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Mending the Broken

Chapter One

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

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Blitzo woke slowly. Lethargically, as if he had been drinking heavily. But he had no recollection of drinking the night before, only going out to that club and...

"Fuck!"

He leapt upright, his head pounding, aching, swaying, the empty bottle of some kind of alcohol (the label had been ripped off) tipping him off as to what had happened after he had crashed onto the sofa. The imp groaned, clutching his head, even aching down the length of his horns.

"Fuck..."

He swore again, stomach rolling and leaping. He supposed it wouldn't have been hell if they didn't get hangovers down there, though he could really have gone for all the good feeling and none of the bad shit, if he'd had any say in the matter. But he didn't and Lucifer wasn't exactly going to take the word of an imp when it came to hangovers and whether they should get them on board.

His apartment opened up around him, familiar and yet forlorn, the pictures on the walls all with his face scribbled out. Just like he had tried to do from his life, once upon a time. But everyone knew that fairy tales didn't happen down there in hell.

"Fuck..."

Third time the charm. He checked the door to Loona's bedroom, the hellhound still out, though there was thankfully a message on his phone letting him know that she was staying with a friend. Something about getting too drunk to get back? It didn't matter, as long as she was safe and with Ferra or someone like that. Even that Tex guy... As much as he didn't like him, the hellhound was beastly and beefy and there was no way anyone was getting the fuck through him.

"Ah... Fuck, look at me."

He sat back on the sofa, his stomach lurching, much to his discontent. Still wearing his clothes from the night before, the spikes from his jacket had left imprints on the sofa. It would rub out, he was sure, though that was the least of his problems. But he was a mess, a complete and utter fucking mess, the kind of mess that no one wanted to be seen with, least of all him.

No wonder Stolas had hidden his face behind the menu at Lust... Blitzo groaned, his head in his hands. Good fucking Satan, he'd really gone and fucked everything up, hadn't he? Sure, it hadn't been the once-a-month deal that he had going on with Stolas, not their regular meet-up, but he had still turned down the demon prince, the overlord... And what the hell did that mean for them? Whatever the fuck was going on with their relationship? The book? His job?

Maybe he should have stayed in the circus...

But, no: that would never have solved anything. It was not as if the jester back then, the crazed, robotic one, had been any replacement for the real thing. Getting out of there was one of the best things he had done. He'd met Millie and Moxxie and Loona after that, adopted Loona. That wasn't something that he would change, but he would have it that he hadn't dragged them into his own shit yet again.

They were always picking him up out of shit too. Sure, most of the time, that was in the course of their work, but, well, often outside of it too. It didn't help that he'd started fucking that damned owl, all in exchange for the Grimoire.

His fingers clenched into fists, his claws biting into his palms. Harder, deeper, until he drew blood. Blitzo didn't even feel it. Or if he did, he thought he deserved it.

Fuck... What did it all mean? He didn't fuck Stolas and was that going to end up with him losing the book? Did that mean that he had broken his contract? Pissed off the demon prince so that he didn't want to work with them anymore?

Was it even work? Blitzo didn't know anymore... There had been something different about the owl, however, when they'd been out on their...ugh... He winced. Their date. Fuck, he hated thinking about it like that. He didn't want to date the owl! He didn't want Stolas looming over him, all tall and overpowering, waggling his fingers at him and calling him his "Blitzy".

Stolas knew that he hated that name. Still, he called him that. Why?

He could be about to lose everything, his life, his job, his friends. Would Millie and Moxxie even hang around still if they didn't have work? They were assassins, Moxxie a skilled sharpshooter. There would be work elsewhere for them in hell, going after far higher profile clients than who they had worked on in the human world. They would be fine.

Him, on the other hand? Blitzo groaned. Maybe not so much. There was no way to tell, though it was not as if things had worked out so well for him that far.

He checked his phone. No more messages, no texts, no voicemails. The imp didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

A shower. He needed a shower. That would... Well, it wouldn't make things better, but it might help in some small way. That was about as much as he could hope for.

The imp dragged his half-dead corpse to the bathroom, which was at least clean. Loona was always on top of that, though she always made him scrape the hair out of the drain. Whereas imps didn't need to have any hair at all and his skin was bare but for his horns and spines, a hellhound was all fur and tangles of hair in drains.

He shook his head. Fuck that. Why was he thinking about that when everything he thought he knew was exploding around him, crumbling right down into the dust from which it had come?

He stripped off, chucking his clothes down on the floor of the bathroom. That could be dealt with later. Satan knew he had more important things to worry about right then. But stepping into the shower, at least, made him feel a little more like the imp he knew, the heat up all the way so that the bathroom filled with steam.

"Oh, yeah..." He groaned, head tipped back, water streaming over his face and down his long, curved horns. "That's the stuff..."

Blitzo tensed. Fuck, why had he had to say that? Now all he could hear was Stolas saying that to him... The owl, however, had said it more eloquently, more like: "That's what I like from that beastly imp dick!"

Blitzo shuddered. Sure, it was fetishized, but, well... Fuck, he didn't want to think of it, didn't want to pull the image of Stolas naked into his head again. That wasn't right, not with everything going on.

Suddenly, his steaming hot shower didn't seem all that appealing anymore. He was cleaner, fresher, warmer...but that was about it. Maybe he shouldn't have ever hoped for more.

He drudged out of the shower cubicle, dragging his feet. There was no bath. That was something for luxuries and there were very few imps indeed in Imp City who could afford luxuries. Though that was perhaps simply due to the sheer volume of booze they tipped down their throats, day in and day out. Everyone had their vices, especially in Hell, and Blitz was not going to be a stranger to that at all in the days to come.

Why the fuck had he gone to Ozzie's and done all that? It was stupid, really fucking stupid. If he'd just gone up on the roof or something, watched from a window, everything would have been okay. There had to have been a way to get backstage, some pink face paint to make himself look more like an incubus or something like that, that would let him fit in without looking too obvious about it. He could have tried something else, but, nooooo - what he'd gone and done was rope fucking Stolas in on everything, the damn bird thinking that it was a real date.

Not that Blitz had said anything about it not being a date. He'd even agreed to it. And that might have been one of the fucking stupidest things he'd done that night.

The imp, however, was a professional at berating himself, demeaning himself, a constant stream of thoughts running through his head.

Fucking idiot, you knew what you were fucking doing. Asking the fucking feather-duster out on a date - just what did you think was going to happen there? Of course he was going to try to parade around like you were his little pet, of course you were just going to get fucking humiliated. You're not the fucking boyfriend of a Goetia so don't fucking act like it. You're even more of a disgrace than you were back in the circus, all when that rotten-arse no-good jester was shooting ahead of you, leaving your fucking sorry arse in the dust.

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He took a shuddering breath, readying himself, going through the motions.

Dressing. Getting a glass of water in the kitchen. Hitting the tap when it sputtered. Checking the fridge, finding nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary.

You're a fucking disgrace, cast out, of course they didn't want your sorry arse on stage. You were always going to fail, just like your father always said, he was right about you. Even Loona doesn't want you around and you fucking adopted her. What do you think that fucking says about you, huh, arsehole?

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He tuned it out. Mostly. But the thoughts were always there, chittering and chattering and, sometimes, snarling away in the background of his mind, a seething sea of demons that demanded attention. Yet Blitz knew all too well for himself that, if he gave in to those demons, they would be the end of him.

He would fall. And Blitz had come far too fucking far to fall.

He didn't want to go out, he didn't want to do anything. But, against all odds, he had to, ignoring the yawning, heaving, lurching gape in his stomach.

No, don't think about that.

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Fucking loser.

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No... No, not that time. It was a weekend. That meant that Millie and Moxxie were both busy (not that he wanted to face Moxxie anyway) and Blitz had something good enough to drag him out of bed on a weekend, even if he did pause and sneak a look in through Loona's door, cracking it a little, to make sure she was in bed and okay. The Hellhound hadn't come to bed until the late early hours, though all he'd done had been toss and turn, not thinking, not really sleeping, just sort of fading in and out. It was not all that different to being awake, to be fair to him.

He cared for her, still, though he believed she would leave him eventually, as soon as she had the means to do so. Picking up his keys, he rolled his shoulders back, ignoring how they cracked, dressed in form-fitting clothing that no one else knew about. It was not as if Loona, after all, had even been at all bothered about going through his room, his things. She had better things to do with her time.

Blitz winced. Everyone had better things to do with their time.

He sighed, running his hand back over his head, his tail curling unhappily around his leg. He wished he could blow it off...but there was something on the outskirts of Imp City that called him, outside the bounds of smoke and traffic, the grind of sinners looking to see what the resident denizens of Hell had in store for them. The Pride ring really was a fucking cesspool.

He wasn't sure if it was a bright spot, what he was going to, as he slid into the van seat, hating the after-image of a taller, larger demon that remained in his mind's eye in the passenger seat, but it was a different shade of grey (or red, as so much of Hell was) than the rest. Maybe that would have to be enough, if only for a day. Besides, Stormblaze needed him.

Those horse riding lessons, well... They hadn't come to nothing, not for Blitz. Not that anyone knew about it. And if he had his way about it, no one else would.

Taking a deep breath that hurt more than it had any right to, heart aching with every pound, he turned the key in the ignition.

Hell had to go on, despite the night he'd had.