Do You Want to Know? - Hazbin Hotel

Chapter 49: Stay

In that alley, the three of us surrounded by a lavender glow, the queen of the realm backed Alastor into a corner and trapped him in a deal he couldn't refuse. It was something he'd done so often to others, and here it was happening to him... Some kind of karma, I guess.

After Queen Lilith took Alastor's soul away, sealing him into a deal he had no choice but to accept, she opened up a portal that led to an empty, black nothingness and told us to go through. Once we did, she poked her head into the hole and said, "I'll be back when I need you, but... It might be a while, so get comfortable. You are to stay in this void until I call for you. Goodbye!"

With a wave, she closed the portal and was gone. There we were, alone in the void, left to sit and slowly heal from both the physical and emotional wounds caused by all of the horrible things that had occurred one after another that day.

It was a pretty terrible moment, when she took his soul. I saw the desperation in his eyes, it nearly killed him to do such a thing. He always said that he would never ever let another being own him. That he had taken charge of his fate and he refused to be on anyone else's leash. But it was that or die, so... He decided to make the choice to live another day.

Alastor had spent his entire afterlife as the owner, and now he was the owned. He blamed Vox for it all, of course. I guess that wasn't entirely wrong, to be fair. TV bastard fucked up everything for Alastor. He fucked up everything for me.

I don't think we'd ever really lost before, honestly. Not like this. Alastor always took what he wanted and succeeded in anything he went after. Then everything, literally everything, was ripped away all at once. It was just one hard loss after another. Vox betrayed him, then tried to kill him, then his soul was stolen away by the queen of all demons, and then she stuck us in an endless black nothing until further notice. Away from our home, away from the couple of souls we still trusted. Alone to bathe in our anguish.

It was too much to handle all at once. I know it was. I felt every bit of the pain right alongside him. Every ounce of fear. Every drop of agony. We shared every bit of the rage and sorrow, and I think that might have been the final straw. Like that one feather that lands on something that's already far too heavy and it just makes it all crash down, destroying everything. I think I was the feather.

He wouldn't admit it, but I knew. He felt guilty. He couldn't keep all of his thoughts away from me, we've always been in each other's minds. He knew if he'd listened to me all of the thousands of times I warned him not to trust Vox, we may not have ended up there.

Let me be clear- I don't blame him for what Vox did. I had a little resentment about being dragged into a situation that I never wanted to be any part of, sure. But I knew it wasn't his fault Vox was fucking insane. Alastor though... He definitely blamed himself.

He blamed himself for getting into the situation, he blamed himself for falling for Vox's tricks and lies, he blamed himself for the trauma he'd sustained. And he blamed himself for what had happened to me. Being sliced apart by that knife, being attacked by that fucking lunatic... It left me a little broken. I think a situation like that would do that to anyone, really.

Now, if I could feel his emotional distress, could he feel mine? Was that what pushed him over the edge? I don't know for sure, but I do know that his regret was overwhelming. It's strange to think that among all of the things that had been broken, it was me that his guilt tormented him over.

As a result, he refused to speak to me. He refused to look at me. He just pretended I wasn't there. Even in a void of endless darkness with no one else, he still chose total isolation over acknowledging me at all. Was that his way of protecting himself, maybe? If there was no me, was there no sense in feeling guilty over what had happened? But I was right there, he couldn't ignore me forever, right?