Work Text:
Adam had always remembered his children as burdens. How his hands had never stopped trembling in his old age from all the backbreaking labour he had done in order to provide for his family. To keep them fed, clothed, healthy, and alive.
There was no parental instinct within the First Man and Second Woman. It all had to be brutally learned from trial and error, and with bittersweet elations did Adam and Eve pass on the knowledge to their kin. This was their retribution for their sin. To further mankind at the cost of their bodies and happiness.
And yet, Adam’s efforts to teach his children right and wrong were not enough.
One night, as he slept in a pile of furs surrounded by his wife and younger children, he was contacted by the messengers of Heaven.
“Adam, disgraced Son of God. Heaven’s eyes have looked to the west and witnessed the sinful acts of your descendants. Their wickedness is not to be suffered on this earth, their seed will not be permitted to spread the roots of evil. You, who have sired their sin and brought them into being must be the one to put them to death, for God has declared that the father is above his children in responsibility.
Go forth, and permit them not to live.”
The following day, Adam obeyed Heaven’s will and became a butcher of men. For the child must have faith in their parent to punish them justly, even if it means to be put to the sword. Just as Adam put his faith in Heaven.
Death and the subsequent afterlife came as a shock to Adam. His hands were no longer wrinkled and bowed by the years of harsh living, and all the marks of his time on Earth had been wiped clean. Adam had fulfilled his punishment and achieved entry to paradise.
The angels praised him endlessly, at first. Sera foremost looked at him with proud and quietly doting eyes, and it made Adam yearn for something he didn’t know the name of. She had always invoked a subtle emptiness in him, even in the days of the Garden. When Adam had run over to her with unbridled excitement, eager to show Sera the new thing he discovered.
In Heaven he sought the seraphim out constantly, trying to get her attention with songs and paintings. But Adam never received anything more than professional pats on the shoulder for his efforts. Eventually, his relationship with the angels degraded along with his character.
When Adam suggested the Exterminations, the Elders deliberated amongst themselves for a few hours, much to his chagrin. They had callously demanded that he kill his children on earth, when he didn’t even know that there was life after death, and now that it was a ‘true’ death he delivered, they hesitated.
And so it came to pass that Adam failed to bring down the Hazbin Hotel in spectacular fashion. The bodies of him and his soldiers devoured like dogs, bereft of dignity.
But not even the desecration of his body kept Adam from returning, albeit in a most wretched form. A sinner. Soft velvety ears dangled from his head, a small lamb-like tail portruded from his tailbone. Tiny horns jutted out from his scalp, the hooves that he balanced were precarious, and no amount of scrubbing could wash away the ashiness of his skin.
Adam had become something vile and abhorrent. He knew what he had to do.
The Hazbin Hotel crew were extremely hesitant to accept Adam as a guest, even Charlie couldn’t keep a straight face as she tenatively welcomed him in. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered. Hell was forever, but Adam knew that his execution would come sooner if he stayed here. He knew Lute, that she would do everything in her power to kill everyone here, and that surely her hatred for sinners outshone her respect for him.
But as Adam was waiting for Lute to come crashing down in a blaze of fury, Lucifer was dragging him along to the embassy.
“Sera wants to see you,” is what Lucifer had told him as he yanked Adam through the portal.
Adam had fought against him, but alas, he was already in the meeting room when Sera beamed down.
Her grand imposing figure invoked a sense of terror in him, and it took all of Adam’s being to not break down in pure shame as Sera’s silver eyes laid upon his twisted visage. She frowned when Adam would not meet her gaze.
“Leave us, Lucifer.” Her solemn tone left little argument, Lucifer only gave Adam a brief look before vanishing.
Sera stepped forward, Adam stepped back. She sighed.
“Adam. I found what you kept from me.”
Sera held up a piece of red paper and Adam’s eyes widened in horror when he recognized what it was.
Ever since he had learned of the concept of Mother’s day he had been plagued by thoughts and urges that gnawed at his mind relentlessly. Adam was no one’s son, a fatherless father, a motherless creation. Yet something compelled him to sit down and handcraft gaudy cards out of bright construction paper and decorative tissues.
Adam made Sera a card every year, writing nothing but whatever nonsense he felt about her at the time. Some of them he had bitched and vented about her treatment to him was unfair, others Adam put in thanks and promises to do better. Mostly he just wrote I’m sorry over and over again.
He never gave them to her, because Sera was not his mother and didn’t think of him as her child. Adam had never needed a mother in the first place, and Sera never responded all too positively whenever he tried to gain her affections. So Adam had buried them all under a pile of dirty magazines and let them rot.
Adam’s legs shook and he refused to look Sera in the eyes. There was no way she would ever entertain these delusions when he was an angel, when he was perfect, no chance she would take kindly to a disgusting monster harboring such perversions of a head seraphim.
With beckoning eyes, Sera crouched down on her knees and spread out her arms and wings out in welcome, her face remorseful yet hopeful at the same time. Adam’s blackened heart skipped a beat as he shakingly trodded over to her. He felt so lowly, worse than when he was banished from the Garden.
Adam tripped over his hooves and fell into her lap. Ashamed, he tried to get up but Sera wrapped her arms around him in a way she never had before. Sniffling, Adam felt hot tears falling from his eyes, staining the shining fabric of Sera’s dress.
Timidly, he clutched at her skirt like a child, and Sera felt her heart ache as Adam looked up at her with regretful, yet wholly trusting eyes.
“You… You can. You can kill me now. I know I’ve done wrong.”
An icy tendril of horror squeezed at Sera’s ribs as Adam gently tilted his head up to display his tender throat, the fragile pulse beating leisurely under the ashy skin. He looked every bit the sacrificial lamb, the Isaac to her Abraham, the child who blindly trusted his parents to do what is best.
Sera held Adam tightly to her chest as she wept. She had done wrong. She had failed at every turn.
But he was still alive. There was still hope for her to change. For him to change. They were given another chance to do better.