Barbatos Headcanons

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~General Headcanons~

This will be a running list. Canon items may be mentioned.

~Deep Headcanons~

Please note that the following headcanons will probably be limited to wips and ships only. These headcanons are extremely personal to my Barbatos and if you bring them up without a relationship and prior ooc warning, he may become fearful of you or stonewall you. Please DM admin ooc if you are interested in starting a ship with Barbatos to explore these headcanons in RP.
Be advised that there are some mild canon spoilers, as well as references to irl Barbatos lore. Read at your own risk.

WARNING FOR LOTS OF READING, DARK THEMES, AND ANGST.
~Additional warnings may be listed below~

The Watcher

*irl lore being referenced: Barbatos, the Watchers, Baraqiel/Baraqiyal/Baraqel

>>In a timeline long abandoned.<<

The Celestial Realm was a place of perfect order--where people deferred and obeyed the Most High, and operated in perfect unison. The war between the two realms had long since become stagnant, each never backing down against the other. Things had long since grown repetitive, and dull. Even one of the great Virtues, Barbatos, could grow weary of the eternal struggle. There was little change, little progress, merely a machine of war that was constantly needing to be oiled and maintained.

And then the Lord created a third realm. Created beings after His own image, and called them human.

Such fascinating creatures. They were given gifts no angel could ever claim: freedom of choice, and the gift of love. And yet, even when the humans fell... they were still cared for, still adored, punished yet not eradicated as angels would in disobedience.
But what was so interesting was the unpredictability of such creatures of choice...Barbatos' powers suddenly held more meaning. No longer was his chronomancy a mere weapon to subvert enemy tactics. Scrying into the future and into different timelines became so much more interesting. Infinite futures... bringing such creatures into existence opened Barbatos' eyes to so much more. Even without powers, these humans had futures that were so radically different from one another.
And he realized that the more they knew, the more beautifully intricate the web of futures became.

What irony it was, then, that his very virtue of Generosity became the seedbed of his sin, teaching forbidden arts to the human realm. The humans would now be able to read the stars the Lord had placed in the sky, and their horizons expanded. Other angels followed suit, bringing medicine, magic, alchemy, botany, and so much more to enrich the minds of humans, to lurk at the edge of their cultures.

And when he fell, Barbatos was free. Free to teach, free to observe, free to toy with the timelines as he pleased. The dragon demon gave knowledge, only to be returned thousandfold in return. Time was his playground, his research lab, and the human realm in particular was his diorama. A discovery here, some guided knowledge there, led to the rise and fall of empires, societies--timelines even existed where the human realm had destroyed itself over the advances he had caused... but there was never anything to worry, as the number of timelines were near-infinite, and he could simply move on to another... it was curiosity that drove him, a thirst for knowledge.

Generosity had long since become Greed.
_____

Broken and Gathered

~WARNING: emotional manipulation, gaslighting, torture, blood, self-harm. cutting~

>>In another timeline long since abandoned.<<

Good things never lasted.
It was with irony that the powers Barbatos so used to chase his knowledge would become his undoing.

Time had its own unspoken rules, and with the constant perversion of time, it would seem almost imminent that these rules would suddenly hound him. For eons he evaded such mistakes, until suddenly he had trapped himself into a paradox. Time had been his toy, and now it had made him its prisoner. The changes and magic had been set, and this timeline had been slated to disappear permanently.
There was only one problem. He was still in it.

This...this was an unfamliar emotion... for all of the notes he had compiled, all the research and millennia of work, he could find no answer.
Barbatos had never considered fear to be a formidable foe until this very moment.

As he delayed the timeline's demise in a desperate struggle to find a solution, other powers were alerted to the powerful magics afflicting their existence.The Demon King, Belial, had a vested interest in the preservation of himself and those within the Devildom. He subdued the dragon...and offered him salvation. The spell in progress could only be broken with either the dragon's death, or his servitude.

Naturally, Barbatos bowed in surrender. His close brush with death had opened his eyes, and never again did he wish to experience the lack of control over his own power. And with this submission, Belial bound Barbatos' powers into the place that would become his bedroom, cursing him so that he could not use his power without permission from a member of the royal family.

The Demon King never allowed Barbatos to forget that indelible sin. As the dragon learned once again to serve an authority, every mistake was met with severe retribution and punishment, in payments of blood, torment, and suffering. Every misstep was met with the slap of a reminder of what an irreparable monstrosity the dragon was, to so easily throw away lives in every altered and erased timeline. A reminder that such a creature could not be corrected, and needed to be collared. A reminder that Barbatos relied on the King to keep such potential disaster in chains. Because no other could keep Barbatos safe in the way that was necessary.

As more eons passed, constant instruction and punishment birthed a servant perhaps no longer even a demon. Perfection was a process long in the making. Aches had long since become truth. Mistakes came lesser and lesser, and time soon came where Barbatos would no longer need to be corrected for mistakes, for he would carry out such penance himself, with his own hands, to spill his own dark blood. After all, the framework that was his position as a butler was the eternal penance he would pay for his existence, and far be it from him to stray from it. The dragon foud meager comfort in working with his hands. And with his identity reduced to his mere position, Barbatos learned a variety of skills solely so that he could better improve himself, to serve the royal family more effectively.

The war-minded Belial used Barbatos for many things, but the Demon King's greatest commission was still to come. The dragon was ordered to locate the timeline in which two separate incidents would occur: The Fall, and the final death knell of the Celestial Realm.

And he was ordered to make it into the true timeline.

As a former angel, it might have broken the dragon's heart to willingly place his comrades in danger, now that he was aware that he would directly affect them. But again he submitted, truly believing that he had no choice.

___

To Change the Future

>>>WARNING: mentions of torture, Minor canon spoilers<<<

>>In the current timeline (at the start of the game).<<

It was expected that Belial would need an heir. So when Belial had taken a bride, Barbatos had paid it no mind--simply another member of the family he would have to take care of. When the Queen fell ill, the dragon was tasked with searching for any possible cure. And when she confessed her wish for the realms to be at peace, the loyal butler had remained silent, unwilling to betray the demon he depended on for his security.

The Queen died in childbirth. Barbatos had failed once again.
The butler had never felt such fury before. The punishment that followed was several centuries worth of torment and recovery, a hellish cycle repeated whenever Belial again reached a point of hatred in his unceasing grief. The dragon lamented as well, not only swearing to never again peer into the future, but grieving for his own innocence, for what was left of this despicable life he had led. What salvation was there in this, for he who had betrayed his kind, failed his Master, and ended the lives of so many others?

Suddenly, the torment stopped.
At last the dragon could recover without interruption.
The castle was strangely quiet without the Demon King's overbearing presence. He was told that the King had no longer cared for his kingdom, and now slumbered beneath the Devildom. And that only his son, Diavolo, remained. The tutelage assigned by the King had been incredibly strict, there was little surprise about that, yet so much so that the Prince was quite sheltered.

Barbatos, no longer tethered to the King's side, simply defaulted to remain as the head of staff, overseeing much of the castle's operations. It was in one such rotation where he became one of Diavolo's temporary tutors, and after using certain analogies to explain certain concepts, ended up telling stories about all three realms. The enamored Prince hounded him relentlessly afterwards, to the point where he used the extremely rare Cheshire Cat Grass Tea, Barbatos' favorite, to lure him. Then he claimed that if Barbatos would not remain by his side, then he would not become the future King.
Barbatos would never allow such a thing, for fear of what the Demon King might think when he awakened. Therefore, he again submitted to became Lord Diavolo's personal butler.

Diavolo was nothing like Belial.
He was kind, vivacious, generous, spontaneous, and the dragon could not help but grow fond of him. It was almost difficult to believe that Prince shared the Demon King's blood. What was most shocking of all was the fact that the Prince had shared his mother's vision--to bring harmony to all three realms. Such an utter contrast to how fervently the Demon King hated the Celestial Realm.

It was this that gave Barbatos hope.
Hope that perhaps the grave injustice that would destroy the Celestial Realm--the final significant order he had succeeded in carrying out for Belial--could be reversed, halted, utterly destroyed. It may have been a future that Barbatos had already foreseen, yet he knew very well that choices can always affect the future. And it is with this hope, this nearly childlike hope that the greatest stain of his life can be erased, that Barbatos wholeheartedly supports the young Master in his endeavors. No matter how strange his ever-changing whims may seem, Diavolo is a demon of his word, and Barbatos is willing, truly willing, to follow him to eternity.

From King to King

WARNING: Minor canon spoilers

>>In the current timeline (at the start fo the game).<<

It was common knowledge, at least to Barbatos, that humans often reached out to make pacts with demons. But never did he expect that it would ever happen to him.
...

>>>THE REST IS COMING SOON, SIT TIGHT!!! This will be the final headcanon and it will be about Solomon.<<<