyes. 

Rosie led them all into the emporium before turning toward the kitchen. “Alright,” she said brightly, in an attempt to lighten the mood, “What do you want to eat?”

~~~

Perched delicately on the cushioned chair at Rosie’s table, Alastor stared out the window, watching twisted, hellish birds preen their horrid wings in the birdbath in the garden. A streak of black and red broke his stare, and his gaze settled instead on the figure of his daughter, who was letting out delighted shrieks as she chased said birds around the lawn. She’d bounced back from his absence remarkably quickly, going from clinging to his arm in sullen silence to a ray of sunshine gracing the dusky dimness of Hell. 

Perhaps it had something to do with the simple act of eating breakfast. 

A tapping drew his attention and he sighed through his nose. He turned to the woman seated across from him. Her eyebrows were knit, the sharp tension of anxiety twisting her features. Alastor wanted to roll his eyes. He refrained. 

“Are you alright?” she asked.

Alastor opened his mouth to tell her that he was perfectly fine. A transparent lie that even he could see through, but the miniscule chance of her leaving him be was too tempting to give up on.

“And don’t tell me you’re fine. You look like shit,” she said, cutting off his non-existent sentence.

Alastor closed his mouth with an audible click. A miniscule chance, indeed, and one he seemed to have tragically missed. Rosie waited patiently, her deep, void-like eyes and raised brow demanding he speak. 

“Rosie, dear,” he began with uncharacteristic, barely-there patience. His lower eyelid was a hair’s breadth from twitching as he continued, “Posing demands as questions is a rather rude way to begin a conversation, is it not?”

Rosie had her eyes closed and her fingertips pressed into her temples before he even finished speaking. Alastor thought that might be a personal record for the fastest he’d ever caused such exasperation. There was a drawn out moment of silence, and he almost turned back to the window, content to watch his daughter learn to find joy in the simplest of things.

But-

“Why,” Rosie said, long and dramatic, “are you like this?”

Alastor paused, his vision sticking on the near-dead flowers on top of the credenza against the far wall. An honest contemplation shot through his mind. He’d been asked that question many times, but it had always been between terrified screams, as opposed to the genuine worry Rosie foolishly wore on her sleeve. His upper lip curled slightly in a display he did his best to stifle. He vastly preferred the bitter taste of torment over the sweetly deranged flavour of kindness. 

He hummed as he considered the weight of his options. Of course, he could give a real response, something that would satisfy her craving to dig around in his head for broken parts. Or… or, he could persist in playing it as a tactless joke, which was so much more amusing. 

As was typical for him, he chose to create himself a bit of entertainment.

Alastor shrugged, leaned back in his seat, and said casually with a gesture to his head, “Perhaps some wires are disconnected.” He let out a snort that was devoid of any real mirth and carried on, “Or missing altogether. It’s really quite difficult to say. I’ve never had the pleasure of peering inside my own-”

“Alastor.” Rosie cut him off as her palm hit the table with a bang. Alastor’s ears flicked back for a fraction of a second, just until he could force them upright again. “I’m trying to help you,” she hissed with quietly blazing eyes, and he couldn’t help but think that she looked like a remarkably angry cat.

A remarkably angry cat that was relentlessly chasing after his last nerve. 

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, on the verge of desperation in clinging to his composure. “Rosie,” he said, and he could feel the black bleeding into his sclerae, “I do not want to discuss the revolting acts my traitorous body forced upon me.” Every word was pushed from behind gritted teeth, firm and unnegotiable. The uncomfortable, crackling itch of his antlers expanding raced down his spine, and as his eyes popped open, the dials hidden in them began to swing. 

He tuned back into reality to find Rosie peering at him with the most unamused expression he’d ever managed to pull out of anyone other than his own mother. Somewhere in the depths of his gut, the sheepishness of childhood reared its head. A hushed, involuntary growl escaped him as he did what he could to stuff it back into its usual silence.

With a tone as flat as her countenance, Rosie said, “Would you put your shadow away? Talkin’ isn’t gonna hurt ya.”

At that, Alastor blinked, a tad bewildered. The dials froze in place. He twisted in his seat to find that, yes, his shadow had sprung to life and was curled over the back of the chair, tall and menacing, its mouth pulled into a jagged frown. 

“Oh,” he said, mildly. He knew he’d been… worked up, so to say, but he hadn’t expected his deadly silhouette to come out to play. He flicked a hand at it absentmindedly in a dismissive gesture. “You may leave if you wish,” he told it, curious as to what it would do with little instruction beyond go away. 

Alastor watched as it processed, face evening out into its ordinary jack-o’-lantern features before it morphed again into confusion. It tilted its head at him, as if asking, “why?”

“I’m not in any real danger,” Alastor slowly explained to the silly thing, and it narrowed its acidic green eyes. Clearly, it did not believe him. He gave in to the impulse to roll his eyes this time, and said, through a gritted smile, “Rosie is right. Speaking, no matter how much I don’t want to, will not harm me.”

The shade raised its ever-ephemeral eyebrows at him and somehow gave him a disrespectful glance up and down despite its lack of pupils. Whether it fully understood him or not, it nodded once, then leapt from the chair it was perched on and bounded out the door. Alastor thought briefly about calling it back to demonstrate how little patience he had for its insolence, but he was certain it was off to amuse Victoria. He wouldn’t pull her playmate from her, no matter how impolite it decided to be. 

With his most reliable – and most infuriating – defense against the alarming conversation to come sent away, he swivelled back to Rosie, whose entire expression, posture, and general air screamed I told you so. His lips twisted into as much of a frown as he could manage, and he crossed his arms and slid down in his seat, all to properly express his deep, deep irritation. Sure, Rosie was objectively correct. That didn’t mean he had to like it. 

Rosie sighed as her smug demeanor melted away, and she said, in a tone that was only slightly apologetic, “It’s not like I want details, honey, but…” She worried her lower lip between her sharp teeth, and Alastor could feel that she was about to bite down on the admittedly fragile dam he’d hastily constructed to prevent a catastrophic spillover of unappealing emotion. 

The anxiety crawling up the back of his throat was, he told himself, the result of the lingering remnants of whatever had burned so fiercely through him and nothing more. 

Rosie released her lip and said, soft and sweet and sincere, like a blade held to his ribs, “I just want to know that you’re okay.”

Alastor scoffed in derision before he could stop himself. His shoulders curled inward, a reaction he had no choice in preventing. “I don’t see how anyone is meant to be okay after enduring such a repulsive bodily revolt,” he snipped, and he almost missed the way Rosie’s lashes flicked downward, her typically untrackable gaze settling for just a moment on the way his claws bit through his sleeves and into his skin.

Rosie opened her mouth. Closed it again. Tilted her head and stared far too intensely at him for his comfort. Then, in a delivery of the heaviest blow she could have possibly managed, she said, “You do understand what happened to you, don’t you?”

Unwelcome waves of memory and dread finally emerged to beat against the walls of his skull, one after another in a nauseating rhythm, eroding his stubborn resolve to keep his mouth shut. Chaotic visual feedback screeched across his eyes and he felt something pop beneath his fingertips. The pain that followed was quickly drowned out by the deafening ringing in his ears. 

It was too much, too far, too- too everything.

His precious dam began to leak.

“Alastor?” It was Rosie’s voice, echoey and distant, shoved under the water of the flood creeping through his mind. 

Something somewhere burst, and his mouth spoke without direction, loud and frantic, “No, I don’t!” Alastor pulled his claws from his own skin and threw his hands in the air, sending flecks of blood to land wherever they pleased. “I have never,” he continued, “and I do mean never, experienced something so base and vile as arousal, Rosie,” he hissed, and he trampled over whatever reply she had with, “It makes absolutely no sense to me, and I do not appreciate being forced into it.” One set of bloodied fingers flew to his face, smearing red across his forehead and down his temple. The words flowed on, damning and horrible and desperate to escape his chest, “For fuck’s sake, all I’ve ever been is forced. To keep my career, my reputation, my secrets, all of it, always, and never my choice.” He was aware, vaguely, that he was panting, short of breath, as he said, “And still, somehow, I am not allowed a choice.”

Silence crashed down around the room, almost as loud as the things he’d never meant to say had been, and when his vision cleared of the fog, the first thing he saw was Rosie. Rosie, whose bright, animated face was crestfallen and dull, concern etched into every feature. 

Alastor wanted to scream. This damn woman and her empathy. He growled in frustration and she jumped, which offered him a well-earned drop of twisted amusement. He waited for her to speak, to tell him that she was sorry, that it wasn’t his fault, something from her usual bag of tricks, but she just sat there, staring at him with that expression made of sorrow that wasn’t hers. 

Eventually he huffed, and decided that if he was going to endure this nonsense, he might as well acquire an explanation. 

“What was it, then?” he asked, and Rosie blinked rapidly, brows falling in confusion.

“What was what?” she asked, and Alastor rolled his eyes.

“My… ordeal. What was it?”

“...Oh. It was a heat,” she said simply, as though he were supposed to know what that meant.

His eye started up with its twitching again as he sighed and asked, “Which is… what?” Exhaustion from the outburst he couldn’t yet bring himself to be embarrassed about was rising quickly, and the singular thing he wanted more than to go home was to understand what had happened to him. 

Rosie’s lips parted into a little ‘O’, as if she couldn’t believe he required a deeper explanation. Alastor raised an eyebrow at her and her mouth slid shut.

Finally, she said, stiff and awkward, “Well, it’s a reproductive cycle.” When Alastor did not interrupt and instead waved for her to carry on, her tone warmed, “Of course, they’re useless in Hell ‘cause us sinners are infertile. Most animalistic ones have ‘em, though, and they usually last a full month. Yours was only two weeks, which I suppose could mean that it…” she winced as she trailed off, something that worried Alastor greatly.

“Which could mean that mine what?” he asked, and it certainly was not toeing the edge of despair.

“Could mean yours is every six months,” she said with a grimace, “instead of once a year.”

Alastor froze. An audio of breaking glass pierced the air, coming from both him and the radio on Rosie’s mantel. The thoughts in his head ground to a halt in favour of replaying the phrase “every six months” on repeat.

“What,” he hissed, nearly entirely static.

Rosie frowned and stretched her arms across the table, fingertips brushing Alastor’s forearm before he yanked it away. She bit her lip again and hesitantly pulled her hands back to herself, where they belonged.

When she spoke, it was quiet, like she was dealing with startled prey and not a well established overlord. “They’re usually annual, and a full month long. Those that have shorter cycles, like yours, tend to have two in a year.”

The self-imposed stiffness holding him up dissolved, and Alastor dropped his head into his hands. He groaned through his still-bloodied fingers, “No, no, no.” He whipped his head up and stared at Rosie with probable mania in his eyes. “Two?” he asked, a bit wildly. “One a year would have been torture enough, but two?”

Rosie flinched. “I’m so-”

“If you tell me you’re sorry, I will never speak to you again,” Alastor said, and he was entirely serious.

She paused, her lips still parted to speak, and studied him with pinched brows. Slowly, she closed her mouth and raised her hands in surrender. Alastor had one moment to bask in the blissful silence of victory before she reopened her mouth to say something else that he probably wouldn’t like to hear. 

Thankfully, instead, both of their heads whipped to the door across the room as it creaked, announcing the arrival of a sniffling Victoria with red grass stains on her knees and blood on her stockings. The shadow stood behind her, frowning and chittering at a low volume.

Without his express permission, all of the tension melted out of Alastor’s bones, Rosie and her inane, ridiculous tendencies swiftly booted out of his awareness. Despite the previous situation, his voice was disgustingly soft and loving as he said, “Oh, Fawn.” 

She correctly took it as an invitation and traipsed toward him with the gait only a downtrodden child could achieve. She pulled herself up onto his lap without asking and twisted her fingers into the looser fabric of his coat, her head resting wonderfully on his chest. 

“What happened, my love?” he asked, and she launched into a lengthy and rather circular explanation of how she’d tripped on a deceptive little rock and fallen. 

Alastor hummed and gasped in all the correct places, and when he chanced a glance up at Rosie, she was smiling at them fondly, chin resting on her palm. He was certain his earlier animosity was not forgotten, but, for now, it seemed to be ignored in favour of familial tranquility. She’d surely drag him back into a terrible discussion sooner or later, but sitting and listening to his daughter yammer on about her inconsequential fall took obvious precedence. If Alastor were honest, he found Rosie’s willingness to put the fight aside very sweet. 

He drew his attention back to the girl on his lap, who was still somehow speaking, and lifted a hand to smooth it along her unbound hair. It was sun-warm and frizzy from the humidity of an approaching summer. The feeling pulled more nostalgia from him than he’d expected. He dropped his head to rest on hers with a sigh, which made her ears twitch as his breath brushed against them. 

He waited politely for her to pause so he could say, “I love you, Victoria.”

She giggled and shuffled around until she could wriggle herself out of his hold to turn her bright blue eyes on him, sparkling and so full of life. “I love you, too, Maman!” she exclaimed, and she wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him with all of the affection her small body could hold. Alastor returned her embrace easily, a thing that had become so unnaturally natural to him. 

And it was then that he finally began to remember that she made it worth it to him. Every deal, every heat, every horrible, depraved aspect of Hell was worth it so long as he got to keep her. She was his reason, his real reason, his best reason, to endure. 

And he would endure.