Chapter Text
Beelzebub had always been alone.
He shouldn't have cared about it. Really. And yet... he had.
He had met Lucifer, Samael, and Azazel during his first year at Gold Valkyrie University.
He hadn't gotten along with them right away. They were too loud, too alive, too... human. But as time went on, he felt more and more at ease in their company.
Since kindergarten, everyone had avoided him. The other children almost treated him like a contagious disease. They played cruel games: daring each other to touch him, to see if they'd catch scabies or malaria.
Beelzebub had grown used to it.
His parents thought he was a bad omen. He hardly ever went out. He didn't like football or video games. Black was his favorite color—to the point that he'd repainted his room in austere shades, which his parents deemed abnormal for a nine-year-old. By their standards, at least.
So they had handed him over to nuns, convinced he carried Evil within him. A sinister reincarnation, they whispered. One day, they no longer opened the orphanage door for him.
It was the Olympus family that took him in. Hades had become the head of the family at just seventeen, after their parents' death.
Beelzebub appreciated Hades.
He felt uneasy with Zeus.
Adamas thought he was crazy.
Poseidon didn't even acknowledge him. It had taken over five years for him to deign to recognize Beelzebub's existence.
So yes... Beelzebub had never had real friends.
In his third year of university, he had told Hades that, that summer, he wouldn't be around. For the first time, he was going on vacation with friends. Hades had encouraged him, sincerely.
But after a party, Beelzebub had taken the wheel again. His friends had drunk too much. He didn't particularly like alcohol.
He remembered turning his head toward the rearview mirror to tell Azazel not to stand up on the back seat.
It had only taken a second of inattention.
Lucifer's hand had pushed the steering wheel—unaware, too drunk and laughing to realize the disaster.
Another car had crashed into them.
Azazel and Samael died on impact. Lucifer was taken to the hospital, like Beelzebub, but he passed away on the operating table.
When Beelzebub woke up, he understood. His friends... his first friends... were all dead.
Hades had told him. He had come with his brothers to see how he was doing. But Beelzebub felt terribly guilty.
The hospital room was silent. Too silent.
Beelzebub stared at the white ceiling, unable to blink. Every breath burned his chest, every heartbeat sounded like an accusation.
You were driving.
The voices came back in waves. The muffled laughter, the too-loud music, the smell of alcohol. The impact. The twisted metal. The darkness.
He had survived.
Why him?
Hades had stayed sitting by his bed for a long time. He hadn't spoken. He didn't need to. His presence alone was an anchor, heavy and silent. Zeus and the others had left earlier. Beelzebub had felt their gazes: pity, discomfort... perhaps even blame.
When Hades stood up to leave, Beelzebub finally spoke.
"It's my fault."
His voice was hoarse, almost unrecognizable.
Hades froze, his hand still on the door handle.
"No."
One word. Firm. Definitive.
Beelzebub laughed—a dry, broken laugh. "I was driving. I should have... I should have refused. I should have stopped them from drinking. I should have..."
He didn't finish his sentence. It drowned in a trembling breath. Hades came back to sit down. Slowly, as if afraid to break him.
"You don't control other people's choices. You did what you could."
Beelzebub closed his eyes. He knew Hades was trying to protect him. As always. But something had broken that night. Irrevocably.
When he left that hospital, he already knew nothing would ever be the same.
He would never go on vacation again. He would never drive for someone else again.
He would never allow himself to get attached again.
Because everyone he loved... ended up disappearing.
And Beelzebub, he remained.
---
Beelzebub had always had a certain talent for brooding.
He looked like a troubled, lost guy. One day, Adamas had told him he should have ended up in a melancholic punk band, singing all his sorrows like a kingdom in ruins.
But what he felt since leaving the hospital was different.
Well... "felt" might not be the right word.
He hardly felt anything anymore.
The only human contacts he still maintained were with the Olympus family. The rest of the world seemed distant, unreal. Beelzebub resembled a vampire refusing to leave his lair, living in permanent darkness, steeped in sadness and melancholy. Every night, he stared at a starless sky, deprived of sleep, his body exhausted but his mind unable to shut down.
Yet, surprisingly, even beyond Hades, they all seemed to worry about him—in their own ways. They encouraged him to continue his studies. Not to give up.
And Beelzebub did.
He had missed a month of classes. But Hades, thanks to his connections, had arranged for him to resume without difficulty. "He's intelligent," all his men said. A real family. Real brothers, in their way.
And potential that shouldn't be wasted.
---
Resuming classes didn't mean getting better.
Beelzebub sat at the back of the lecture halls, silent, motionless. He took notes with mechanical precision, never looking up. The professors' voices sometimes mixed with other sounds—a too-loud laugh, a chair moved abruptly—and then his heart raced.
He gripped his pen until it hurt.
At night, he hardly slept.
When he closed his eyes, the images returned. Not always the crash. Sometimes just the rearview mirror. Lucifer's smile. Azazel's voice.
Insignificant details, but they pierced him like blades.
He didn't cry.
He didn't even have the strength for it.
Hades had caught him once, sitting on the floor of his room, back against the wall, surrounded by open files. Beelzebub was working. Again. Always. As if stopping meant dying.
"You can rest," Hades had said softly.
Beelzebub had looked up slowly. "If I stop... I'll think."
Hades hadn't replied.
The days passed. All identical.
Beelzebub ate little. Sometimes forgot to drink. He only went out when forced. The rare times he crossed paths with other students, he felt transparent—or worse, like he carried something dirty, invisible, that made people pull away.
Sometimes, without warning, his body started shaking. There was no reason. No clear trigger.
Then he locked himself in the bathrooms, breathing with difficulty, hands pressed to his temples, mentally repeating scientific formulas, complex theories—anything to keep his mind from plunging back.
He survived.
One evening, Hades knocked on his door. "You don't have to be okay," he said simply.
Beelzebub stayed silent for a long time.
Then, in a barely audible whisper: "Why am I still here... and not them?"
Hades approached. He placed a heavy, warm hand on his shoulder. "Because you haven't finished."
Beelzebub didn't respond.
But that night, for the first time since the accident, he slept a full hour.
Without dreams.
---
Beelzebub didn't believe in divine illuminations. Even though the Olympus family was deeply religious, his brothers didn't hold it against him for not sharing their faith.
Beelzebub felt more inclined to pray to Satan himself—or demons, at the very least.
But after the night he'd just had, where Hades and Poseidon had to sleep in his room as if he were just a six-year-old child, Beelzebub didn't expect the next day to be a good one.
Truth be told, he no longer believed in the myth of a good day since the accident.
You could call him cynical.
Negative. Or even bitter.
He didn't care.
When he arrived at the university that day, however, he had the strange impression of being blinded.
Theoretically speaking, it was physically impossible. Humans don't glow.
And yet...
A transfer student that day caught his attention.
Nikola Tesla.
A genius, they said.
A foreign student, from Croatia.
And Beelzebub would have sworn—this was ridiculous, absurd, scientifically unfounded—that he was glowing.
Impossible. Beelzebub was cruelly lacking sleep.
---
He tried to look away.
He had no reason to stare at this stranger. New students arrived constantly at Gold Valkyrie. Prodigies, heirs, oversized brains... it was nothing new.
And yet, his eyes kept drifting back to him.
Nikola Tesla was laughing softly while talking to a professor, his hands animated, his gaze sharp. He seemed... alive. Too alive. As if the world didn't weigh on his shoulders. As if gravity spared him.
That thought annoyed Beelzebub.
He forced himself to look at his notes. The lines danced slightly. He blinked. A dull migraine throbbed behind his skull.
When the lecture began, Tesla sat a few rows ahead of him.
Beelzebub noticed details despite himself: the slightly forward-leaning posture, the ink-stained fingers, the fact that he took notes too quickly, almost frantically.
Another madman, he thought.
But not the same kind as him.
At one point, Tesla turned around.
Their eyes met.
Beelzebub felt something tighten in his chest—not pain, not panic... something else. A forgotten sensation. Foreign. Tesla smiled, simply, without unhealthy curiosity, without judgment.
Beelzebub immediately looked away.
Don't get attached.
Don't look too long.
That's how it starts again.
At the end of the class, the room emptied slowly. Beelzebub stayed seated, staring blankly, waiting for everyone to leave. When he finally stood up, he bumped into someone head-on.
"Oh! Sorry—"
The voice was warm. Too warm.
Beelzebub looked up. Tesla was looking at him, embarrassed, a disarming smile on his lips.
"I wasn't watching where I was going. I'm Nikola."
Beelzebub stayed silent a second too long.
"Beelzebub," he finally replied.
Tesla blinked, then smiled even more. "Nice name."
No one had ever said that.
Beelzebub felt his heart skip a beat. He frowned, as if the world had just violated a fundamental rule.
"...Thanks," he murmured.
They parted on that note.
But all day long, Beelzebub had that strange sensation—as if, since the accident, something had briefly drawn his gaze forward... instead of pulling it back to the past.
And it scared him.
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