Chapter Text
The first one is red.
Red as the dried blood on a festering injury, left too long without tending to it, infection nurturing in the carelessness. It’s red–black–red. Small. Soft. Pathetic thing that doesn’t even have the grace to grow thorns; smoothly going up his throat and out of his mouth. Withered before it even touches the ground.
He struggles for a breath, grasping the sink for support, crimson claws tearing through the ceramic. His shadows tither, they wouldn’t dare do anything else. The radio crackles, changing stations as the static surrounds him; it’s still far too quiet.
Alastor’s first instinct when he gets himself under control and sees the dead flower on his bathroom tiles is to go to the Emporium. For Rosie to look at him, past skin and flesh and give him the answer, for her to tell him how to make this stop. This is her speciality, after all. And if that fails, as it inevitably will, for her to get the flowers out manually, to cut him open and untangle the vines from his lungs. Just as he–
His second instinct, and the more reasonable one, is to kill something.
So, he does that.
.
The first time Alastor dies is at thirty-five to a bullet to the head, in Louisiana, hunting grounds while burying his latest prey, the parts that weren’t worthy of consumption. It was deft and swift, one moment he was staring at the barrel of a gun and the next at a blood-red sky, there was no in-between. Just the now and then.
The second time he died was to teeth tearing through his throat at the edges of Cannibal Town; a passage rite; an aperitif. The first time he embodied the prey his body took after, even if he managed to land as many hits –bites– as he took. The third time was an affair he would rather forget, uneventful; boring. The fourth time was a very unfortunate accident, Rosie really didn’t mean to tear that very important vein or the other one, she just got over excited and has since made up for it. Her eyes are just delicious, absolutely worth dying for! The fifth time was a tragic scene, indeed, a severe allergy he carried through death and the sixth one was to confirm that, yes, a seed killed him where hardened Overlords had failed.
He considers for a second that this is his seventh and final one, just as he unbuttons his shirt and sees the situation festering on his chest. A holiness that is dripping from the cut made by that dreadful first man; open, gaping and a brilliant white where there should be the red–black-red of his innards, his shadows shrill and dissolve every time they try to stitch it, Sin rejecting the Sanctity rejecting the Sin. And in-between, pushing out what remains is the manifestation of a love that shouldn’t exist, not like this, at the detriment of himself. A garden, a red that is nothing like his own, tacky yellow and soft pink. Soft, soft, soft. They still don’t grow thorns –or spikes or poison or teeth–, green, lively vines slithering around and clutching his chest, trying to choke him from the outside.
They don’t wither. Not yet.
Alastor is– trying to breathe around the pain and the all-encompassing rage. Eyes turned black, antlers grasping the ceiling, higher and higher like it matters, smile pulling at the stitches holding his face together. The lights above him flicker and the wound pulses like a warning.
“We are–” He forces past his lips, staring at his frowning shadow. “--we are in a bit of a hassle, aren’t we?”
They don’t even draw blood, there’s just that horrendous white, white, white dripping like purified ink, into the petals and the tides below. He breathes, chest expanding, moving the wound along, opening it more; gaping.
It happened fast. One moment he was standing in the middle of a charming group gathering at the front of the brand new Hotel, trying to keep his insides as insides when Charlie decided it was a good idea to hug him. The stitches were clumsy, mangled things that nevertheless remained where he sewed them, bringing skin together, hiding the white, white, white, lulling him into a false sense of victory when he didn’t crumple and die over the course of the next few weeks.
It didn’t heal, no, but it wasn’t getting actively worse, so he had the time to figure out something, while also asserting his authority in the Hotel. And then, two days after, he threw up a flower, crimson, soft; four days after the vines slithered around his lungs and pushed against his chest, popping the stitches open and dripping white.
A terrarium.
He releases one hand from the sink and raises it to graze the brilliant red flower at the center of this situation, he watches as life is slowly drained away from it, drying and withering; dying and falling. It’s the only good thing to come out from his curse, to not need scissors and shreds. Knives and tweezers.
Red turned black turned ashes. No evidence of his little weakness, of his–
A shudder runs through him and he starts to cough, violently, trying to expel the things trapped on his chest, on his throat. His smile stretches all the way, snapping the stitches holding it together and his mouth breaks, jaw hanging, allowing him to get a hand inside to touch and wither, to kill the flower that desperately wants to get out. It disintegrates inside him, between his fingertips; something wet falls from his face and he gags, whole body spasming and making more of a mess of his chest.
He drags a breath, willing his body under control while his shadows rearrange his jaw into its proper place, replacing the stitches and Alastor finally spits the ashes into the black sink; he swallows a laugh.
Of all the things that could have killed him this is the most fitting, something so holy and pure that goes against his very nature. Disgusting and pathetic; hilarious if he looks at it sideways. He’s not going to let himself die, of course not, nothing is definitive to him; he can remedy this, find a way, but–
It’s fitting.