deals and demands

1.

when he dies, he's scared.

fear is something you grow accustomed to in the apocalypse. nothing is as it seems and the gods once relied on and prayed to no longer pick up the phone—

all except for one.

when he sees her, he's not afraid.

okay, well, he's a little afraid— but more in the... primal sense. in a natural sense, the same way that when you see something much larger than you think it should be moving way faster than you thought it would in the woods when it's much too dark, something falls over you and your heart stops a moment.

...not that he had a heart left to stop, but still.

it's magnificence, fear, and reverence all at once as he sees her ascend from below. her wings, all too many of them, move in tandem as she swoops through the haze and her hair flows in the billowing heat behind. she glows brilliantly in the low light of hell, strips and swirls of red curling around her exposed skin and beneath the few things covering it.

in reality, it couldn't have been more than a moment that he saw her. they say one step in hell is eight more above and he's not exactly sure if the same applies to time, but it doesn't matter. he won't be here for an eternity anyway, of that he's certain.

absolutely so, as he watches her slip through what looks like a purple stained glass window with a grin on her face, and she disappears.

the fear subsides.

he knows his way out, now.

2.

once upon a time, conquest was just a language of words that bit his tongue and choked in his throat. it was stammered syllables and broken accents and sounds that just didn't come out right no matter the force he put behind them. like in everything, he just spit out the blood and kept trying.

it was a language he learned for her.

by the time she came back, he was ready for her. he had hell in his hands and a demand to make, a low voice that spoke evenly and stressed the right syllables.

he cornered her in her palace and closed the door behind him, ignoring the way all the muscles in his body wanted to pull taut and all the synapses in his brain wanted him to run away. the blood in his body screamed like a siren but his hands didn't shake as he let his weapon clatter against her desk.

"I have you surrounded, Your Highness— or should I say, Devil. Hell is no longer in your possession. You have one option. Give me my life back or lose Hell forever."

...he wasn't expecting her to laugh.

(it sounded nothing like he'd been expecting it to.)

"wait— wait, are you serious?" many hands connected to many arms that weren't connected to her wipe away red and black tears that seep from the many eyes that blink over her body. her wings twitch and her tails flit and her shoulders shake as she shrugs off the remnants of laughter.

he keeps expecting realization to dawn on her features, but the mo(u)rning never comes.

"hey, be my guest. you want this place that bad, take it." she kicks her heels up on the table and takes the blade he had clattered onto the table into her grip, twisting the sharp tip into the smooth surface. it splits like flesh.

"...I'm sorry?"

"if you're looking for forgiveness, you came to the wrong place." she's looking at him too closely. it feels like every gaze of every eye is burning into his skin but it does nothing to cut through the dumbfounded expression on his face.

"That's— Not what I meant. What do— what do you mean?"

"what i mean is that the only thing you have is something i was forced to keep. if you're so desperate to take it off my hands for me, i welcome you to do so. have fun!" she leans back in her seat and dismisses him with a little wave. his eye begins to twitch.

"...That's it? I spend weeks rallying your subjects in your domain, fixing issues YOU caused, using YOUR resources to overthrow YOU and all you have to say is 'have fun'?" his voice is rising now, the conquest that he had built up in his throat slipping away with his composure.

"uh... yeah. did you want anything else?"

"...My life back?"

"oh! yeah, nothing i can do about that. sorry!"

every ounce of that natural, primal fear that he had felt before was gone. honestly, he felt... nothing, as he stared across the room and out the window behind her, at the army he had raised that are currently sitting bored and attentive waiting for a sign of trouble. she followed his gaze and turned to look, raised an eyebrow, and turned back to him. that nothing subsided just as quickly.

"WHAT KIND OF FUCKING DEVIL ARE YOU?"

she's laughing again. the tattoos that curve around her body glow in time with every breath she takes, and he's seriously regretting leaving her his blade. he stomps up to her desk and slams his hands against it, recoiling as the desk sinks into his push like fat. fuck, why does it DO that!?!? why doesn't it do that for HER?

"one it looks like you weren't prepared for, honey. but i commend you for trying."

"This... this is absurd. Are you just playing games with me? Or are you serious?"

3.

this is probably the most entertaining thing that's happened to her in five thousand years.

it reminds her of those old cartoons she used to watch when she was a kid, when the poor fool being bamboozled gets so in over his head that all notions of reality stop for them. steam bellowing out of ears and bodies suspended running in the air a foot off the cliff they didn't realize was there.

he's standing there red-faced and bewildered and she's starting to feel a little bad. she's sure he had some grand delusions about this moment, about being the chosen one in hell to overthrow the devil and escape. what a rude awakening for him.

"mostly fucking with you, a little bit serious. you don't make demands with the devil, babe. you make deals."

"I told you the terms of my 'deal.'"

"okay? i don't accept them. but i’ll tell you what— i like your stuff, kid. it takes a whole lot of balls to strut in here and make demands like that to a person like me, so i’ll hear you out. whaddya say? what do you want?”

the frustration on his face begins to wane with her question, like he’s considering awful carefully how to go about this. if she were more invested she’d rise from her station and loom over him, but she’s too lazy to stand up. say what you will about hell, but at least the chairs are comfortable.

“I… I want power. I want to be alive. Up on the surface. I know I fucked it up royally the first time, but if I just got another chance, I know I could do it right this time— I just. I need to get out of here, first—”

the devil throws her feet off the desk, letting her heels click-stomp against the floor and her hand slams against the arm of her chair. he doesn’t jump at the sound, but he blinks hard instead of flinching. something in her chest begins to pull, a well-known regret of a similar measure to his, threatening to rise if she doesn’t keep her apathy in check.

“alright, little prince fuck-up. let me stop you there. do you know how many times i’ve heard that one? it only took dying from your mistakes to make you realize how to fix them, and now that you had a taste of the consequence, you think it shouldn’t apply to you. what else? what makes you so special?”

“...Not a Prince. A King. I’ve got all of Hell behind me, and you’re asking what makes me special. Not everyone can do that. You obviously can’t.”

“i never tried to. never wanted to. look, little king, i’m in the same boat as you— well, admittedly, a much nicer boat not made of meat and not experiencing eternal suffering, but still— i don’t want to be down here as much as you do, but look at where we both are—”

“You get to leave! You do it all the time, I watch you leave through that portal and you never stay—”

“i’m bound to this place. i can’t leave unless i have a valid directive. like... some kind of summons, or a deal to make with some stupid mortal for their soul—”

“Then make a deal with me. I want to leave. You want to leave. I don’t care what I have to give— hell, I don’t care what I have to take. Nothing is going to stop me from getting out of here. You just seemed like the shortest avenue.”

4.

she pauses at his words. the many eyes of her devilish form blink and vanish as they close and she stands from her chair. he’s not exactly sure what to make of it, but her features seem to soften as she walks. her many wings pull inward behind her back into a mass of feathers before extending again, leaving only two to bob and sway as she walks.

that fear he was used to swallowing at the sight of her melts into something resembling ease as her vessel changes. he notices that she’s shorter than him, and for some reason, he wasn’t expecting that.

“...okay.”

“Okay?”

he wasn’t expecting that, either.

“okay. let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“Wait, really—?” he almost doesn’t believe it. there’s no way it’s that easy, the devil herself doesn’t just decide to abandon her post after bitching about how hard it would be to leave—

“yes. really. i think… i think i have a way to get us both what we want while still being able to make it look legit on the books. you ready to sell your soul to the devil, young man?”

“...I thought you lose your soul by default when you die?”

“you do. technically, i already own it— but hey, if you’ve got something to trade for it…” she gestures at the open window with a raised brow and cheshire smile, but he’s not entirely sure he’s following.

“Okay, so… I give you my legion for my soul back. But then I’m… selling my soul back to you.”

“i’m giving you free chips to bet with, little king. you’re selling your soul back to me in return for a pact, and if i have a pact with someone on the surface who needs my services— we both get to stay up there. you said you wanted power, right? you can have some of mine.”

the devil holds her hand out to him to shake, and for some reason, he feels inclined to take a few steps back. something is wrong. it’s all too easy and she’s the devil, for fuck’s sake, why would she need him to do all this? what’s stopping her from fucking him over the moment they hit the ground and he’s fucked and just like before, this was all for nothing—

“what’s wrong? don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet now—”

“I’m not! I just— how am I supposed to trust you? A couple of minutes before this you were fucking with me and saying there was nothing you could do! How do I know that you’re not just going to put me in a hole somewhere and keep me just barely alive so you can go screw off and do— whatever it is someone like you does! It’s too simple, it’s too easy, it doesn’t feel right—”

“fuck, are you really that paranoid? i promise i’m not going to—”

“I want to see it in writing. The— the contract, the Pact, whatever it is— I want to review all the terms and just what I’m giving to you.”

“didn’t you say you didn’t care what you had to give or take to get out of here?”

“To get out of here, yes— but for security after that? It’s different.”

the devil sighs frustratedly, throwing her hands up in the air and click-stomping back to her desk, pulling open a drawer (that continues to shoot open, comically longer than the depth of the actual desk, until it hits the far wall) and smacking some piece of parchment down.

“fuck, you’re an annoying one. you’re lucky i want to get out of here as bad as i do. wait— what’s your name?”

“Oh, it’s—

5.

“that work for you, your majesty?” she rolls her eyes and drops the quill on the desk, scooting away from where he’s peering closely at the collection of pages over her shoulder.

“...You misspelled ‘jeopardized’ in paragraph—”

“oh i misspelled ‘jeopardized’ in paragraph— shut the fuck up!” she shoves her shoulder into his, swiping the pages up into a stack and failing to elbow him as he blocks her. she wants to wipe that stupid little smirk off his face, but it’s not like she could completely eliminate her own, either. the two of them look way too excited to get the hell out of here, thick as thieves.

“once you sign this, there’s no going back. you get that, right?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t sign it otherwise. More than anything I’m just surprised you left that page in about you losing control of Hell to some sinner—”

“and no one is going to see it but me, got that?”

“Hey, if it gets me out of Hell, I’m not telling.”

“it never leaves this room. but we, my friend,” she throws an arm around his neck, slapping the quill into his palm, “are getting the fuck out of here.”

6.

“...Can you tell me more about what it was like before?”

the king sits on the other side of the campfire from pandora, pulling his knees up to his chest and his bunny ears over his crown. calypso— pandora’s guitar— rests comfortably beside him as he stares into starry night sky.

(he had almost cried when they stepped through that portal and the meat of his organs stopped shifting around inside of him long enough stumble to the ground and look up to be met with a sky full of stars, a far cry from the world below. he didn’t know how much he missed it. he swore he’d never take the stars for granted ever again.)

“okay. where to start… oh! this might be hard to imagine, but there used to be this big, bright rock in the sky called la luna. well— she had a lot of different names, but that’s the one i like. she was beautiful— and she looked different depending on the way the sun looked at her. she could control the waves of the ocean, too. but one day, she just… disappeared. the nights have been darker ever since.”

“...That doesn’t sound real. Are you messing with me again?”

“promise i’m not.”

“Okay, well… If it was there, why didn’t anyone go looking for it when it disappeared? How do you lose a big rock in the sky?”

“cuz it was super far away. duh. you see all those stars up there? the people from before tried to visit them. to see what they looked like from up close.”

“Did you guys ever get there? Or find out what it was like?”

“sorta? we went there, y’know. to la luna. but that was way before the world ended. turns out that space is really empty and not a lot happens out there. it’s honestly way more boring than you might think. we never found any foreign signs of life, so we had to create our own from home. sent whole colonies out there to inhabit planets and everything. never heard back from the really far away ones, though, cuz of the whole… end of the world thing.”

“...Do you think they’re okay out there? All alone?”

“...i hope so. i think.... i think that’s where luna went, honestly. she’s keeping them company out there. that way, they’re not alone.”

“Are we alone?”

“well. yes, technically, there’s no one around right now—”

“No, like— if they have her out there, what do we have here? To keep us from being alone?”

“...i don’t know, king. each other, i think.”

“...That makes sense, I guess. What else happened? Before the world ended?”

“well… once upon a time, there were three teenagers in a summer camp. they were all pretty bad kids in one way or another. no matter how hard they tried, they could never quite seem to get it right.”