Chapter Text
When they cast him down to earth, he was reborn, not as an angel, but as a boy at the turn of the 20th century in Louisiana.
His skin carried the warmth of his mother, darker than the pale of his father, but light enough that people sometimes hesitated before placing him in either world. He was mixed-race, a child of two conflicting heritages, and the society around him made it clear from the start that belonging would always be a fragile thing.
They named him Alastor, as though Heaven itself could not resist a cruel private joke. The name, heavy and grand, felt too large for the tiny, bright-eyed boy who clutched his mother’s hand as the world passed judgment on his skin before it could even see his soul.
His mother, Marielle, was a gentle, fierce woman, all warmth and music. She taught him about stories, about the power in words, in songs, in laughter. She taught him that people were never truly bad; they were shaped, broken, or desperate, and it was love and care that could sometimes set them right. She had a strength that radiated quietly, guiding him through the confusion and fear that came with their precarious life.
His father, Gideon, was a storm in human form. Tall, cruel, and unrelenting. He believed in power, control, and the sharp sting of fear. Beatings were frequent, cold and vicious, and Marielle bore them silently, a shield for her children, a love forged in endurance. Young Alastor learned early what Hell looked like in mortal life. He saw it all through his father’s cruel hands and dark temper.
And one day, he fought back.
It was a quiet evening, the sun long gone behind the low Louisiana clouds, when Gideon’s rage reached for Marielle again. Something in Alastor snapped. Fear turned to fury. His small hands found a weight, his mind a flash of instinct and instinct alone. In protecting his mother, he struck Gideon hard.
Once.
Then again.
And again.
And again.
The man never rose again.
It was his first murder, though he didn’t understand it as such then. It was survival. It was love. It was the first time he realised that life demanded choices, that sin could be an act of protection.
That night, as he held his trembling mother, as she whispered reassurances through her tears, he understood something fundamental: the world was cruel, yes, but the right action was not always sanctioned.
His mother wept and kissed him gently, whispering lessons that would echo for a lifetime: "Care for those who cannot care for themselves. Fight, if you must, but always remember why."
And perhaps that was it, perhaps that was what Heaven had intended for their angel all along.
From his mother, Alastor learned empathy, loyalty, cunning, and the taste of moral complexity. From his father, he learned fear, wrath, and the instinct for violence. These two forces carved a dual path within him, one of light, one of shadow.
He grew up surrounded by music, poverty, charm, and danger. He danced in church pews and hid from mobs outside. He told stories with his mother and listened to the old folks’ songs late into the night. He witnessed both the beauty and the ugliness of humanity, sometimes in the same breath, and understood that survival often demanded compromise.
Human life seeped into him:
Laughter, when his mother’s voice rose above despair, was a reminder that joy could exist even in suffering.
Food, when scarcity made every morsel sacred, every meal a small ritual of gratitude.
Storytelling, where he could shape reality with words, molding the fears and hopes of those who would listen.
The thrill of hunting, for animals, for sustenance, for control over a world that paid him little heed.
The temptation of power, a quiet spark observed in his father, an allure he learned to navigate carefully.
He learned sin not through malice, but through experience:
Pride, in the remarkable talents his mother nurtured: voice, wit, charm, intelligence.
Wrath, in the raw, protective fury that once saved her.
Gluttony, in the small indulgences that tasted sweeter precisely because they were forbidden.
And eventually, a dark fascination with violence, surging through him like electricity, a reminder of the world’s cruel duality.
No angels came to guide him. No memories returned. He lived, erred, loved, and feared, believing himself merely a peculiar man. Yet even in that mortal life, Heaven and Hell cast long shadows: his father’s cruelty a hint of Hell, his mother’s love a flicker of Heaven.
And yet, when he died, Heaven did not come. The gates remained shut. His wings were not restored. Their promise, the one whispered in the cold light of eternity, was nothing but a lie.
But he remembered nothing. No past, no debt, no betrayal. There was no question, no anger… yet.
Only Hell awaited. Its arms were wide, indifferent, patient. A world that took him as he was, a world that did not ask what he had been, nor what he might have been.
By the time he crossed its threshold, those early lessons, the laughter and the tears, the protection and the wrath, the music and the blood, had forged him into something beyond mortal reckoning.
And somewhere deep beneath his emerging power, the faint echo of Heaven’s abandonment smoldered, a wound that would never close, shaping the being he was becoming: neither angel, nor man, nor demon,but something entirely, terrifyingly new.