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fandumb-thoughts · 2 months

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“What did you do?” Adam asked.

Cain—his first born, the first ever born—looked at him with eyes wide and terrified. Adam’s eyes, Eve would say, the same brown of rich, rain-watered soil.

“I don’t know,” Cain said. “I don’t- Dad, I don’t know. Why won’t he wake up?”

Cain’s lip trembled, hands clasped tightly together, tears welling and falling in great fat drops. He was still so young, younger than Adam had ever been. His knees were knobbly and his wrists thin and he barely came up to Adam’s chin. Big enough to work, to till the fields and pull the weeds and harvest the crops, but small enough to curl tight in his mother’s arms when lightning cracked the sky.

On the ground was Abel, even younger yet. He tended the flocks and kept watch for anything that might want to harm them. He was good with them—gentler than Adam understood, though Eve told him to let him be. Even now several sheep creeped closer, braying nervously at the sharp scent of iron.

Abel was still shorter than Eve. He had a gap in the far back of his mouth where the last of his molars had popped out only a handful of days before. He had freckles that showed up in the summer sun, as if he had grown them there, all over his face and shoulders and arms.

“Dad, what do I do? What can I-?”

Abel’s eyes were open, looking to the sky that they so resembled, but they didn’t see anything. Somehow, Adam knew. Abel wouldn’t see anything ever again.

Adam hadn’t known that they could die. Humans, that was. Adam hadn’t known that Humans could die. How could he?

He’d suspected, of course. He bled when he was cut just like the animals he’d learned to butcher for their fat and meat and skin. He grew weak when they had little food to come by, they all had fallen ill a time or two, he’d watched as Eve lost what would have, otherwise, turned into a child. It wasn’t a shocking conclusion to reach, but he’d never known for certain. Not like he did now.

Adam fell to his knees, hands helplessly cradling Abel’s face. His son, his body, his baby-

There was so much blood, comign from the cracked-open place in Abel’s brown hair. It dyed his curls slick black, spilling down his neck. The soil was covered in it. This place would be stained for days—weeks, maybe even months—just as the place they slaughtered the livestock was marked as a place of death.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry.” Cain was sobbing, hiccuping over his words and gasping for breath.

Adam’s vision was blurring as his own tears came. Abel’s face felt rubbery and wrong underneath his hands. Lifeless.

This was wrong. This shouldn’t have happened. This should never happen. Abel was so young, had so much more to live. He would keep growing—maybe until he was taller than not only his mother but Adam too—and he would continue to tend the flocks like personally tending to the lambs that fell ill with sudden weakness and some day he would have his own children because that’s how it worked, how God had told them it worked and He never lied.

“D-Dad, say something, please. Daddy, say something!”

Cain was his son, too. The first Human ever born when Adam and Eve still struggled to provide even the most basic needs for themselves. He was a good boy—always so helpful, always so smart. He knew when food ran low, when the well pulled up dry, when the hearth burnt out, that it wasn’t easily fixed and so he didn’t complain and tried his hardest to make it better, somehow. He was a good son.

So why had he done this?

“What happened?” Adam asked, still looking at those glassy blue eyes.

“I-” Cain stuttered, like he didn’t expect to be asked. “We went to bring out sacrifices to God. I brought what extra I had grown and Abel slaughtered a goat—the little one, with the limp. God accepted the goat but He…He said I was to do better.”

God was like that sometimes, Adam knew. He didn’t know why, maybe He just liked meat better than grains and fruit.

Each time they had to butcher even a chicken Abel got—had gotten—upset. When they slaughtered the goats and sheep and cattle he always cried, but they needed to eat and God needed to be praised and worshiped.

“He- He always says that, but I give Him everything. I’ve always set aside the sweetest fruit, the finest wheat, the very best of the lot. I make sure to give Him everything Mom thinks we can spare—sometimes even more because I don’t want to disappoint Him.”

Cain sounded desperate. Like he needed Adam to understand.

“What happened?” Adam repeated. His voice thundered, and he saw Cain’s feet stumble back. Some part of Adam was distraught at having incited such a fearful reaction, but some other part nearly reveled in it.

“I was just so angry,” Cain said, sounding miserable and defeated and small. “It isn’t fair Abel is always getting praised when he’s choosing the weakest and worst of what he has. I didn’t…I wanted him to hurt but not this badly.”

“Wasn’t,” Adam said.

He was shaking, but not from cold or fear. Rage coursed through him like it never had before—not even when Lilith left him, or when he’d bitten into the Fruit and understand what they had just been tricked into doing, or when God had cast them from Eden.

“What?” Cain asked. He still sounded so small, like he was Seth’s age instead of nearly fifteen. Maybe even younger than that.

“It wasn’t fair. Abel was getting praised.”

“No! No, Dad, he isn’t- I didn’t-”

He understood what he’d done. He probably had since the very start, or close to it. He was never stupid.

“He is,” Adam said, and finally looked at Cain.

Cain looked lost. Frightened, in many ways, like every single thing he knew had been upended and scattered. Adam…couldn’t feel much of anything.

“He can’t be,” Cain said, a plea like a prayer. “I didn’t mean it.”

“He is. He’s dead. You killed him.”

“No,” Cain wept. “No!”

Adam was standing. His hands were covered in his son’s blood, his son who lay dead on the ground at his feet. Cain shrank away from him, like-

Like he was afraid Adam might kill him.

“Leave,” Adam said.

Cain sobbed. “No, Daddy, please- I didn’t know! I didn’t know!”

“Leave!” Adam shouted. “You killed him! Get away from here, get out!”

Cain tripped over his feet, scrapped a knee and both palms in the dirt. And then he ran.

Adam watched until he left the field they had tended together, that Adam had first sowed when Cain was first learning to wobble on chubby legs. He watched as he tore through the brush and sharp brushes, until he lost sight of his hair and brown tunic, until he couldn’t hear him in the forest. He stayed there, staring off into the space where he had gone, until a small lamb brayed near his feet.

The creature had crept closer to him and its fallen favorite master. It bleated at the boy crumpled to the earth, clean white wool coming nearer and nearer to being stained by the blood congealing in Abel’s clothes.

“Fuck,” Adam said. His boy—his boys. Cain and Abel, the first two and then only two for several grueling years. One always coming right after the other.

Hadn’t Eve seen this coming? Had a dream so terrible it woke her in the night with a start so strong it had woken Adam, too? She’d begged him to help them, their two eldest children, to prevent the animosity she knew was brewing.

Adam hadn’t believed her, not really. The boys adored each other, it was plain as day to see. Still, she had insisted and it wasn’t that bad of an idea to separate their area of work. Perhaps it would be best, in the long run, for Cain to know as much as he could about farming the earth and for Abel to know how best to tend to their animals. A downright practicality. Up until this moment, had Eve come to him again with her concerns, he didn't think he would have believed it.

Even now, even after all this…he couldn’t actually believe that the two hated each other. Certainly not their sweet, gentle Abel and their thoughtful, dedicated Cain. Not when the roughest tumble they’d gotten into before had only resulted in bruises because they’d accidentally fallen from the river bank they’d been walking near. Not when Adam had watched Cain rise from the bed he and Abel shared with their youngest brother, delicately extracting himself from the tangle of limbs so as to not wake the others, only this morning.

“Fuck!” Adam yelled, tears falling hot and fast.

It was frighteningly easy to gather Abel into his arms. To carry his limp little body back to the house—back to his bed, his mother, their hearth.

“Adam?” came Eve, as he entered their little yard. “What- no, no!”

She must’ve thought he was carrying something else, at least for a moment, but the instant she realized her scream was shrill enough to send the chickens flying to the trees.

“No, no, my baby, my baby,” she cried, running to Adam as if she could take the weight all unto herself. “No, please, this can’t- oh!”

From where Eve had come was Seth, only seven and still little enough to cling to his mother’s legs when uncertain. He looked very much like he would like to do just that, now, old enough to understand that he wouldn’t be able to. Not when Eve wept as she did, not when Adam’s face was wet, not when Abel was limp and Cain was nowhere to be found.

Eve crumpled to her knees, taking Adam down with her. Her arms crossed beneath his. Between them they cradled Abel, so small and so young and so very dead.

~~~

A/N: Full disclaimer I did in fact write this because I watched Hazbin Hotel. Yes, it did surprise me that such a stupid little show (that I have semi-complicated opinions about but did enjoy watching) inspired something like this. I don't think it's strongly related to Hazbin Hotel in any way, though it could be if I was actually interested in expanding it (and I'm not really). There is non-negligible impact from Supernatural and Good Omens in this as well.

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