#grimwalker alastor au

[void-occupation]

Ok, hear me out (angst, bc of course)

I've been having these thoughts bounce around my head for about a week and I finally decided to post them. I don't know who's going to see this, but whoever sees it needed to. I guess this is for an AU rather than a headcanon, but whatever, just hear me out. I was inspired by The Owl House, specifically Hunter, so maybe that will spark some interest. This is about to be a rant, so I'll go ahead and add the read more thing

Okay, now that I have your attention, time for angst.

SO, in The Owl House, we learn in season 2 that (SPOILER ALERT) Hunter is a grimwalker (a clone of someone who died for those of you who don't know), and that before him, there were TONS of other grimwalkers that Belos murdered for "choosing to betray him" AKA realizing that Belos was an evil psychotic bitch. Also, that Hunter looked the most like Caleb (the dead guy he was cloned of) out of all the other grimwalkers, but he didn't KNOW that he was a grimwalker until a very angsty reveal by his abuser (Belos) who then immediately tried to murder his ass.

ANYWAYS, obviously, as the angst-lover I am, I think about this literally all the time. Then. I started thinking. I absolutely love Alastor, he's such a blorbo. And what do I do to my blorbos? I give them immeasurable amounts of trauma, c'mon, keep up.

What do we know about Alastor? Well, someone owns his soul. He disappeared for unknown reasons for seven years. He is INCREDIBLY anxious about whoever owns his soul - or at least the deal itself (as evidenced by his musical breakdown where he literally TEARS HIS OWN HAIR OUT FROM THE STRESS), and that he's probably going to use the deal with Charlie either for nefarious purposes, or to escape his deal.

Which brings us to the point of this post in the first place (kind of???? I might have just been mindlessly rambling there), and the start of my AU. I'm not going to pretend I know who owns Alastor's soul, but I really vibe with the idea of it being either Lilith or Roo, so that's who I'll be thinking of for the majority of this post. What if the person who owns his soul made a deal with him when he first got to hell (or it could be one of those versions where someone sold his soul before he was even born [a sort of "I want your first-born kinda deal] and they let him know when he got to hell which is how he got all his power so quickly), but he managed to either tick them off or get really close to escaping the deal, which lead to them killing Alastor.

Then, the contract-owner realizes, "Oh shit, I kind of need him," and finds out how to make whatever the hell equivalent of a grimwalker is. Thus, Alastor 2.0 is born. However, they can't have him knowing he's a clone - he might find a loophole in the deal that way. So they find a way to control which memories he has. They replace all of the memories the OG Alastor had up until whatever it was he did to get killed in the first place - don't want him getting any ideas after all.

This works fine for the contract-holder for a while, but then Alastor is back on the same shit - trying to find loopholes, backdoors, ticking them off, whatever, and oops, there goes another one. Well shit. Guess it's time to make another clone. So, the process is repeated, and the song and dance continues. However, it always concludes the same way - with Alastor's inevitable "betrayal". Also, none of the clones ever seem to look quite right - sometimes the eye color is wrong, or the height, the cheekbones, or the nose shape - whatever it is, something is always off

So, after many failed attempts, they decide to take a different approach. When they make the new clone, they give them the same memories, everything is the same as the previous attempts, except they don't turn him loose right away. Instead, they keep him under their thumb for seven years - really just until there was something they needed him for. Those seven years were spent conditioning him. They were determined to make him perfect. After all, this clone was the one that looked the most like the original Alastor, there was no way they would let him go like the others.

In his time at their side, Alastor endured unspeakable cruelties - beatings, torture, extreme sensory deprivation, emotional manipulation, sleep deprivation, total isolation - you name it, it was almost certainly done during that time. This is also when his smile was sewn on because the contract holder wanted him to smile more, and used his defense mechanism to torture him (smiled to hide weakness, forced to smile against his will, making the smile itself a constant reminder of how powerless he really is). There was rarely an action Alastor did that provoked his contract holder, but that didn't matter. They convinced him that each "punishment" was earned, that they were simply trying to help him see his own shortcomings and failures, and to make him better. Obviously, this is complete bullshit. However, when you live like that long enough, with no other influences, you become conditioned to believe it.

Eventually, for whatever reason, the contract holder released Alastor on strict orders to go to Charlie's hotel, and Alastor is doing exactly what they told him because he's terrified of the idea of being summoned back to their side. He hates his contract holder, but at the same time craves their approval, because if they're happy with him, then he won't be in pain. However, Alastor has to Alastor, and once he's on his own, he starts looking for ways to escape his deal - but he's sneaky about it. Years of constant conditioning made him cautious. He has no memory of ever searching for loopholes before - a least not successfully (bc the contract holder doesn't let the clones remember those things), so he does the best thing he can think of: he makes a deal with the Princess of Hell herself.

I'm definitely going to make another post about this, probably detailing the reveal. Not right now though because I have homework to do, and this is getting to ungodly lengths

(if you want to see the next part when I post it, keep an eye on the '#grimwalker alastor au' tag. I might just make this a whole thing if anyone is interested. I'll make it a whole thing anyways because I feel like it and deep down I post for myself, but if you're interested, I highly encourage you to ask about it [I don't bite!!])

#alastor #hazbin hotel #alastor hazbin hotel #alastor angst #this idea has had me in a chokehold for the past week #alastor headcanons #toh hunter #grimwalker #mentions of the owl house #grimwalker alastor au #I would say this got away from me except I knew exactly what I was doing #uhhh #long post #alastor's deal #tw mentions of abuse #TW mentions of torture #hazbin hotel au

[zonerobotnik]

Wait, isn't there a problem with it? How does it work from the time? If Varian died when Tangled happened, wouldn't he go to hell around two hundred years ago? Most characters only existed around the past century, Vox must have died when the television was already invented and Alastor came from the roaring 20s.

Yes. He died back in the 1840s and has been around a long time. He generally kept to himself and only really talked to people to contract downtrodden souls to work in his lab with him in exchange for food, shelter and a rare find of common decency. He joined the Vees 6 years ago after someone trashed his lab and hurt his contracted souls. Varian took the attacker out, Vox saw it and got impressed and offered him, his contracted souls, and his equipment a more private and safer place to reside, if he joined his team. [Varian would be much older than the Vs or Alastor.] He is. The Vees affectionately refer to him as their "favorite fossil". As for Alastor, yes, he's older than him, but Alastor was a monster in life and even worse in death and Varian has nightmares about the massacre and can't listen to the radio anymore after hearing the screams. [When you talked about a Owl House AU, you said Varian would arrive on the Boiling Isles at his time, maybe before Philip became the emperor, wouldn't the same problem occur in Hazbin Hotel?] It's not a problem if he's dead in Hell. He's not worrying about dying of age here, or even aging physically. Look at Velvette. She's clearly still a teenager. For the Boiling Isles issue, Varian was still alive and would have to have been with Belos for a long time and befriended many of the Grimwalkers before he ever met Hunter, Luz and the others, so he could only do that if he was Moon Varian and immortal. Belos would know very quickly that he was in control of two very powerful magical creatures, one of which has severe daddy issues and a desperation to be loved and Phillip was ready and eager to take advantage of that. But, in this case, he's dead. He can only die by an angelic weapon, so even getting hurt by someone would just be an annoyance since he can quickly heal naturally. And he can live through so many eras of technology, which he finds fascinating. He used to love listening to the radio after it came out...too bad Alastor ruined it for him.

#ask zone stuff