Notes: I love that Facilier is involved with Voodoo but I don't know enough to really feel like I could consider myself any authority on the subject, the world that we see here is inhabited with a mish-mash of Greek afterworld mythology, magic as we see in the movie and some of my own expansions. I wouldn't want to misrepresent a valid and historical religion and form of spirituality.


Persephone

IV


With a stamp of his cane, Lottie was underground. She knew that he never asked questions except for rhetorical effect, but her stomach still lurched, even though they couldn't have actually gone anywhere. She peered up from the end of a great mineshaft, thousands of metres deep and perfectly round. As far up as she could make out the white waterfall poured in a manic spiral. As if they were at the bottom of a plughole watching the suds spin away.

Except if they were at the bottom of a drain they'd be getting wet. The walls were peppered with holes, into which streams of the white substance passed, none reaching where they stood. There were thousands of them, some with only flashes darting through and others with a constant stream. It was the strangest and most amazing thing Lottie had ever seen.

The other thing was the noise. The reeling, screaming noise of a million voices all howling with every fibre of their essence. It was deafening. The most bone-chilling sound Lottie had ever heard.

"What is this?" she asked, and it wasn't strange that she could hear herself above the racket. It didn't seem as real as her voice. She figured that he was probably just showing her, rather than really bringing her there.

"The end of the river," he answered, voice a soothing purr over the anguished moan. "This is where souls are passed on."

"Where to?" she queried. They were like rabbits running into warrens.

"Anywhere," he answered solemnly. "Whether they have beliefs or not, good or bad, all go somewhere in the end."

"How?" she questioned. "If a bad person thinks they ought go to heaven then-"

"They are mindless," he interjected. "They're sent." He waited on her curiosity like a table service. She wanted to ask, but hated playing grandma's footsteps with him. Saying the words he wanted her to say, because they were the only ones there to grasp.

"By you?" she begrudged herself to ask.

"By me," he answered, looking up to the very centre where the waterfall split into rain, as if wrenched apart by a huge rock.

"You're doing all this?" He nodded, seeming weary. "All the time?" She watched where he watched for a moment, saw the prism scattering of a million people going to their own afterlives or wherever it was they went. "Is it hard?"

"Exhausting," he answered, which was more forthcoming than she'd expected. "Most couldn't withstand the pressure. They'd break as soon as the power touched them." He appeared talkative for once, and Lottie wasn't one to stop him giving her more information about just who and what he was. "Others break in time."

"What do you mean, others?" she queried.

"Those who served before me," he explained. "Some last a short while, others for thousands of years. Until they can bear the load no more, and break apart like driftwood." She imagined him splintered across a shore, short sharp splinters of what a man once was. It was satisfying yet tragic, for anyone to be reduced to so little.

"When one person wears out, someone else has to take over?" she suggested, and he gave a silent gesture of approval. "Does it... hurt?" she inquired, thinking of the noise.

"No more than being torn by the soul from one world to the other," he answered. The screaming continued relentlessly; it seemed like it hurt them too.

"Don't they want to go?" she asked of the wails and anguish while souls disappeared like butter on hot bread.

"Would you?" he turned back on her. "Who is ready to die?" He seemed so calm. She couldn't really believe that it was anything to do with him, but there was a kind of ragged tension in his voice as well.

"You weren't," she found herself saying, words on expedition from her mouth uncharted.

"I'm not dead," he remarked, and she bit on comment about this being life for anyone. "A poor price for this domain," he alluded, and she couldn't help but agree. "Yet someone has to do it."

"And you lost the draw," she phrased. His laugh wasn't scorn or contempt this time, but riddled with warmth, like he cherished the moment in which she gave him humour. For a second more and less than pitch black.

"Not all titles are desirable," he returned, light dying until he was hard and cold once more. "Princess." Ugly reminder of her own snare. Poor rabbit Lottie with her foot in the wire.

"Don't call me that," she said with a tone like the edge of a hatchet.

"You and I are not so dissimilar," he indicated. "Neither of us wanted to come here, or the roles we were given."

"We are not the same," she shot. "I didn't get into debt with bad spirits or try to enchant or murder anybody."

"What makes you so sure?" he said with a more foreboding sneer. "You went to a fortune teller, gave her money for her service. That's black magic on your hands too."

"It's not the same," she fought.

"Isn't it?" he spat like bullets off his tongue. "The spirits think they've done you good service bringing you here. To them you owe the debt."

"What?" she fumbled. "That's-"

"Not every girl gets the chance to become Lady of the Underworld," he explained. "They see it as power and opportunity. And all you had to do was ask for it."

"But I don't want it," she retorted.

"Too bad." He reeked arrogance and hauteur. It was all he could do to feel better than her, the one audience to his imprisonment. "You should be more careful next time you go asking for wishes in the wrong places," he advised.

"So the spirits idea of a fair deal is marrying you?" That was like winning a lame horse.

"That's your part of the bargain," he replied. "There are those who'd take a life for what power is offered to you."

"Then find one of them and they can do it," she declared.

"I don't wantone of them!" he snapped suddenly, and that caught her. Did it mean he wanted her? Or did he just want to torment her?

"What do you want?" she felt bold enough to ask.

"Don't ask me that," he said bitterly.

"Why not?" she put to him. "Because I couldn't possibly help?" He flicked eyes sideways at her, like that was maybe exactly it – or exactly the opposite. "What if I could?" she put to him. "If there was something... anything I could do for you."

"Why would you want to help me?" he pointed out, and with a spin of his cane their illusion was gone. They stood in an empty chamber once more, no waterfall or screams or magic at the end of the tunnel.

"If you let me go," she reminded him.

"I thought you didn't want any more deals," he pointed out acutely.

"Well I don't much like the sound of staying down here and dying either," she retorted. He'd made it more than clear what would happen if she stayed. Perhaps this was the way he was planning to run her into a deal, she thought, but what choice did she have?

"Bargains require sacrifice," he stated. "You should know that much at least."

"Yes, well," she fumbled. "If it was only a little one."

"You have a tall order," he explained. "It ain't no easy thing, what you're asking."

"You're the Prince of the Underworld," she asserted. "With all that power, surely you could send one sweet little girl back up to the surface again." Her flattery skills were still in place, that much was obvious. Whoever he was, the Shadow Man had once been a real man, and men could be sweetened.

"Well," he purred, and Lottie was both intimidated and desperate. "There might be a way... but you won't like it." He was enjoying it too much. He wanted to scare her, to make her so unsure she wouldn't take it. He was baiting her.

"If it doesn't hurt anyone, I'll like it," she insisted. She couldn't exchange, not another girl in her shoes, but even a crooked deal that got her out was something. She would be out. "As long as I go home."

"And is it what you truly want?" he put to her, fingers laced together and a cunning look in his eye. She knew those words were important now, but she asked herself, what choice did she have? Stay here and marry him?

"Yes," she answered with a stillness like swamp water. "It is."

"Then the deal is done," he announced, and rose up out of his seat in all of his height like a late afternoon shadow. "You'll have to come with me." Lottie shuffled out of her seat, feeling very unsure as she followed him out the door and a long way down the corridor. With each step she became less and less certain of her decision. But she was going home, she told herself. That was worth anything.

"Why is it so far away?" she asked after a good long stretch of pacing behind him in her little slippers going nowhere.

"This is a place that must be reached on foot," he stated. "Patience, girl." She buttoned her lip and traipsed along in his shadow, noticing that the ground was slowly rising up. Eventually they came to another archway, this one even older and more worn than the first. Inside it was a cavernous room carved out of clean black stone. It reminded her of a cathedral.

"Is this it?"

"Oh yes," he purred, and seemed torn between resignation and happiness. Maybe he didn't want to let her go, she thought – if it meant being alone again. "Stand right there," he told her, pointing to a large engraved circle in the floor. "I have to get a few things ready."

"Wait," she called out, and he halted mid-turn. "What's the price?"

"Why must it cost?" he put to her saccharinely.

"Of course it does," she spat. "Everything has a price. Before you said there was no way out."

"I lied," he said simply.

"And why aren't you lying now?" she rounded on him, and a twitch across his expression, like the beat of a bird's wing, made it seem almost like he was impressed. That she wasn't as stupid as everyone took her for on looks.

"You said you would help me," he remarked.

"I said as long as no one got hurt," she reminded him.

"That much I can promise," he stated. "You're going to help me just by being back up there."

"How?" He didn't answer her, locked his secrets with a padlock glare and smirked.

"Don't worry about doing anything," he assured her. "Just go about your vapid little life." Lottie scowled but didn't spit; she couldn't fight with him now, when he was so close to letting her go. From the perspective of a yawning stomach and fear-shivers and being tired and confused all of the time, anything seemed like a fair price to get back out.

"I have to get a few things ready," he excused, gesturing to an inlay in the centre of the room. "Stay right there."

All this time Lottie had accepted a quiet knowledge that what she saw and what the Shadow Man were were two different things. His surroundings and appearance shifted in the blink of an eye. So when he fell into shadow and emerged a different thing, her breath was scared stiff in her throat, stuck there like hard candy, but she had expected it as well.

He hadn't really a body any more, just pitch black space that was defined with sharp edges of white; hard and slightly shiny, as if they were bone. His eyes weren't eyes but pinpoints of purple light set inside empty black space.

"Stay cool," he soothed just as fight or flight was telling Lottie to run out of there as fast as her gams could take her. His voice was the same sonorous drawl, and that reminded her it was only his appearance. He was no scarier now than he'd ever been, she just had to get past the outside. "Are you ready?"

She might've said 'as I'll ever be' had she had more voice in her, but instead she nodded, church-mouse in the wrong kind of church. He clapped his hands and then cupped them, and inside sat a golden goblet full of red liquid.

"Drink," he said authoritatively, and extended the cup towards her. She had refused anything from him up until this point, staring at the cup like it might hold her blood.

"Will I really go home?" she asked, feet feeling rooted into the stone floor.

"By all my power, yes," he swore, and it wasn't worth much from him, but it was the only thing she'd get. Lottie had to take a leap of faith. She took the chalice and held it in both hands, looking down into the murky depth and then putting it to her lips. Sweet wine, real wine, that was warm down her throat. She took three sips then pushed it back, leaving some in the bottom.

"That's enough," he asserted, reaching to take the cup from her. When his hands crossed over hers, the tingling that had accompanied his decay was gone. Although he looked like an undead creature, he felt as any person would. The inky substance that made up his flesh felt like skin, warm and firm to the touch. And no longer did he turn to ash and corrode.

"You're not-" she began, and then he'd closed the cup back up into his palms and instead twisted skeletal fingertips in the bowl of his palm.

"This is what you wanted," he reminded her, but when he extended one of the spider-like limbs to her face she flinched. " Be still," he demanded, and she grit her teeth and went rigid as he laid his hands onto her face. Although his eyes were points of light and he had no nose and his hands were bones, if she looked hard enough she could just make out his face underneath, like it was a shadow that had been pushed far to the background.

He drew his fingertips in sweeping bags under her eyes, then along her brow, like he was painting. She watched him return fingertips to his palm and twist them, like he was smearing colours from a palette, and wondered if it wasn't exactly what he was doing. He placed intricate lines across her temples, her cheeks, gentle fingertips encircled her eyes like touches of rain, and she'd almost forgotten to breathe she held so still under his command. With butterfly touches he coloured her, one final swipe covering her lips like a wax seal. She felt soft under his touch.

"What's all this for-" she queried, but he shushed her, laying a thin silver blade to his lips in lieu of a finger. He didn't speak, and she had the feeling that meant they were both supposed to be silent. When he let the blade fall, he drew it down instead of away, crossing hidden lips that split and released blood so red it seemed to glow.

Then he took one hand and rested it under her chin, tilting her face up to his. She swallowed, and almost choked on the anxiety as he put the other side of the double-edged blade to her mouth. He was close, but his presence didn't exude the fear it often did. She didn't flinch as he drew the blade downwards and made a shallow cut over both her lips. Something to match.

With a twist of his fingers the knife vanished, and his hand was left empty to take hold her cheek, a gentle grip that still would not have let her move away. Not that she tried to, when he leaned in and pressed his mouth to hers.

Truth be told, it was not Charlotte La Bouff's first kiss, but it certainly was the first for a lot of things; girls like her didn't kiss men like him. She ought to have seen it coming, though it seemed both a surprise and inevitable. It wasn't actually a bad kiss, like she might've thought had she considered it beforehand – probably because he had wanted it to be so. She was his puppet and he had hands on the strings, holding her to him and releasing her when it was done.

When he stepped back, hands no longer cupping her face as tenderly as any man might hold a woman, she was drawn from the daze.

"Now." With a jolt he threw out his arms, and from him flew a tremendous fog, lights filling the toneless cavern. Whipping mists circled them, showering everything with blinding colours and intense patterns Lottie had never seen before and could barely comprehend. A roaring like wind filled her ears as he backed away from her, the circle below her feet now illuminated in millions of interwoven glyphs.

Through the haze she could just make him out, standing beyond the boundaries with his forearms crossed and held up at her, palms facing out. As the whirlwind raged, his shadow stretched out from under his feet and reached for her, grasping its long fingertips through the pulsing signs and curling around her feet. She could actually feel the hands, and looked down to see dark fingers encircling her shoes.

In a split-second he turned his hands over and snapped his fingers. There was a click so loud it hurt Lottie's ears, and everything vanished.


Yeah this is one of those kissing fics. I am not sorry.

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