Weeks passed, and though she often still found herself missing home(even though this place almost seemed objectively better, it wasn't familiar, and she often felt alone), she was managing. She'd gotten herself hired on at some law firm further into the city - maybe all those years of being I.M.P.'s secretary were coming in handy after all. She worked longer hours and she had to ride a bus to work and had to 'dress up', which she didn't like, but the pay was a lot better and she was seriously starting to consider what she was going to do when the six months on this place were up.
It was... frightening, almost, and she didn't really see herself as someone who scared easily. It was funny that she'd faced down demons and imps and humans and everything else when she'd worked back home, but up here where she was 'safe', she was more scared at the thought that she might be finding a new place to live than she could ever remember being down there. It didn't help that the days had been growing colder and for the first time that she could remember, it had actually snowed. It hadn't stayed on the pavement for more than a few hours but she'd ventured to her balcony to watch the snow fall, bundled up in just about every scrap of clothing that she owned. Turns out snow's actually really cold!
Fortunately, with extra cash that meant she had a little extra to splurge on other things that she didn't need, which meant that she had a stock of alcohol around for when she wanted a drink. One of her favorite pastimes. It also meant that she'd decorated the place just a little bit, just a poster here and there, and she'd actually restored the bass she'd found. It hadn't been difficult, she'd just needed to buy a cheap amp, get a new cord(turns out that they just plugged into the bottom of the guitar), and replace some strings. There was a music place nearby that she'd been able to visit, talk to people who actually knew what they were doing, and buy a couple of booklets, a tuning thing, cleaning stuff, and the like. She was pretty sure that they'd sold her more than she'd actually needed, but it'd felt good to buy the extra stuff and not have to worry about it so much.
She knew the six months that she'd been given were going to be up soon, and she'd been saving every month like she did have to pay rent so she had a little bit extra... Maybe she could just stay. For now, though, she was lounging in front of the TV, just... thinking. Some show she didn't care about that came on the basic cable she had was quietly playing out while she stared at the screen, unseeing, lost in her thoughts.
It was around this time that she was interrupted by a ring on her phone - a ring she'd assigned to Moxxie and Millie's numbers so she could just ignore them whenever they called. She'd given up on finding some way to explain herself that didn't sound so shitty and had decided to just ignore them instead. Buuuuuut... maybe she didn't have to? She fished her phone out of her pocket with a frown and looked at the screen, watching their number flash as they tried to reach her. Her lips pursed as she hesitated, thinking she'd just send them straight to voicemail for what seemed like the thousandth time... But then she picked up the call instead and stuck the phone to her ear, even though she didn't exactly know why she was doing it.
"MILLIE. SHE PICKED UP", a shrill and all-too-familiar voice shouted into her ear loud enough that she winced and had to tug the phone away in shock.
"I'm right here, you little idiot, you don't have to scream, fuck", she growled back into the phone, though she soon heard a second voice - she could just imagine them crammed together around a phone sitting on a table set to speaker.
"Darlin'! You're alive!" The second of the two, of course.
"Of course I'm alive-"
"We're coming to get you! Don't hang up." That sounded distinctly like pages turning in a bo - oh fuck.
Loonie quickly sat up in her chair as her heart lept into her throat. "No! Don- definitely don't do that." They didn't even know how to use the book, what the fuck? She could have sworn Stolas had taken it back, they'd even told her as much in some of the messages that she'd ignored. She stood up out of her seat even though she didn't have anywhere to go, just wanting to do something. "Guys, listen, you can't come here-"
"It's okay, you don't have to worry, we're on the way!" Loonie heard something that definitely sounded like a gun being cocked.
Then she felt the air around her starting to crackle, that familiar energy that she was used to, and the hound just breathed out a quiet little 'fuck' as a small pocket of Hell quite literally broke loose around her.
Two small imps lept out of the portal, Moxxie ended up sprawled across her bed, some gigantic gun that she was not remotely familiar with clutched in his little claws, and Millie sprang out like she was expecting to be attacked immediately, clutching a large metal bat. The familiar scent of sulfur filled the hound's room, which immediately made the place smell far more like home... but also sent a small little trill of panic up her spine. She knew she was being watched, this was bad.
"Loona! We're here!", Moxxie called as he stood up on the bed and almost immediately pulled his sunglasses down to look around the room in surprise. "Whoa, this is really nice for a prison cell." Millie climbed up onto the bed next to him, still holding her bat at the ready, but she quickly turned her attention to the hound who was still staring at the pair of them. "Well, darlin'? Get back in the portal! We're gonna get you out of here and get you back to where you belong!"
Almost immediately the hound's ears flattened against her head. They had no idea. She held out her hands toward the pair and pretty much immediately skittered around the bed to start to try to shove them back into the portal. "You two need to go! Like, right the fuck now." She found them a lot more resilient toward moving than she expected, and they stuck to her bed like glue.
"What do you mean? We're here to rescue you! Blitzo might be gone but if he knew we didn't save his daughter from whoever killed him-" Moxxie swung his weapon around in a way that made the hellhound duck.
A mixture of fear, anger that they were here and weren't listening to her - at herself that she actually answered the call and got herself into this mess - and anxiety that she might actually lose what small amount of freedom she had bubbled up and almost immediately over. Her temper was famously short. A growl rose in her throat as she shoved the two of them back toward the portal. "I killed him, you idiots! Go back in the portal, I left for a reason!"
Rather suddenly, 'hard to push' became 'impossible to push' as both Imps dug in their heels and pushed firmly back against the hellhound who was only just now realizing what she'd actually said, and the 'fuck' that she was going to mutter died in her throat as both of them turned toward her and let out a "What." in unison that left Loonie surprised that Moxxie's gun hadn't been leveled toward her instead.
She stopped pushing almost as soon as she realized it, and the position she was in meant that when the pressure let up she almost immediately flopped herself down onto her bed with a soft grunt of breath as her fingers flexed. Loonie lifted her head up enough that she could look up at the two imps and let out a far-quieter-than-she-intended "I can explain."
With an expression that suggested that they were still trying to process what was said and a loud 'snap' of the portal cutting off as whatever they were doing to keep it open stopped, they both sank onto the bed. "Loona... what are you saying? He loved you." Millie was the first to speak, Moxxie still too shocked to do anything else than stare at the hound.
Loonie slowly sank down onto her knees on the side of the bed and stared at the floor. This is not how she was expecting tonight to go. "It was an accident." Even as she said it she knew how weak it sounded, but once she'd started - it just spilled out of her in a rush so fast that she felt like she could barely breathe. "We had that contract - you know, the big one - and he kept saying that he didn't want to do it, that we didn't want to take on that much risk. I wanted to prove to him that I could do it, that I could help, that he was being too cautious, so I went and grabbed the Exterminator pistol that we had hidden in the safe."
"We had one of those?", she heard Moxxie ask, but she was too far gone in her spiel to answer him.
"I was nervous, I was going to go off and do the job by myself if I had to, so I got drunk and I grabbed some pills I had laying around - I took everything, I was fucked, I could barely stand - but I was determined that I was going to do it." Loonie stared at her hands on her thighs - telling the two people she might consider 'friends' this, people that she'd considered 'family' how she'd shattered what they had... She wasn't even crying as she'd been with the others. She just felt empty, and the words spilled from her like it was completely out of her control. "He came in, I was making too much noise to be sneaky, he found me, he told me that we weren't doing the job, that we'd find other work." Loonie could hear her own voice crack but she kept going. "I already had it in hand, he yelled at me, he tried to take it, and I- I hit him."
The two imps sat in stunned silence as they just watched the hound they'd come to rescue explain exactly how mistaken they'd been. They'd thought that she'd been captured or driven off, that someone else had killed Blitzo and Loona'd gone into hiding - this was so much worse.
"I don't... I don't remember..." The lie cracked as she put her head in her hands. The wet heat against her palms told her that she'd finally started crying again, some mix of shame or guilt or something else, she didn't know what, forcing them up and out of her. "I hit him. He... he stared at me, shocked. He hit me back, we fought, he clawed my side, he grabbed for it and I..." For the first time since she'd started, she actually faltered, but some part of her knew that she couldn't stop now. "I didn't let go, I had my finger on the trigger, he tried to pull it out of my hand and it... it went off."
"Loona, we didn't-" She couldn't bring herself to look up to meet Moxxie's gaze, but the tone of his voice told her everything.
"It hit him in the chest." Loonie lifted one of her hands to her own, over her shirt, right in the middle. "There was... a hole..." She turned her gaze to her hands as she stared at them - she felt like she could still feel his blood on them, feel his weight in her grip as he faded away. "I didn't even get to say goodbye. He was gone so fast..." She shook her head. "I grabbed the grimoire, I... I emptied the safe, I ran... I just ... I didn't... I couldn't..."
The hound lifted her gaze up toward the two Imps, finally, and their expressions were discordant. For his part, Moxxie seemed to be taking it the best, mostly a mix of shock and sorrow that practically broke the hound's heart all over again. Millie looked like she was ready to beat the hound to death on the spot - and Loonie didn't know if she'd be able to stop her if she did. She didn't know if she'd want to.
"Please. I didn't... None of this was meant to happen." Loonie could fear the tears running down her cheeks as she stared at them - she knew she'd probably just lost the last two people she'd have ever considered 'friends' if someone used the loosest definition of the term possible. But she hoped that...
Millie grabbed Moxxie's shoulder. "Hon, I think it's time we were going. There's no family for us here to save." The imp turned to his wife, "But Millie..." The stare that she was giving him put his protest to bed immediately, and he glanced back to Loonie one more time before he just nodded his head toward his wife. The portal opened up over the hound's bed, singing the covers, and then the two of them vanished with a pop. It slammed closed almost the moment that they were gone, leaving only the smell of sulfur lingering in the air, and the hound alone in her apartment again.
Loona slowly pushed herself to her feet, tears stinging her cheeks as she lifted a hand to her eyes, wiping them away. She needed a drink. She needed a drink bad.
The hound stumbled her way to her drink cabinet and tugged it open, grabbing the first bottle she could see. A claw plucked the cap off as she brought the bottle to her lips and chugged it, and she drained what felt like half the bottle in the first go. That was fine, there were more. Her other hand grabbed a second bottle as she turned and settled at the small table in her kitchen, staring at the wood.
She was going to get good and drunk. Maybe it'd help her forget.