Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s three o’clock in the morning when Katherine’s phone buzzing on her nightstand wakes her up, far too early for anyone to be calling. By the time she groggily fumbles around for it she’s missed the call, it was Joel. Their date last month had been much nicer than expected, well aside from the whole murderer thing but considering all the other stuff she has to deal with that was minor; but not so nice as to welcome calls at such an ungodly hour.

That’s when her phone began ringing again and she instinctively answered, “Hello? Joel?”

“Katherine! Hi! Sorry for calling so late-“ he said, sounding a little flustered, “What’s wrong Joel?” She asked, just the slightest amount of anxiety slipping in as she began to wake up.

“Well I was on my way to the Copy Shop because… Well, cats. But I got sidetracked by a situation with my neighbours car! That little boy, what was his name?”

“Abaddon” now Katherine was fully awake, pulling herself out of bed and looking for her clothes that she hadn’t yet had the chance to wash from the day before.

“Yeah Abaddon! Well he was on top of my neighbours car! And I didn’t want the cops to get involved so I got him down with a little bribery and he’s with me at the copy shop. Does he elope a lot?” Joel sounded both curious and concerned about the prospect of a fifty pound boy sneaking out every so often.

“Unfortunately yes, he makes a habit of it that neither I nor my brother have been able to break. One of these days something’s going to happen and he’s going to get himself hurt… Thank you Joel, I’ll be there in about twenty minutes to get him. I’m sorry if he’s any trouble.” Katherine sighed as she started to pull off her pyjamas and started to dress in her less than clean clothes.

Katherine could hear the smile in Joels voice as he replied “It’s really no problem Kathy, I’ll be the coaster okay? Don’t worry so much, I’m here to help if you need me.” She laughed before saying her goodbye, slipping her shoes on, grabbing her car keys and putting her phone inside her purse before heading out the door with it slung over her shoulder, keys in hand.

When she got out to the car, she quickly tossed her purse in the back seat behind the driver seat before starting the car engine. The drive wouldn’t be too long but with the mud and ice of early December Katherine was struggling to maneuver the winding road that lead down to town. It took a little over twenty six minutes to reach Joels copy shop.

The copy shop is simple outside, almost like it used to be part of an apartment complex but was renovated into a storefront. White exterior with black window frames, a door that looked like it may have been from the late 1800’s and posters showcasing Joels work in a few of the windows. And in front of one of those windows stood Joel and Abaddon, that later of which held a small container of yogurt and a small spoon.

“Hey! Look who’s here! It’s Aunt Kathy!” Said Joel jovially as Katherine go out of her car and stepped up, Abaddon grimaced as if he knew what was to come once they were in the car. “Hi Joel. I seriously appreciate this, I owe you.” Katherine replied, the embarrassment crawling up her chest and colouring everything it touched.

“Oh no you don’t! Abaddon helped me get all the cat’s out of the copy store! Well at first he wanted to kill them which was concerning but I told him he couldn’t do that because it’s a crime so he just helped me chance them out.” Katherine looked surprised, then looked between Joel and Abaddon.

“It was a worthy quest for the evening” Abaddon wasn’t looking at either of them, scrapping all of the ruminants of the yogurt at the bottom of the container. When it was clear there was nothing left Joel reached above his head and slipped it from his grasp just as Katherines hands tucked under his armpits pulling him towards her and up onto her hip to which he struggled vehemently.

“Unhand me this instant!” Abaddon shouted, but it lacked the usual conviction Katherine was used to. Ignoring Abaddon, Katherine spoke directly to Joel “Thank you, seriously. I’ll talk to you later. Have a good night.” She said as she opened the back passenger car door, depositing Abaddon into his car seat and buckling him in before shutting it again.

As Joel made his way to his car only one parking spot away from her own he replied “Of course, I used to elope when I was a kid too so maybe my parents will have some suggestions. I can come over— Or just text them if that’s… too forward…” He’s blushing and Katherine can’t help but blush in return. “I’d like that, please come over.”

As Joel says his final goodbyes and good nights they both get into their separate vehicles and begin to drive away, one staying in town while the other begins the almost half hour trek back to the hotel, and just as they reach the edge of town Katherine feels the world weigh down on her shoulders at the unmistakable pitter patter of rain.

“It’s raining” Abaddon says. Katherine looks through the rear view mirror at Abaddon, “Yes, and I’m trying to concentrate on driving. Please don’t distract me.” Abaddon glares.

“I didn’t force you to come get me!” He kicks her seat, hard.

Katherine gasps and the car slides just a little, but it’s enough to scare her and stop Abaddon.

“Do not. Do that. Again. Do you understand me?” Katherine annunciates every word in order to get her message across to the demon. Abaddon looks at her for a moment, but his earlier statement still lingers between them.

“I know you didn’t force me to get you, but if Joel hadn’t have found you someone else would have. And if it hadn’t have been the neighbour of the police maybe it would have been someone worse…” Anxiety laced her voice, anxiety that had been part of her life ever since she’d had kids, ever since she was a kid.

Abaddon scrunched his eyebrows and crossed his arms as if to contest the idea that anything bad to happen to him, “I do not understand, I am an immortal demon.”

“Well… You know how people say there’s a special place in hell for people that hurt kids?”

Abaddon suddenly has clarity, his eyes are wide and blue as if he had never considered the idea of someone looking at him in such a way.

“I don’t like the idea of you being out alone at night…” Katherine sighed.

The rain was getting worse, and the mud and ice was making it hard not to slip around. That being said Katherine was sure she had a pretty good handle on it, that is until a car full of screaming teenagers with their headlights off came whipping out of the woods off an unmarked dirt road.

The back of the car on the passenger side was hit hard sending it sliding into a tailspin, Katherine clenched her teeth as she tried to counteract it only to notice in the last second that there wasn’t enough road to save them. They were about to go over a cliff side. Abaddon had initially shouted in confusion but that shout had quickly turned into the two of them screaming as the car started rolling down the cliff.

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Regaining consciousness is a fight, especially for a being who has not lost said consciousness in billions of years. A blackened blanket lays heavy in his mind yet he knows urgently that he must awaken, must open his eyes. His vessel aches in ways that confuse him, which is odd because he doesn’t remember getting into a battle only chasing off those little fur beasts with the matriarch’s concubine. He does not recall what occurred after that…

Abaddon takes a moment to focus on his vessel, his eyes still closed. He hurts, he cannot breathe well, it feels as if something is protruding from his chest; going straight through him almost? It feels awful. His head is ringing on the right side and he can feel something warm mixing with freezing liquid washing down his face. There’s more warm liquid than the freezing liquid but it seems to awaken him just that little bit more. To his left Abaddon hears a high pitch dinging sound along with what seems to be a whimper, and immediately cracks open his eyes, learning his right eye is caked in blood.

Katherine is in the driver seat, the car is on a right leaning angle but at some point her leg had become pined to the dash. On top of that Katherine appeared to be bleeding from multiple lacerations to her arms and face.

Abaddon wanted to call for Katherine, to see if she was alright. He hadn’t stopped an apocalyptic just for her to die in a car accident off the property of all places, but all he could do was make an odd gasping noise. Katherine instantly looked at the rear view mirror though, so he supposed it didn’t matter.

“Abaddon…?” She sounded terrified. Abaddon wasn’t sure why, but it made his vessel shake. He watched as the Matriarch reached up to a panel by the rear view mirror and pressed a button, once pressed the whole cars radio began making a sound. Abaddon wasn’t sure this was the time to be listening to the beach music though.

“This is OnStar, your system GPS shows you as being off road near Midwich, do you need assistance?”

“YES! Yes that’s where we are! We were hit and rolled down the side of the cliff and I don’t know if the people that hit us stayed! I’m pinned and my nephews… He’s really hurt, we need help!”

The Matriarch truly sounded frightened, Abaddon wondered briefly if she was afraid of the family finding out the car was broken. He tried again to speak, to say anything to her but all that came out was a gargling noise from deep within his vessel’s throat.

“Alright we have emergency services on their way, can you give me a rundown of your injuries?” The radio asked.

“My nephew is impaled with a branch! It looks like it may have hit a lung! He- he’s not talking but he’s trying to, his heads bleeding on his right side. He’s conscious right now but I’m worried, he looks like he’s going to pass out.” Katherine shouts matter of factly, terror still etching every part of her.

“My legs broken, bother are pinned under the dash and I hit my head on the driving wheel. We both lost consciousness for a bit there…”

“Alright I’m sending ambulance’s and fire rescue now, stay on the line with me and keep talking to your nephew.”

Abaddon didn’t want to close his eyes, he wanted to be sure Katherine survived whatever was going on. Otherwise Esther would be very upset with him and he wasn’t having that, but for the first time in millennia Abaddon was very tired and his eyes kept drifting closed without his say so.

His next bout of consciousness was brought on by Katherine screaming his name, there are tears streaming down her face which confuse him. Doesn’t she remember he can’t die? That being said he feels worse than before, a deathly cold creeping into his bones; warping his vision black at the edges when he tries to breath to hard. That’s when Abaddon realizes he hasn’t moved this entire time aside from breathing and staring at Katherine, he hasn’t moved his arms or legs from their rested positions neither his head from where it lays against the child safety seat. She must truly think him dead at times.

“Abaddon, emergency services are here okay? They’re gonna help us get out of this alright? I just need you to stay awake and let them help you, hang in there. Don’t go to sleep!” Katherine said, tears clearing tracks through the bloody cuts on her face.

He feels bad as unconsciousness begins to take hold over again, he blinks and Katherines been removed from the car, even the doors gone. There’s also a man in heavy looking gear with a helmet on looking grimly at him examining his infernal car seat.

“Hey buddy,” Hey says to Abaddon, “We’re gonna get you outta here okay?” The man continues to examine something behind Abaddon’s seat before he fully pulls the seat with Abaddon still on it out of the car and toward more people on the driver side of the car. When the three people next to the same thing aunt Rose’s corpse was taken away on started to extricate him out of his seat Abaddon attempted to scream only for blood to project out of his mouth onto one of the individuals and for Abaddon to lose consciousness again.

Chapter Text

Abaddon isn’t sure how he ended up in the ruins of the hotel, standing idle in the midst of an apocalypse that never was. Yet here he stood unmoving, and across from himself was his vessel, Abaddon looked down at his hands only to see his vessels puny digits before him. He was confused but not so lost as to not realize that all of this was impossible.

“We are not conscious.” Said his vessel. Abaddon stared for a moment, “why?” He asked, not believing it possible that his vessel could know more about this odd situation than him.

“Perhaps we are dying?” He shivers, a look of fear and longing on his little face that Abaddon doesn’t quite understand but feels in his chest all the same.

“I am an immortal demon…” Abaddon tries, but it feels less powerful than it usually does.

“And I am a mortal human, we’ve been bound for how long now?” The vessel raises his brow, but the question matches a pained look on his face as he hugs his chest tight.

“…Surely billions of years attempting to stop this…” Adabbon halfheartedly motions to the apocalypse that never was around them as his vessels steps toward him. “Yes,” said the vessel, “and we stopped it. Together we saved our family even if it ment giving up a home that didn’t want you anymore, because if you couldn’t have both you wouldn’t lose them.”

Abaddon noticed his body shaking violently as his vessel took the last few steps toward him, “When you chose them over and over again you began to put your very essence into saving human lives, and I along with you. We began to meld during our time trying and became something else, something both demon and human…” The vessel spoke softly, body still shaking just as Abaddons was yet he now smiled at Abaddon with his arms held out, grasping Abaddon at the elbows.

“How do you know all of this…?” The horrible shaking in Abaddons body increased tenfold, when had he stopped picturing himself in his minds eye as a demon and started picturing himself as his vessels instead? Why is it he could not see life without the Freelings? Why was the idea of being turned away from Hell’s residents a less terrifying prospect than loosing his found family? What had this boy DONE to him?

“I know everything you know Abaddon, I’m just willing to acknowledge it. I know that you and I are both afraid of dying, afraid of where we will end up. But at least we are not alone…” The vessel spoke softly, pulling Abaddon by the elbows toward his own chest into a hug as they fell to the floor of the destroyed hotel. Tears began streaming down both of their faces unbidden, cheeks pressed together at the end of the world only in their mind.

They didn’t notice the sounds around them that sounded all wrong for an apocalypse, the sounds of beeping machines, some high pitched and short others long and screeching continuously as if needing immediate attention, the sound of metal instruments being moved and clanged, liquids splashing and dripping, wheels turning harshly on linoleum and people. So many people talking, shouting over one another, on a PA system and what could have been a radio.

“It’s a hairline fracture to the left fibula and shouldn’t take any longer than six to eight weeks to heal, we’re prescribing you Tylenol with codeine so please don’t overdo yourself. Talk to your pharmacist about alternatives pain relief if you don’t want to become reliant as well. That being said; for today and tomorrow you can’t sleep or take any pain medication as we believe you have a concussion from hitting your head off the steering wheel”

Katherine nods politely, trying desperately to focus on what the nurse is saying to her. She has an ice pack in her hand and an air cast on her left leg that honestly feels like overkill but she’s not a doctor so she doesn’t push it.

“Alright, I’ll be back as soon as I have some information on your nephew.” The woman, Katherine reads her name tag as Letitia; walks away to attend to other tasks.

For a moment Katherine simply watches as the nurse walks away, she allows her mind to wander as her eyes drift to the floor in exhaustion; flashes of the event rolling and tumbling through her mind. The absolute freezing terror that had shocked through her veins and stilled her to the drivers seat unmoving for a single moment. She regretted the lost moment now as Abaddon went through hell only knew what, but Katherine couldn’t help it. When she’d first looked in that mirror and seen him she hadn’t seen Abaddon, she’d seen her baby boy Ben soaked in blood with a branch sticking out of his chest and through his own window. It must have broken off of a tree at some point, but that wasn’t important. It was only a moment but Katherine saw her son there suffering in ungodly agony not moving or speaking and she was terrified. In the moment she thanked her lucky stars for continuously forgetting to cancel her OnStar account.

Shaking her head out of her daze, Katherine looked about the large emergency sector to find a tv. Luckily there was one not too far off from her curtained bed, close enough to read the subtitles and it was on the news station for Midwich as well. A helicopter was flying over Undervales private road leading up to the Hotel, a spotlight showcasing just how fucked up her car was. The back passenger side was a mess, the news anchor crediting Abaddons survival to his car seat. While the front was completely collapsed in mostly on the passenger side as well, had it been opposite side damage she’d be dead for sure.

An officer appeared on screen before her anxiety could get the best of her, “This appears to be a hit and run, uhh both individuals in the victim’s vehicle were injured and brought to Midwich General Medical Centre, we are looking for any help identifying the suspect vehicle in this case. The incident would have occurred about an hour ago now and left substantial damage to the subject’s vehicle.”

Katherine blinks, then looks at the time also shown on the news which shows it to be nearly five in the morning. “Any help from the public would be greatly appreciated,” the officer continues, “as it is currently being treated as a criminal investigation. Thank you.”

Katherine sighs, the kids will be up in about two hours to get ready for school not knowing that with the road closed for an investigation the school bus wont but coming to get them… Also their Mother and cousin had been in a horrible accident. Heaving another exhausted sigh Katherine looked at the blood speckled purse a firefighter had grabbed for her from the back seat of the car before they had been toted away, pulling out her phone and making a call. She supposed if he could make middle of the night calls so could she.

“Kathy, hey isn’t it a little early for the hotel to be opening?” Joel sounds too awake for a normal human being in her opinion but she leaves that for later.

“Turn on the news.” She replies tiredly. It’s a few quiet seconds of shuffling and the sound of a tv turning on in the distance, she can hear the anchor repeating what has already been said before, that there was a hit and run on the hotels private road and that a child is in critical condition. That’s when she hears the sound of Joels chair clattering to the floor, “What do you need? Do you need me to come to the hospital?” Joel sounds more upset than Katherine herself but maybe it’s because his adrenaline is fresh and hers is finally wearing off.

“I need you to go to the hotel and pick up my kids if it okay, I know it’s asking a lot but I can’t have them freaking out all morning. I —“ She takes a deep breath and hopes to whoever is playing this cruel joke on her that this doesn’t end their short relationship today. “I appreciate the help.”

“Katherine, you could’ve died please don’t THANK me for doing the bare minimum of what you ask!” She’s stunned, Joel seems genuinely upset with her at this. “You’re worth the effort… I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”

Katherine attempts to hold her voice steady as she responds, but her voice cracks with tears as she whispers “Okay… I’ll see you soon.” Before hanging up the phone

He notices many things at once this time and he despises all of it, Abaddons body is freezing cold yet blindingly hot at the same time, he is choking on something down his throat and when he tries to remove it he finds that there are soft cuffs strapped around his wrists and ankles. When he opens his eyes it is to a blinding white light of an unholy God he does not know and he is strapped to something similar to an alter of metal. There are people all around him wearing the same uniforms much like the cultists from before, but this time their faces had masks and they’re covered in blood. His blood.

He feels like a lamb to the slaughter.

The humans are saying something about eyes and someone is attempting to get his attention, while another says the words Sonogram and CT scan but he doesn’t know why or what those mean. Abaddon coughs attempting to dislodge the thing in his throat only to feel this horrible gut wrenching agony throughout his entire being, clenching his eyes shut Abaddon feels as his body grows colder. He feels as the humans cut away his precious clothing from his chest, Abaddon can feel that slight flicker of rage insisting he fight these humans who wish to sacrifice him to their false God.

“Alright all hands on deck, ready for debridement?” A stern voice that reminds him of Katherine shouts, and that’s when all chaos breaks loose. The thing that seemed to both be holding Abaddon together and ripping him apart was swiftly pulled from his chest and then hands were inside of him. Holding his lung together and pulling out only they knew what.

“Hang an O negative Blood and saline bag and more gauze” the stern voice reaches over everything in the room.

“Well can you be ripped apart? Because that’s about to happen!” Ben’s voice echoed in Abaddons head as his consciousness betrayed him yet again this day. A thick blanket of fog was spreading through his mind as these cruel cultists pulled at his organs and decorated themselves in his vessels blood.

“Doctor, the lobe.” Abaddon did not see what they were talking about but they sounded eager, as if this was good news. “Let’s finish this up and get him prepped to head up for surgery, he needs that lobe now.”

He did not want to admit it but Abaddon was afraid, he was afraid of being torn apart. Of dying and never seeing the Freelings again. What would come after? Would his essence be torn away from his vessels soul? Was that possible? Abaddon didn’t know, all he knew was that before he completely gave in to the fog his minds eye called out one name he hadn’t expected and surely would need to analyze at a later date; he called out for Nathan, but no one could hear him.

Chapter Text

Ben isn’t sure of the last time there was an emergency call from his Mom, usually he was the one making the emergency calls and his Mom often told him what he was calling about wasn’t actually an emergency. He had been dreaming about two of his most favourite Bridgerton characters getting carried away in a romantic escapade when suddenly the only sound that came from Penelope’s mouth was that of his ringing phone.

Ben slipped off his eye mask to see who was calling him only to be informed that it was his Mother, and in bright red text at the bottom of the screen and message read “EMERGENCY”, he quickly picked up.

“Mom?”

“Ben, buddy.” A sigh of relief that concerned Ben more than it probably should, “I don’t wan’t I to have a meltdown or anything, but I needed to go into town last night to pick up Abaddon and we got into a bit of an accident—“

“WHAT!?” Ben’s heart begins to race and he’s sure he’s riled up a few ghost’s as he jumps out of bed, forgetting his shame at his lack of pants or a shirt. He hears Nathan somewhere shouting something in concern as if he thinks Ben is in danger. “Where are you? Mom, how do we get to you if Nathan can’t drive—“ his nerves are through the roof. Ever since the divorce Ben had had to deal with a lot of big feelings, he’d had to help others through theirs before he’d managed his own on multiple occasions but this? This felt too big for him, he’d square his shoulders and solder on but these feelings would need to be addressed just like how his school counsellor wished for him to be his bullies punching bag in the name of said bullies normalcy.

“Ben! I’m okay, to be honest I got out relatively unscathed. Abaddon was a little more worse for wear, he’s being seen to by doctors now. As for getting here I asked Joel, you remember the man I went on that date with? Almost got murdered? He’s going to pick up you and your sister, okay? Make sure that Nathan knows what you know and that the answering machine in his office is on speaker so he can hear it, I don’t want him worrying.” She sounded tired but like she was trying to hide it.

“Mom, are you sure you’re okay?” Ben asked, he knew she was hiding the details for a reason.

“I’m okay, Ben. Now I gotta go. I have to call the officers that are blocking the road so Joel can get up to the hotel to pick you two up. I love you Benny.” He could hear the smile in her soft exhausted voice.

Ben spends approximately thirty seconds staring at his phone before he goes into hyper gear, throwing on grey sweatpants a white t-shirt and his signature red sweater and running the few doors down to Esthers room. Nathan is down the hall having been startled awake by all the commotion in Bens room, not that he’d admit he was asleep.

“Ben? What’s wrong? You know it’s nowhere close to time to get up for school, right?” Nathen asks. Ben stops just before Esthers door and turns to his Uncle, he can feel the dread from earlier crawling up his throat like bile and he’d rather do anything other than this. He steels himself for a crashout something otherworldly, “Mom and Abaddon were in a car accident.”

Esthers door swings open, crashing into the opposite wall and jumping in the hinges and she screams in rage “WHAT!?” She sounds like a banshee to him.

Ben holds up his hands as if in self defence and notices Esther is already fully dressed, shoes and all. “She said she’s not really hurt much and that Abaddon is being seen by a doctor, not that an immortal demon needs to be seen by a doctor…” Ben also takes notice of how Nathan stiffens at the mention of Abaddon being in the hospital. “Mom told me that guy she saw, Joel? He’s doing her a favour and he’s coming to pick us up,” He turns to look at Nathan, “She also asked me to turn the answering machine on to speaker mode so you can hear her when she calls with updates.”

Nathan nods but he seems dazed and frightened. For lack of a better term Ben would say Nathan looks like he just saw a ghost.

“Lemme get my shoes on, Esther go downstairs and eat something real quick before Joel gets here.” Ben made to run off toward his room but not before pantomiming a hug with his uncle.

His car was his baby, like his literal BABY. Something he had worked really really hard for. And sure that work was just through grades and not like… A job, but Brockton was proud. He was also proud to say he’d not been much of a drinker, but yesterday was his seventeenth birthday and he deserved to celebrate. That celebration had consisted of himself and two friends he’d known since he was like eleven, they met back where his parents yacht was tied off; and the three of them took two bottles of fireball a bottle of vodka and a bottle of absinthe to the lake off of Undervale Road. There was a dirt road that split off of the paved one only about twelve minutes down the road, leading directly to the lake, some rumour said kids got murdered there forty years ago but that wasn’t gonna stop more teenagers from having a good time.

”But how’d I get home…” Brockton asked aloud, he was laying on his back on the floor of his childhood bedroom staring up at old peel and stick glow-in-the-dark stars pasted to the ceiling. His arms splayed out to other side like a cross, he was still wearing last nights clothing and on top of all that Brockton could tell he was still HIGHLY intoxicated.

Slowly, excruciatingly; Brockton pushes himself into a seated position and waits for the vertigo to pass before he makes his way out of his bedroom and down to the lard kitchen, he stops momentarily at the island to rest against the counter before heading for the sink on the opposite side of the kitchen under the bay windows. Forgoing a glass all together Brockton drinks straight from the tap, gulping greedily.

Once he’s had his fill Brockton heads out to the garage on unsteady feet. But the garage is where his world comes crumbling down around him, his baby…. His precious baby is a mess. The front passenger side is crumpled in toward the engine. It’s still drivable but clearly he’d hit something and HARD, and on top of that he’d just… Come home? Examining the damage Brockton couldn’t tell what he’d hit, maybe a mailbox? No that wouldn’t have done this much damage.

”I need to call my Dad.” And with that Brockton pulled out his seasonal car cover and covered his baby up before heading back to his room to find his phone. His dad would know how to handle this.

The guilt was eating her alive and Katherine knew this was the only chance she’d get to truly analyze it, why had she panicked? Tears pricked at her eyes as she saw his vacant stare in her mind, her body aching. Suddenly it felt like she was all alone in a bathroom again sobbing at the loss; cold tile flooring, burning fever that ached her body, and the miracle of life flushed down the toilet. Ron had been off doing fuck knows who.

Abaddon wasn’t her child, sure she was attached but he wasn’t her son. He was Nathans ward and yes, that did make him Katherines responsibility now that Nathan was dead but he wasn’t that child. That child never had the chance to develop a brain let alone breathe their first breath.

Unlike her child Abaddon would survive this ordeal, he was a demon after all was said and done.

Katherine is startled out of her rumination’s by the sound of her daughter’s voice calling for her from just by the nurse’s station, which happens to be right under the television she had been watching earlier. There stands Esther, Ben and Joel all at varying degrees of wakefulness and anxiety.

Esther and Ben both run towards her Esther throwing herself at her mother while Ben gently hugs her from the side once he notices the cast and massive bruising on her face. “Mom!” Esther whines again, fear and confusion she doesn’t usually showcase is as clear as day to Katherine and she wants nothing more than to kiss it all away so she tries to do just that.

“Mom, stop! Tell us what happened!” Esther softly pushes at her Mothers shoulders before pulling herself up onto her Mothers bed. She sits gingerly next to Katherines leg, the air cast such a foreign object to her; Esther is carful not to touch it or move too much.

“Mom… You never said you broke any bones.” Ben scolds, and honestly for a moment all Katherine wants to do is duck her head and apologize. At the same time though she was simply trying to minimize their worry in the moment, and she supposed it worked.

“I was hit by someone using the dirt road I think, it’s being reported as a hit and run investigation. My fibula has a very small fracture and should be healed in a month in a half to two months, and I have a concussion. Abaddon is in surgery—“

“Surgery?!” Esther’s ability to sit still is thrown to the wind and she bolts upright from her semi relaxed position, though she’s still careful not to touch her Mothers leg.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Ben asks for her, but before Katherine has time to answer there is a Doctor making her way towards them.

“Are you The Freelings Family? Katherine Freeling?” She asks, her name tag reads Lauzon. “Yes that’s me, is Abaddon gonna be okay?” Katherine responds, she feels her breath catch in her throat.

The Doctor takes a moment to look at her children before remarking “Interesting, he isn’t a natural ginger yet he was very resistant to anaesthesia. Abaddon made it through the surgery and is now it recovery upstairs, he’s going to be here for quite some time just so you’re aware as the damage was extensive and his body still risks rejecting the donated lobe of lung tissue we had to use to repair his lung. We’ve given him his tetanus shot along with multiple other antibiotics for safety’s sake and have him intubated to help re-inflate his left lung. There is still a chance that his right lung may collapse if infection presents itself so I wouldn’t’t say he’s out of the woods yet.” The Doctor looks at her matter of factly, there are bags under her eyes and she looks younger than Katherine herself but not by much.

Katherine takes it all in, she remembers to breathe; “Alright…”

“Another thing, we noticed a scar on his chest indicative of some form of potential assault?” Her eyes go hard and calculating now.

Katherine is silent for a moment, because honestly part of her thought the mark of his binding was gone. “I’ve never seen his scar, my brother told me how he got it but I’m not sure I believe the story. Said something about a cult from a few years back? That they tried to use him as a human sacrifice but he escaped, they all killed themselves anyway. Apparently it was in the news. My brother said he found Abaddon in the woods and took him in, when my brother died Abaddon became my responsibility.”

Doctor Lauzon studied Katherine for a moment, as did Esther. Ben seemed to be watching tv while Joel had made his way to a chair next to the bed to sit with Katherine and hold her hand, giving it reassuring squeezes now and again. “I see… I must inform you, as a hospital we are mandated reporters and have no choice but to inform Child Protective Services as well as the police of this matter.” A part of her doesn’t believe Katherine.

“Of course… “ Katherine is nervous though, this is something to be nervous about.

Officer Sloan may well have just been assigned to his carrier case and he’s only forty eight, it’s not the hit and run itself that makes the case so interesting though. No it’s the undocumented child that’s got his gears grinding to a halt. Finding the suspect that hit their car was easy enough, start with local CCTV in town directed toward the private Undervale road and watch for a damaged car exiting the road after their victims entered.

Unfortunately that’s when the hit and run get complicated as its very clear from the expensive green four door with a crumpled up front that Peter and Isabella’s son is to blame for all of this, and a lawyers kid almost NEVER faces the consequences of his actions. Either way he still had to try and make the arrest.

One phone call and the warrant is being worked on with the judge as Officer Sloan makes his way to the Chen household to see Brockton, in the meantime he makes another call to an older partner of his.

“Hey Foley hows it going?” Officer Sloan greets.

“I’m good! But I know you aren’t calling for personal reasons so what’s up my guy?” Foley cuts straight to the chase, as he’s one to do.

Officer Sloan laughs, he can’t help it with Foley. “Right right, you know me like you know yourself. So you remember that mass suicide case, April of 2022? Was there ever a child reported missing around that time? Around the age of four possibly younger.”

Foley takes a moment on the other side of the line, clearly looking something up. “Like in reference to the area? Because yes there are hundreds of thousands across America. Please be more specific.”

“Look up the reports of that wild kid people keep complaining about, the one that eats their gardens and jumps on cars and breaks into homes to stand on their tables for no apparent reason. Se if any children in the area of where that cult existed went missing and fit that kids description. The hospital called us and CPS to say the second victim in the crash might be a victim of child abuse but the aunt is claiming the scar is from that cult. To be honest I buy her story, or at least that she believed her brother given the fact that Ive been dealing with that kid for the last few years and she only just got here.” Officer Sloan said as he pulled up the Chen household.

When Officer Sloan exits his vehicle The Chen family are already waiting outside, and the warrant for Brocktons vehicle has come through but not his arrest.

“I am acting as his legal counsel and we do not wish to speak with you, yes he will supply you with a blood or urine sample as expected when he signed his drivers agreement. Is there anything else officer?” Isabella asks.

“Warrant for the car.” He walks around to his trunk and pops it open revealing his fully functional office space on wheels and a freshly printed warrant before walking up the driveway to hand Isabella the warrant.

The police tow truck is there moments later to tow the truck, swiftly removing it from the garage with the cover still on. “Shall I meet you at the hospital or would you like to ride with me?”

“My car works just fine Daniel.” Laughs Peter.

Ben’s never been this angry before, sure he’s been angry; angry at Dad for hurting Mom, angry at his bullies for hurting him, and angry at the school for not helping… But this felt like a monumental failing of the system.

He’d walked away while the Doctor was talking to his Mom about Abaddon as he was almost certain the demon would be fine, the Doctors weren’t sitting them down in a private room saying “I’m sorry for your lose” so everything was okay with Abaddon in Ben’s book.

But the news report? To find out that not only was Brockton the suspect but that he’d been released without bail? Ben didn’t understand, surely the police had SOME evidence on Brockton otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered to book him in the first place.

The heat of anger in his stomach seemed to intensify at the idea of Brockton going on a Christmas holiday after nearly killing Ben’s mother, although he wasn’t a violent person by nature Ben seriously couldn’t curb the need to lash out. Before he did something he might regret, Ben removed himself from the immediate space and went for a walk into farther corridors.

It wasn’t fair Ben thought, that then kids who were starting their adult life soon nearly killed his Mother. She would have died and he would have never seen her again, he and Esther would have been left with RON of all people which would have been the same as asking Ben to raise Esther. Ben hadn’t even turned fourteen yet and Brockton was thoughtlessly throwing adulthood at him without a second glance!

The fire in Ben’s body is overwhelming and he just desperately wants to beat the shit outta something, but that’s when a familiar voice catches his attention; it’s Brockton of all the people in the world sitting in a blue cushy chair with his parents on one side of him and a nurse drawing his blood on the other side of him, behind the nurse is an Officer Ben recognizes from the news.

“Next you’ll need to pee in this cup” the nurse intones.

Ben ducks around the corner towards the bathroom and heads inside, he doesn’t look the door however. He’s not sure what he’s doing at first but knows this is what the fire wants, when Brockton enters Ben doesn’t wait for older boy to notice him before he makes the first move. He punches Brockton hard in the temple first, which seems to cause the larger of the two to black out for a moment as he falls to the floor. Ben doesn’t waste his chance and jumps on top of Brockton, beginning his full assault. He doesn’t stop punch the 17 year old in the face until the fire subsides and all that’s left is wrecking sobs.

As Ben stands he says “That’s for nearly killing my Mother, and my cousin.”

Brockton stares for a moment as his face begins to swell, blood trickling from his nose, eyebrow, and lip. Without getting up from the floor he says “I’m gonna pee in a cup now”. And that’s Bens que to leave.

He doesn’t go back the way he came and definitely doesn’t go straight back to his family, but instead finds a place to wash his hands. The monotonous routine of soap and water helps to clear his mind, as if someone’s added the soap to his brain and is scrubbing. The soap smells like cinnamon and gingerbread and he cant help but smell his hands after his dried them. And that’s how Esther finds him.

“There you are! Common! We’re going to Abaddons room” She scurries off, barely glancing back. Ben takes a deep breath a steels himself again, putting his issues on the back burner for now, Esther was clearly not dealing with all this very well, and he was going to need to call Nathan and leave a message soon.

Quickly making his resolve to address the many issues ahead, Ben headed after his little sister.

Chapter Text

She feels out of her depth which is ridiculously because Mom leaves her in charge for a reason, but at the same time she hadn’t told Esther the truth about what had happened. Well sure she had called Ben because Esther didn’t have a phone yet but the point was that she didn’t TELL them the truth!

Esther felt her chest clench again and wondered if that was what a heart attack felt like, honestly she had enough shit on her plate to deal with Esther didn’t want to deal with any more medical drama that morning she just wanted to find where her brother had wandered off to and drag him back to her Mom and her Mom’s… Boyfriend?

Nope, Esther was not comfortable saying that! He was just a Joel for now.

“So you’re not gonna tell us how your face got all busted up?” Esther overhears as she rounds another corner and descends another corridor, not too far down she can hear water running.

Rounding yet another identical corner that honestly makes her think of the backrooms if it weren’t for all the people, Esther spots her brother washing his hands although they don’t seem to be dirty.

“There you are! Common! We’re going to Abaddons room” She scurries off, barely glancing back. It’d taken too much time to find him and Abaddon needed her. She could hear her brother’s steps behind her anyway, calm and steady as when their paren’t divorce really rocked her world. Ben had been right beside her every day, always steady, Esther knew she could count on him for the big stuff.

As they reached their Mom’s bed Joel was just finishing helping her into a wheelchair, “Welcome back, I hope the walk helped a bit.” Joel seemed to know something Esther didn’t, “I’m gonna wheel your Mom in and then wait out here okay?” He says.

Ben thank’s Joel quietly as the head down the hall towards an elevator, they’re following a woman that reminds Esther of Heather for some reason. Similar glasses, speech pattern, even the way she walked was similar except for the whole being an adult thing.

They go up four floors before they are guided toward a relatively dark room, the lights are on but dimmed enough so as to not bother the patient… Patient. Esther takes a moment to process the scene in front of her as Joel excuses himself, she slowly makes her way over to the bed that Abaddon barely takes up any room on.

He has a tube down his throat but it’s small, doesn’t seem to take up his whole mouth and is taped to his right cheek. On his right collarbone is another sort of tube, she can’t tell why it’s there but the stitches that keep it attached are ugly. The worst of them though is the tube sticking out of his right rib cage, it seems to be emptying blood from his lung. There’s blood bags and was it water? Hanging about him going into a needle in his arm, and grossly a bag at the bottom of the bed that looked like it had pee and blood in it with a tube that snaked under the blanket.

Abaddons clothing is gone, and for some reason that’s what sets off Esthers tantrum; not that she would call it that out loud. “Where’s his clothes?! Mom, they took his clothes! He need’s his clothes, he’s not comfortable with anything else! We have to get his stuff back before somebody ruins it!” She sobs angrily, her mother attempting to hold her only for Esther to rip herself away.

“Esther they’re right here!” Ben says, “Now you gotta stop shouting.” He holds out a plastic bag, inside is Abaddons destroyed clothing, cut up the middle of either leg as well as the chest and arm. Esthers sobs are renewed, but she turns into her brother this time; allowing him to hug her and stroke her back.

“He’s gonna be okay.” Ben insists, “How do you know!?” Esther is desperate for reassurance, anything that will tell her all of this will blow over and go back to normal.

“Well,” her Mom starts off; “he’s awake for one.”

Esther whips her head out of Ben’s chest to look at Abaddon, he’s still laid out in that too big bed in a hospital gown barely covering his chest. She can see the top of what looks like a scar there, there’s a suggestion of a blanket thrown overtop of him and he looks ten times paler than he usually is, hair even messier. But his eyes are cracked open and he’s looking at her.

“Abaddon…?” Esther whispers.

His vessel feels like it is on unsteady ground, as if it has been upon a boat for many a year just to step foot on solid ground and find they are unaccustomed to the sensation. Intoxicants possibly. Intoxicants do not work on a demon, so that mustn’t be the case. His vessel argues that he is no longer just a demon but rather a human too, and a human that’s lost too much blood.

Abaddon considers this and wonders what the learning curve will be like.

His vessel still feels blindingly wrong when noise awakens him, but he can’t make much sense of what he is seeing. It is silent for a moment before a voice he knows speaks from a face he recognizes; “Abaddon…?”

“Esth—“ He tries to say her name only to choke on a tube halfway through, his dry throat cracking and tears slipping out of the corner of his eyes.

Quickly Esther scurries over to Abaddons bed and takes a seat next to his head, Katherine wheels herself closer to the middle while Ben sits himself next to Esther, she reaches out and softly wipes the tear she can reach away only for another to join the first and another.

Esther tries nonetheless to wipe his tears away, “Abaddon, what’s wrong? You’re gonna be okay, right?”

For some reason neither the Vessel nor Abaddon could explain, the way Esthers face scrunched up while she dabbed at his temples made the tears come faster. “I… Feel wrong. This body is… are we on a boat of some sort?” His breath shook on the way in.

“No Abaddon, we’re at the hospital.” Ben answered

“Mom what’s wrong with him” Esther was looking at Katherine.

“It’s probably the morphine, sweetly. I’m surprised it’s affecting him like this.” Katherine sighs as if relieved.

Abaddon shudders as Vessels soul makes an overwhelming request that his essence echos loud and clear to which he is unable to stop himself from voicing in his intoxicated state, “I want Dad.” He cries, and the room falls silent.

He repeats himself a few times, desperate for some understanding. Surely they would eventually find clarity, but eventually his cries wore him to sleep. Damn the intoxicants that once never touched his mind, now confusing him to such a state that he couldn’t even remember Nathans name in the moment.

Foley had found some ground breaking evidence, but it definitely wasn’t going to help the Freelings in keeping that kid.

Foleys research into the mass suicide case had told him this much: a man who went by the name Mordecai Bennett, that wasn’t his legal name his legal name was Todd Jones but Todd Jones wasn’t impressive enough to start an End-of-days cult so he went by the name Mordecai Bennett instead.

Jones had a troubled history; was a nuisance in school, dropped out early, was diagnosed as narcissistic, had trouble keeping a job, and his parents kicked him out. He chose Midwich because of its history with as he put it “vulnerable people”, when asked to elaborate he mentioned the asylums, the prison, the settlement with it’s story of exorcism and the fact that the town never seemed to get any bigger than the few thousand people.

He had convinced twenty three people to join his cult, following him as a priest to the end times. One of those followers happened to be the daughter of a local Priest, she was old enough to leave on her own accord at the time so there really wasn’t anything the police were willing to do; but her body was found alongside the rest all the same. She had gone missing in 2017 but her body along with the others hadn’t been found until 2022, surrounding the mass suicide were multiple fire pits. Each pit had the chard remains of children’s bones, there wasn’t much to be found but little chipped pieces.

Farther research lead Foley to a photograph that had been found in a tent at the scene, within the photograph stood the daughter of the priest smiling vacantly; the supposed prophets arm slung over her shoulder while she carried and small boy with dark hair in her arms. His face was slightly blurry but Foley and Officer Sloan supposed it could be their undocumented kid, alarmingly he was dressed in some sort of ritual garb and the photo was dated just a day before the bodies were found.

With all of this coming to light, officer Sloan had immediately thought to reach out to the hospital and request and DNA test to compare against the town Priest Father Docherty, but needed a sample to compare against; so that was where he was on his way to.

The Docherty household.

The drive took longer than he wanted it to but Sloan supposed that gave him time to think about that Katherine woman, why hadn’t she or her elder brother Nathan reported the boy? It was suspicious all around, and made her seem like she was hiding something from him. Unfortunately for her Sloan was motivated to figure this puzzle out, whether it took arresting her to get that information or not.

The farther into town the drive took him the older the buildings looked, more exposed beams and slanted thatch rooftops with charming crosshatch windows and chimney stacks coughing up smoke to signify the living inside. The Dochertys live in a not to dissimilar home on the property of the town church, or at least one of the towns churches; Sloan puts on his hat and slowly makes his way towards the arched gate that locks their garden.

In the summertime it’s inviting as the roses bloom above but at this time of year its winding branches lay barren save for the intimidating spikes. Officer sloan opens the gate and walks the path that leads to the large oak door, he’s just about to raise his hand to the antique knocker when a woman in her mid fifties opens it. “Officer Sloan, to what do I owe this pleasure?” She smiles sweetly.

“Anne, I’m here on duty. It’s about a case that may be related to Sarah.” He keeps his composure, face straight as he watches her world change in an instant. “We need a DNA sample to compare his to.”

Suddenly Isaac is standing behind his wife, his coat already on. “Blood, saliva, piss, what do you need? I’ll give it.” Sloan can’t help but laugh even if he tries to catch himself, he hasn’t Hearn Isaac talk like that since high school when he was going through his rebellious phase.

“Come with me to the hospital and we’ll sort out the best option there.” Sloan says, motioning for Isaac to follow him out to his police car. He watches out of the corner of his eye as Isaac shares a kiss with Anne before whispering “I’ll bring our grandson home.” Anne is crying but nods nonetheless. They’ve been waiting for this day ever since they found out Sarah had a baby with that monster.

“Let’s go.” Isaac Docherty sounds determined.

Abaddon can hear the scratching of what he interprets as a pen on paper and thinks maybe Esther is drawing something next to him, but when he opens his eyes Esther is not there. Esther is gone and so is Benjamin and Katherine as well, replaced by a dark skinned woman in Esthers seat wearing glasses, a knitted sweater of a fur beast that smiles and pants much like the matriarchs own.

She pushes a long braid behind her shoulder before noticing Abaddon is awake. “Hello there.” She smiles sweetly at him, “my name is Celeste. I’m here to ask you a few questions about how home’s been with aunt Katherine. Do you think you’re up for answering some questions?”

Uneasiness seems to fill the pit of Abaddons stomach, “Where’s Esther…?” He slurs, and that’s when he realizes the intoxicants had yet to stop affecting his vessel. Vessels soul was still restless at the lack of Dad… but Abaddon would boil that down to the intoxicants as well.

“She’s waiting outside for us to finish our talk okay?” The woman whose name he’d rather not even think seems to take his question as an invitation to start her inquiry. “So tell me what it’s like living with your cousins, your aunt.”

He doesn’t think, it seems to be the vessel is more in control “Esther is my best friend, they take care of me.” He’s surprised at how quickly the words tumble out, this poison seems to work as some sort of truth serum. “I like Froot Loops.” He adds.

“Oh wow! That sounds lovely, what else do you eat? Do you have any other food you like?” She feigns interest while writing on her clipboard.

Part of him wishes to say squirrels but his gut churns, the words “ Cheerios… and spaghetti. I like yogurt too.” The matriarch would be pleased with these answers, Abaddon reminds his vessel that they deserve a dinosaur sticker later.

“Strawberry yogurts my favourite. Okay, tell me okay your house Abaddon.” She seems pleased with his answers.

“Our abode is the hotel Undervale.” She stares, Abaddon thinks maybe the answer was incorrect. His vessel disagrees because it is the truth.

“I see. I just have a few more questions for you, okay? Can you tell me how your aunt goes about teaching you? Are you homeschooled?” Her voice is held steady.

“Like with the computer?” Abaddon asks, recalling Nathan’s attempt to teach him how to use the modern technology was truly humility but it seemed to appease the woman. “I am not very good at it.” Vessel admits this without his consent.

“Okay last question buddy,” he want’s to inform her that he is not her buddy, she continues “I need to know about yours and Nathans relationship.”

That curling sinking feeling in his gut is back and he can barely breathe, which is odd given the machine that making sure his lungs are functioning the way they are supposed to. He’s looking at this woman with a name from the heavens but all he’s seeing is Nathans smiling face.

“Hey buddy” he says reaching out,

“He pulled me out of a hole in the woods.” Abaddon says, “He saved me and made pancakes… he died in the lounge watching Con Air.”

Abaddon doesn’t take in her reaction to what he says, all he can see is Nathan dead in his chair. He wants his Dad back, Abaddon desperately wishes he had the power to make Nathan corporeal, alive. Not dead.

Suddenly there were people rushing around the room again, those forsaken cultists that had attempted to take his organs and sacrifice him to their deity of meat. They were poking at his body and checking machines and tubes attached to him, one man was attempting to calm the sobs he had yet to notice tumbling from his chest.

“We’re gonna have to put him under, the stress is too much.”

Abaddon isn’t sure who speaks but he doesn’t have the opportunity to argue as something like an ocean wave knocks him down down down into himself, an unfamiliar place that his vessel knows far better than him.

Nathan wasn’t sure he’d call this a panic attack but something similar, then again he was dead so it wasn’t like he was getting the chance to handle all of this hands on. The two calls on the answering machine had been alarming to say the least, first it was Ben telling him the full scope of Kathy and Abaddons injuries. The later of the two sounded terrifying but when you knew who you were dealing with it sounded a little less terrifying, still terrifying but less so. Kathy though? His baby sister with a broken leg and a concussion? Nathan couldn’t stand the idea of not being there for her.

The second call was from Kathy herself and that’s where the alleged panic attack comes in, because apparently she’s being investigated for custodial interference and failure to report a crime. She also mentions how out of it Abaddon had been when he’d woken up, how he’d been asking for his Dad but no one could figure out who he was asking for.

It was sad really, because Nathan thought the answer was pretty obvious. Abaddon had been his ward for the past few years and had told him before on multiple occasions that he could call him Nathan or Dad, that it was all on his terms.

The sound of the front door opening startles Nathan out of his thoughts, it’s been almost an hour and a half since those messages were left and for some reason Kathy and the kids were back. Nathan watches as Esther angrily storms off to her room and slams the door, there are tear streaks on her face that Nathan knows she won’t acknowledge if he asks her about them. Ben seems to be disassociating which is a huge problem in and of itself, but he too immediately makes his way upstairs to his room. They don’t hear him close the door but assume it’s closed all the same.

Kathy is on crutches, her left leg in an air cast that looks far heavier than it actually is. She also has stitches in her hairline. “Kathy…” Nathan says, he wants to hug her but wont even fake it while Joel is here.

“I’m okay Nathan, I’m gonna be okay. The police are doing their job so I’m not worrying about the rest and neither should you.” She says curtly as Joel helps her make her way to the couch. As she sits down Joel makes a point to excuse himself to give them some privacy, “I have to leave, the Copy Shop’s been closed all morning and it’s already…” he looks at his watch, “nine fifty eight. Call me if you need anything Kathy, same goes for you Nathan.” At the door Joel attempts to shake Nathans hand only for Nathan to jump back.

“Germaphobe! Sorry…” Nathan sweats.

“Right,” Joel elongates the word, “hospital. Welp, see ya later!” Nathan shuts the door.

As Nathan re-enters the sitting area just off the entrance, he walks towards Kathy and asks “What’s all this about custodial interference? Whose custody?” He’s confused because of the obvious seventeen hundreds thing, but doesn’t feel the need to mention that.

Kathy sinks into the couch, her head leaning back allowing the light shining in through the window behind her to showcase the new set of bags under her eyes. “Apparently the police think he has living relatives, which is obviously insane but they said CPS focuses on reunification so because you didn’t report him when you find him and I didn’t report him when I inherited all your responsibilities I’m being investigated….”

They’re taking his ward from him.

Nathan feels his soul crack.

Chapter Text

“Nathan, please! You have to calm down!” Katherine cries, she doesn’t now if he can hear her over his own weird ghostly wail. Another painting flies across the room though oddly nothing has flown toward Katherine herself, it’s as if even while Nathan is in this otherworldly state he still doesn’t want to hurt anyone.

Nathan is in the middle of the sitting area just off of the lobby, his feet are hovering several inches off the ground and blue ghostly energy seems to be radiating from his body; his eye sockets are glowing bright ghostly blow where his eyes are supposed to be. Everything in the room is shaking and once in a while an object takes off with the energy he emits, shimmering in that energy of his and taking off toward a wall or the floor.

“They can’t take him!” Nathan wails, and he looks like that painting the scream. It’s honestly terrifying to look at but Katherine is more afraid for Nathan than of him.

Katherine notices as both Esther and Ben appear at the top of the stairs, Annabelle standing just beyond Ben looking very concerned. “God back to your rooms!” Katherine shouts, she couldn’t bare the idea of either of them getting hurt and she knew that once Nathan did calm himself he would freak out again if he realized he’d hurt one of his nibblings.

“Right! I’ll go check my books, see if there’s anything to help in there!” Esther takes the invitation to cast Black Magic that wasn’t given and runs back to her room, Ben doesn’t move a muscle. Instead, from the top of the stairs he speaks to a still wailing Nathan.

“I know that you’re afraid uncle Nathan, I know the idea of losing Abaddon is scary but… Sitting here and crashing out about it isn’t gonna help anybody!” Ben smacked his hand on the banister to get his message across, which seemed to work.

“I’m scared too, I was scared of losing Mom and now I’m scared of losing Abaddon… I need you not to lose your cool uncle Nathan.”

Nathans incorporeal body shudders before dropping back onto his feet; he curls in on himself for a moment, grabbing at his chest and wincing. “Sorry everyone… I don’t know what all that was about.”

“Mama bear is angry.” Katherine tried to lighten the mood, it clearly didn’t work. She cleared her throat just as Esther ran back towards the stairs, “So I found— aww you guys figured it out without me!” She whines.

“Anyway,” Katherine annunciates, “the next few days we need to get a few things sorted. Tomorrow I am going to the police station, Joels driving me. They want fingerprints and an interview. Separately CPS is doing a full inspection of the hotel, Abaddon needs to have a room for himself so that needs to be somehow put together before the caseworker gets here. Oh and, Nathan?” Her brows furrow in concern, “She knows you’re dead so you’ll have to make yourself scarce… I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mind” Nathan laughs, “as long as we get our little demon back!”

The house is silent save for the clocks hollow ticks in the distance, the days light fading in through crosshatched windows and landing on Annes mousy brown hair. Isaac watches his wife as he washes their dishes from the soup they had for dinner, she sows a teddy bears eyes on as a pensive thought crosses her face, she’s probably wondering if he’ll like it.

Isaac is thinking about his daughter Sarah and whether or not that boy is actually their grandson, he hopes so.

There are photographs of Sarah all over the home, from the moment a guest walks in the front door and passes the shoe rack still stacked with her shoes. She decorates the wall of the hallway leading to the sitting room from infancy the high school graduation, to the right of the front door is the kitchen where there are even more photos of her on the fridge throughout her life, from church to birthday parties. In the sitting room there is a fireplace with a family portrait painted of the three of them when she was seventeen, she had stopped going to church at that time but Isaac didn’t mind.

Her life was her life he just wanted to be there for it. A silent tear rolled down his cheek before he swiped it away with his wrist.

The same pattern of photographs could be found in the stare well leading to the upper section of their home, and although Anne had originally wanted to leave Sarah’s bedroom in it’s original state when she was missing; the moment they found out she was gone they decided to donate her belongings to the community.

To find out that she had had a son, and that his body had not been found with the others had changed things for them. Isaac had wanted to charge off into the woods looking for the boy back then; that or get his hands on that filthy perverted man that had charmed his precious daughter and murdered her.

The sound of the home phone ringing breaks Isaac out of his thoughts, he watches as his wife puts the stuffed bear down and walks over to the side table opposite her favourite seat. “Hello? Docherty residence.” She says.

It’s silent for a moment as Issac finishes washing the last of the few dishes he needed to do, he looks back up to Annes face only to see tears in her eyes and her hand clasped over her mouth. He freezes, then walks towards her; wrapping an arm around her shoulder to steady her stance. Anne leans into him.

“Thank you so much Officer… We’ll be there as soon as possible. Thank you, goodbye.” Anne hangs up before looking to Isaac, she smiles as tears ones again seem to force their way out. “The DNA results came back, he’s ours Isaac. They’ve asked us to go to the hospital to sign some paperwork and meet with his social worker.”

Isaac feels his heart fall through his ass, he never thought this day would come. He thought their grandson surely had succumbed to the elements when they hadn’t located him after one year, then two but three years? Only to find out someone had been taking care of him.

“We’re going to have to get his room ready, we barely have anything for a growing boy!” He laughs,

“We can worry about that later, Isaac. For now we need to be going to the hospital to meet him!” Anne gently shakes him by the arm before dragging him toward the hallway closet.

Cleaning the hotel is a daunting task for Nathan given that he can’t physically touch anything, Esther and Ben have been tasked with moving all of Abaddons stuff into a bedroom in the same area where their own bedrooms are as well as making sure the room looks well lived in.

Nathan looks around, Katherine is already gone and the rest of the inhabitants or also ghosts so it’s just him and the hotel right now… that’s when a genius idea hits him like a broom to the face.

“Hey Hotel!?” Nathan shouts in question, the nights flicker in response. “You know my ward Abaddon, right?” Suddenly a book is thrown at him.

“Okay yeah he has a habit of breaking things and making a mess of you, but you gotta admit he does make life more fun, he even chases Jessica outta the vents when she’s bugging you!” It’s silent for a moment, as if the hotel is thinking to itself. Then the lights flicker again.

“Well Abaddon is at risk right now of being taken away, and if you don’t look AMAZING like I’m talking five stars baby, in the next…” he looks at a nearby clock, “three hours? That’s gonna happen, I personally don’t want that to happen so if you could do me this teeny tiny favour? I’ll make sure Kathy gets those coffee grounds for the garden as a reward?” Nathan suggests.

The hotel seems to shudder in excitement, drawers and cabinets shaking while lights flickered happily. Suddenly the whole hotel was coming to life around Nathan in a way he’d never seen before, the colours on the wall brightening, paint chips correcting themselves where they had chipped away. In rooms with peeling wallpaper and water damage it was like someone had used a Time Machine, the wallpaper was in pristine condition and there wasn’t a spot of water damage anywhere in the building. The missing fencing from the top of the hotel grew back like hair along with the rooftop doors handle, and the wall of the Undervales grounds seemed to build itself back up anew.

Upstairs in the room Esther and Ben had chosen for Abaddon, Nathan could hear an excited commotion. Slipping through the door Nathan could see why; the hotel had made sure the wallpaper was intact, his bed was similar to Esthers with rainbow Christmas lights hanging above it. In the corner of the room next to an armoire was a pile of pillows that reminded Nathan of that scene from spirited away with the giant baby. Within the armoire was Abaddons coat that he had most definitely grave robbed, along with more clothing that appeared to be similar to Abaddons clothing but it was like someone who was at target trying to put an outfit together from the 1700’s.

Next to the bed sat a night stand with a framed photo that Nathan had taken of the two of them, on the walls were crayon drawings Abaddon himself had made with guidance by Nathan on what colours to use. There were also some drawings made by Esther taped up here and there, along with a picture Katherine had taken of the two of them when they haven’t been paying attention; Abaddon had a red bucket on his head and was showing Esther his button collection.

Higher on the walls are shelves with a few plants and between them animal skulls decorate the walls, Nathan is touched by the amount of attention to detail the hotel has put in to Abaddons room.

“What was that!?” Ben excitedly shouts, he spins to look at his uncle as Esther takes her time looking at everything.

“Thank you hotel.” Nathan says. The kids look at him with wide curious eyes before echoing his statement loudly, wanting nothing more than for whatever spirit inhabiting the walls of the hotel to know how much this ment to them.

They wait for all of fifteen minutes before they’re met by a case worker, “Hi my names Celeste, I’m Abaddons Worker. I’ve got some paperwork for you to fill out before you can go see him, okay?”

Isaac feel’s as Anne squeezes his hand, they’re both superstitious after all. Her name was another sign as far as they were concerned; God had answered their prayers. Isaac nods at the angel of a woman.

“Alright, so Abaddon is going to be under continued supervision for the next year by me. We are inspecting your household to make sure it’s up to living standards and that by his release you are prepared to handle a seven year old boy. We understand if you aren’t prepared yet so you still have some time to get things prepared but we will be looking for the basics. Food, water, hygiene products, access to education, so on. We expect him to have a paediatrician as soon as possible as well as his vaccinations up to date as it doesn’t appear he has any, all of these responsibilities will fall to the two of you. Are you prepared to take on all of these roles and responsibilities? Given the traumas he’s been through there is a chance he may have worse breakdowns than the average child.” She sits stiffly next to Anne, leaning at an angle so as to address both of them.

“I was an early childhood educator in my thirties, I’m ready to try. And even if I’m not prepared already I will learn for him.” Anne says, her voice soft but steady.

“He is my grandson, I will not lose him.” Isaac intones, this all feels like a dream to him as he and his wife sign the paperwork.

Celeste seems reserved in her response, “Alright, I will be at your address in the next four days to inspect the home. You’ll have until then to get him whatever he needs, until then I’m going to leave you my card.” She hands Anne a small card with her contact information on it, then she excuses herself.

Once she is gone there is a doctor in front of them and Isaac wonders how in the world she got there, it clicks that he recognizes her from his congregation; Ophelia Lauzon. Isaac stands up to hug her tight, “Father.” She says.

“Doctor Lauzon.” He says holding her out to take a look at her, she then turns to hug Anne sweetly. Isaac then insists “Tell us everything.”

“Walk with me,” She says, turning to walk next to Isaac as Anne walks next to her Husband. “The initial car accident wasn’t actually that bad, but as you may have seen on the news their car went over a cliff side and down an embankment where a tree branch broke in through the back window and severely injured your grandson.” She leads them to an elevator and takes them to a wing Isaac identifies as the paediatric wing, “at first it was believed to be lung damage and head injury, that he’d spend maybe a month or less here; but this morning Abaddon had many visitors and as a result became extremely agitated. It seemed he had an injury to his liver that had gone unnoticed, he had been internally bleeding and it needed to be repaired. He’s now in an induced coma. Now I don’t want you to be frightened, it’s induced so we intend to take him out of it as soon as possible. This is just so he can rest and heal.” They reach a door with painted animals on it.

“Deep breaths, go meet your grandson.”

Anne squeezes Isaacs arm as they do as the doctor tells them, breathing deep before opening the door before them.

As they walk over to the far too large bed in the centre of the room, Isaac sees this as both a blessing and a cures. It’s cruel, they’re finally meeting him only for the boy to look like the dead. Yet Isaac takes the opportunity to study his features nonetheless.

Anne is next to the bed stood in front of the seats there with here large shoulder bag sat in the chair, she’s pulling out a knitted blanket that she had started working on the moment they’d found out about the boy all those years ago. At the time he’d been supportive simply because he believed it to be a grieving method, sort of like his craving to search the woods. She would continue adding rows to the blanket every year in order to be sure it was big enough for a boy of whatever size she thought he might be.

At first she had been so flustered, she hadn’t known what to put on it; eventually she settled on dinosaurs, “All kids like dinosaurs” she had said

She turns to Isaac and asks “Will you help me with this?” Isaac nods and takes the top half of the blanket while Anne takes the bottom, they then carefully drape it over Abaddons frail body.

While Anne fusses over tucking Abaddon in, Isaac takes a seat next to his head in the bedside chair; he gently brushes his fingers over the child’s cheek and feels the heat beneath it. For a moment Isaac wonders at the fact that his whole hand is the size of his grandsons head, he then moves on to softly petting his hair back with the palm of his hand.

They’re in the forest and Esther is too far ahead to hear him, he must call louder but his vessel is too weak to make a sound. It chokes on air, Esther never looks back until suddenly she’s gone. Disappeared into the fog that has taken over everything.

Abaddon runs, he hears screaming children but not any he knows. He smells a fire in the distance but does not investigate, for there is a greater concern afoot.

This isn’t real

The watermill is looming before him but he is alone, no ghosts or Brother to protect him from a falling building or being torn apart. Not even a hatchet.

When Abaddon tries to step toward the building the ground collapses from below his feet and hes falling falling falling…

He’s falling for so long he wonders if he’s falling into hell, it’s then that he sees that

Yes, yes he is falling into hell.

The punishment for the abomination he’s become is the acid pit that was once his home, his castle. And who better to stand witness than his wife, his children, and his mother-in-law.

When Abaddon tries to speak, tries to curse them he chokes on a tube. His sight is blurry when his eyes open but there is a man standing over him saying something.

“Try to relax, it’ll hurt less as it comes out okay?” Abaddon tries, but something in the room feels irritating. Like there’s an itch to his skin that he cant reach, or a smell of some kind; something too sweet.

When the tube is fully removed Abaddon coughs before attempting to open his eyes again, he hears another man whose voice he thinks he recognizes but can’t recall where from, “There, there child. You’ll be alright.” He says.

When Abaddon looks to where the voice is coming from he thinks he must be hallucinating, that or there were new intoxicants being used to torture him; which he found admirable to be honest. Because this wasn’t possible, the Priest that was this vessels Father couldn’t physically be sitting next to him yet there he was smiling at Abaddon as if all his prayers had been answered.

Abaddon doesn’t take in much else, mind still reeling as the priest turns to the man who’d removed the tube from his throat but he did hear the man ask one question in particular that caught him off guard; “When can we take him home? It’s been over a week already.”

Home?

A week?

Where was Esther? Where were the Freelings? No this couldn’t stand.

Chapter Text

Finding out that they really weren’t going to have Abaddon back was something Katherine expected, explaining that to the kids and to Nathan had been difficult because they’d each thought that Katherine somehow had a right to keep Abaddon. Katherine was lucky she hadn’t been charged, something about someone close to the case seeking leniency from the Judge? She wasn’t sure how they’d managed that nor if she wanted to thank them. Since the interview at the police station things had gotten a little interesting for Katherine, coming home to the state of the Hotel was something else. At first she was ecstatic, then frustrated when Nathan explained how the hotel had cleaned itself. Abaddons case worker stopped by in order to take a look around the place, ghosts making themselves scarce for the safety of the already messed up situation as she made her way toward a bedroom Esther and Ben were leading her and Katherine toward.

They’d done good work, Katherine was impressed and it seemed so was the case worker.

Though not enough to bring Abaddon back to them apparently.

Once the case worker has taken her leave everyone stands awkwardly around the lobby for a moment, “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Nathan says just as an unknown number texts Katherine.

He’s not their Grandkid and the Doctor’s not telling them. I’m willing to help if you’ll let me.

Katherine stares at her phone for a moment before looking up at Nathan, then over towards the kids. “What’s up Kathy?” Nathan asks, “We might not be alone in this.” She replies, holding her phone out for Nathan to read the text to which he does aloud. She then quickly types up a response of her own.

I need all the help I can get, come to the Undervale Hotel tomorrow at 10am if you can?

The response is instantaneous I’ll be there

Katherine hopes this is for the best. The rest of the night seems to go in a blur, they eat leftover spaghetti for dinner and don’t get any guests in the hotel. Esther and Ben both camp out in Abaddons new room as if they need it to smell like them, Nathan sits on the front porch keeping watch for the night. When Katherine had asked why he was staying outside he’d said simply “Incase Abaddon runs back home.” She’d left him to it for the night and gone to bed.

After breakfast the following morning Katherine was surprised to find not only Heather but her mother the nurse standing at her door, none other than Letitia who had treated her concussion. “Uhh, hi?” Katherine was confused, had Esther made plans with Heather she had forgotten to clue her mother in on? 

“Hi,” Letitia says, “We were texting yesterday.” She smiles softly at Katherine as Heather says her hello before running off to find Esther. “Oh! You were texting?” Katherine was surprised, not only had she not realized the nurse was Heathers mother, but it also explained how she’d gotten Katherines phone number without it teetering on HIIPA violations. 

“I apologize if I gave you the creeps, I just really needed to talk to you.” Letitia says, stepping inside the hotel and closing the door behind herself. She walks slowly with Katherine who guides her toward the lounge, “There are just some things about this whole situation that I think you ought to know. I mean, from a legal standpoint I’m not talking about this outside of work just like who I don’t tell my husband anything about my patients, but we both know that’s not true.” The two women take a seat in the lounge on a Victorian style love seat, “but last night I was discussing Abaddon and this whole DNA situation, see; he’s not their grandson.”

Katherine holds her breath, waiting for the nurse to elaborate.

”According to the DNA sequencing he’s more like a great times uncle of some sort. When I mentioned that to my husband, Heather said something about that being obvious. She said it’s because he’s a possessed boy from the 1700’s?” Letitia is holding her knees, looking at Katherine imploringly. 

Katherine searches her eyes for doubt, any sign that answering her honestly may only come back to bite her in the ass; she finds none. “Yeah he’s… yeah. There are ghosts too. My life’s a mess.” She sighs as her head flops back. That is exactly when Nathan makes his appearance, a ghost cat in his arms for comfort; he does not use the door.

Letitia pauses and studies the ghost, Nathan stares for a moment. “…Hello! Didn’t know you’d arrived.” Nathan says with false confidence, she waves with a straight face before turning back to Katherine, “So the thing is that my higher ups are aware Abaddon isn’t their grandson but still chose not to inform them, they didn’t tell the officer in charge of the case. Apparently the Judge knows, but I heard Judge McCullough and Doctor Lauzon talking about how they deserved him. Somehow that doesn’t sit right with me… Heather seems to think that even though he’s as old as the town itself, if not older; he still seems to act younger than her.”

Katherine shudders as she lifts her head to look at Letitia, if what she is saying is correct then this seems to have been some sort of small town conspiracy. Nathan has made his way over to stand before the table in front of the two of them, the cat in his arms struggling to get away; its futile attempts admirable. “Why would so many people in a town work so hard to get a kid they know isn’t that families put into their care? Especially when they all know that family has a missing family member out there still…” Nathan asks aloud, he sits himself down on the floor crossing his legs.

”Well,” Letitia smirks, “We can figure that out. But we’re gonna need help from my genius daughter Heather.”

It takes her a minute on the laptop she pulls out of her backpack but Katherine mentally fist bumps when Heather excitedly says “Here it is!” She’s on a webpage dedicated to the full and in-depth history of Midwich, starting with its original settlers. The only major families it mentions are those that truly affected the shape and culture of the town, the Docherty family being a main one. The Priest had come here during the initial colonization of America, he saw the land as promised but also saw it as being full of many evil spirits needing to be cleansed. According to records the man was known as stern but just, but Katherine knew otherwise.

She had seen the scar.

When the Priest and his wife had arrived they had two little girls with them and a third on the way, after arriving they had a grand total of five living children and three still births. Their names had been as such: Antoinette, Elizabeth, Edith, Mary, and lastly Abraham. 

It is the death of the Priest and Abraham during a botched exorcism that changes the town to it’s core, according to Heathers research Mary swears herself to Christ becoming a Nun, Antoinette is arranged to marry a much older man who seems similar to that of a banker, Elizabeth is arranged to marry a man more similar in status but trained in the art of wound care, while Ediths marriage is arranged with the man that is chosen to replace the Priest. The towns men vote on the holiest of men, which Katherine finds absolutely disgusting.

Maybe that’s why the townsfolk had conspired to have Abaddon put into the Docherty home, the family lineage was clearly there; most higher ups in this town were distantly related. But that also ment they know Abaddon was not that missing child… Did they know who he really was? Was Abaddon in danger?

He heal’s much faster than the humans anticipated, giving Abaddon multiple opportunities to exact his escape attempts. Only to be thwarted by guards at the doors or blasted old folks asking him “are you lost sweety” to which he would hiss before being grabbed by a ‘doctor’ as they would remind him, not a cultist. 

“Unhand me! I wish to leave this place!” He shouts as another guard pulls him towards an elevator and away from sweet freedom, he claws at the hand grasping his wrist tightly desperately attempting to loosen at least one finger but finds he is still incapable. The guard pulls Abaddon into the oddly lit death trap and he watches as the doors shut, once closed Abaddon kicks the man in the shin to which the man lets out a pained grunt.

Once they reach whatever floor they had been keeping him on, the man harshly yanks Abaddon out of the elevator and toward the awful room full of children’s paintings and torture devices. “Let go, you giant bumbling fool!” He shouts, hoping beyond hope that he can get away before he’s returned to his doom. Abaddon doesn’t know what’s to come, he hasn’t been able to communicate with his vessels soul the way he used to and all of the emotions that have been flooding him lately have been too much to handle alone, the physiological responses are overwhelming.

Without stopping the guard drags Abaddon the last few steps to the door and slides it open, pushing him not so gently inside, “Make sure your kid stops causing problems please. He has a serious eloping problem.” He says before sliding the door closed again.

In the room stand three people, a man with what Abaddon knows to be a police uniform; he has salt and pepper hair and a moustache like Nathans. The woman who reads him books is here too, Anne was her name? Her grey hair was pulled back by a hair clip and she had glasses on, a black turtleneck sweater and grey pants along with a long dark coat with a scarf and square heels. Lastly the priest.

He was dressed oddly, almost as if he was attempting to blend in with the times. A simple white shirt with a cable knit sweater overtop and a tartan grey coat over that. He appeared to be wearing cuffed jeans and leather boats of all things, and his hair was cut short; pushed back out of his eyes. Abaddon noticed a scar above his right eyebrow which did not appear battle induced.

Abaddon can’t help the physiological reaction, his body freezes at the sight of the priest. His heart rate picks up and he can hear buzzing in his ears, feeling tingling in his legs and arms; the back of his neck feels hot and he can see spots in his vision. 

“Honey, where were you? We were worried about you!” Anne doesn’t truly sound upset, she can tell Abaddon is upset about something and he hates how visible he is to them.  “We got some stuff that we hoped would be somewhat similar to your old clothes that got all cut up. Do you wanna try some on?” She sounds hopeful.

Abaddon takes a moment to come back to his body… his body? His vessel, before he gives a slight nod. The priest moves to stand next to the police man as if sensing Abaddons discomfort as he and the stout woman make their way over to the bed, she picks up a bag and hands it to him.

”We have a few Amish friends that make their own clothing, I thought that those would be the most comparable in quality to what you were wearing before. I asked if they could make something similar…”

Abaddon doesn’t know what an Amish is but looks inside the bag to see several items, though none exactly like his original clothing it seemed more compatible with the winter season. Long dark pants that felt similar to his own, cotton undergarments that were an exact replica, a cotton dress shirt similar to his original one save for the makers mark pressed into the left breast, and a woollen cardigan; the only piece that seemed any different than his original dress. Abaddon looked over the offerings in the bag and wondered for a moment if he was being tricked, surely this was a trap of some kind.

”Do you think they’ll help you feel a little better?” Anne asks. 

Abaddon is confused, he is not sick. “I am not sick.” He says, she simply smiles at him before saying “okay, why don’t you go put your new clothes on then and see if you like them.” The demon human takes the bag of clothing to the washroom that’s in the patient room and quickly gets changed. He examines his chest before fully dressing, not even a scar from the impalement but the cross stands proud with irritation.

Exiting the washroom after dressing Abaddon is confronted by the priest standing next to a chair by the bed, “Have a seat please.” The boy freezes, his mind dulls and he watches as his socked feet carry him toward the priest without his say-so. The priest kneels down before him, Abaddons mind is reeling into overdrive now; unsure what is to come.

The priest lifts his hand toward Abaddons foot hesitantly before lightly grasping the heel and slipping his shoe on, then the other. 

My shoes

”My shoes!” Abaddon is surprised when the excited squawk comes out of his mouth, when he looks up at the priest it seems he is too simply by the look on his face before it cracks into a blinding smile that only serves to confuse Abaddon more. The moment sours when they start gathering all of the items around the room, readying themselves to leave for a place Abaddon doesn’t consider home. Anne comes over with a dark grey coat that reminds him of Esthers, she instructs him to put his arms through the sleeves and he does. Only because it reminds him of Esther.

When the priest takes his hand he shudders, his instinct is to pull away and run; but the officer walks steadily behind him. Abaddon will escape another way.

The car ride had been disastrous, these people did not know of the beach music which nearly had Abaddon kicking the backs of their seats. One look from the priest from the drivers seat through the rear view mirror stopped him before he started, instead Anne said she was putting on some sort of instrumental. She said it had been recorded from over a garden wall, Abaddon wondered whose garden she had been stalking to hear such melodies. 

He’d been fading within his mind, eyes heavy and head lulled to the side of his car seat listening to the lullabies when his car door had opened. He hadn’t noticed who’d unbuckled the infernal belt that trapped him nor had he noticed as his body protested being picked up, it was only when he awoke in a room he did not recognize that Abaddon truly noticed anything. 

This being human thing was truly an inconvenience…

Abaddons skin itches as if he’s been rolling around in poison ivy, his nose is slightly runny and his eyes blur slightly. He’s laying on a bed with a wooden frame, the white cotton duvet covers him with the knitted dinosaur blanket overtop. In the corner of the room there is a rocking chair with a side table and lamp and a teddy bear sitting peacefully in the seat, there’s a dresser under and crosshatch window across from the bed wear light streams in signalling midday and above there is a chandelier situated in the centre of the room. There’s a chest at the end of the bed, but Abaddon ignores it in favour of grabbing the dinosaur blanket and scurrying under the bed. It’s a tight fit, but the demon prefers it that way; much like the vents or under the couches of the hotel.

Taking a moment to breathe, Abaddon reminds himself of exactly who he is now: no longer is he the demon of the pit but the thwarted of planetary ends, connector of four, Demon and Human, first of his kind, walker of time itself and member of the Freelings family.

Looking around Abaddon spots something slipped between the mattress and the bedframe, a book. Slipping it out is easy enough, it’s a small light grey thing a little bigger than Abaddons hand. But its locked.

”Hmm…” Abaddon grumbles. Reaching up, the child feels around between the boards and the mattress to see if he can find anything only to hear the unmistakable sound of the key hitting the ground about his head. Shimmying to turn his head Abaddon spots the key and reaches out to grab it, using the key to unlock the little book. When the lock comes loose Abaddon swears he hears the voice of a woman, but he can’t make out what she said. He can’t read what’s in the book either, what with not being able to read… 

Esther would know what it says. Maybe if…

Abaddon mulls it over and determines, yes seeing Esther was completely acceptable. She was his best friend after all, they couldn’t deny him the pleasures of life as there did not appear to be any reason to punish Abaddon at the moment. And surely they wouldn’t extend this supposed punishment Katherine was facing against Esther right? 

Slipping the book back into its hiding place, Abaddon made himself comfortable. He intended to make a sort of nest under the bed for safeties sake, but just as he was starting to get comfortable he distantly felt the creaking of stares as someone moved about the house. Silently Abaddon watches the light beneath the door, he sees as shadows stop just before his door and cant help but imagine the priest dressed in his holy garb bursting in with a red hot iron cross ready to brand his chest again. 

Abaddon can feel it as the weird human feelings start to set in again, the tingling, the sweating, the heart rate, and stars in his eyes, a hot blaze shooting down the back of his neck as his chest stiffens.

I can’t breathe…

I can’t breathe!

Why can’t I- This isn’t real.

He feels something warms squeeze his hand gently as he tries to call out, “he-!” He chokes as he hyperventilates, “Fath’r, pray bid? What has’t I done?” A wail Abaddon knows isn’t his, his body vessel is betraying him. 

“Deep breath, you need to breathe. You’re safe just try to breathe. Can you hear me?” It’s a woman’s voice.

Suddenly Abaddon is screeching, he can feel the phantom pain of sizzling flesh on his chest as if the iron is still pressed to it. “Wherefore Fath’r?” He hiccups, clawing at the cardigan that covers his chest. The boy can feel himself being dragged out from under the bed. “Wherefore doth thee maim me so? Mine own chest!” The sounds he makes are not dissimilar to his frustrated screams in Katherines car from before the cult fiasco, this ones fuelled by something more akin to heartbreak and betrayal than frustration.

Suddenly Abaddon is sat in the lap of someone, he concludes it must be Anne but wishes it was Katherine or Nathan Nathan can’t hold me like this; she’s rocking him gently from side to side as wails that aren’t his rock his whole body. The windows just barely tremble in their crosshatching, and Abaddon rues the consecrated grounds they sit on.

Chapter Text

A straw is being pushed toward his mouth and without thought he drinks, it is ice cold water. Greedily he gulps it down as his mind slows and Abaddon comes back to himself. He is sat in an oak chair at a large table of the same material, there are seven other chairs sat around the table and Abaddon wonders why the two of them would need so many. Anne is fussing around in the kitchen beside him to his right, to his left appears to be a sitting room of some kind; looking down Abaddon sees that he is holding some kind of bottle with a straw attached to it’s lid, there’s a sliding piece that sits beside the straw which he remembers Esther once saying is supposed to stop the bottle from spilling. She’d had one that was similar to this but the lid had Brocken during one of their escapades, Katherine had promised to replace it but had probably forgotten.

Taking a moment to look around the environment Abaddon gets down from his seat, taking his water the boy makes his way over toward a cobblestone fireplace with a painted family portrait above. In the portrait stood the priest and his wife ever proud and several years younger, yet in the centre sat a girl not yet a woman sat in the chair Abaddon had just been sitting it. She had a face Abaddon swore he recognized, when he closed his eyes the image of her own soft smiling ones shaun back at him but Abaddon knew these memories were not his own for he had never seen that woman smile. He had only ever seen her cry out for the priest not to harm her only son.

Continuing his examination of his surroundings Abaddon noticed two doors within the room, one that made his skin crawl that was adorned with a cross of the holy man himself and another that appeared to have a drop latch higher up on the door. If he wanted to use that as an escape route he’d need to drag something over in order to open it, Abaddon thought better of doing that right now though. 

Better to wait until the humans slumber, it is required after all.

Behind him Abaddon hears as the woman Anne places something upon the table, looking over he sees as Anne arranges a few items around a plate full of food. “Why don’t you come over and eat, I could show you more pictures if you like?” He says nothing as he quickly scurries over, grunting as he pulls himself into the chair. 

Taking a hesitant moment Abaddon puts his water down on the table, ignoring as Anne moves it away from the edge of the table. Looking at the plater before him the demon studies it, there are many items before him but he is unsure what they are. “What are these?” He asks, pointing at three dried out yet still oily looking sticks of meat.

”Those are pepperette sticks, they’re kinda hard to bite through don’t pull; try to chew instead. They’re spicy too.” Anne smiles.

”And these? What are these?” Abaddon points to some grape-like food that looks more like rotting eyeballs to him than grapes, when he picks one up it feels wet between his fingers and smells of sulphur. “Those are olives. If it’s too strong a flavour you don’t have to eat them.” The demon pops the one he’s holding into his mouth as if challenged and finds himself delightfully surprised at the flavour. It somehow reminds him of the smell of hell.

Abaddon wipes his mouth before pointing to the next two items, “And this?” 

“This ones cheddar cheese,” she says pointing to one, “and this one is mozzarella.” He can barely see a difference. Pointing to the last pile of items on the plate which Abaddon thinks he may know what they are already, he asks “And what of these? What are these?”

”Those are naan, it’s a type of bread. When you’re done, if you’re still hungry you can have some yogurt too. Does that sound like a plan?” Abaddon wonders briefly if mothers inherited magic when they had kids and if all human children were weak to it, but he boiled it down to the church sitting right next door playing tricks with his essence. 

Abaddon gave a noncommittal nod before grabbing one of those pepperette sticks and violently biting into it, ripping a piece off and beginning to chew. The flavour hit him like a tidal wave, hot spices slipping over his tongue and tickling his tastebuds reminding him of hellfire. The boy hadn’t notice the sound of pleasure he’d made before taking another bite, sniffing the pepperette told him it smelled as good as it tasted. He wondered briefly if maybe the eyeball looking olive would pair well with this treat before popping one into his mouth. To Abaddons delight he had been correct.

Although the cheeses look the same to him, Abaddon grabs one at random and takes a bite. To his surprise it pulls away in a stringy chunk, there isn’t much flavour but the texture is devilishly good. The other cheese however comes apart in chunks while the flavour lingers on the back of his tongue, he has fun using all of his ingredients to make himself a little sandwich on the small pieces of bread he was given, the bread is soft and hollow on the inside. Abaddon is a fan.

Anne is suddenly placing a book on the table next to Abaddon, “This book is full of pictures, several generations back. We also have a few family portraits from before the time of cameras but those are hung in the church.” She says as she opens the book to reveal photographs of the young girl from the painting, there are photo’s of her from throughout her life but Abaddon notices something interesting as Anne flips each page, there are reoccurring figures.

”Who’re all these people?” He asks. It looks like they’re at some sort of gathering or celebration, all sat around this very table. One of the men’s arms is encircling the girl’s shoulder.

“These are all very close family friends, they’re actually distantly related to us. This man,” she points at the one holding the young girl, “is Judge Cyril McCullough. He presided over your case. And this woman here,” Anne points to a smiling lady with a drink in her hand sitting next to Anne herself in the photo, “This is Augustine Lauzon, she’s the doctor that operated on you.” She then points to a man Abaddon recognizes.

”The police man” a near growl as Abaddon rips a chunk off the last pepperette stick.

”Yes. The policeman, his name is Daniel Sloan and he’s a very close family friend. Also, you can’t see him because he’s the one taking the picture but Augustines husband is there too. He’s no longer with us, God rest his soul. Passed away last year.” She says, looking reverently at the photo.

Abaddon feels his skin twitch as if to detach from his form and run away from the very words, he shoves a piece of bread in his mouth instead. 

When Anne tells Isaac that she needs teaching supplies the man does not hesitate to get what she orders, he is sent to the local children’s store with a list of items required along with a few notes. On the list it reads:

Crayons

Pencils (make sure they’re child sized)

Books! Many Books!

LOTS of paper, lined and blank

Stickers

Isaac reads the list over and nods to himself before heading into the building, he’s greeted by the teenaged cashier while grabbing a basket then takes a right to head down the first isle he sees. Most of the store is dedicated to infants but there are about two and a half isles dedicated to toddlers and the steep learning curve they take before starting school, the learning curve that Abaddon had missed out on.

He shuddered at the thought of Abaddons name, to think that they would be forced to keep that name. Isaac and Anne had petitioned the court to change Abaddons name on the grounds that naming a child after a demon was abuse of some kind, Cyril hadn’t disagreed but had said changing it at the boys age would cause more harm than good. Isaac supposed they were all just trying to do what was best for him in the end.

Isaac grabs two packs of twenty eight crayons of the shelf, the ones with the built in sharpeners, and puts them in his basket. He grabs a packet of miniature pencils as well, perfect for the hands of a child. Farther down the same isle sits the paper and stickers, the paper was quickly deposited into his basket but the stickers came with a choice; there were superhero stickers and zoo animal stickers, deep sea stickers and plant life stickers, dinosaur stickers and Christmas stickers, stickers with bones and other spooky paraphernalia left over from Halloween, there were stickers with fairies and stickers of stars and hearts.

Taking a moment to think Isaac recalled how Anne told him about Abaddons newfound adoration for the dinosaur blanket, how she told him that the boy would drag it around the house with him, examining every nook and cranny of their home. He recalled how she told him of Abaddons panic attack and how she’d found him self swaddled under the bed.

Dinosaur stickers it is.

Isaac grabs two packs before moving on to the children’s books isle. He doesn’t limit himself here on the number of books he puts in the basket, but rather the content of what’s inside; nothing religious so as not to frighten the boy. One book especially catches his eye, the title reads “Babies first alphabet” below that reading “ABC 123” Isaac scoops that one up and puts it in the basket too.

Paying for the items went quickly and without conversation, he supposed his presence made the teen who hadn’t been to church in over a year somewhat uncomfortable. He didn’t mind though, to each their own. He reminded that age, it’s when he got his eyebrow pierced, also his first and last tattoo. The only difference between them he supposed was that when he was a teenager he never stopped being religious, he just didn’t respect the way his father ran things.

The drive home was swift as it had been sunny, and what little snow had been on the pavement had already melted away. Entering the home to the smell of melted cheese and paprika, Isaac makes his way to the kitchen to kiss his wife on the temple. Anne hands him two plates each with a grilled cheese sandwich, “Could you take Abaddons to him please?” She turns back to the stovetop ready to make a third.

Isaac turns to the dinning table where Abaddon sits with his dinosaur blanket draped over himself, a portion pulled up over his head. Isaac walks toward Abaddon slowly but makes a point to create sound with his shoes, he places the plate in front of the boy before placing his own plate down along with the bag of learning supplies, then sitting himself down to enjoy his meal. Isaac isn’t one to skip a prayer before a meal, but he’s made a point to do just that with Abaddon around.

”Abaddon, your lunch is ready.” Isaac says gently touching his small shoulder, he still twitches slightly but pushes the blanket back nonetheless. Abaddon is about to grab half his sandwich when he notices the bag on the table, “What is that?” He asks.

”Books and things, they’re for you.” Isaac replies.

Abaddon scrunches up his face, picking up half his sandwich but not yet taking a bite, “But I cannot read the words…” he sounds dejected. 

“That’s why one of the books is supposed to help teach you the alphabet, Anne was a teacher once so she’s gonna help you through it. And you need to know how to read to be able to go to school with Esther, right?” Isaac baits.

Abaddon jumps up to stand in his chair, dropping his sandwich on the table while his blanket acted like a cape around his shoulders. Isaac gently picked up the sandwich and put it back on the plate as Abaddon excitedly shouted “I will conquer this Alpha-Bet in battle and be delivered unto the place in which you call school! I will be master of it!”

The child’s confidence was blinding, Isaac wouldn’t have it any other way. Smirking, the priest responded “After you eat your lunch” just as Anne sat down at the table opposite Issac.

That confidence had lasted for approximately an hour and a half before eventually Abaddon was complaining that he had been bested by the “Alpha-Bet”, but both Isaac and Anne could tell he was just becoming overwhelmed. 

Maybe a tutor would help? Someone closer in age who can sit in with him.

Bringing up the idea goes smoothly, Anne doesn’t discredit it and tells him she’ll keep an ear to the ground. That night Isaac takes on his second project, ‘Abaddon-proofing’ the house. Given the fact that the seven year old is known to elope, the two adults had decided it was in their best interest to get deadbolts for both the front and back door, as well as the door leading to his office as it adjoined to the church which inevitably lead outside. There had already been two separate nights with Abaddon attempting to make his way out the locked doors, Isaac understood what was going through his head; that hotel was his safe space. He knew that hotel and the people he’d been living with, but running away in the middle of the night wasn’t an option. Isaac had suffered many a punch in the face and head during those nightly tantrums.

It’s as Isaac finishes putting away his tools that he spots Abaddon at the end of the hall, he’s studying the deadbolt at the top of the front door. Putting his tools down on the coffee table, the priest makes his way silently toward Abaddon from the opposite end of the home, careful so as not to alert the boy to his presence. Abaddon is dressed, blanket absent even though his bedtime was over an hour ago. Just as Isaac reaches Abaddon, the seven year old spins around wide eyed and hissing.

”Abaddon” Isaac chastises, “It’s past your bedtime.” He quickly reaches out to grab the boy who ducks under his armpit. “Come on Abaddon, don’t make this any more difficult than it already has to be.” Isaac sighs.

”NO! I wish to go back to the hotel!” He shouts, and Isaac’s heart aches for the boy as he scurries under the dinning table to hide. Unfortunately for Abaddon though, Isaac ran track in high school so keeping up wasn’t very difficult, the priest easily caught the boys ankle and swiftly yanked him out from under the table. When Abaddon began punching and screaming at him to let go and as the next punch flies Isaac grabs Abaddons wrist only for the seven year old to bite his fingers.

Isaac winces, but the two of them are frozen with the priests fingers between Abaddons teeth. Slowly, as if afraid of what’s to come Abaddon lets go. His body is shaking and he wont meet Isaac’s eyes. He thinks his grandfather is going to harm him but Isaac wouldn’t do that, gentle yet stern Isaac states “We do not bite people.”

”I do…” Abaddon whines. His face is red and blotchy with frustration.

”Did Katherine let you bite people?” Isaac inquires, his grandson is quiet for a time, biting his own lip. 

“No…” he says.

”So?” Isaac asks, hoping to lead Abaddon on. The child is silent, his emotions unreadable as he mulls over the situation in his head, then a whispered “we do not bite people…” to which Isaac releases Abaddons wrist. 

“Abaddon,” Isaac touches his small chin, hoping to get those blue eyes to focus on him for a moment, “I want you to be able to visit the hotel, even have sleepovers. I want you to be able to go to school, I want you to be able to go on field trips. I need you to understand though that none of that will be possible if you don’t meet us halfway.”

Abaddon looks at him, truly looks at him and Isaac can see the gears moving in his head. When the boy scoots forward to stand he thinks maybe not, only for his grandson to quietly take his hand and whisper “it’s bedtime”. 

Esther thinks this is a foolproof plan, and Heather agrees. And to be honest if Heather agrees then it’s gotta be absolutely foolproof guaranteed. According to the school rumour mill one of the people that had taken Abaddon hostage was looking for a tutor for some reason. And sure, Esther was aware they weren’t looking for money but she did have a professional tutor with her and that tutor was the smartest in the whole school. Hence why they had been dropped off at Joels copy shop under the guise of printing posters for her tutoring business. 

See Joels copy shop was about a fifteen minute walk from where Abaddon was being kept, so it wouldn’t be too much for the two of them to make their way over. And that was what brought the girls to the church side property, knocking on the front door.

When the door opened to reveal a short, stout, middle aged woman with mousy brown hair wearing glasses and a large green sweat suit and slippers Esther was semi-disappointed. She didn’t seem cruel or evil. 

“Hi!” Heather says enthusiastically, “We heard you were looking for a tutor?”

”Oh! Yes, please come in.” She says waving them inside. She looks to Esther and asks “Might you be Abaddons friend Esther? He’s upstairs in his room if you’d like to go see him.” She doesn’t reply, swivelling unsteadily on her heel and darting up the stairs. By the time she reaches the top she notices four doors but doesn’t have the time to think about which one to open as the one across from her opens and there stands Abaddon, the sun silhouetting his frame. She barrels into him, knocking him to the floor as she shouts his name, Abaddon shouting hers at the same time. As they lay there she holds out her hand above them, missing half their handshake, “Shemon?” Abaddon puts his fingertips to hers nonetheless, “Demon… How did you get here?”

Esther giggles as she sits up to wink at him, “Always be schemin’.” Abaddons eyes go comically wide as he smiles.

”We’re not here for long though, Heather’s infiltrating the house as we speak, She’s trying to become your tutor but seriously mom thinks you’re in danger. She’s just trying to figure out who all is in on it. Abaddon looks like he’s thinking hard about something, “Wait here.” Before he pulls himself under the bed. When he returns he has a little pink diary and key along with a picture of several people sitting at a table. “I feel this is important.” He then hands it to Esther who pockets the items just as Anne calls upstairs that it’s time to go.

”I will work hard on my end, you stay safe on yours. Let Heather know if anything suspicious happens okay?” Esther hugs her best friend hard, wishing she didn’t have to let go. 

Chapter Text

Ben doesn’t care how exhausted the other boy looks, he’s getting answers and if that means breaking some knuckles then so be it. He hopes he doesn’t have to but it’s one of those situations, besides Brockton deserved it in his opinion. Making his way across the school courtyard toward the slouched teen Ben made a point to straighten his spine and drop his face, he didn’t want to show any emotion that could be taken advantage of. When Brockton noticed Ben’s approach he looked shocked, the bruises on his face were healing but still blue; a split lip joined them. 

“Brockton, I have some questions for you now do us both a favour and bite the bullet will ya’?” Ben international cringes at the dumb statement.

Brockton stares for a moment before he nods, saying “Yeah whatever you need…”

Ben reaches up to scratch the back of his neck before asking his question, “Why? You’re the guy that’s always going on about safety first this and designated driver that so why drive so hammered that you nearly kill to people?” Ben supposes Brockton doesn’t need to know about the who immortality thing.

The seventeen year old’s eye’s go wide as if something is running through his head, and good Ben thinks because you should feel pretty awful about it. But then he focuses back on Ben and it’s like he can’t figure out what’s real and what’s not, his hands haven’t stopped wringing around themselves for over a minute now and Ben thinks this looks a lot like a he’s on the verge of a menty B. That’s when Brockton tell’s him “I don’t remember anything from that night, I remember the drive out with my friends but I don’t actually remember being at the lake at all… I don’t remember leaving and I don’t remember the crash, I don’t remember going home and I don’t remember taking my friends back to theirs either but they somehow got back and they live over an hour out of town. Whenever I call and ask them about that night they act like it never happened, and it’s convincing! I keep telling myself I would never drive drunk, never but especially with people in the car! I don’t understand!” Brockton puts his head in his hand and curls into himself.

Ben watches as Brockton breaks down, it seems like he’s telling the truth as for as Brockton is aware anyway, walking away to find Esther Ben leaves the older boy to stew in his thoughts.

Finding Esther though seems to be another whole challenge in and of itself, as Ben walks from level to level searching for his little sister he finds his heart beginning to race just slightly. She had been on the bus with him that morning just as usual, though she seemed somewhat preoccupied by something in her mind. Ben assumed is was thoughts of Abaddon and whether he was safe but now as he searched the library to no avail he wondered just what she had been planning. That’s when he noticed her and Heather hopping off the city bus across the street from school.

Making a mad dash for the front door that takes less than a minute even with his ankle thing, Ben skids to a halt in front of the two girls, “And where the hell were you?!”

”Oh don’t worry so much,” Esther waves her hand to dismiss Ben’s concern, looking away as she and Heather continue on toward their next class; “Heather and I were infiltrating the Docherty household. You know, the weirdos that have Abaddon.” She says as if it was no big deal.

”Listen” Ben says gritting his teeth in irritation, “Next time you want to do something downtown at least let me know so I can make sure you don’t get kidnapped?”

”Abaddon gave me some stuff that he thinks might be important.” Esther says with a smirk, hyper enunciating the final word of her statement. Ben snaps his mouth shut, staring at his sister, Heather looks between the two before quickly saying her goodbyes and departing. Quietly Ben holds out his hand seeking whatever it was Abaddon had given Esther, surprisingly Esther hands it to Ben without question also saying a quick “see ya later” before heading to class. He supposed she wanted the Coles notes version, and Ben would happily oblige once finished.

The thirteen year olds next class had him sitting in the library doing research for a project he’d already finished so he decided to optimize the time he had and start reading the little pink diary right away.

Dear Diary

It’s Sarah, it’s my 13th birthday today uncle Neil got this for me and told me it was for all my secrets. I’m happy I have a diary even though I don’t have many secrets to tell you, he says maybe one day I will though so I’ll always talk to you. Aunty is coming over for cake with her husband and so is Danny too and uncle Neil! I will talk to you soon diary.

Sarah

Dear Diary

It’s me, Sarah. Sorry it took so long to write again I’m still 13 though! Uncle Neil took me to the movies today. I was supposed to be at school but I didn’t want to go cause there was a big science test that was stressing me out. He told me that he thinks it would be a good idea if he got me a phone so we can text when I’m feeling stressed so he’s gonna get me one with hello kitty on it!! I’m so excited. He also said he’s gonna take me to get new clothes this weekend. I think I have the best uncle in the world!

Sarah

Dear Diary

I turned 14 yesterday and we all got together just like last year, everybody told me how beautiful I looked and how I was growing up so fast! They say that every year though. Uncle Neil gave me a necklace for my birthday! It’s so pretty diary…

Sarah

Dear Diary

Uncle Neil says weird things sometimes and it’s starting to make me feel weird. He says he loves me A LOT which I think is normal for family but it makes my belly do flips, and not in a good way. Today when I tried to tell uncle Neil about how my belly felt when he said he loved me too much he kissed me! On the mouth! When I got embarrassed and said that was a sin he said I was sinning by accepting all his gifts? Was I sinning? I don’t understand. He said I’m not aloud to tell anyone or they’ll throw me away for being greedy and seductive. Am I a bad daughter?

Sarah

Dear Diary

Wow, it’s been years since I’ve touched this thing… I’m seventeen now and leaving tonight. Uncle Neil has convinced me to go with him, he says he’s a profit. I’m supposed to bare his child, I won’t say I’m not afraid nor will I say that it isn’t sad. To bare a child just for that child’s death to be the bringer of the new world is heartbreaking. But I must die as well in the end. He’s meeting me in the church, I’m only taking a backpack worth of things as he said he’s going to supply us with everything we need during our time on his land. When I asked him why this all had to happen he said it had to do with our forefathers, our one connecting ancestor and a destiny we must meet head on. So tonight I’m gonna go through my dads office to the church to meet him, my uncle Cyril McNeil McCullough.

to whoever finds this, thank you 

Sarah

Ben sits stunned as the rest of his classmates continue their work around him, he can hear the clacking of keyboards and kids laughter as they refuse to do their work, the flipping of paper and pens scratching as other students take notes. Ben however, is lost in thought. 

She was only thirteen when it all started… She was my age.

He thinks about his sister and how vulnerable she truly is, she’s a fighter for sure but she’s still so small and Ben can’t help but think about a worst case scenario. Getting himself up is easy enough, but that’s when all the blood rushes to his feet and the thirteen year old is left stumbling out of the library. The washrooms are only a few feat away but it’s a struggle to make it as Ben attempts to hold himself together, by sheer force of will the young teen makes it into the first stall of the empty bathroom where he promptly keel’s over the toilet and throws up his entire lunch. Ben decides spicy ramen is far better going down than coming back up.

Benjamin spends the next thirty minutes throwing up stomach acid then dry heaving into the bowl while trying to muffle his sobs, he was an emotional guy and he wasn’t ashamed of that in the slightest…

But this wasn’t something he could talk about.

I need to call mom…

Taking a moment to collect himself, Ben pulled his phone out of his pocket and pulled up his contacts to search for his mom’s number. Selecting hers he sat back against the painted brick wall of the stall and listened to the dial up tone as the phone began to ring. The stall was covered in illegible handwriting everywhere as well as a badly drawn penis.

”Ben? Are you okay? Is this a bully related issue or are you asking for something.” She sounded only mildly concerned, he supposed he didn’t look sick this morning.

”Mom, I—“ He hiccups, attempts to hold himself together futile as he begins to cry anew, “I’m sorry but I need to come home. I’m really sick right now, Esther is fine but She— she did something really stupid and I— I just ca— can’t catch my breath right now and I threw up a bunch al— already, can I please come home?”

“Okay, okay sweet I’m on my way okay? Go to the office if you can okay? I’ll have the office page Esther to meet you there and pick you both up within the next no forty minutes. Can you do that?” Her concern is palpable now, Ben hums in agreement before hanging up. He looks down at the little book still clutched in his hand, then reaches into his sweater pocket and pulls out the photo that had gone along with it; the girl in the photo looked so young and happy celebrating her birthday, a big smile on her face while the man behind her reminded Ben of a predator hiding in the bush read to pounce, his arm slung over her shoulder.

It’s a familiar name Ben thought and a familiar face. But where from?

“‘A’ is pronounced ‘Ahh’ like?” Anne asks

”Abaddon” the boy squirms in his seat, “What else makes an ‘Ahh’ sound?” Anne asks as Abaddon draws out an imitation of the ‘A’ shown in his Alphabet book. He hums, thinking for a moment, “The screams of the damned…” He whispers.

”Maybe we don’t focus on that though, we need to spell the word with an ‘A’. Any ideas?” Annes eyebrows are pinched.

Abaddon looks around for a moment truly at a loss until “Absolute?” He sounds unsure of himself but as the word comes out he feels as if he is correct. Anne is grinning, she reaches toward the coveted stickers and peels a reflective Tyrannosaurus rex sticker off of the pad, placing it on Abaddons hand. “Your ‘A’s are starting to look really nice Abaddon, how about we move on to ‘B’s? ‘B’ makes the ‘Buh’ sound what words do you know that start with that sound?” They continue these lessons for the next hour, the demon picking up each letter faster than the last.

Eventually he wants to learn his name, “Can you sound it out? I think you’re really smart Abaddon, let’s try sounding it out together.” Anne gives her perceived grandchild one of her winning smiles, his face and hands are now covered in reflective dinosaur stickers to which Abaddon is filled with the utmost accomplishment. She gently points to the first letter, sliding her nail beneath the letters as she guides “Ahh Buh Ahh Duh” she stops “We don’t make two ‘Duh’ sounds when there’s two ‘D’s they just kinda mash together” she then starts her finger back at the beginning and Abaddon begins sounding out his name softly “Ahh Buh Ahh Duh Aw Nnn”.

His writing wasn’t the neatest but Anne seemed proud nonetheless, Abaddon had spelled his own name. Distantly there was a knock at the front door, his teacher stood saying “Keep working on your name, and you’ll get an Oreo.” Abaddon doesn’t now what an Oreo is but he agrees to her bargain anyway, quietly starting on his name again. He’s frustrated with the fact that the line on the ‘D’ and the hump don’t match up properly when he hears the door open, there’s quiet conversation as it closes. He’s working on perfecting his name a third time round when a loud ‘POP’ fills the air and Abaddon finds himself frozen.

Then in a matter of seconds its the unmistakable sound of a body hitting the floor and Abaddon is vaulting out of his chair, he’s running toward the stairs that line the back of the couch in the living room leading to the bedrooms; he needs to hide.

There is someone behind him.

Making it up the stares Abaddon slips into his room long before the assailant is even halfway ascended, he quickly slips beneath his bed and watches the gap beneath the door as the shadow moves past. Abaddon pulls himself out from under the bed without so much as a creek from the floorboards, if ever there was a time for my powers to resurface, Abaddon thought now would be great… 

Quietly stepping toward the door, the boy listened. When he heard nothing he took the chance and slowly cracked open his door, all he could see was the staircase ahead of his room, whoever was in the house could be anywhere beyond his door. Was it worth the chance? What had become of Anne his current caretaker, his teacher? 

Pull yourself together! I maybe be more and more human every day that does not negate the life I have lived as a demon! I am Abaddon the Destroyer, Cobra king and thwarter of the apocalypse, king of plague and locusts, angel of the abyss and member of the Freelings family!

Abaddon pulls the door open, taking a step toward the staircase and is swiftly knocked in the top of the head with something heavy and porcelain that shatters causing him to collapse though not for long. There’s blood on the floor as he pulls himself up as fast as he can and practically throws himself back down the steps, falling down the last few, whoever is following is fast behind as Abaddon stumbles to his knees in the sitting room. 

Suddenly there is a cold hand at the back of his neck pulling his body off the floor, he is bodily brought up to meet a mans eyes only to recognize the face before him. It’s that man from the photo, Cyril; the one who’d had his arm around the girl. Abaddon kicks the mortal in the most sensitive area of his human flesh bag and is unceremoniously dropped to the ground where he scrambles to get back to his feet, three Abaddon thinks I have to press three. Anne had instructed Abaddon on exactly what to do in the case of an emergency, her examples ad been if her bad hip caused her to fall down the stairs or if one of his ‘Grandparents’ had chest pains but Abaddon could tell this counted.

A ‘Bee’ is like a three but against a wall… Grabbing the device off the side table Abaddon doesn’t think anymore, trusting the training they’d worked on together and hoping beyond hope that it would work.

”Nine one one what’s the address of your emergency?” Abaddon wants to jump with joy only for the moment to be cut short by a hand in his hair, suddenly his head is being smashed into the side table once, twice, three times, four times… Again and again and Abaddons vision is blurring. He’s getting nauseous at the sight of everything swinging around when all of it stops just as suddenly as it started and his knees are giving out on him, the boys falling to the floor in a heap blood beginning to pool around his head. Abaddon thinks he can see his precious dinosaur stickers floating there and finds that he is disappointed in the loss, there is a voice in the device shouting “help is on the way!” But he is being picked up and slung over the mans shoulder.

He watches as the world slips by, as the man steps over Annes corpse, her brains coating the walls and family photos in the hallway. He doesn’t understand how no one notices, but no one does as he’s dropped in the trunk of a car he doesn’t recognize and the lids closed above him.

Chapter Text

Katherine hadn’t necessarily wanted to ask Joel for help with Ben as she wanted more so to keep him at arms length with this situation, but her friendship with Letitia was tentative and new, Katherine didn’t want to press things so early and break something that could potentially be really good for both of them. So she had relented, making the quick phone call to Joel to ask if he had the time to drive her to the school in order the pick up the kids, she explained what Ben had said over the phone to which Joel mentioned something about Esther skipping school to go downtown for a period of time? Most of Katherine wanted to reel at that, but before she had an aneurism or a heart attack the mother of two took a deep steadying breath, thanking Joel for his help yet again before hanging up.

“Nathan, Ben and Esther are coming home. I need you to watch the front desk while I’m out, can you focus enough on that?” Katherine asks, catching her brother off guard. He’s on the upstairs landing with the ghost cat clutched in his arms, he’d been changing since this whole situation had began. Dr. Finch, the therapist that haunted the basement had attributed his behaviour to almost an obsession. Nathan would wander the hotel looking everywhere looking, at first it started with a mild sense of distress. He thought he’d lost something and believed that while they tried to sort this whole situation out the ghost cat might help calm his nerves, but his anxious wandering only increased day by day. Katherine believed he was looking for Abaddon, that he was forgetting where Abaddon was and that he had been taken from them. It was doing something truly frightening to Nathan that break Katherines heart, Esther had likened it to how Candle Head behaved.

“Oh! Uhh… Yeah, yeah.” Nathan’s reply is unsure as he takes a few more glances around the halls stretching in either direction before descending the stairs toward Katherine. 

Her heart aches just that little bit more at the sight of her brother, he looks exhausted, although he hasn’t physically changed in anyway he somehow gives the impression of a man who’s untethered, eyes wild; never lingering in one spot for too long. His shoulders are tense and he doesn’t seem capable of standing still, he wont put the cat down and if it weren’t for the fact that the cat was already dead Katherine would be worried for it.

Katherines eyebrows pinch in concern, if it weren’t for the fact that there was nothing she could do to fix this she’d be doing everything and anything to help easy Nathans worry, but a ghosts obsession isn’t like a humans. She needed to help Abaddon to help Nathan.

But, as she heard Joels car slowly pull into the front drive; that’d have to wait for now. Her son needed her now and car or no car she was going to be there for him.

Getting out the front door wasn’t difficult on the crutches as Katherine had become a bit of a pro in her personal opinion, but the icy stairs looked to be a bit more of a challenge, that’s when Joel exited his car and made his way over to the bottom step. “Here, lean your crutches against the railing. I’ll pick you up.” He puts one foot on the middle step, knee bent at a near ninety degree angle with his arms outstretched. 

“Oh no, I couldn’t!” Katherine denies partly out of embarrassment, the rest out of instinct.

”Come on!” Joel elongates the second word, “Let me show you why they call me toner!” He jokes, and Katherine can’t help the flush that spreads across her face as the laughs. This is the most normal conversation she’s had in days possibly even longer. Nodding her head Katherine leans out into Joels outstretched arms, wrapping her own around his neck and catching her gloved hands in the hood of his coat as she does so. He easily lifts her several inches up by the waist, her own coat sliding just slightly as he does to reveal a slit of skin.

Time slows for Katherine, she can feel his fingertips on the back of her waist as he gently places her back on the ground and all Katherine wants is for this moment to last, for a little bit more normalcy. She hugs Joel for a moment, just breathing as deep as she can and he seems to understand holding her just as tightly as she holds him, rubbing gentle circles into her spine. Then the moment is over and Joel is taking a step away to get her crutches.

It doesn’t take long to get to the car with the extra help and soon the two of them are on their way to Midwich Middle School, home of the Banshees. It’s odd, she thinks having a middle school and a high school built into one another. At first she had been worried about potential drug exposure, but eventually realized that wouldn’t be an issue here. That didn’t mean the concept wasn’t odd to her.

”So what exactly happened?” Joel asks, eyes still on the road as they descend toward town.

Katherine heaves a sigh, “Ben called, I think he was having a panic attack. Said something about Esther doing something that upset him but wouldn’t say much more than that. Honestly I haven’t heard him like that since he found out I was leaving his father, and even that wasn’t this bad.” She rubs her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose as they make their way over what Abaddon likes to call ‘the goat-man bridge’.

Joels eyes flick from the road to Katherine before going back to the road again, “Esther came to my store today.”

Katherine is just able to stop herself from shouting, “What do you mean my eleven year old daughter was at your store today? Are you saying she was downtown alone?” She grits her teeth, one eloping demon child is enough Katherine seriously doesn’t want to have to deal with too.

”Well no, she wasn’t alone. She was with another little girl printing flyers, they said they were going to the church to hang some up for her tutoring business?” Joel says, “But I see your point, I’d ment to call you too but the store got so busy right as the two of them left that I completely forgot to… I’m sorry Katherine.” He sounds genuinely upset with himself as they drive the last few minutes toward the school listing to the radio. 

Katherine can’t lie and say she isn’t upset, she is. Because she wasn’t Joel to be reliable, and he probably is or at least he seems like it. More than likely this was a mistake, and it’s not like they’re his kids… But what if one day they were? Would he make a devastating mistake like that again? What would it cost them? Katherine cuts herself off there, it’s unfair to think like that when Joel was only doing his best, just like she was.

Joel lets out a genuine sigh, something seems to shift in his demeanour as he stops at a crosswalk as a family crosses with their infant in a stroller. “Katherine, I can’t help you with what’s going on if you don’t let me in. I need you to tell me what’s going on, really.” He sounds… dejected yet hopeful and Katherine aches all the more for it.

Katherine takes a moment to truly consider a relationship with Joel, with anyone really and realizes that telling them would be inevitable so given the circumstances this seemed as good a time as any. Besides, she thinks Joels a catch and it’s not like Letitia took it hard she barely reacted. This relationships to good to waste on stupid secrets. 

Another heaving sigh, “Ghosts…” she can’t seem to formulate anything past that as Joel pulls into the schools parking lot. 

Joel pauses for a moment before turning the cars engine off with a giggle, “Yes Katherine, there are ghosts in the hotel. Everyone in town knows about it, it’s like a right of passage to stay there when you graduate high school if you’re brave enough. Some people stay long enough to actually catch a ghost while others chicken out, I saw a guy who said his name is stabby Paul. Is that what you’re so high strung about?” He unbuckles his seatbelt turning to fully look at Katherine who is wide eyed with wonder.

Before Katherine even realizes what she’s doing she’s unbuckled her own seatbelt and is leaning forward, face pressed into Joels. It’s not the most romantic kiss, they absolutely knock teeth but the Joel laces his fingers through the back of her hair to gently caress the back of her head and the kiss softens. When they pull away Katherines face is flushed and there are tears in her eyes, she’d been so stressed without realizing it. “There’s more…” She tells him about Abaddon, about his possessing the boy or what little she knows both from what Abaddon told her and from the historical accounts they found in their research. She tells him of the potential conspiracy and the fear she has that Abaddon is at risk, and Joel listens nodding along, absolutely no doubt on his face.

”Thank you” Joel says without a hint of sarcasm, “Now let’s go get your kids and figure out what really happened today.” He strokes Katherines cheek before getting out of the car, walking around to the passenger side to get Katherines door as well as her crutches from the back.

As Katherine is getting out of the car with help from Joel, she distantly hears the sounds of multiple sirens and wonders what could possibly be happening before she begins the hazardous trip toward the school’s entrance. The snow and ice had truly become a problem over the last few days as a cold front had come in from the east, blowing in over the mountains in wet chunks of snowfall that left Katherines bones aching in old injuries for middle school soccer. 

Inside the office of the school, Esther was found attempting to comfort her elder brother who was practically disassociating. She stood in front of Ben as he hugged himself while sitting in a plastic chair, looking unsure of what she should do when she saw her mother. “We are going to talk about what kind of activities you get up to during school hours young lady.” Katherine keeps her voice stern, Esther looks shocked. Like she’s been caught with the box of cookies hidden in her bed again, but she simply nods and grabs her backpack. Ben finally notices his mother and makes to get up, his backpack already on. 

As they head toward the car, Katherine watches as Joel keeps precautionary hands held toward Ben’s back as if ready to catch him if he were to fall. 

Once they’re all in the car, Katherine turns wishing to ask Ben if he feels okay enough for the drive or if he needs a plastic bag to throw up in only for Ben to shove a pink book with a photo sticking out of it at her. It looks like a child’s diary, with a small key sticking out of the lock. “Why don’t we go to my shop to read it rather than staying here?” Joel suggests.

It’s a little farther downtown but Katherine agrees, once they’re arrive however she wishes she’d never read the diary at all. Ben read this? She wants to throw up, Joel exits the car, takes two steps and promptly does just that.

”What the hells in that diary that’s got everyone so worked up? I got it and I’m the only one who’s not even read the thing yet!” Esther complains and Katherine feels bile in the back of her throat, she swallows before responding “Esther this is going to give me nightmares for the rest of my life, Ben’s going to need therapy. I’m glad you didn’t read it…”

Katherine feels her phone begin to vibrate with a phone call as Esther grumbles about being treated like a baby, pulling her phone out she sees the unknown number and thinks hard about whether or not to answer. It couldn’t have been Letitia because she had added Letitias number after the texting session, it obviously wasn’t Joel who had just finished throwing up. Hitting the green phone symbol Katherine brings the device up to her ear, “Hello?”

”Is this Katherine? Freelings?” She doesn’t get the chance to respond to the panicked man on the other end of the line, “This is Isaac Docherty, please it’s an emergency I need you to be honest with me, did Abaddon come back to your hotel?” Katherine swears she feels her heart plummet into her gut.

His head was pounding as if the organ inside it was attempting to escape, blood spilling at al alarmingly fast pace into the trunk of the vehicle as he screeched in rage to be released, kicking at the lid and walls with as much might as he could muster and denting the metal encasing. In response to his demands for release from his inescapable prison only deafening music met his already ringing ears, if it weren’t for the fact that he was actively being abducted Abaddon my actual like the song.

I'm on the highway to hell
On the highway to hell
Highway to hell
I'm on the highway to hell

But right now Abaddon only has one thing on his mind, and it is that this man is a murderer and murderers deserved to be punished. Sure Abaddon was going through some things right now that he didn’t understand entirely, memories that weren’t his, fears and anxieties he’d never experienced before, physiological symptoms to every emotion that left him dizzy. And his body’s vessel’s soul was still concerningly quiet, Abaddon could feel him like an extension of himself but he couldn’t hear him outside of himself. Almost like how his tails or arms used to be…

No stop signs
Speed limit
Nobody's gonna slow me down
Like a wheel
Gonna spin it
Nobody's gonna mess me around
Hey satan

The vehicle jumps and Abaddon attempts not to hit his already bleeding head off the lid of the trunk only for it to ricochet off the floor instead, it makes a ‘splosh’ sound on the carpeting and the boy groans. Taking a moment to truly look around his prison, Abaddon sees there is nothing in the trunk with him however there is some sort of strap dangling at the back invitingly. Shimmying farther into the trunk is somewhat difficult with the reckless driving but Abaddon manages, taking hold of the strap with both hands and hoisting himself up as much as the trunk will allow until he hears a ‘click’ and suddenly he’s falling into the back of the car.

The judge looks surprised, but Abaddon doesn’t waste another second as he launches himself through the cabin of the vehicle toward the murderer, wrapping his thin arm around the mans neck in a headlock before biting his ear as hard as he can. He feels as the flesh and cartilage give way, then begins to pull. The car then jerks to a stop as the monster squeals in agony, one arm grabbing Abaddons hair and attempting to pull him away unintentionally removing the ear entirely in the process.

As the car comes to a complete stop far too quickly and Abaddon losses his grip on Cyrils neck, the man turn with fiery eyes the make something curdle in Abaddons stomach. That’s when his much larger hands wrap violently around Abaddon much smaller throat and squeeze and don’t stop even as Abaddon reaches up to claw at the mans eyes, catching them multiple times, he tightens his hold as Abaddon kicks and wriggles and Abaddon thinks I’ve sat at the bottom of a lake for over a week, this is nothing! But soon his vision is blurring even more that it had been from the blood loss, his chest is burning for oxygen he’s sure he doesn’t need and he can feel his movements becoming sluggish. The feeling of loosing feeling in your… body is not something he appreciates. 

Abaddon can feel his form jumping awkwardly, as it desperately attempting to pull in air on it’s own as his eye’s slip shut. He can feel the blood vessels bursting around his eyes, suddenly his chest is making a horrendous gargling gasping noise as it sucks in air of its own accord. Abaddons eyes won’t open, his limbs wont move as he feels the Judge release his neck, he hears something being pulled out of a plastic bag before it feels as if he’s being bound with rope and something much like packing tape is stuck over his mouth. His ankles are bound together and the boys body is unceremoniously rolled back into the trunk the exact way he came into the cabin of the car, back into darkness as Cyril closes the exit.

When Abaddon next opens his eyes he is no longer in the vehicle but rather alone in a dilapidated church, collapsing beams with a massive hole in the roof, rotting pews and a cross that sits destroyed on the floor at the head. There isn’t a single unbroken window, yet there are three pristine alters of with Abaddon is now chained to one with cold iron that burns his flesh just barely. His arms are spread out in sacrifice, as if he is some sort of innocent lamb while the other two alters lay empty diagonal to him.

Beyond the alters there isn’t much, the pews are covered in a layer of ice and snow that seems to have been cleared away from the alters themselves, there are old rotting paintings that Abaddon thinks he might recognize from some biblical references but one specific painting catches his eye. He studies it almost reverently, humans today would have referred to him as a ‘pilgrim’ or more accurately a colonizer. It was his vessels Father, the Priest. The true Priest.

This ment one ver specific thing to Abaddon, one very important thing; he was on hotel property. Taking a deep breath, Abaddon attempted to scream only for it to instantly turn into the worst coughing fit he’d ever had still muffled by the tape. His throat ached in ways he’d never felt in his existence, he was so close to home though so he had to keep trying.

Just as Abaddon was about to attempt to screech again a quiet sniffle caught him off guard, pulling his attention to the pews at his right. There underneath one of the less rotted pews was a small boy no more than four years old, a boy that looked so much like the one he’d possessed it truly did put much of his situation into context. 

The boys eyes were puffy with tears, but he seemed to understand more about Abaddons situation than any child his age should as he quickly stood and ran through the wall heading in a direction that Abaddon could only hope was the hotel. 

The Sound of footsteps crunching in frozen snow breaks Abaddons focus, pulling his attention toward the semi-intact doors to the church where the Judge is making his way inside with two black garbage bags in one hand and a box propped on his hip, he forces the door closed with his foot behind him. 

“Abaddon the Destroyer, Angel of the Abyss, King of locusts and plague.” The man prattles as he places the bags on the floor in the centre of the room, all three alters pointed toward himself. He brings the box toward the alter on Abaddons right and begins pulling out bones, human bones. A child’s human bones Abaddon deduces from the size, surely the child who had just been here.

”You’re changing Destroyer, the prophecy was ment to be fulfilled months ago yet hell on earth has yet to come. Do you deny your destiny, your glory?” The man arranges the bones in a celestial sigil which confuses Abaddon more, does he not know what he’s doing? Then he registers what the man said and a shocked chocking sound comes from his chest, he ignores the burning in his wrist as his shifting irritates the cold iron.

The man walks over to the last remaining alter, “Even your voice shows weakness, why have you taken on such humanity? It’s disgusting.” He then begins to remove more bones from the box that leave Abaddon wanting to vomit, its the Priest, the true Priest, the vessels father. The chest bone is missing and most of the ribs are mangled which only stands to confirm it for the demon and Abaddon finds himself panting into the tape over his mouth, a whine attempting to make it’s way out. That’s when he hears it, truly hears himself, the high pitched soprano of a little boy. The very same boy he’d possess all those eons ago.

”There see!” The judge sounds like he just stepped in entrails, “Absolutely disgusting.” He says as he arranges the priests bones into their own celestial sigil.He then walks back toward the backs in the centre of the circle, opening the first to pull out what Abaddon could smell to be animal hearts along with an ornate knife. He placed the hearts down to de-sheath the knife then picked up the smaller of the two, walking over to the child’s skeleton where he proceeds to stab the heart. 

“Here lies the Sacrificial Lamb, may the blood of a lambs heart awaken the seal of Gods name so that he may Judge us of our sins!” Cyril shouts, spraying the blood over the bones. Abaddon feels the energy shift in the air as his skin begins to burn, distantly he swears he can hear someone calling his name.

Cyril moves to the true Priests skeleton after picking up a larger animal heart, “Here lies the Shepherd of our flock, may the blood of the father sheep’s heart awaken the seal of Gods name so that he my wash away those that do not seek forgiveness!” Cyril stabs the heart, blood spraying the skeleton of a man Abaddon can’t help but feel conflicted about. The sigils are glowing and the murderous judge looks incensed, collecting the third animal heart to stand above Abaddon himself.

”Oh Lord, here lies your angel Apollyon, the destroyer Abaddon; bound to this vessel for all of eternity! Please my Lord forgive me for I ask that his sins be whipped clean, for he has taken it upon himself to save us! Oh Lord, He gives himself a mortal form only so that you, Father may take it away! Much like your favoured Son Jesus Christ, please accept His offering, may the blood of the goat symbolize the death of His demonic self!” The man becomes more crazed as he shouts into the open sky, snow slipping throw the collapse roof.

Abaddon notices then that he’s shivering, from the cold or not he’s not quite sure; as the man stabs the goats heart spraying him with freezing blood. Everywhere the animals blood touches burns his flesh, a horrible feeling that only intensifies with time. Abaddon can hear himself making awful noises of pain while his body thrashes against the chains that no longer seem to burn his wrists or ankles, distantly he hears a voice he recognizes shout his name as more voices echo distantly, then agony blooms in his chest as the ornamental knife is plunged beneath his breast bone.

Chapter Text

It’s cold and Isaac can tell from the look outside that there’s a chance of snow soon, he honestly just want’s to go home to see his wife and grandson to make them something warm to eat for dinner when he’s stopped before the exit by a nurse he doesn’t recognize.

”Excuse me, Father Isaac?” She asks, “There’s a final prayer that’s just been requested up in the critical burn unit, you’re needed on the twelfth floor please.” Isaac sigs through his nose, before giving a solemn nod and heading back toward the elevator and requesting the lift. He’s alone on the ride up, each ‘ding’ feeling like a countdown to something that mattered more than this, Isaac allowed his mind to wander for a moment to Abaddon; he seemed to be adjusting well for a child who had been through so much. Sure there were tantrums and sometimes he would say things that needed to be passed on to the case worker, things about bones and torturing souls but therapy would help. Isaac knew he was getting through to Abaddon, the conversation in the dinning room under the table had led to the boy crawling out on his own rather than needing to be dragged out, Isaac was taking that as a good sign.

Reaching the twelfth floor Isaac stepped off the elevator and onto the floor of the critical burn unit, intending to head toward the intensive care sector. Once there Isaac greeted the nurses at the nurses station, informing them of the reason for his presence. He was asked to have a seat only to wait for twenty minutes as the nurse looked through files attempting to find the supposed last minute request.

”Uhh, Father Isaac?” He stands making his way back to the nurses station. “There’s no request for a final prayer here, I’m sorry but there must have been a mistake. I apologize.” Isaac offers a soft smile, waving his hand dismissively, “It’s no worry, it’s always a blessing when I’m not needed in such a way. Have a blessed evening.” He say’s before taking his leave, turning back to the elevator to make his way back down to the ground floor and out to his car. The clouds overhead look heavy with snow but have yet to part.

Isaac wonders what Anne and Abaddon are up to.

Just as Isaac makes it to his parked car his phone begins to vibrate, and part of him hopes they didn’t just find the request for final prayer services, but to his surprise its not the hospital calling when he looks to his phones caller ID but rather his old high school friend Daniel Sloan. 

Answering as he opened his car door and slipped into the drivers seat, Isaac asked “Danial, how are you? Abaddons adjusting well just so you know. He’s a good kid.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line for a moment save for breathing, “Daniel?”

“Isaac there’s been an incident at your home.”

Isaac’s body runs ice cold. He tries to speak, to ask if they’re okay but no words come out not at first. Then all at once “Is Anne Okay? What about Abaddon? Is Abaddon okay? What happened? Daniel what happened? Tell me what happened to my family?!” He can hear his voice raising unintentionally.

Daniel tries to interrupt him a few times only to really be able to answer Isaac once the priest is finished bombarding him with questions, “I can’t give you much in the way of details because of the nature of the case,” Isaac’s stomach coils, “But… Anne is gone Isaac, I’m so sorry for your loss. And at this time Abaddon is missing. Where are you right now?”

Isaac thinks back to his daughter and how they’d followed protocol then, how they’d done everything they were told and still lost their baby girl. How they’d done everything almost never got to meet Abaddon at all, and Isaac replied with sheer determination lacing his voice “I’m going to find my grandson.” And hung up the phone before dealing another number.

The line rings once, twice before it picks up. “Hello?” She answers.

”Is this Katherine? Freelings?” He asks, “This is Isaac Docherty, please this is an emergency I need you to be honest with me, did Abaddon come back to your hotel?” Isaac thinks he can hear Katherine swear away from the phone as an engine starts in the background. “I’m not at the hotel right now but why don’t we meet over there and look together, if he’s there we’ll find him.” Isaac emphatically agrees before hanging up the phone and starting his engine as he buckles his seatbelt.

The drive out of town and up the private road takes half as long as it should, turning a drive that’s almost an hour and twenty minutes into that of thirty five. Isaac sees a car already sitting in the drive of the hotel as he pulls up, multiple people getting out; Katherine and her children along with the owner of the local copy shop. Parking his car, the priest swiftly popped his seatbelt off and turned off the engine before getting out of the car. Quickly heading over to the group and ignoring each time he slipped on a patch of ice, panic was effecting Isaac’s ability to focus as he rushed toward the group attempting to explain the call he’d gotten from officer Sloan.

Suddenly Ben was cutting him off, “Hey guys?” He said, pointing off into the woods about a hundred feet. There, stumbling away from the hotel was a brunette man wearing a blue sweater and brown slacks. “What’s uncle Nathan doing?” Ben asked.

Nathan… Isaac thought Wasn’t Nathan Freelings the man who took Abaddon in? But I thought—

“Isn’t Nathan Freelings Dead?” Isaac asks, and he feels a little silly for a moment because that was supposed to be an inside thought. Then the man from the copy store laughs, “Oh right! I remember that being in the news! I didn’t know he would become a ghost too though… How weird is that, is that weird Kathy?” Isaac thinks back to high school, how he’d stayed here too and seen a priest in the woods, how he’d gotten a tattoo in his honour.

Katherine looks uncomfortably from Isaac to Joel, “Yeah… we can maybe talk about this later? He’s not been right lately, but part of me feels like he might actually know where Abaddon is hiding.”

Isaac considers this, he doesn’t have time to question why but rather trust her “Then we follow your ghost brother.” 

Esther shouts something about getting a book just in case while Ben joins her, Joel leaning down on one knee in front of Katherine as the two run past. “Piggyback!” Katherine agrees without complaint as the three of them stumble through the thicket, looking back Isaac can see Ben following Joels lead with Esther on his own back only a few moments after they’d entered the brush less than forty feet behind them.

It feels like his chest is tugging, pulling where the crack refuses to mend and no matter what he tries or where he looks nothing helps to calm Nathans anxious wandering. He’s pacing the lobby as he strokes the ghost cat in his arms who desperately tries to escape yet again as thoughts of where where where must find must must its missing missing he's gone they took they took him must find he's gone where is it where where where where— eventually the tugging takes him out to the side of the house looking into expanding forest. 

Nathan distantly remembered a time when he was constantly fighting off the neighbouring land owners that wanted to buy more of the hotels heritage land, something about there being important landmarks or something. Must go go must he's there go go he's there go to him he's there my boy they have him they do that’s mine that’s MINE they have mine— the obsessive thoughts overwhelm Nathan and he can feel that physical tug on his cracked soul pulling him into the woods, his grip on the ghost cat slips and it jumps away without so much as a second glance as Nathan stumbles forward. 

The farther into the woods he gets the louder the obsessive thoughts become follow follow he is this way they took him I feel it I feel it follow suddenly Nathan is running on unsteady feet and awareness hits him like a freight train as he makes out the shape of a dilapidated collapsing building that could potentially have been a church at one point. ABADDON ABADDON ABADDON MY SON MY BOY MY WARD MY ABADDON THEY TOOK HIM HES HERE

Nathan isn’t very far from the building when he hears chanting from inside, ”Oh Lord, here lies your angel Apollyon, the destroyer Abaddon; bound to this vessel for all of eternity! Please my Lord forgive me for I ask that his sins be whipped clean, for he has taken it upon himself to save us! Oh Lord, He gives himself a mortal form only so that you, Father may take it away! Much like your favoured Son Jesus Christ, please accept His offering, may the blood of the goat symbolize the death of His demonic self!” 

Snow begins to fall in heavy blankets as Nathan phases through the doors. Yet as he does so he watches as a man in a suit stabs Abaddon in the chest and Nathan screams, it sounds almost animalistic to himself. Then the man raises the knife into the air above his head and plunges it into Abaddons ribs, then again. Nathans soul feels like it’s shattering, like it’s burning up inside his chest except that its all of him and suddenly he’s floating and that mans body is flying across the room; crashing into the rotting cross that lays broken on the floor.

Nathan looks over to Abaddon, screaming his name. He’s choking on blood as it bubbles out of his nose and slips from beneath duct tape that’s been placed on his mouth; there’s a bright circle of white light encircling the three alters that point toward each other in the centre of the room, two of which carry glowing skeletal sigils. Beyond the alters is the destroyed cross with the man pulling himself to his feet, a grotesque smile stretching upon his face. For the first time in his life Nathan wants to kill someone.

Katherine had been shouting Nathans name the whole time they’d been following, Joel doing the best he could to stay steady on the uneven icy and snow covered forest floor as they made their way forward, but Nathan was unresponsive; completely transfixed on whatever had his attention. Eventually they reached a nearly collapsed building as it began to snow heavily and Nathan phased inside leaving them outside. There was shouting and then screaming and Katherines anxiety was even higher than it had been during the car wreck, Joel made to put her down as he quickly motioned for the middle-aged man to assist him. Together they shoulder checked the partially broken door into the building and Katherine stepped inside revealing a scene from her worst nightmares, she didn’t think when her legs carried her toward Abaddon, the cast protecting her from new damage but pain blooming in her broken leg nonetheless.

Theres the ‘POP’ of a gun as Katherine nearly reaches Abaddon, looking back toward the door she sees Joel; gun raised and pointed across the room at the Judge who’d tried to kill their boy. Theres monster was now on his knees with a bullet wound to his elbow screaming in agony as a gun of his own skittered across the room toward the pews, disappearing beneath one. Katherine turned back with a wince and kept running until she reached Abaddon, the circle of light didn’t seem to affect her as she ran to him; pulling the tape off his mouth.

Katherine didn’t know what else to do in the moment as Abaddons body convulsed and choked, his eyes rolling back as sigils she didn’t know anything about appeared all over his skin. It was a horrible contrast to the dinosaur stickers that clung to his face and hands, “Abaddon, can you hear me?” She places her hands on either side of his head and turns it to the side, hoping to at least clear his airway a bit. 

“Cyril why?!” Isaac shouts and the Judge stands back up, “Why do all this? I don’t understand! We’re friends! We’re family!?” 

“He has denied his destiny for too long! He must bring about hell on earth! He must open the gate to the hellgaurd to bring about the end of all, it is his sworn duty! He cannot do that in his current state! This is a worthy sacrifice I am willing to make for all of humanity!” Cyril sounds crazed.

Katherine notices Esther and Ben making their way through the pews toward the alters as she attempts to keep Abaddon conscious and tries to indicate for them to stay back with Joel at the door, she is promptly ignored but doesn’t have the energy to be upset. But then Esther looks like she’s in shock and Katherine can’t help but feel like she’s failed all of these children. Ben read a child’s diary about being groomed and potentially molested, Esther is watching her cousin bleed to death on a table, and Abaddon… well what hadn’t she failed with Abaddon? The car wreck, the custody battle, his being taken and now this? “We’re right here Abaddon, we’re all right— right here.” Katherines voice sticks, trying not to cry.

Suddenly Esther is ripping open the book she’d brought with her saying, “It’s a cleansing ritual, some kind of purification!” She’s flipping madly through the pages as Katherine looks back over to Joel who’s still pointing his gun at the Judge, Nathan is still floating in the air with glowing blue eye sockets while Isaac attempts to reason with the man across from the standing in front of a broken cross on the floor. He’s on one side of the alters while the rest of their group is now on the other side, having walked their way toward their family in an attempt to keep Katherine and the kids safe.

Esther looks terrified and Katherine doesn’t want to ask but also needs to know what’s happening, “Esther? Hunny?” She looks like she’s on the verge of tears, “There’s rejuvenation spells for minor exhaustion, salves for demonic burns and irritants, but there’s nothing here about what to do to stop an essence from being purified…”

Katherines fear must have shaun through because Esther can’t hold herself together as she presses herself into her mother’s shoulder to hide her tears, begging her mother to help Abaddon in any way she could. Looking back to Abaddon Katherine assessed the situation; he was still loosing a lot of blood, stab wounds to the chest causing him to ooze blood from his mouth and nose, bubbles forming in indication of a breathing pattern. He had two head wounds, a small gash on the top of his head along with a much larger gash that stretched across his forehead and then down his nose in an almost cross-like formation only bleeding lazily. The convulsions that had been taking over his body not long before seemed to have slowed but Abaddons eyes remained transfixed on a distant point, unseeing.

In that moment as Katherine struggled to figure out how to fix this she is met with the image of her son leaning down in front of her, touching his forehead to Abaddons own. As his forehead meets the smaller boys own Ben’s eyes begin to glow a brilliant gold that Katherine still can’t get used to, around her she hears the argument continue.

”How many people? How many lives have you destroyed in the name of this absurd goal of yours Cyril!?” Isaac begins to step around the circle, slowly approaching his target. “What about the cult that took my daughter’s life? Was that your doing too?!”

The crazed Judge laughs, “Well I will admit I did need a bit of assistance, I cant take all the credit.” There’s suddenly a whistle from the other side of the room that catches nearly everyone’s attention save for Ben and Esther, there are two ghosts standing backed by glassless windows that surely used to be beautiful, Katherine wonders if they had stained glass in the seventeen hundreds… One of the ghosts is a small child who looks so similar to Abaddon she’s almost positive it’s the Docherty’s missing grandson, and her heart breaks for them. The other is a man who also looks oddly like Abaddon, long dark hair with uncut sideburns; a tall brimmed hat with a buckle at the front. He wore a black frock with a cross necklace hanging from his neck as well as black britches and black boots that reached his knees. He also held the child ghost to his chest as the boy sniffled.

Katherine shuddered at the sight of him not because he seemed evil or anything but because he had a massive hole in his chest.

Suddenly Ben was pulling away with a gasp, his eyes snapping back to their normal state as he shook his head. “He’s still with us, but just barely.” Esther then reaches out to hold Abaddons hand gently, moving closer to the table as she says “Abaddon, I don’t really know what’s happening for you right now but I know you’re strong. I know you can get through whatever’s happening because my book says you’re supposed to be gone already so if you’re not gone that means you’re fighting, so keep fighting. Please keep fighting. I need you to keep fighting, you’re family and LILO and Stitch say no one gets left behind. We love you so you have to come home, okay?”

Katherine is still looking at the ghosts as her daughter begs Abaddon not to die, but the ghost Priest is looking directly at Abaddon. 

The Judge is laughing even louder at the entry of the ghosts, seeing some kind of joke that Katherine doesn’t get as Joel and Isaac make to stand by Ben whose taken a step back; dizzy from the use of his ability. The ghost with the intimidatingly piercing blue eyes heaves a sigh before turning his gaze to Cyril, “I findeth thee to beest unbearable. Wherefore thee not stand ho talking?” His voice cracks through the room like thunder, silencing everything except for Abaddons laboured gargling breaths.

It seems though, Katherine realizes in that moment; that Nathan had been stewing in rage. Just as the silence feels like it’s about to snap her brother is suddenly launching a broken iron floor candelabra that seems to be missing its base directly toward the Judges body, hitting him in the head and taking a third of it across the room. His body dropped, and Nathan slowly cooled into his regular self, dropping to his own feet.

As Nathan approached silently, his hands shaking violently Katherine continued to watch the ghosts across from them as the priest too slowly walked toward the circle. Katherine watches as the man studies Abaddon for a long moment, then as if seeing something no one else can see his eyes soften before he says “Mine own son, his soul hast becometh one with Abaddons essence.” The man looks from Abaddon up to Katherine, then to Nathan. “Protecteth that gent f’r that gent is both knave and angel. That gent shall attracteth many who is’t wisheth to causeth that gent most wondrous harmeth.”

Isaac and the priest before them share a look that Katherine understands, Isaac knows. Before they can say anything else though the little boy has burst into a firework of colour in the priests arms, business finished… whatever it was. The priest takes one more look at Abaddon before turning to the glassless windowed wall and walking through it into the snowstorm beyond.

Abaddon can see everything as it’s happening around him but it looks slow, almost like it’s missing bits and pieces in between… He can hear everything too but it’s almost like being at the end of a tunnel. There’s snow falling from the sky above him as he chokes and something is coming out of his nose, people are screaming and fighting and there’s a ‘POP’ and he remembers Anne is dead but suddenly he can see Katherine above him, the matriarch is hear so things will be okay. 

There are voices overlapping, Katherines “Abaddon, can you hear me?” And a Man he thinks he recognizes calling him into a haze of fog, Abaddon thinks the voice is from before all of this; before hell, before the fall even. 

Abaddon finds himself walking in the woods, it’s summer its winter and there’s snow falling on his blood soaked face there’s a pit around here somewhere that he dug himself which he’d like to find. 

“Tell me about life” the voice asks.

”Life…” Abaddon starts, “Life is an adventure, as long as it’s with them. No matter the situation that has occurred the freelings always find a way to make it… enjoyable.” Abaddon keeps walking he's seizing on the altar toward where he believed the pit to be, finding the area to be less familiar as he walked.

”And what of your Fall?” The voice does not sound judgmental.

”I… Do not regret my Fall from grace, if I had never become a Demon I never would have possessed this boy—“ the voice interjects here to say “Abraham”, “Yes Abraham,” Abaddon continues, “and never would have… become like this, or met Nathan or the Freelings.”

The voice seems pensive as it asks “What of your destiny?”

”If it can be changed is it truly destiny?” Esther is begging for him to fight, to come back. That he’s family. 

The voice seems to smile as it replies, “Abaddon, you must understand why you are here. You have been given a chance; cleansed of your cardinal sin in which you Fell from Grace you now have the opportunity to reenter the gates of Heaven, but… you are not simply Abaddon, Angel of the Abyss anymore. You are the first Angel to carry a soul, gifted to you willingly by a human. Do you understand the power that lays within something like that? The danger that goes along with it?” 

Abaddon stops in his tracks, truly taking the time to consider what’s been said.

”You have a choice to make my child, Glory or Family.”

it doesn’t take Abaddon long to make up his mind; his head is leaning to the side as he lays on the alter, no longer is he walking through the woods in the summer but rather dying in a decrepit old church in the winter as snow chills his frozen skin. His choice is simple but voicing it comes with great difficulty, and as he speaks his wish Abaddons body is rocked with miraculous energy that is not his own. A force that heals wounds completely within moments.

Abaddon meet’s Katherines eye’s as she leans over him and says “I wish to go back to the hotel.”