Chapter Text
You don’t remember it at all, but something bad must have happened. How else would you have ended up in Hell?
Those are the heavy thoughts that are pressed into you before your eyes are even able to open, everything feels wrong. When you finally drag yourself awake, the world above you is a smear of violent red sky and crooked buildings leaning in a rather precarious manner. Your back aches where you must have struck the ground, it’s a fiery deep, bruising pain that grinds through bone and muscles alike.
Your eyes hurt, everything hurts. All you want to do is to remember what had transpired right before the pain now.
You search your mind’s archives for your last day, your last breath, but no… there is nothing. There’s absolutely nothing - empty… a blank silence where memories should have been.
You are pretty sure you had tried to be good!? You feel like you would have remembered being a bad person. But there is nothing there, you have no memory of any thing or of anyone you had been… you scrunch your already shut eyes trying to focus, you had been human right? Just ordinary before this.
Crawling onto trembling hands and knees, you drag in a breath that burns your throat raw. The air tastes wrong here, sulfur and rusty, sweetly rotten, and you choke on it, coughing and gagging on nothing until your ribs ache, until your tears blur the neon world into bleeding streaks of color.
For one strange moment, you think you might die again just trying to breathe. When the coughing finally stops, and you’re able to open your eyes the world you’re now in begins to sharpen into focus.
There are signs flickering overhead, lots of neon. The pavement is beneath you is cracked and slick with fluids you refuse to examine too closely. You’re in a street of some sort, maybe an alleyway, you hear laughter somewhere… echoing somewhere close. So there are other people here.
“I don’t belong here” The certainty rises quiet and terribly. Your hands…are they your hands? Tremble uncontrollably. Glancing down at your…hands…they are no longer a humanly color, instead now a muted soft color like the sky as it turns from sunset to night.
Rolling your arms over you’re momentarily mesmerized but the tiny silver specks that now pepper your arms like little freckles. Rubbing at them hard they don’t come off, neither does the color.
Panic twists low in your stomach. You scrub harder at the new hue, until your skin stings, until your breath comes quick and shallow. It hurts, this is your skin, darkening in color now a reaction to your useless scrubbing. Feeling ill as this thought settles, the unearthly color remains, and the soft stubborn glints that shimmer ever so slightly when you move.
“what is wrong with me” you ask into the emptiness, “what happened?” The alleyway doesn’t answer of course.
Mustering all of your strength you manage to push yourself upright. Your knees wobble violently, your vision tilting sideways, and suddenly bile rises in your throat. Doubling over, you retch helplessly, your body shaking with dry heaves that scrape your lungs raw. When it passes, you’re left hollow and trembling.
You wipe your mouth with the back of your new hand. You don’t know where to go, you don’t even know where you are but it all feels dangerously wrong. With no where else to go but forward you hesitantly take a few shallow steps trying your best to remember how to walk.
Out of the alley into a crooked street littered with broken glass and flickering street lighfs. Music blares somewhere distant, the harsh color palette appears to be everywhere, everything feels wrong in a way that makes your skin crawl. A pair of humans? No…something else…they look to be some sort of demonic form, arguing over something that looks suspiciously like a bone. You shake your head trying to wake up from this sickening nightmare. A neon sign buzzes overhead, letters blinking on and off like a flickering heartbeat.
You keep your head down, trying to wish away the taste of bile and the flavor in the air. You don’t want to see anymore, you don’t want to be at all.
You pass a dark cracked window in what looks to be an abandoned building. For a moment your new reflection flashes back at you, not human, colors like an early evening sky, touched only by those strange flecks of light across your cheeks and shoulders, they spread across your arms ever so slightly. Seeing yourself in this…form threatens the bile back out, so you look away as fast as possible. Your head can’t stop spinning.
The longer you walk, the heavier your head feels. Trying your best to conjure up anything that happened before you hit the ground your mind is straining uselessly against blank walls. You know you are dead, you don’t know how you know but you do.
What did you even do? The hues of the city are violent enough to let you know this isn’t heaven, quite the opposite it seems. How did this happen? What kind of person ends up here and doesn’t even remember why?
You try to think of a single cruel moment. Something terrible enough to earn eternal damnation. Nothing comes from your mental search, but pain behind your eyes, a burning sensation that sets your mind into spin.
You’re so focused on the spinning in your head you don’t feel your legs give out beneath you.
You don’t even notice where you are until your back hits a cold brick structure and you slide down beside a dented dumpster, sour smells curling around you. The world spins sickeningly again. You press your forehead to your knees, trying to steady your breathing.
Just for a minute, you tell yourself. Just until the spinning stops. The ugly city hums around you, and Your eyelids grow heavy despite the fear. You don’t mean to fall asleep. You just… stop fighting.
And then the feeling of rough claws grabbing you. Jerking awake again with a scream caught halfway in your throat. Rough talons dig into your arms, hauling you upright like a ragdoll. The world tilts wildly as your feet scrape uselessly against pavement.
“Well look at that,” one voice snickers. “Don’t find something pretty as this every day for the taking?”
You blink, trying to focus, and see their grins ever so wide, sharp teeth, way too many teeth. Beady black eyes gleam impossibly wet and hungry. For what you are too afraid to think of an answer. Something half shark but also like a man, holds you tight. Words fail you, your body fails you.
Your heart pounds painfully. “Please, I…I don’t have anything”
“Didn’t say we wanted anything but you right now,” another laughs. “You’re plenty enough.”
They drag you deeper into shadows of an abandoned partially dilapidated structure. Your head spins too hard to fight. Panic claws at your throat, you know this is bad, very bad.
Are you going to die again? The thought lands dull and certain as they shove you against a crumbling wall. Light from a street lamp flickers across their faces, turning their smiles into something even more monstrous.
Closing your eyes trying to disassociate, you don’t notice the dark shadows creeping forward towards the ankles of your assailants. And then the sound of static rings out in a dizzying frequency making your teeth ache. It's then the groping hands pause, claws stop scraping and grabbing.
Forcing your own eyes open as your teeth grate at the noise. An astonishingly tall and slender figure stands at the alley mouth, red suit immaculate against the grim landscape of Hell, a yellow smile bright and fixed in a way that is much too wide.
“Well now,” the figure says pleasantly, a voice warm with crackling static, “must we be so uncivilized? This poor dear appears to have just arrived, have you hellions nothing better to do than terrorize a new sinner in its infancy?
Immediately you feel the shift in atmosphere, the grip on your body loosens. The shark-like demons mutter immediate apologies and begin to try to slink away before those dark shadows creep up, with a wave of his long arm they pounce, you have to turn your head away from the gore that unfolds. Shadows claiming flesh and blood into a hellish oblivion.
You can’t feel even relieved at the disappearance of claws on your new body, because as soon as they leave you feel hot blood spatter onto your skin. Some part of your mind is aware that the red figure has stepped closer.
His crimson gaze sweeps over you, not crudely like the men who had grabbed you, His eyes linger ever so slightly longer than necessary on your face.
“It appears today was your lucky day my dear, had I come along any later you might have been subject to a laundry list of unholy desires.”
You swallow. “Am I in hell?”
His smile widens in confirmation at your observations. “How very astute”
“I don’t know how I got here…I didn’t do any…”
Before you can try to claim any more innocence the golden grinned man cuts you off
“Why, that is of no consequence at all, chère. Hell is remarkably indulgent when it comes to such insignificant formalities. You are so new, still finding your footing, poor thing, and this city has a way of devouring the unprepared. I am a demon, certainly… but not an uncivil one. Should you desire it, I could extend my… protection.”
His voice makes something inside you bristle, a quiet warning coiling through your bones…run. Yet he approaches without any hesitations. Taloned fingers, carefully close around your wrist to guide you upright, and for a single, suspended moment you stare into his eyes, you notice a pair of tiny dials spinning as he extends his hand, shadows creeping towards your ankles as if they might grasp you and pull you into their realm.
Black ribbons lash toward you, coiling hungrily as though to claim you and then, just as suddenly, they snap back in a burst of searing pain. A shrill, splintering scream sounds through the air, silver sparks exploding outward as his little shadows recoil like creatures burned by flame. The red demon jerks away as though your skin scalds him, stumbling back with a startled, breathless stagger.
For half a heartbeat, his smile turns to a grimace. He chokes, his hand trembles where it touched you, as though he’d grabbed something searingly hot.
You stare, horrified at a loss for words over his reaction to your touch, scared of what might have happened had he not retreated.
It’s then you hear a slow clap echoing from the alley mouth. The red demon man straightens instantly, the same nauseating smile snapping back into place.
Both you and the red demon turn toward the sound, and there you spy a stranger in red and white and gold, this rather short man is draped lazily against a crooked lamppost, dressed too well for this ruined street, pale light glinting in his golden hair, atop his head giant white top hat. The newcomer has watched the scene unfold with a grin far too pleased.
“Well, now what do we have here…,” he laughs, “this is a new low bambi. Trying to swipe souls that aren’t yours to claim again? Geez, give the girl some space sicko”
The red man’s smile pulls tighter, and only then do you notice the small horns curling from his hairline, delicate and sharp, like a stag’s.
The man in white takes a couple steps until he’s right in front of you, bending down ever so slightly he offers you his hand with disarming gentleness. “Hey there,” he says softly. “You look a little lost. Just got here? Name’s Lucifer, but you can call me Lu. Come on, let’s get you somewhere safer than this. My daughter’s probably about your age, and she has a place you can stay. It’s… a little nicer than a back-alley dumpster, at least.”
You don’t know why, but you nod before you can think…maybe it’s the mention of his daughter, maybe it’s the way he sounds like he wants to help instead of take. When you slip your hand into his, he doesn’t flinch the way the red, deer-horned demon did. And as he leads you from the alley, you don’t noice the way that red deer demon watches you go with an air of utter disdain.
Crooked streets slide past in blurs of neon and red hues. The faint scrape of your shoes against cracked pavement as you follow the man who had introduced himself - with cheerful absurdity as Lucifer.
He walks ahead with easy confidence, hands tucked into his vest pockets, humming softly to himself like the city isn’t literally hell. You trail behind him slowly, dizzy and quiet, unsure whether to trust him but more unsure of what else to do besides follow.
And trailing behind you, comes the deer man. You don’t turn around but you can feel him anyway.
The hotel appears suddenly, rising from the chaos like something out of a Las Vegas wet dream.
Tall, gaudy in an incredibly desperate sort of way. Its lights glow warm against the bruised sky, windows shining in invitation. The sign flickers uncertainly but bravely, letters buzzing as though trying very hard to be hopeful in this hellish landscape.
You stop on the sidewalk, staring up.
“Here you go dear! New home… well, temporary home,” Lucifer says lightly, glancing back at you. “Come on then, this bunch doesn’t bite…. Much.” He guffaws at his own joke, and you crack half a smile.
You hesitate only a moment before following him inside.
The lobby smells like stale carpet cleaner and cheap candles. It’s strangely comforting. Somehow much too normal for Hell.
Your shoulders sag before you realize it as exhaustion steeps in. There is something about the place that makes you realize how exhausted you are. For the first time since you woke, you feel… almost safe. Maybe it’s the fact you don’t feel exposed to the new elements now that you’re indoors.
A blur of red and black crashes into your peripheral.
“New guest! New guest! Oh my gosh new guest!!”
A tiny one eyed woman skids across the floor, eye wide and delighted. She stops short in front of you, squinting suspiciously.
“…Why are you…sparkly?”
You blink. “I… don’t know.”
Niffty gasps in horror. “Hold still!! You’re dusty, so so DUSTY, I just finished sweeping don’t get glitter all over my floors!”
Before you can react, she’s scrubbing harshly at your arms, neck and face with a rag that smells like lemon cleaner. You flinch, startled, but much like your own attempt, the tiny flecks don’t budge.
She scrubs and frowns then scrubs harder.
“…It…it won’t come off.”
From behind the bar, a black cat like demon snorts into his bottle. “New kid looks like she died in a glitter factory, cut it out Niffty!.”
The one eyed woman finally halts her cleaning assault to glare at you pointedly.
Heat floods your face. You rub at your arm self-consciously. “I guess… maybe, I’m not really sure myself.” You don’t know what else to say. You don’t remember anything.
Footsteps hurry toward you, light and bright.
A pretty blonde woman who kind of resembles Lucifer stops just short of crashing into you, eyes shining with hope so fierce it almost hurts to look at.
“Hi! Hello! Welcome!” she says breathlessly. “You’re safe here. I promise. We help people. We really do.”
You stare at her, throat tight as you try to smile.
Charlie’s expression softens immediately. She takes your hands gently.
“Dad says you’re new and a little out of sorts!,” she says. “That’s okay, we can figure this all out together.”
Something in your chest cracks a little.
You nod, feeling tears well up out of nowhere as she embraces you and for the first time since opening your eyes in hell you feel your shoulders slump. Everything is suddenly too exhausting all at once.
Hidden in the slow-crawling dark of the lobby, the stag-horned demon watches without your knowing. His perfect smile remains untouched, immaculate -yet his eyes narrow with a sudden, terrible clarity, the look of a beast that has caught the scent of prey worth following.