"Revenge is a dish best served cold."
-Old Klingon proverb

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In one reality out of infinite possibilities, perhaps the First Man wasn't the only in the Exorcists.

Let me spin you a story... about a pair of Winners named Martin and Marian Royce.

Martin and Marian were twin siblings living mundane lives. Their parents took them to church virtually every Sunday since they were born and gave the two their values and morals. And the twins never forgot the most important piece of advice their mother, Emily (no relation to the seraphim) gave them: "If someone knocks you down, you get right back up. You stand up for yourselves and each other, and you don't take crap from ANYONE."

Martin's father, Toby, wasn't as big a churchgoer as the rest of the family, and he taught him how to play guitar and poker. And Martin got VERY good at both. He always prided himself on his ability to tell what others are usually thinking. Toby played at gigs all over town, got drunk one night, and ended sleeping with another woman. He felt horrible about it, but Emily wouldn't hear otherwise, and they divorced almost immediately... And Toby committed suicide out of sheer guilt not long before Martin and Marian began high school.

Martin remembered feeling a lot of emotions he didn't understand how to process, so he put on his best poker face and acted like nothing ever bothers him. Around the same time, he and Marian made a promise to each other. That Martin would always be there for her if she couldn't protect herself, and that if they couldn't be there for each other in person, then they would be in spirit.

Martin went on to study music and performance in college, wanting to be a professional guitarist, and went on a road trip, riding around the country on a motorcycle for a year after he graduated to broaden his horizons, playing at bars, parties, clubs, and at churches every Sunday. It was during this period that he learned about a certain popstar... One named Verosika Mayday. He almost went to a Spring Break concert of hers in Florida but ended up cancelling after contracting a stomach virus. But Martin seriously considered sending her a resume once his road trip was over.

Then the first time Martin and Marian saw each other after a year was the day they both died. Though they assumed it was a drunk driver, when the twins were in 10th grade, Martin kicked a bully in a bully in the balls when he took Marian's hat and pushed her hard enough to make her fall when she asked for it back. The twins forgot about this and moved on with their lives. The bully's mother did NOT, nursing a grudge against the "psycho punk" that made her son walk funny for a week. Then she saw the two outside a diner they ate all the time when they were kids and gunned it when Marian was in the middle of the road. Martin didn't even think. He just moved, throwing himself between Marian and the car. And the next thing they knew, they both woke up in Heaven. It was every bit the Paradise they were told their whole lives was waiting for them. At least... That's what they thought at first.

Adam and Lute came by their house a month or so after they had settled in, since Adam made a habit of personally greeting every new Winner, and the topic of the Exorcists came up. All they said was that they were an order of warrior angels dedicated to keeping watch over Heaven if war with Hell ever began. The twins only ever wanted what was best for Heaven and truly believed it was worth fighting for. They thought Adam felt the same way, which is why he offered to let them join. THEM. A pair of fresh-faced winners impressing the First Man himself in the span of a single conversation? What were the odds?

All Martin and Marian wanted, all they EVER wanted, was what they thought was best for Heaven. They had nothing but pure intentions. And if they'd known what Adam and Lute TRULY were like, they never would have accepted. But it's literally Heaven. Nothing could possibly be wrong with it, right? The twins had forgotten an important piece of advice from their father. "If something sounds too good to be true, that's because it usually is." Martin in particular had forgotten... "Sooner or later, life will remind you there's ALWAYS someone who has a better poker face than you." And in a situation like that, you don't realize the danger you're in until AFTER you've gotten hurt.

So, they trained, day after day. Adam himself personally oversaw them. He broke them down, built them back up, and gave them new names as Exorcists. Marian's was Sonata, and Martin's was Arpeggio. And he told them the truth about the Exorcists, or... the version of the truth that made him look good. That the Exorcists went down into Hell once a year to punish demons and strike them down for preying on human souls. Then they were sworn to absolute secrecy over the nature of their "sacred mission". They thought they were going to be heroes...

Then Extermination Day came, and Hell was NOTHING like they were expecting. It wasn't the fire and brimstone they had beaten into their heads as children. It was a city that looked almost like anywhere on Earth. These weren't the demons Adam told them would fight tooth and nail to survive. These were people who were running from them because they didn't want to die. It was too much. Martin blocked out the noise and went into autopilot, a voice in his head like a broken record telling him they deserved it BECAUSE they're in Hell, that his cause is just... But that's only what he was telling himself. Because admitting Adam lied meant admitting Heaven wasn't perfect.

Then right before they were about to go back to Heaven, Martin saw some Exorcists on a roof, watching something happening on the street below. ...It was Marian... They were Sinners on top of her, and they were... Martin tried to help, but he was knocked out and woke up several hours later in Heaven. He found out that Marian had refused to kill who she thought was a child and gotten jumped by his gang. He had promised to always keep her safe and he COULDN'T...

Martin BEGGED Adam to let him go back to Hell to find her. He even threatened to go straight to the High Seraphim about it. But Adam wouldn't see reason and Martin saw his true colors. He was another bully. But this time, he was strong enough to back it up. Martin thus decided to go back anyway, consequences be damned. That was when Lute approached him, saying that she'd convinced Adam to let her go with him. She told Martin everything he wanted to hear and filled his head with delusions of grandeur, getting her claws in nice and deep.

They tracked down the gang that had hurt Marian, got them to say they'd sold her to an incubus visiting from the Lust Ring, then killed them all before they snuck onto the incubus's blimp and found Marian... Then Marian let slip that Adam had coerced her into sleeping with him, threatening to do everything he could to make Martin quit the Exorcists if she didn't. As for Lute? She dropped the pretenses and sprang her trap, stabbing Martin twice and throwing him to the incubus's gang. She never liked the twins, having given the order to leave Marian behind, and had been looking for an excuse to get rid of both all along.

Then Martin was thrown off the blimp with one of his wings broken and fell into the water below. That SHOULD have been the end of Martin Royce... But then he was pulled out of the water and woke up in the home of none other than Verosika Mayday herself, who helped him get back on his feet as he recovered.

Once he was well enough to leave, Martin came up with a simple, if admittedly shitty, plan. Find Marian. Take her back to Heaven. Kill EVERYONE who tries to stop them. If he has to kick down the gates of Heaven to make Adam and Lute pay for what they did, he WILL.

But... for that plan to work, he can't let himself get attached, let anyone get as close as Lute did. And he's begun developing complicated feelings about Verosika...

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So yeah, here's Hellaverse Merrick, in a little bit of an AU I'm working on with  Sickbastard. Done by Jeny312 on Twitter.
Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss are property of Vivienne Medrano.