you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.
(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)
but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.
(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)
there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.
(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)
you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.
(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)
you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.
in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.
but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.
they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.
it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.
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Hazbin Hotel roleswap au concept? maybe?
Got bored, started thinking about "What if Alastor found Vaggie instead of Charlie", snowballed a little from there.
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Edit: an expansion: How Deals Work
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What's swapped in this AU:
For now, only Alastor and Charlie.
Alastor remains largely unchanged. He's still the Radio Demon, the terrifying overlord with a meteoric rise to prominence after killing multiple century-old overlords and broadcasting their screams, then disappeared after a fight with the TV Demon, Vox.
But, now after seven years of. well. Radio silence (lol). His radio has begun broadcasting once more. And unexpectedly, what the voice on the radio speaks of is not the brutal murder of Overlords, but instead, a pet project of his. The Hazbin Hotel, an establishment accepting all, and under his protection, with its insane goal of redeeming sinners.
No one really knows what made the Radio Demon take on such an impossible, foolish task, thuogh speculation is abound. Vox, in particular, likes to ridicule Alastor on his shows to the point where it's a bit of a running gag for his viewers. No one knows anything, except that these days, the Radio Demon is often seen around a winged cat, and an odd, gray-skinned girl.
Charlie, on the other hand, is the Princess Of Hell. To the common sinner, not much is known about her. She's more of an abstract presence since her role has her with responsibilities that don't et her get out as much. What is known is that sometimes appears after an Extermination, you can catch a glimpse of the third-most powerful demon in Hell looking around the devastated circles, cataloging the destruction.
While it's unknown how much of Hell's ruling she actually does, most of the things she attaches her name to have to do with the Extermination, or more accurately, the aftermath. Ways for sinners to get back on their feet after the exterminators pop in and trash shit, for example. Most of the Overlords don't really like having to do this, but even the greatest detractor puts the programs in place with some level of competence, after how the last Overlord to disobey her rules was... Punished.
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So, why the change of heart? Why would Alastor suddenly decide to try to redeem sinners? In a word: Vaggie.
During that particular Extermination Day, Vaggie crawls in an alley, injured and in pain. Lute left her alive, but her eye will never grow back, and she left her torn-off wings to rot in a trashcan a few steps away. Leaning against a dumpster, she decides she needs to rest.
Normally, she'd be afraid of sinners finding her, but she knows from the few of her former colleagues that she's talked to that were trapped in Hell after the Extermination ended and had to be extracted, that Sinners actually have a bit of a grace period after an Extermination, where violence is at an all time low. (She doesn't know this, but this is actually a decree by the Princess of Hell).
As she begins to drift off, however, a shadow falls over her. In canon, this would be Charlie, deciding to help what she thinks is a demon lucky enough to escape the Extermination with only a missing eye for it.
Here, though, the responsibilities of the Princess keep Charlie in her office, working and unable to go see what's been happening with the devastation. Here, her eyes snap open as she senses the aura of an Overlord, and right before everything goes dark, she realizes with horror, that whoever this demon is, he knows she's an Exorcist.
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When she awakes, she's tied to a table, restrained by dark tentacles that radiate demonic power in a room lit by a single bulb. The demon from before walks in, introducing himself as Alastor, and he asks for her name.
Naturally, she ignores him, instead demanding to know what he wants. She considers threatening him that she could call Exorcists down to extract her, but she knows that she's considered a traitor, and it'd never work. For some reason, the demon acquesious, and he explains that he's curious what exactly managed to harm an Exorcist so badly.
As an Overlord, he's seen and even fought off Exorcists before, and he's seen what happens when a demon harms one. They get back up. Tear an limb off and they regenerate, punch a hole through their chest and they'll be down for a while, but it'll close and they'll keep going. Suffocate one and given time, they'll start to breathe again. Even the more thorough methods of disposal simply result in the Exorcist turning into golden light and reconstituting themself or flying back to Heaven.
So, four years into his "sabbatical", when he followed the scent of an unfamiliar type of blood to the sight of an Exorcist missing their wings and an eye, he was naturally very interested. Knowing what, exactly managed to permanently harm an Exorcist is invaluable knowledge for an Overlord, after all, even though he's on a sort of sabbatical.
He threatens torture if she doesn't tell him how to kill an angel, even proposing a Deal where he won't use the knowledge against her (as long as she doesn't attack him) if she tells him. It's his turn to be surprised, however, when she just laughs, rejecting his deal only to just tell him the answer: the only thing that can harm an angel permanently is angelic power. He couldn't kill her even if she wanted him to, and with the guilt she's feeling and the pain she's in, she actually kind of wants to die.
Alastor, after some prodding, gets her to spill her story, and sensing opportunity, offers another Deal; for her to work under him in exchange for his protection, or if not, she can just leave, and he'll let her go. Demons gain power from having Deals, after all, and having one with an Angel is far too tempting.
Vaggie, believing that this is the best option she has, and that she'd probably not have to do that much more than what she'd have to even if she struck out on her own, accepts the Deal.
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Two years later, the two have formed a sort of "friendship?"with each other. It helps that despite Alastor being Alastor, with all the cruelty that implies, since Alastor's basically decided to disappear from politics, he has no real need for any sort of "enforcer" role for Vaggie, and she's more of an assistant than anything. She's also friends with Husk, having bonded over the collective experience of Alastor having them in a Deal, though it is strained at times since Vaggie's Deal is so much more lenient while Alastor owns Husk's soul.
It also helps that Alastor did defend her during Extermination days whenever some Exorcists tried to attack them. He doesn't want to lose his Deal with an Angel, after all!
Eventually, the topic of what goes on in Heaven when they're not down in Hell exterminating demons comes up between Vaggie and Alastor. It's all well and good until Vaggie mentions a woman she knows, and how she talks about her beloved son, and Alastor freezes. That woman? It's his mother. After some talking, Alastor tells her that his only real regret to what he's done (being a serial killer) is that his mother would be heartbroken that he'd turned out like that.
The conversation eventually turns to if Alastor could do someting she'd be proud of now, and, well. He's in Hell, there's not much he can think of right now that'd have the large impact he would want it to have. And honestly, while it does eat at him, he's had decades to make his peace with the fact that his mother would be severely disappointed in him now.
But the idea of doing something that'd make his mother proud stays with him. And eventually, after a conversation with Vaggie he comes up with the idea of redeeming sinners.
And so, one year later, Alastor's radio comes back up, and sinners start hearing of the Hazbin Hotel.
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