Chapter Text
Modern media is something of a luxury in Hell.
At least, the stuff that’s modern in the living world is. Films that are being actively produced by the living, apps and social media, video games, even new books are hard to come by in the afterlife. Specifically because: it’s the after life, and those things come from the present life, and as such they aren’t dead yet.
There are loopholes, of course. If someone is buried with their favorite book or film, sometimes it comes with them. This isn’t the greatest thing for newly arrived Sinners, who are more often than not mobbed for whatever small part of Life they happen to take with them. But once that thing has fallen soundly into Hell, it tends to fall into the greater circulation as well.
But mostly, people just have to wait. Wait until the medium itself is dead, or the author or staff involved have died, and the thing in question is considered soundly dead as well. Only then can it really appear in Hell proper for anyone to have access to. It’s why old things are so commonplace in Hell, and why VoxTek is so incredibly popular: precisely because it isn’t old, long before its time.
Modern media is something of a luxury in Hell, which is why Charlie is very lucky that her father is the King of it, and able to pull strings where others can’t.
It is possible for demons to make their way back into the world of the living, if they’re strong enough. But for most it requires complicated rituals, sigils, sacrifices, and True Names, and it’s usually a lot more trouble than it’s worth. Charlie’s father, on the other hand, is something of an exception to the rule. While he can’t enter Heaven, he figured out how to slither his way back to Earth thousands of years ago, and started making waves with stories ever since.
He can never stay long. Heaven is usually quick to track him down and push him back into Hell, if he makes too much of a ruckus. Most of the stories are also gross exaggerations, from golden fiddles to his footsteps embedded in stone to the curses his presence causes.
Realistically, Charlie’s father just uses his little backdoors to Earth to get things. Unlike the stories, he’s never after immortal souls or interested in cruel and twisted deals. Mostly he just avoids humans when he can, because it’s a hassle to interact with them at all. He prefers modern, mundane things, like fresh seasonal fruit or pretty new instruments or materials for his latest duck project.
Or things like modern media, just to make living for thousands of years a little less boring.
So it’s courtesy of Dad that Charlie and the rest of the team are enjoying a weekend movie marathon of something the living folks call ‘superhero movies.’ Apparently it’s been the latest trend for the past twenty years or so in living cinema, although superheroes themselves are much older than that. Angel Dust vaguely remembers them just becoming a thing in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s before he’d died. And Niffty says they’d become even more popular in the fifties. But it seems like they’ve come a long way since either of Charlie’s friends were still amongst the living.
It’s hard to understand exactly, with the jumble of movies they’d received, and with little way to research it, so they’re mostly going on what they can pick up through osmosis. Charlie thinks they’ve managed to figure out by now that there are two different companies with two different sets of superheroes, and they never interact, and they do things very differently. She’s pretty sure there’s an ongoing story thread going on through all these different movies, but she’s not entirely sure they’re watching them in order, or even separate from each other.
It’s hard to keep track of them all, but they are just sort of fun to watch even so. There’s lots of special effects and interesting music and so many characters doing wild things. They could use more singing, in her opinion, but maybe superheroes aren’t supposed to break into song as often as people in Hell do.
So it’s been a fun movie marathon overall. Almost everyone is there: Vaggie, Angel Dust, Husk, Niffty, even her father has joined the fun. Everyone but Alastor, essentially, and that’s hardly surprising. He’d been invited, but since he isn’t a fan of movies and superhero comic books started after his time, he’d declined and left the hotel to do…something. Charlie just hopes it’s not eating people.
(It might still be eating people, in which case she doesn’t want to know).
Their current film is Wonder Woman, and Charlie’s really been enjoying it. She finds Diana to be extremely relatable. First, because she’s a princess, so obviously. But also because she really admires the way Diana addresses the world. The other characters think she’s naive and stupid, but she isn’t; she’s brave and strong, but kind too, and knows how to apply both when they’re needed. Charlie finds that inspiring. She wants to be someone who can protect her people with strength when force is needed, but to show unwavering kindness and compassion when it’s needed, too.
The plot is a little confusing, and Charlie does need help with it though, mostly because she’s unfamiliar with human history and geography.
“So Themyscira isn’t real,” Charlie asks, as the characters head for England. “But England is.”
“That’s right,” Angel Dust agrees.
“And the fight on the island wouldn’t have happened, but the Germans attacking, that’s real? And this whole war they’re going into, that’s real too?”
“If it wasn’t, sure as fuck can’t imagine what I fought in,” Husk grumbles, taking a drink from his bottle of booze.
“You fought in it?” Charlie asks, eyes wide.
“Lucky me, right? Got drafted,” Husk admits. “The Great War was a real piece of work. You’ll probably see some of it if they’re heading to the front lines like they said.”
“We don’t have to watch it if you don’t want to!” Charlie offers.
But Husk just snorts and shakes his head. “Nah. Kinda like the idea of some super-powered Amazon chick beating the shit out of the Germans. Looking forward to that part.”
“Alright.” Charlie considers. “Were Amazons real? And Zeus, and all that?”
“I don’t think they were real like this,” Angel Dust says, gesturing to the screen. “Super powers ain’t a thing topside, Toots. And I guess Zeus and all those other gods ain’t real either, cause…” He gestures around them, and presumably, at Hell in general.
“If they are, they’re real good at hiding, ‘cause I’ve never met’em either,” Dad offers. “And I’ve been around a lot longer than any of you. Hell, I think most of those ‘underworld’ gods in other religions are based off me.”
“Really?” Vaggie gives him an odd look. “Like Hades and all that?”
“Sure,” Dad says with a shrug. “I mean, c’mon. Spooky deity figure gives important lady some fruit and brings her down to the underground death place and marries her. Familiar, much? And the pomegranate?” He points at his apple-tipped cane, leaning against his chair.
“That’s an apple,” Angel Dust points out.
“Yeah, well, it didn’t start being an apple until about the twelfth century,” Dad says absently, waving a hand. “Before that it was a pomegranate or a fig or sometimes grapes depending on where you came from and what you had on hand to grow. Then you humans started doing weird things with your translations of the bible and decided it was an apple. But I liked apples, so I figured, what the Hell. My image now.”
“I didn’t know that, Dad!” Charlie says brightly. “So you gave mom a pomegranate?”
Dad shakes his head. “Nah. The fruit I actually used doesn’t exist anymore. My siblings destroyed it after the whole Eden fiasco. It was called a ███████ but you probably can’t even hear me say it, because it’s literally been pulled out of existence and space-time.”
In fact Charlie can’t, and her dad’s voice goes kind of funny and distorted when he speaks, and no matter how hard she tries she can’t remember even the sounds. Judging from the expressions of her Sinner friends, they hear even less, to judge by their blank-faced, confused expressions.
“...Anyway,” Dad says hastily, “all that to say I’m pretty sure Zeus is just made up, Char-Char, but it’s kind of a neat story they got going here! It’s sort of nice to see humans being creative in a good way, for a change.”
Charlie agrees.
And the movie is fun! They have a grand old time talking about some things in the human world and most of her Sinner friends are able to answer questions if Charlie’s confused about what’s happening. The Great War, it turns out, really was great; most of the countries on Earth participated in one way or another, and a lot of people had died. Probably because they really didn’t have an Amazonian princess to come save them.
The characters have just arrived at a country called Belgium, and the warfront for this region, when Charlie hears the front doors to the hotel open and close.
She glances over briefly. Alastor is back, staff idly tucked against one arm as he steps past the front doors.
“Welcome back, Alastor!” Charlie greets briefly, turning away from the characters—talking in some sort of depressing-looking trench—to wave to him. “Did you have a good night?”
“Well enough, my dear,” Alastor says. “Rosie sends her greetings.”
“Aww, that’s so nice of her! I say hi back,” Charlie says. She gestures to the screen. “We’re still watching movies. Did you want to join us?”
“It’s kind of you to offer, Charlie, but you know how I feel about picture-shows,” Alastor says. “I think I’ll retire to my room to plan for my next radio broadcast.”
“Alright,” Charlie says, as she turns back to the screen. She’d offered to be polite, but she knows by now that Alastor doesn’t really do movies. At best, if he’s feeling unusually sociable, he’ll read a book in the lounge while the rest of them watch TV. “Have a good night if I don’t see you!”
“Thank you, dear.”
Charlie returns to the plot of the movie. She’s missed some things, but Steve is explaining how there’s nothing they can do at this warfront because of something called No Man’s Land, and how the enemy Germans are across the way pointing machine guns at anyone who tries to fight. He says they can’t save everyone.
Diana says she’s going to anyway, and Charlie squeals in excitement because she gets that. She really gets that desire to save people even when everyone else in the world tells her it’s hopeless. She believes in Diana and she can’t wait to see how she does manage to save people.
“Fuckin’ lucky she’s got powers,” Husk grumbles, as Diana climbs the ladder and steps out into No Man’s Land. “That’d be fuckin’ suicide for a normal person. She’s asking to get shot.”
And she does get shot. A lot, actually. Except she’s able to deflect them with her neat bracers, which seem to function a lot like angelic steel, and she rushes forward unharmed. More of the Germans start shouting, and leveling guns at her and firing, and she blocks more and more shots as the gunfire grows louder and louder. One of the Germans shoves something into what looks like a stout cannon, and it explodes forward and comes down at Diana with a whistling scream, but she takes out her shield and knocks it aside and it explodes next to her. She keeps charging, and—
—the video sizzles with static, and starts skipping violently.
“What the hell?” Angel Dust scowls. “Is the disc busted?”
“No,” Dad says with a scowl, looking over Charlie’s shoulder. “C’mon, bellhop, don’t be an ass. You’re allowed to not like movies, but let the rest of us have our fun!”
Charlie blinks in confusion, and looks back over her shoulder.
Alastor had paused halfway to the stairs, presumably on his way to his room. He does seem to be the source of the glitching in the video, based on the buzz and hum of static surrounding him.
But something seems… off about this, compared to his usual effects on video. He isn’t even looking in their direction, to start, so he’s not intentionally mocking the film, and he doesn’t seem to be sabotaging it on purpose. He definitely has enough control not to, as long as he’s not being filmed himself. It’s not the first time he’s walked past them on a movie night, and he’s never messed with their films before.
Beyond that, he’s standing stiffly, frozen mid-step. His fluffy ears are fully upright and twitching constantly, twisting and turning like they’re searching for noise. His eyes are staring straight ahead at a distant step, his staff held loosely in his hand now, not tucked against his shoulder.
But something still seems off, and Charlie can’t quite place what’s wrong, until—
—his shadow. Alastor’s shadow is twitching at his feet, as though agitated. And it’s frowning.
Charlie is just about to ask in concern if anyone else has ever seen Alastor’s shadow frown, because it smiles exactly like he does, all the time.
But then Alastor himself breaks the silence. He’s still staring straight ahead, and his ears are still twitching urgently, the left one cocking towards the film with particular regularity. And then his staff slips from his grip and clatters to the carpet as he raises his right hand, almost dreamlike, clutched around something invisible that he raises to his mouth.
“Wires cut,” he says, and his voice isn’t under a filter at all, and that makes the shaking in it all that much more obvious. “Communications are down! Germans are advancing—I repeat, enemy troops are advancing— shells fired—requesting emergency orders—”
“What?” Vaggie says.
“Fuck,” Husk snarls. “Turn off the—”
And then things go bad fast, almost too fast for Charlie to understand what the Hell even just happened.
The movie, while glitching and warped, is still playing. Charlie’s not watching it, but the sounds of gunshots and machine gun fire are growing louder. It seems to agitate Alastor’s ears, which are twitching violently now as he raises his own voice over the noise and screams into his invisible—phone?—about Germans and cut wires and emergency orders.
Husk and Angel Dust both lunge for the remote in a panic and to try and grab it as Alastor grows more rigid. Another whistling scream of a shell shrieks from the TV speakers, followed by the sounds of an explosion, and—
And Alastor’s eyes meld to black, radio dials burning brilliant, violent red, as his yells for emergency aid turn into monstrous, howling shrieks.
He throws back his head and staggers as his shadow surges up and over his body, and suddenly he’s growing right there in the lobby. To his partial demonic shape—long-limbed, gangly and slim, with six-foot antlers and tendrils of shadow slithering out of his back. And then past that, taller and taller still, one story, two, hurtling for the ceiling with alarming speed. His hands are large enough to crush a person, his claws taller than Charlie herself, his hooves sharp and solid and already beginning to crack the marble flooring of the lobby. His teeth are glowing yellow and more jagged now, his antlers are at least twelve feet long on either side, and the whipcord tentacles emerging from his back are each big enough to strangle or stab with no issues.
Alastor’s full demonic shape is a true terror to behold, and it’s rare he pulls it out to begin with. Mostly he uses it for displays of power outside the hotel, to chase off would-be looters and gangs.
The important key word being: outside. Because at two stories tall and with an antler-span to match, Alastor absolutely does not fit in the lobby, and he knows that.
“Alastor!” Charlie yelps. “What are you doi—”
“Hun, look out!” Vaggie roars, tackling her to the side.
Charlie squeaks as Vaggie hits her hard into the ground and uses their momentum to roll them both away from the parlor. Before Charlie can ask what the fuck is going on and what the heck is Vaggie even doing, she gets her answer in the form of one of Alastor’s massive claws smashing down where they had just been. The entire hotel lobby shudders beneath them at the impact, the television crackles and pops with electricity as the gun and explosion sounds come to an abrupt end. The marble cracks, the couches splinter and shred, and dust and splinters burst into the air.
And over it all Alastor screams, a sound that is part terrible animal bellow and part shrieking, mindless, ear-bleeding feedback.
Charlie coughs as she staggers to her feet, trying to catch her breath in all the dust. Vaggie thumps her on the back with one hand as she hollers, “Everyone alive?”
“We’re good!” Angel Dust chokes back weakly. “Short King got us, thank fuck for those wings’ve yours, man—”
Charlie can’t really see them in the spreading dust and smoke, but she can see enough to know Alastor had absolutely destroyed the parlor with one savagely-placed claw strike. The walls and marble floor are torn apart, the furniture and TV are nothing more than shattered pieces, and something in the wall is sparking dangerously. She hopes it doesn’t catch on fire.
“What the fuck, bellhop?” Dad yells. Wind howls past Charlie, and a moment later the dust is cleared. Dad retracts his wings from where he’d beat away the dust and dirt in the air, and scowls up at Alastor. “If you had a problem with my decorating just fucking say so, you contrary bastard! I don’t—”
Whatever her father doesn’t is lost as Alastor shrieks again, wordless and furious, and whips out with the other set of claws.
“Dad!” Charlie howls, terrified. She’d known they didn’t like each other, but she never thought it would come to this.
Thankfully, while Alastor’s demonic form is deadly, her father is fast. By the time the claws crunch into the lobby floor, sending shards of marble flying and crumpling the lower bannister of the main stairway, her father is already up by the ceiling. His three pairs of wings flap in a practiced rhythm as he hovers in the air. His white clothes are a little dirty from the dust and splinters, and he’s lost his crowned hat, but he looks otherwise unharmed.
“Oh, I had a feeling it might come to this someday,” Dad snarls.
Demonic Alastor takes a moment to actually locate his opponent again, since he’s mostly focused on dragging his claws back over the marble and breaking more of the tiles. He’s breathing heavily, massive jaws parted, like he’s already exhausted after just two swings. Maybe he is. It hasn’t been long since Extermination day, and he’d gotten hurt quite badly against Adam, and taken even longer to let them know about it. He’s barely recovered, and who knew if he had the energy to maintain this form yet?
But Dad flitting past his eyes with a taunting show of feathers definitely catches his attention. Alastor jerks his head away with a screech that’s half animal bellow, half poorly tuned radio, and swipes at Charlie’s father as he goes past. He misses, because Dad is too fast, and laboriously turns his enormous form to try and keep up with the angel zipping around him.
This becomes a problem when, halfway through turning to try and shield his back from his opponent, his antlers catch on the chandelier.
The chandelier in the new hotel is an enormous, ostentatious thing, because Charlie’s dad went a little overboard on the designs. And also possibly because he’d wanted to rub it in Alastor’s face. It has multiple tiers of wide metal circles with strings of crystals dripping from them, and when the lights are on it’s beautiful, casting shimmering sparkles from each facet of each crystal.
It also means there’s a lot of hanging parts to catch stray limbs. Which wouldn’t normally be a problem, given it’s hung two stories up in the open lobby. Nobody is supposed to get near it.
But Alastor’s massive twelve-point antlers catch, first in the strings of crystals and then in one of the wide metal frames. He shakes his head to try and dislodge the irritant hooked to him, but that only loops two more of the tiered metal hoops around his antlers, and the ropes of crystals get tangled around the branching tines.
Alastor pulls. To Charlie’s surprise, the chandelier goes nowhere. Several of the lights flicker alarmingly, and a few crystals are shaken loose and shatter on the floor. But the chandelier doesn’t come loose from the ceiling, and it doesn’t release Alastor’s antlers.
Alastor shrieks.
Charlie has to cover her ears, because the sound is deafening. The radio feedback pierces at her ears like daggers, and the animal bugle sounds like a tortured scream. Even covering her ears it hurts, and based on the groans and yelps of pain around her, the others feel the same.
But Alastor isn’t done yet. He keeps shrieking, and while he does, he pulls at the chandelier over and over, and still the stupid thing doesn’t budge. The crystals tangle in his antlers and cast sparkling, blinding light everywhere, and somehow, that only seems to startle Alastor even more. He thrashes his head violently, and lashes out with his claws, shattering and snapping anything—walls, stairs, decor—unfortunate enough to be within reach.
Worse still, he seems to be trying to free his head so he can turn himself and keep an eye on Charlie’s dad, hovering safely behind him out of reach. The destruction and attacks grow more wild and panicked the more tangled and pinned in place he becomes. One of his enormous sets of claws reaches up to try and paw at the chandelier at the same time that he thrashes his head, and he ends up cutting himself in the face with his own claws, narrowly missing his eye.
It’s wrong.
It’s absolutely wrong for calm, clever, calculating Alastor to be lashing out haphazardly, and the more Charlie realizes it, the more signs she sees of it. His radio-dial eyes are glazed and blank. His heavy jaws are still parted and panting rapidly, and his chest is heaving with exertion. His ears are twitching rapidly, casting around for sound. And his attacks seem much less like coordinated attacks now that she’s watching, and much more like a panicked animal caught in a trap and flailing about blindly.
It’s not right. He wouldn’t thrash helplessly like this. He would know he could shrink, or turn to shadow, or even just reach up and carefully untangle himself. In fact, now that Charlie realizes, he’s not even using his powers. The shadow tendrils oozing from his back are twitching and spasming, but don’t seem to be doing anything useful at all.
Something’s wrong with Alastor.
“Dad, don’t!” Charlie yells, as her father’s horns start to slither from his forehead and he draws back, preparing to dive. “Something’s wrong!”
Alastor doesn’t seem to hear her. But his animal howl, and another panicked twist that sends more crystals raining the floor, seems to agree with her anyway.
Her father pulls back out of his dive, allowing his most demonic tributes to slip away again. “I can see something’s wrong, Char-Char!” he yells back to her. “This stupid busboy is destroying my lobby!”
That’s not what Charlie means at all. But before she can try to say anything further, Husk takes to the air as well from where he and the others had been crouched behind an overturned sofa for meager protection. He flutters awkwardly, as close as he can get to Alastor while staying out of immediate tooth range.
“Boss!” He roars. “Alastor! The war’s over, Al! Ain’t no Germans attacking! It’s safe!”
But Alastor doesn’t seem to understand. He catches sight of something fluttering in his periphery, massive eyes rolling to his left. Unable to turn his head, lashes out sideways with one enormous set of claws. Charlie swears she hears something that’s half a whine underneath the animal shriek and keen of feedback when he moves.
“Shit!” Husk tries to dodge, but he’s not nearly as fast as Lucifer in the air. Alastor manages to clip one of his wings and he takes a mid-air tumble.
“Husk!” Angel Dust yelps.
Thankfully, Dad is able to swoop in and catch him by one arm, before ducking out again and dragging Husk with him. Alastor claws after the two of them when they get too close, but he stops attacking the moment they’re out of his sight.
“You know what the Hell is going on with him?” Dad asks, as he drops Husk down next to Charlie. He doesn’t set down himself, keeping all three sets of wings extended and ready for defense or distraction, and keeps one eye on the trapped Alastor at all times.
Husk lets Vaggie and Charlie help him to his feet as he gasps, “Shellshock!”
“He’s surprised?” Charlie asks, confused.
But Husk shakes his head. “Shellshock,” he says again, more insistently now. “It happened to soldiers in the Great War. Being on the front lines did things to people, messed with their heads. They’d get confused, twitchy, go blind and deaf and dumb…people said it was cowardice, but it wasn’t. Some of my friends in the trenches had it and they weren’t fucking cowards.”
“Sounds like PTSD,” Vaggie says, frowning.
“Think they changed the name at some point,” Husk admits. “Whatever you wanna call it, he ain’t here right now. Not in his head.”
Charlie glances up at Alastor.
Their hotelier is still tangled in the chandelier, but his panicked thrashing has calmed slightly now that no one is immediately fluttering around him like a threat. Only ‘slightly,’ in that he’s no longer thrashing about in a blind panic trying to hit Lucifer. Instead, he’s pulling relentlessly at the chandelier itself, tugging and jerking with his head in a manner that’s making his multi-jointed neck crack unpleasantly. There’s blood dribbling from his mouth and nose, and from the cuts on his face where he keeps gashing himself while trying to claw at the offending item trapping him. His enormous hooves skitter and slip on the marble as he tries to brace back against them to leverage his pulls.
He won’t stop screeching, but now that Charlie’s listening, she can’t help but make out how sad the noises sound. Whatever’s happening to Alastor, wherever he is in his head, he’s terrified, if the pained wheezing and keening is anything to go by. He hasn’t said a single real word since shouting about Germans and emergency orders. Just screams, animal bellows, and broken radio noises.
“How did this happen?” Charlie asks, horrified. “He’s never done this before!”
“Musta been the movie, Toots,” Angel Dust says, dashing over to their group while Al’s back is turned to them. His lower set of arms have Niffty wrapped up securely. Their housekeeper looks dazed, and is watching Alastor with her wide, unblinking eye.
“The movie?”
“The noises were pretty real,” Husk says grimly. “That whistling noise—the shells—that’d set people off sometimes. And I know Al fought in the Great War too.”
Alastor shrieks again, tugging with a frenzied panic at the chandelier. The ceiling overhead is starting to crack, and plaster is beginning to rain down alongside the bits of crystal.
Charlie covers her mouth in horror. “The movie? Movies can do this to people? Then this is my fault…”
“It’s not your fault, Charlie,” Vaggie says immediately. “It’s nobody’s fault. If it’s PTSD, then sometimes certain things just…hit people the wrong way. Noises or smells, things like that. It can be hard to predict.”
“She’s right,” Angel Dust agrees. “Just bad timing that Smiles walked through right at that minute…”
Another alarming crash as Alastor’s massive hooves thump into the marble and send chips flying. He stomps again, trying to pull away by leveraging the strength of his long, spindly legs. The ceiling groans ominously.
“We can talk about faults later,” Dad says. “How do we stop him from freaking out now? Not for nothing, but he is way too big to be panicking in the lobby!”
“I…I don’t know,” Husk says. “On the front lines they’d take shellshocked troops out, give’em a week at a facility to recover, but we can’t do that here. Tried to tell him it’s over but he didn’t hear me—I don’t think he understands where we are.”
“We need a way for him to calm down,” Vaggie says urgently, ducking as a shard of bannister goes flying overhead. “Make him understand where he is. Something that engages the physical senses, like touch, sound—”
“Radio!” Charlie says. “Music! That’ll get through to him, right?”
“If we can reach one,” Angel dust says. “If he hasn’t buried’em all yet.”
“I can do it!” Niffty squirms in his arms. “I’m little! Little like a roach! He can’t see me to smush me! I’ll turn on the music and save him!”
Charlie bites her lip. Niffty isn’t helpless, but Alastor isn’t himself right now. He’s always been fond of Niffty, and he’d be devastated if he’d accidentally killed her in the middle of some kind of trauma response. Even if he would never admit to it.
The ceiling groans again, and Alastor screeches, and with a horrible crack, he finally wins his tug of war with the chandelier. The piece finally tears free from the ceiling, along with a not insignificant chunk of the ceiling itself, which crashes down on and around Alastor and sends up another wave of dust and plaster.
“Shit!” Dad drops out of the air and hastily grabs at Charlie, dragging her and Vaggie close while mantling his six wings around the whole group of them. The wave of dust rolls past, and Charlie and the others cough and gag, but they’re shielded from the worst of the broken bits of ceiling and shrapnel thanks to a little angelic power.
“Everyone okay?” Vaggie asks.
“Had better days, but we’re alive,” Angel Dust says. “Thanks again, Short King.”
“Uh-huh,” Dad says distractedly, lowering his wings and turning to watch the danger again.
“Oh, Alastor,” Charlie says helplessly, the moment Dad isn’t blocking him anymore.
Alastor isn’t chained in place by chandelier anymore, but that hasn’t helped his distress any. His monstrous form keens in raw panic and scratches frantically at his head and face, trying to free himself from the metal loops and crystal threads still hooked onto and over his antlers. His whole head sags awkwardly to the left from the weight of the light fixture, forcing him to crouch awkwardly like a spider in the middle of the lobby.
He shakes his head this way and that, smashes it against the destroyed walls and stairwells and screeches loudly, but he isn’t able to free himself from the restraints. His head and shoulders are covered in dust and debris from the ceiling, and his hair and left shoulder are matted in blood, possibly from something hitting him when it fell. The crystals reflect light into his eyes with bright flashes, and that only seems to alarm him further each time he tries to flinch away from them.
If what Husk said is true, Alastor doesn’t understand he’s in the middle of the hotel lobby and that it’s just a chandelier hooked over his antlers. He might think he’s still alive and still human, that he’s in the middle of a war like the one in the movie. Maybe he thinks they’re under attack, or that he’s tangled or trapped in netting, or that he’s being captured. That the pretty flashes of light from the crystals are terrifying flashes of fire from gun muzzles and explosions.
Whatever it is, it’s clearly causing him distress, because he hasn’t stopped screaming or fighting for his life. He’s hurting himself without even realizing it, and he’s putting the rest of them in danger too.
They can’t let this keep happening. They have to calm him down.
They have to find a way to get through to him.