(Record of Ragnarok)[HaBeel] - Pyrith's HadeBubu

Oneshot 2

When he found Beelzebub in the council room of the gods, curled up into himself looking like a wounded animal, the sky was dark.

There had been a call for another meeting, something the gods had been doing too frequently these times around for his liking. Hades had been the first to arrive, as per usual, surrounded by empty seats and the cold air of an unnecessarily large space. Being in this room had always made him feel inferior, mundane; human, even, like Hades, the god of the underworld, was merely an ant in a garden full of men. (Sometimes, he wondered if the room was designed specifically for that purpose: making superior existences feel like they were merely one of many, like they were a mere grain of sand in a desert.) Still, he was nothing if not dutiful, and so, obligingly, Hades walked up to his seat in the Helheim side of the room.

And—

“Beelzebub?”

— there, lying on one of the seats, shivering slightly, was him, curled up into himself and all alone in the labyrinth of seats. Beelzebub.

The lithe figure stirred a bit, and Hades watched as his long limbs uncurled themselves out of the foetal position he was in for gods knew how long. (How long had he been sleeping here like this, he wondered.)

Beelzebub still seemed like he was only half-waken, so Hades called him again, with as much gentleness as he could muster, and reached out to tuck back the long strands of his wild hair. Bruises were blooming on his skin, small cuts scattering his cheeks, and he looked so unimaginably hurt that Hades’ previous thoughts of the council room echoed back to him like an irony. 

The god stirred slightly, one eye cracked open and locked with Hades’. For a brief moment, there was a hint of fear evident in his gaze, before it settled back to an uneasy wariness that he had never seen on him before.

“Beelzebub.” He said again (the name stuck on his lips like a prayer, like how his worshippers call his name in hours of distress). His mind was racing with questions, questions and rages that he didn’t even know he possessed. Who did this to you? Who had the nerve to hurt you like this? How do you want them to be destroyed? 

Instead, he held out his hand and helped him sit up, and asked, gently, the way he had never imagined he could before him, “How are you feeling?”

Beelzebub looked away from him when he answered.

“I’m fine.” 

                                              

You don’t look it, he swallowed down the words, and let him go lax into the seat, running his gaze along the god, inspecting the bruises and injuries on his body. His skin is flushed, the way pale skin would look after cold nights, and small cuts scattered on his face, the stark contrast between skin and blood almost too heartbreaking to see. He wondered how it went down, whatever it was that Beelzebub got involved in. Hades knew better than to push. He resigned to leave him in his own space until the light in those clever eyes return, doing his own things in the meantime. 

(And if doing his own things involved listening and watching closely to any shift in Beelzebub, well, it is for him and only him to know.)

It was several minutes later when he heard a sniffle, which then turned into a string of quiet cries. Faint, suppressed sobs, like he was afraid someone would hear it, and Hades wasn’t certain which one felt more painful, his silent cries or the fact that he was trying to hide it from him. He averted his gaze to look at him from the corner of his eyes, taking in how lost the god seemed — how pained — and silently cursed any and every single creature that had participated in making those clever eyes of his seem so scared.

“It–” Beelzebub started, and the other god was by his side immediately, coaxing words out of him with gentle caresses, muttering sweet nothing into his hair as though he would break if Hades wasn’t careful enough. (Perhaps he would. He tried not to think of the possibility.) “It hurts.”

He cradled him into his arms, almost like a child, and Beelzebub slotted himself right in his lap, involuntary sobs wrung out of him like an old instrument. “I–” he started, head buried into his chest. “I couldn’t— I couldn’t come home. I didn’t— I didn’t want — I didn’t want you to worry. I truly didn’t. But it hurts.”

I’m sorry, he attempted to say. The words stopped short in his throat, held tightly behind his lips like the way Beelzebub held onto him through his sobs. “I know.” He told him instead, whispering the two words like a secret – an assurance that he understood.

He felt more than heard him sighing into his chest, relief clear in his breathing pattern.

“How long have you been sleeping here?”

Beelzebub tensed again, light breaths echoing in the large chamber, reminding Hades again of how small he was, how the power inside him ran, too, in many others, and how, despite that, to the god of the dead himself, he was the greatest god ever to live — the god whose lithe limbs were in his embrace, whose tears were streaking down cold cheeks, whom he couldn’t help but compare to a wounded hare trembling under a strange hand. Hades drew soothing circles into his shoulders and forearms, attempting to be as assuring as he could. 

“I couldn’t come home.” He repeated himself, voice hoarse and small like a broken recorder, clutching tightly onto his shirt. “I couldn’t— I couldn’t let you know.” And then, head in his chest, tremble running from him to Hades like an electric shock, he broke off the pattern. “They have been — since last week—”

And rage burnt through him like the Greek’s eternal flame. 

He pushed away the burning urge to look for and destroy whoever had driven Beelzebub away from his own domain, whoever had hurt him badly enough that he forced himself to stay in the council room — of all places — for seven days, and, though for the gods time was a mere suggestion, he couldn’t help but wonder if the last week, for Beelzebub, had washed away as slowly as it always was for the human race. 

Alas, all of those thoughts dimmed under the sobs that Beelzebub let out, under the tears that drowned his features in darkness, and Hades embraced him a bit tighter. He rocked them back and forth, caressed every inch of rough skin his arms could reach to, and told him sweet nothing that maybe, just maybe, meant more than just nothing. 

“It’s alright, it will all be alright, I’m here, I’m here for you, nothing could harm you again, nothing could ever hurt you anymore,” he told him, his voice suddenly feeling too ethereal for himself. From the back of his mind, he realised that he meant every word. “Not if I can help it.”

“But it hurts,” Beelzebub whined, almost too breathy and weak to be real. He kept repeating himself, like he himself was broken, like his mind had sent him to a place Hades couldn’t reach, and the occasional “Why”s slipped through him like an accusation.

Because you’re too good for them, his mind supplied, bitter in Beelzebub’s place. Because they were ignorant folks who couldn’t understand. Because sometimes, divinity doesn’t rid us of stupidity, cowardice or narcissism. 

Because I haven’t protected you well enough. 

Because I am the reason, and yet I had not been the consequences. 

He didn’t tell him any of that.

Hades kissed the top of his messy hair, held him in his arms and caressed him until the sobbing ceased, until the pain in his voice seemed to lessen, and until Beelzebub looked at him with those clever eyes again, as enigmatic as he remembered they were.