The apartment smells like garlic and spices, music humming softly from the radio while Fizzarolli stands at the stove, stirring a pan with surprising concentration. You smile from your place against the counter, watching the tiny crease between his brows whenever he cooks, because he treats every recipe like a performance, muttering to himself whenever something doesn't go exactly right.
"You know," you tease, "for someone who used to fly through the air for a living, you're awfully dramatic over onions."
"They're disrespecting me," he huffs, pointing the spoon at them. "They're uneven."
Before you can answer, the dish towel tossed carelessly beside the burner slips just a little closer.
The edge catches.
A tiny flame appears.
Then another.
Fizz freezes.
The spoon slips from his fingers with a dull clatter, his breathing stopping altogether as the orange glow reflects in his wide eyes. The kitchen disappears from his expression, replaced by smoke only he can see, screams only he can hear, fire swallowing canvas, wood... people.
"Fizz?"
He doesn't answer.
You move instantly, grabbing the towel with the metal tongs and throwing it into the sink before turning the tap on full blast. Steam rises with a loud hiss, the flames dying almost immediately.
Silence.
When you turn back, Fizz hasn't moved. His prosthetic fingers tremble uncontrollably, his chest rising in quick, uneven breaths as he stares at the sink without seeing it.
You cross the kitchen slowly this time.
"Hey..."
Your hands find his cheeks, warm and steady, gently guiding his gaze toward yours.
"It's over," you whisper. "Look at me, love. You're here, you're safe, and the fire's gone."
His eyes finally focus.
"I..." His voice breaks. "I smelled it."
"I know."
"I couldn't move."
"You don't have to explain."
The first tear escapes before he can stop it.
You pull him into your arms without another word, holding him tightly as he buries his face against your shoulder, his body shaking with silent sobs. Your hand rubs slow circles between his shoulders while you press a kiss against his temple.
"I've got you," you murmur. "I've always got you."
ʜᴇʟʟᴀᴠᴇʀsᴇ (you're tagged in everything Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss)
✦ blurb — The angels called you a murderer. Hell called you a monster. But when Fizzarolli meets a frightened child carrying more guilt than anyone their age ever should, he decides there's one thing he'll never let the world take from you again: the chance to believe you deserve to be protected.
The first thing you learned about Hell was that nobody looked twice at a crying child.
Sinners shoved past you in the street like you were part of the trash scattered across the pavement, their boots splashing through puddles of rain, their voices loud, sharp, hungry, while neon signs buzzed overhead and painted everything in colors that hurt your eyes. You stood too close to the wall of a half-collapsed building, arms wrapped around yourself, your small shoulders hunched as though making yourself smaller might help the world forget you were there.
You did not understand where you were supposed to go.
You did not understand why your skin had changed, why your hands looked wrong, why the little horns curving from your head felt heavy when you moved too fast. You had woken up in the middle of a city that screamed and laughed and bled all at once, and every face around you looked like something from a nightmare, though none of them seemed surprised to see a child standing among them.
Hell did not stop for you. It did not soften. It only opened its mouth and swallowed you whole.
You had been there three days when the sky split open.
At first, you thought it was thunder, until the clouds tore apart and white light poured through, too bright, too clean, too beautiful for a place like this. People around you started running before you understood why. Screams rose from every street, doors slammed, windows shattered, and above it all came the wingbeats, dozens of them, cutting through the smoke like knives.
Angels descended.
They did not look the way you had imagined angels should look. They were not gentle. They were not warm.
They laughed as they hunted, their halos glowing above masked faces, weapons flashing silver in their hands as sinners scattered through the streets like frightened animals. You pressed yourself into the narrow space between two buildings, knees drawn to your chest, both hands clamped over your mouth because crying too loudly felt dangerous.
One of them found you anyway.
The angel landed at the mouth of the alley, blade resting lazily over one shoulder, her head tilting as she noticed you trembling in the shadows. For one foolish heartbeat, you thought she might help. Something in you, some last little piece of the child you had been before all of this, wanted to believe that someone from Heaven would look at you and understand there had been a mistake.
Instead, she laughed.
“Well, look at that,” she said, stepping closer, her voice bright with amusement. “They’re letting kids in now?”
You could not move.
Her mask angled down toward you, and though you could not see her eyes, you felt her looking at every inch of you, taking in the horns, the tail curled tightly around your leg, the fear you could not hide.
“A disgusting little murderer,” she continued, and the words struck harder than the weapon in her hand ever could have. “What did you do, huh? Kill someone? Had to be something good to end up down here this young.”
Your throat closed.
“I didn’t—”
She laughed again, loud enough that a few nearby sinners hiding in broken doorways turned their heads.
“Oh, don’t bother. Heaven doesn’t make mistakes.”
The sentence sank into you like cold water.
Heaven doesn’t make mistakes.
When the angel finally moved on, distracted by another sinner bolting across the street, you stayed frozen in the alley with your hands pressed to your mouth and your heart beating so hard it made you sick. You did not even notice the sinners watching until their whispers started spreading from one ruined doorway to the next.
“That’s the kid who killed someone.”
“A kid?”
“Guess evil starts early.”
“Wonder who it was.”
You ran before any of them could come closer.
After that, the whispers followed you everywhere.
In markets, in alleys, outside clubs where music poured into the streets, strangers looked down at you and lowered their voices, not always quietly enough. You learned to keep your head down. You learned to move quickly. You learned that if someone offered food with too kind a smile, you should not take it, because kindness in Hell always seemed to come with teeth.
The angel’s words stayed louder than all of them. Heaven doesn’t make mistakes. You had killed someone. That meant you were bad. That was why you were here.
By the time Fizzarolli first saw you, you were sitting on the curb outside Ozzie’s, knees pulled to your chest, watching the glowing entrance from the other side of the street. The club was alive with music, laughter, bright signs, and bodies moving in and out like the whole building had a heartbeat of its own. It should have scared you, and maybe it did, but the light was warm, and for a little while, sitting beneath it made the street feel less empty.
Fizz noticed you because you were the only person outside Ozzie’s who wasn’t trying to get in.
He was leaving through the side entrance, still half in costume, makeup sharp beneath the neon glow, mechanical limbs moving with easy precision as he spun a keyring around one finger. He was laughing at something one of the stagehands had said, bright and loud, until his gaze drifted across the street and landed on you.
His smile faltered just a little.
You looked too small for the curb. Too still. Hell was full of kids who learned quickly how to be loud, cruel, fast, anything that kept them from being crushed under someone else’s boot, but you sat there as though every noise around you pressed you deeper into yourself.
Fizz crossed the street before he could talk himself out of it.
“Hey,” he said, crouching a few feet away from you, his voice light, his grin returning like a curtain lifting onstage. “You waiting for the world’s worst babysitter, or are you just really into loitering outside extremely classy establishments?”
You stared at him.
No laugh. No smile. Not even confusion.
Fizz blinked, then leaned slightly closer, one hand pressed to his chest in exaggerated offense.
“Wow. Nothing? Tough crowd. Usually I at least get a pity snort.”
You looked down at your knees.
He studied you a moment longer, the joke fading from his face, not because he was annoyed, but because something about your silence made the old instincts under his skin go still. He knew what it looked like when someone did not laugh because they were scared to make noise. He knew what it looked like when a body expected punishment for taking up space.
So he stopped performing. His voice softened.
“You got somewhere to go, kid?”
Your fingers tightened around the fabric of your sleeve.
Fizz waited.
The club roared behind him, laughter spilling through the door when someone stepped outside, but he kept his attention on you, not pushing, not reaching, not doing any of the things that usually made you flinch.
Finally, you shook your head.
Fizz exhaled quietly through his nose, glancing toward the street, toward the sinners watching from a distance with too much curiosity. A few of them were whispering already, and when one of them muttered something about “the little murderer,” your shoulders curled inward so fast Fizz’s expression sharpened.
He looked back at you. You had heard it too.
“What are they talking about?” he asked, carefully.
You did not answer. Fizz’s jaw shifted, his smile disappearing completely now.
“Okay,” he said, standing, then offering you one mechanical hand without moving it too close. “How about we get you out of the street first, and then nobody has to talk until you want to?”
You stared at the hand.
It was not like any hand you had ever seen. Long, jointed, bright, ending in fingers that looked too delicate for something made of metal. You wondered if touching it would feel cold. You wondered if he would grab you if you tried.
He seemed to understand, because he lowered it slowly.
“Or you can just walk next to me. No touching. Totally allowed. I’m a big supporter of not getting grabbed by strangers.”
That made you look at him. Not smile, exactly. But look. Fizz counted it as a win.
He led you through the side entrance, past startled employees who knew better than to question him when his expression looked like that, and into a quieter hallway behind the club. The music softened here, becoming a pulse through the walls rather than a roar. Fizz found a break room with an old couch, a vending machine, and a table covered in half-empty coffee cups, then rummaged through a cabinet until he found a sealed snack pack and a bottle of water.
He placed both on the table, then sat on the floor several feet away, crossing his legs.
You watched him with suspicion.
Fizz pointed at the snack.
“Yours if you want it. If not, I will bravely sacrifice myself and eat it later.”
You waited a long time before reaching for it. He did not comment when your hands shook.
For several minutes, neither of you spoke. You ate slowly, like you were afraid someone would take the food back if you moved too fast, and Fizz felt something heavy settle behind his ribs. Anger came easily to him, sometimes too easily, but this anger was quieter, older, the kind that had nowhere clean to go.
When you finished, he leaned his head back against the couch.
“I’m Fizz,” he said. “Fizzarolli if I’m in trouble, famous if someone’s paying, annoying if you ask Blitzø, which you shouldn’t, because he’s full of garbage opinions.”
A pause. Then, barely above a whisper, you gave him your name.
“I’m Y/N”
Fizz repeated it once, gently, like he was making sure he had it right.
“Nice to meet you.”
You looked away.
“You shouldn’t be nice to me.”
Fizz’s face changed. Just slightly.
“Why’s that?”
Your mouth trembled, and you pressed your lips together hard, as though the words were trying to crawl out against your will. He did not rush you. He only sat there, still and patient, which somehow made it harder not to speak.
“Because I’m bad.”
Fizz stared at you.
The hallway beyond the door hummed with distant music and laughter, the kind of life that never seemed to care about anything happening quietly in forgotten rooms. Your fingers worried at the edge of the snack wrapper until it crinkled between your hands.
“That angel said Heaven doesn’t make mistakes,” you whispered. “She said I’m here because I killed someone.”
Fizz became very still.
You did not look at him as you spoke. Your eyes stayed fixed on the floor, wide and unfocused, like you were seeing somewhere else entirely.
“And they all heard. Everyone heard. They keep saying it. They keep looking at me like...” Your voice cracked, and you swallowed hard. “Like I’m worse than everybody else.”
Fizz’s hands curled slowly against his knees.
He had heard plenty about Heaven. He had heard enough to know their judgment could be sharp, clean, and merciless, the kind that cut without asking why someone had been bleeding in the first place. But hearing it from a child, from someone whose feet barely reached the floor when sitting on the couch, made something hot and furious rise in his throat.
Still, when he spoke, he kept his voice gentle.
“Did you?”
You flinched. Fizz hated himself for asking, but he had to know how to answer you properly. Your eyes filled before the tears fell.
“I didn’t mean to.”
The words came out small, broken, dragged from somewhere so deep they seemed to hurt your chest on the way out.
Fizz said nothing. That was all the permission you needed, or maybe all the permission you had been waiting for since you arrived.
“They hurt me,” you whispered, and the room seemed to shrink around the words. “All the time. I tried to be good. I tried to be quiet. I tried to do everything right, but it didn’t matter, and one day they got so mad, and I got scared, and there was something on the table, and I just...” You squeezed your eyes shut, tears slipping down your cheeks now. “I just wanted them to stop.”
Fizz did not move. He barely breathed.
“I didn’t plan it,” you said quickly, like you had said it before to people who hadn’t cared, like you were trying to defend yourself in a trial that had already ended. “I didn’t want to be bad. I didn’t want anyone to die. I just wanted them to stop hurting me.”
Your hands had started shaking harder.
“They said I should’ve just taken it.”
Fizz’s eyes lifted sharply.
“Who said that?”
“The angels.” Your voice broke on the word. “When I got here, during the purge, one of them said Heaven doesn’t make mistakes, and if I killed someone, then I belonged here. She looked at me like I was worse than him.”
Fizz’s expression went blank. Not empty but controlled. Dangerously controlled.
You hugged yourself tightly, your small fingers digging into your sleeves.
“Maybe I am,” you said, barely audible. “Maybe if I were good, I would’ve let it happen. Maybe good people don’t fight back.”
Fizz pushed himself to his feet so quickly that you startled, but he immediately raised both hands, palms open, forcing himself to slow down. His anger was not for you. It could never be for you. But it roared through him anyway, loud enough that for one moment, all he could imagine was finding that angel, finding anyone who had looked at you and decided a dead abuser mattered more than the child who survived him.
He turned away, dragging a hand down his face, breathing hard.
“Fizz?” you whispered.
The sound of your voice brought him back.
He looked over his shoulder, and all the rage in his face softened so fast it almost hurt. You were staring up at him like you expected him to hate you now, like telling the truth had only made you more certain that the world would turn away.
Fizz crossed back slowly and crouched in front of you, not too close, never too close unless you chose it.
“Listen to me,” he said, and his voice shook, not with uncertainty, but with the effort of holding back everything too loud for you to carry. “You did what you had to do to protect yourself. That does not make you a monster.”
Your face crumpled.
“But I killed—”
“You had to, you defended yourself,” he interrupted, firmer now, though still gentle. “Those are not the same thing.”
Tears slipped faster down your cheeks.
“They said I’m bad.”
“They were wrong.”
“Heaven—”
“Can kiss my entire ass.”
Your eyes widened.
Fizz pointed at you, serious despite the words.
“And I mean that professionally.”
For the first time, a sound escaped you that might have become a laugh if it hadn’t broken into a sob instead.
Fizz’s face softened completely.
“There it is,” he murmured, quieter. “There you are.”
You covered your face with both hands and cried.
Not the silent crying you had learned to do in alleys, not the careful tears you swallowed before anyone could notice, but real crying, messy and loud and too big for your little body. Fizz stayed right there on the floor in front of you, letting you sob without telling you to stop, without shushing you, without looking uncomfortable because your pain had become inconvenient.
When you finally reached for him, he moved instantly.
His arms wrapped around you with a care that made your chest ache, mechanical hands settling lightly against your back as you buried your face against his shoulder and clung to him like you were afraid the room might disappear. Fizz held you steady, one hand rubbing small circles between your shoulder blades, the other braced carefully behind your head.
“You’re not bad,” he said into your hair. “You hear me? You’re not bad.”
You shook against him.
“You were scared. You were hurt. You were a kid who should’ve been protected, and nobody did their damn job.” His voice thickened, and he swallowed before continuing. “So you protected yourself.”
You cried harder.
Fizz closed his eyes.
In Hell, people heard a child had killed someone and decided that was the end of the story. Heaven looked at a life and saw only the final act, not the years leading to it, not the hands that had cornered you, not the terror that had made survival look like sin. Fizz knew something about being judged by the part of you that survived. He knew what it meant for people to point at damage and call it ugliness.
He held you tighter.
“Monsters like hurting people,” he said softly. “They enjoy it. They chase it. You didn’t do that. You got out.”
You sniffled against his shoulder.
“But I’m in Hell.”
“Yeah,” Fizz said, glancing around the break room with a humorless little smile. “Place sucks. Terrible décor. Worse traffic. Way too many people with opinions.”
You made a wet, broken little sound.
He leaned back just enough to look at you.
“But being here doesn’t mean you’re what they said you are.”
You stared at him through tear-blurred eyes.
“How do you know?”
Fizz’s throat tightened.
Because he had seen enough cruelty to recognize its shape. Because he knew guilt when it sat in someone’s body like a second skeleton. Because bad people did not tremble over the harm they had caused while insisting they only wanted the pain to stop. Because a monster would not ask if they were one with that much terror in their voice.
Instead of saying all of that, he tapped gently against the center of your chest with one metal finger.
“Because you’re still worried about it.”
You looked confused.
Fizz smiled sadly.
“Bad people don’t sit around scared they’re bad, kid. Not like this.”
You went quiet.
The music outside shifted into something slower, the bass soft through the walls, while the break room light buzzed faintly overhead. For the first time since you had arrived in Hell, the silence did not feel like something waiting to punish you.
Fizz reached for a napkin from the table and handed it to you.
“Here. Very fancy tissue. Top-tier establishment.”
You took it and wiped your face.
He pretended not to notice the way your hands still shook.
After a while, you whispered, “What happens now?”
Fizz sat back on the floor, crossing his legs again like the question was easy, like the world had not just cracked open between you.
“Well, first, you’re gonna drink some water because crying is dehydrating and I am very medically qualified on account of being dramatic all the time.” He pushed the bottle gently toward you. “Then we’re gonna figure out food, because that snack was pathetic, and after that, I’m calling Ozzie.”
You stiffened.
Fizz noticed immediately.
“Not because you’re in trouble,” he said. “Because you need a safe place, and Ozzie has money, space, and the emotional range of a very protective furnace when someone messes with kids.”
By the end of the night, you were curled on the break room couch beneath a ridiculous feathered coat Fizz had stolen from the costume department because “blankets are for amateurs,” your eyes heavy, your cheeks still blotchy from crying. Fizz sat on the floor beside the couch, back against it, keeping watch like the entire city might personally try something if he looked away for more than five seconds.
Ozzie arrived sometime after midnight.
You woke just enough to hear the door open and a deep voice lower immediately.
“Fizz?”
“Quiet,” Fizz hissed. “Kid’s sleeping.”
A pause.
Then softer footsteps.
You cracked your eyes open and saw someone enormous standing near the door, all glowing eyes and careful hands, his expression changing as he looked from you to Fizz and understood there was more to the story than a stray child needing a couch.
Ozzie said nothing loud.
He only crouched, somehow making himself smaller despite being impossible to ignore, and asked, “Hey, little one. You hungry?”
You did not answer at first.
Fizz looked over his shoulder at you.
“It’s okay,” he said. “He’s safe.”
You believed him because he said it like a promise.
The next few days did not fix everything.
Hell was still Hell. The whispers did not disappear all at once. The nightmares did not stop because someone had finally told you they were wrong. You still flinched at raised voices, still froze when strangers stood too close, still woke with your hands clenched in the blankets and your heart racing like you were back in that place, back in that moment, back with no way out.
But now, when it happened, someone was there.
Fizz showed up with breakfast that had too much sugar, sat beside you without asking questions, and talked about whatever ridiculous thing had happened backstage until your breathing steadied. Ozzie made sure no one came near you unless you wanted them to. Staff learned quickly that gossiping about “the kid who killed someone” anywhere near Fizz was an excellent way to get screamed at by a clown with extendable limbs and no patience for cruelty disguised as curiosity.
And slowly, very slowly, you began to exist again.
Not happily, not all at once, but in small pieces.
You learned which hallways were quiet. You learned that Ozzie’s office had a corner where nobody bothered you. You learned that Fizz could make three different funny voices during one story, four if he was trying too hard, and that sometimes he pretended to trip over his own legs just to see whether you would react.
For weeks, you didn’t laugh.
Then one afternoon, Fizz balanced a spoon on his nose, declared himself “the greatest spoon-based performer in the Lust Ring,” and immediately sneezed so hard the spoon flew across the room and hit a wall.
The laugh escaped before you could stop it.
Small. Rusty. Gone almost immediately.
Fizz froze. Ozzie, sitting across the room, froze too.
You looked terrified for half a second, like you had done something wrong, until Fizz threw both arms into the air and gasped.
“Audience approval! Finally! I was dying up here!”
You pressed both hands over your mouth, but the smile had already happened.
Fizz pretended not to look emotional about it.
He failed.
That night, when the club had quieted and most of the lights were dim, you sat beside him on the edge of the stage, your legs dangling above the empty floor. The room looked different without the crowd, softer somehow, the glitter and velvet and gold no longer performing for anyone. Fizz leaned back on his hands, staring up at the ceiling rigging, while you picked at the hem of your sleeve.
After a long silence, you asked the question that had never really left you.
“Fizz?”
“Yeah, kid?”
Your voice came out so quietly he almost missed it.
“Am I bad?”
Fizz turned his head toward you.
You did not look at him. Your eyes stayed on your knees, your body braced for the answer even after everything, even after the food and the couch and the feathered coat and the jokes and the way he had never once looked at you like the angel had.
Fizz sat up.
“No,” he said, firm enough that the word filled the empty club. “You are not bad.”
Your fingers tightened in your sleeve.
“But what if—”
“No.”
“But Heaven—”
“No.”
“But I—”
“Fought back,” Fizz said, softer now, leaning closer until his shoulder gently bumped yours. “You had to.”
You swallowed hard.
“What if people still say it?”
“Then they answer to me.”
A tiny pause.
“And Ozzie.”
Another pause.
“And honestly probably Ozzie first, because he’s taller and scarier when he gets quiet.”
You looked up at him.
Fizz smiled, but it wasn’t the stage smile, not bright, not fake, not the one he used to make a room love him. It was smaller. Realer.
“You don’t have to prove you deserve to be protected,” he said. “You were always supposed to be protected.”
Your eyes filled again, but this time the tears did not feel sharp.
Fizz nudged your shoulder gently.
“And while we’re at it, you also don’t have to be funny, loud, useful, adorable, though unfortunately you are, or good at anything to earn a place here.”
You sniffled.
“I’m not adorable.”
“Wrong. Terrible opinion. We’ll work on that.”
A quiet laugh slipped out of you.
Fizz’s eyes softened.
“There it is again.”
You leaned into him slowly, giving him time to move away if he wanted to, but he only lifted one arm and tucked it around your shoulders, pulling you close with the easy warmth of someone who had already decided you were staying.
The club remained quiet around you.
For the first time, quiet did not feel like fear.
It felt like rest.
You sat there for a long time with Fizz beside you, his arm secure around your shoulders, the empty stage stretching beneath your feet like a place where something new might begin. You were still in Hell. You still carried the memories. You still had bad days waiting for you, and there would always be people cruel enough to mistake survival for sin.
But when the old question whispered inside your head, when the angel’s voice tried to crawl back in and tell you Heaven did not make mistakes, another voice answered now, louder, warmer, unwavering.
No.
You were not bad.
You were a child who defended themselves.
And for the first time since arriving in Hell, that felt like something you were allowed to be.
ʜᴇʟʟᴀᴠᴇʀsᴇ (you're tagged in everything Hazbin Hotel & Helluva Boss)
Clearly Stolas's kidnapping and the PTSD he's gotten from it is gonna be looked at in season 3. Though I think Blitz has sorta made it up to Stolas, I can't imagine Blitz not even texting Stolas back while he's in the hospital isn't a little bit of a sore spot.
Especially if Stolas finds out that Blitz had tried to see Fizz when Fizz was laid up in the hospital after the fire. Stolas finding out about that "either from Ozzie, Fizz or even Blitz because he's an idiot might put further strain on their relationship.
