[LH! MiniFic//Log Prequel:] Way Down We Go

[not_mephistopheles]

Is the moon in Hell always so bright bloody red?

Honestly, Erik doesn’t leave his home enough to be sure. The safe predictability in his home is as much a comfort as the control he wields over it. It is his domain, his castle, his refuge. But tonight something about the red of the moon is calling to his long asleep wanderer’s restlessness. He had played the nomad because he had to, for his life entire. Tonight, his feet itch to move and he feels restless, and on edge. Could it be because the chaos of his love life is slowly invading his home? Lacie and Christine both reside in Angel’s Requiem from time to time. By fate’s cruel mischief the pair of them had ended up in his house at the same bloody time, but somehow managed to miss each other. The wary man is beginning to feel as if there’s a knife floating in front of his chest, lingering in the sweet apprehensive moments before a kiss.

Something is going to happen; he can feel it in his bones. In this skin. This brittle calm will soon shatter, and he doesn’t know how to moderate the damage. It’s too late at this point, isn’t it? He’s already broken his cherished hearts; they simply don’t know it yet.

It’s the rooftop of some decrepit building with uniquely crumbling architecture that Erik haunts this night. Shrieking savage notes play like tender agony on the strings of his violin as he slices the notes with his bow; it’s beautiful, haunting, maddening. It’s his temper smouldering at the trap he has slowly enclosed around himself. It’s his despair that he always manages to brutally destroy the things he loves most.

But then the notes cool and slow, deepening and trembling; harder on the heart than the ears. The anger in his melody bleaches out to sorrow and regret, and a pressure begins to pulse inside his chest, creeping up his throat until everything breaks loose in the sudden swell of his voice.

"Father tell me, do we get what we deserve? Oh we get what we deserve…"

The song carries him further away into the night, but he can do nothing to escape the quick-sand gravity that will inevitably pull him down. Once the music ends, Erik sits in quiet resolution.

If things are going to fall apart, maybe it’s about time to get on with the bloody show. Maybe the waiting will be worse than the crash. Maybe he just can’t stand to keep his mouth shut anymore, unable to keep these lies of omission on his tongue for one more moemnt. Erik decides right then and there he will return to the Requiem, and he will tell the truth. He even shoots off a quick text to Christine (Returning home; we must speak of difficult things. Be where I can find you) before sliding his phone into his pocket, and standing upon the roof that is his perch. Erik spends a moment combing his gaze through the narrow twisting streets, and the sparse spattering of demon-folk that occupy them. It isn’t an overly trafficked area, but he’s not quite into the abandoned ruins proper. ¬¬

A gang of rowdy horn headed hell-folk are vandalizing a wall—painting what appears to be a unicorn butt fucking a bald Caucasian man in a white shirt. Further off, a small group of people seem to be having a mini-orgy tucked between two tired buildings that lean heavily against each other. Someone hollers and someone cackles; someone screams in a muddied mix of terror and pleasure. Someone’s selling potions out of the inside of his cloak. All and all, it’s a fair picture of Little Hades, despite the fewer numbers that litter the streets that sprawl before Erik’s view.

But somewhere inside the casual chaos, Erik spots something very odd indeed. It is a man (likely a demon) dressed in a dirty black tuxedo. Wound red paint is smeared unevenly across his mouth, which is the only part of his face not concealed behind a white mask. Erik can’t quite make out the details due to the stretch of considerable distance, but… the mask appears to sport a pair of tall snow colored rabbit ears. Of all the strange things… and the masked stranger seems to be staring directly at him, from at least a block away. Surely Erik is simply being paranoid; it’s a difficult thought to accept as he shimmies down various pipes and landings, until he is finally on solid ground.

At here is Mr. Rabbit Ears, right behind him as he lands. Someone else might have gasped and flinched, maybe even yelped and ran… but Erik loses only half a moment to switch around his thoughts, and draw himself to his full intimidating height. His dry ice eyes narrow and pin the stranger, whose own bloodshot eyes seem unfocused and deranged through the holes of the mask. The stranger is smiling, almost vibrating, as if he can hardly contain himself.

“You’re him, are you not?” the man begins before Erik can say anything at all. “You’re the proprietor of Angel’s Requiem?” his grin stretches eerily, showing too many yellowed teeth. “I am honored to meet you, honored. I heard your voice just now and I must say, it’s utterly enchanting .Just as good as when I saw you upon the stage. I simply must insist you join me for a private show, post haste.”

While Erik can sometimes be soothed with the careful stroking of his ego, this man’s presumptuousness makes The Phantom’s teeth itch. He feels his hackles raise, a sharp snarl concealed beneath the silk of his own mask. The nerve of this man, acting as though he has any right to speak to Erik—to approach him at all! He’s suddenly invading Erik’s space and making demands; almost enough to prompt a less than gentle stabbing. But as it is, Erik has decided he has places to be and illusions to shatter. An indulgent semi-murder would just distract him; maybe dull his stubborn resolution to rip down the fucking shades, already.

This bunny-masked fellow is not even worth his time. Erik simply growls softly beneath his breath in a small attempt to vent his vexation, while he roughly shoves past the stranger, and begins to walk away.

“Be gone with you, fool. I owe you nothing; my talents are my own,” he mutters with distilled and potent irritation, sparing one more glare over his shoulder.

“We’ll see,” the stranger responds with that persistent grin, taking a few eager steps to close the distance between them. For whatever reason, Erik’s temper is suddenly stoked. Somehow, it feels like he’s being threatened, and with his spirits already riled, his mood is quick to sour.

“Count yourself fortunate that I’ve responsibilities to attend tonight,” he hisses, “less impudence has earned my fetal displeasure.” The smoulder of his temper is absolutely corrosive in his voice, and the cold blistering in his gaze. Yet the man in the white rabbit mask just keeps on smiling, the expression beginning to stain with dark inky cruelty and unhindered sadistic delight.

“Such fire will burn up your wings, little death-head moth,” the stranger remarks airily, and gives a tight wheezing huff of laughter. “But you were forged in fire, were you not…?”

Erik steels himself, long slender fingers twitching with the barely repressed urge to grab the knife from beneath his cloak and plunge it into this maniac’s neck. Obviously he has taken the time to learn something about Erik, or at the very least, has been following him. Watching him. That is enough to wake his suspicions, even before he has a chance to wonder just how much this man knows. There is no way this guy is just another fan; something feels off.

“Who are you?” Erik demands in a fierce roar that I chilling in its unnatural quiet. There is a quality to his voice like the soft growl of a wolf, or the warning hiss of a rattle snake; naturally elegant and equally as fetal; the deep resonance of a feral predator. “Whatever it is you want, I assure you that you will be leaving here sorely disappointed. I am in no mood for games this evening; now depart from me immediately; my next request will not be as gentle.” The air seems to sizzle with cold around the skeletal man who boarders on the edge of real frenzied rage. Not tonight, not now, when he had just decided.

“My name is Sander Cohen,” the man replies with slow drawn out flourish and another truly chilling red-ringed smile. “And if you are going to fight the process, I suppose there is nothing else I can do,” he sounds like he’s doing a very bad job at acting distressed, barely able to smother his grin. He places the back of his hand dramatically against his forehead and leans back with a pronounced sigh. “Oh, what’s an artist to do?”

Perhaps Erik shouldn’t take this as an admission of defeat, but he does. This lunatic obviously has some game, which Erik wants no part of. The ground of his stern resolution for truth is beginning to show cracks, and whispering of crumbling… and he can’t. He can’t allow himself to be such a coward any longer. It’s pitiful. A wash of self-loathing stings Erik like an acid bath, making his motions sharp and nearly pained, as he turns from Cohen.

“How very wise,” he snarls hatefully, taking a step to leave—

“FITZPATRICK!”

And suddenly everything is hazy and green. His energy drains very suddenly, in the particular way that signals the body fighting of a viral infection; the notion that he’s dreaming settles comfortably over his thoughts, blanketing everything else in a warm soothing calm. Well, good; this situation was far too irksome to be real. The fact that none of this makes any sense doesn’t seem to trouble him at all. Instead, Erik is distracted by the ghostly flickering image of a woman; her features are ethereal but indistinct; her soft utterances sensual and inviting while just beneath full perception. She’s s in front of him, swaying sweetly, while her soft hands cradle his face; it occurs to Erik (like a single moment of lucid dreaming) that such an action should upset him…

And the thought barely shapes itself before all at once, everything falls into seamless darkness.