A very, very, very long time ago, Levi hadn’t been the King of Hell. At first, he’d been a human who looked very much like a girl and called themself that because they had no better knowledge, but was in fact a boy.
They didn’t have a word for transgender back then, but if they had, Levi would have worked it out eventually.
At the time, he would have described himself as more of a rebel instead.
His father, Nicolas, wasn’t entirely happy with this Rebel situation. His plan was to have a beautiful daughter to sell off for more money because Nicolas just really loved money. But Levi had a habit of not sucking up to people he didn’t like, and he also liked to Learn Things. And it was pretty hard to sell someone with an Education. Nicolas was getting quite sick of it.
One night, just after Levi turned eighteen, Nicolas brandished his sharpest hunting knife, stabbed Levi while he slept, and left him to die.
In those days, no one would have found out, and no one would have cared. It would have been a mystery left to time, and Nicolas would have used his money to cover it up.
But Nicolas hadn’t done a very good job of stabbing Levi, because instead of dying, like Nicolas had planned, Levi had not died, which would end up being quite inconvenient for Nicolas in the future.
As Levi lay bleeding in the darkness, he dragged his finger through a pool of blood and drew an intricate pattern of some kind of summony-witchcrafty-occulty thingy. He was in too much pain to remember which circle he’d actually drawn, but finally, his obscure Education his father had hated was becoming useful.
He put a hand in the middle of the circle.
The room turned white.
“Ouch,” someone said.
They sat in the middle of the room, their purple hair tied in a ponytail that kept going after it reached the floor. Their skin was a light brown, their eyes were purple, their clothes were white and pink and blue and striped. These were all colours Levi had never seen on a person before. Or a demon. Or anything.
He probably would have cared more had he not been stabbed minutes ago.
“Do you want me to um...fix that for you? I’ll give it to you for free.”
Their voice was soft. Like an angel.
Levi groaned. He didn’t know how to make words. Everything hurt.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Their hand glowed and they touched Levi’s forehead. Warmth spread through his body, and the pain faded. Levi brushed his hand over his stomach. The giant hole in his body was still there. He just couldn’t feel it any more.
“Am I dead?” he asked.
“Sort of,” said the new and confusing person. “I’m guessing that’s why you summoned me.”
“Well, I didn’t summon you specifically.” He looked at them. Was there anything special about them? Was he supposed to know who they were? “Who are you?”
“I’m Lucifer,” they said. “I thought you were doing a whole deal-with-the-devil thing. Though, you know I’m not actually the-“
“You’re what?”
“Lucifer.” They sounded annoyed that time. “You get three questions. Am I going to steal and eat your soul? Am I going to kill you? What’s my favourite part about being Satan? That sort of stuff.”
“Why is your hair purple?”
“Why not?”
“How is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re Lucifer?”
“Yes, I am Lucifer, I’ve said this several times now. This is the natural colour of my hair. You don’t have any other general Satan-related questions? Is it all about my appearance?”
“Are you a boy or a-”
“Neither.” They seemed to be getting fed up. “Or both. I don’t really care. Is this relevant?”
“I guess not.” They didn’t seem like they were Satan The King Of Hell Destroyer Of All Et Cetera. They were like Levi. They were human. Or they looked it, anyway. No horns or forked tongue or goat legs or anything. “...are you Satan?”
“It’s a title. Not a person.”
They stared at him. Levi got the feeling this meant the questions were over. He wasn’t gonna push it. This person just stopped him feeling like he had been stabbed twenty times. He had to give them some kind of respect.
“We done?”
“We’re done.”
“Your turn now.” They flicked their hair over their shoulder. “Why did you summon me? What do you want?”
“Well, mainly I wanted to not die from being stabbed. So you’ve done it.”
“I mean, kind of. You’re being held separately from time right now. But when I send you back you’re going to go back to being in horrible pain and dying. So not really. What do you want? Let’s make a deal. It’s my job.”
“Are we getting to that bit already?” He didn’t really want to go back. He didn’t know what kind of deal to make. He was having fun hanging out with Lucifer. Also, he didn’t want to go back to the pain and the blood and the whole dying thing.
“I mean, we can keep talking about Satan or whatever. We have literally forever.”
So they sat and talked about many things for a long time.
“You’re like me,” Lucifer said, eventually. “You’re different. And you don’t know why.”
Levi sat and thought about it. He did not know why. He just knew.
He’d thought that maybe this was something that everyone felt. Maybe it was.
“...I don’t.”
“Me neither,” they said. “I just know. There’s something that separates them and me and I don’t know or understand why, but I know I’m different.” They sighed. “Anyway, have you thought of what you want yet? Surely you’re getting bored by now.”
“Not really.” They were fun to talk to. Levi was quite enjoying their company. Their reputation was quite the opposite of who they actually were. “But yeah. I have a plan.”
“Alright.” Lucifer sat upright. “What’s the plan?”
“I want to kill him. But I want to do it myself. And I don’t want to go back to that life. Let me start again. I want to remember all of this and then I’ll grow up again and I’ll murder him.”
“Your dad?”
“I would have thought that was fairly obvious, but yes.”
“Alright,” said Lucifer. They stretched out their hand and opened it, revealing a glowing symbol. “Shake on it.”
It took six years of existence for Levi to remember who he was again. He had gone to sleep as a normal child and when he woke up he remembered something. Not everything. At first all he knew was that he wasn’t just some kid. Small things, here and there, flashes of pain at the sight of a knife, knowing things he was too young to know.
Lucifer was there, too. Always watching. Making sure everything was going to work out. Making sure Levi was safe.
They didn’t do this for anyone else. To be fair, most people that made a deal with Lucifer hadn’t been murdered.
They kept an eye on Levi until it was time.
He wanted it to be the same. He wanted that bastard to feel the same pain that Levi had.
It was nearly midnight when Levi pushed open the front door of Nicolas’ house and crept in. He paused for a second to look at the room, his room.
There was someone new inside. Probably another daughter. Nicolas would have replaced Levi as soon as he could.
They’d have to replace Nicolas soon.
He was important. He was the head of a lot of things. He was a leader.
He was a corrupt bastard and Levi was going to murder him like he deserved.
As Levi slid along the walls of the house closer to Nicolas’ room, he thought of something cool to say as he stabbed the guy. Knife to see you again. Have a knife time in Hell. Maybe a joke about a stab in the dark. Or something really insulting. Like ‘your mother never loved you’ or ‘you have a really funny looking nose’. Some kind of curse, maybe. All your sheep are diseased.
The possibilities were endless.
Levi pushed open the door to where Nicolas was sleeping.
The room was empty.
Ah, fuck, he thought. Ah, fuck.
A floorboard creaked behind him. Levi whipped around, holding the knife out, ready to go for it at any second.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” said Nicolas from the corner. “What do you want?”
Levi didn’t say anything. He crept forward.
“What are you doing here?” This time the voice was behind him.
Levi swung himself around to see Nicolas standing behind him, knife in hand. Did this guy always have a knife on him? Did he sleep with a knife or something?
Nicolas pressed the tip of the blade to Levi’s neck.
“Get out. Or you know what will happen.”
The knife was cold against Levi’s skin. Nicolas was going to kill him if he didn’t act quickly.
Levi was close enough to get a decent hit.
He went for it, lashing out with the knife and stabbing it into Nicolas, and pulled it out as soon as he was sure it had gone all the way in.
Nicolas was fast too. As soon as he felt the knife against him, he stabbed Levi again. Nicolas, being a more experienced stabber, hit a slightly more vital organ.
Levi lay dying on the floor knowing that Nicolas had won again.
“He died pretty soon after you, you know,” said Lucifer, approximately fifteen years later.
“I know,” said Levi. “But if he died properly, why am I still here?”
“The universe works in mysterious ways. The deal I made with you was for you to be reborn until you killed him. I guess it’s something like...you stabbed him, but because you died first, technically it was the blood loss that killed him.”
“So I have to live forever knowing that I failed?” He didn’t really want to live forever if he was just going to feel bad about it.
“Well, you did land the fatal shot. So you didn’t fail. I don’t know what’s going to happen now. If you really want to die, maybe you could bring him back to life and kill him again. That would probably work.”
“I don’t want him any more alive than he is now. He doesn’t deserve any more of it.” Levi folded his arms. “Where is he?”
“Probably wandering Purgatory. He will be for a while. Eventually he’ll find a line and wait in it, and at the end of that line either Heaven or Hell will choose him, and then it’s whoever’s job to do something with him.”
It happened to everyone, supposedly. The line between heaven and hell. You stand, you wait, you get picked.
It happened to everyone except Levi.
“If he comes to Hell, I’m going to put him in the Labyrinth and make him suffer.”
“You don’t get to choose that,” said Lucifer.
“I’ll write a strongly worded letter,” said Levi. “I’ll make it happen.”
Of course, by the time it would happen, Levi wouldn’t need a strongly worded letter to send him there. He could do it on his own.
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