| |
Waking up in Kalav's arms feels like I'm still dreaming, but it is so very real. He remains asleep for a little while longer. When he, too, realizes I'm still here and last night really happened, he smiles and greets me with a kiss that makes me give a small moan.
"I love the sounds you make." He says when he finally pulls away. "I love everything about you."
"You're ridiculous." I can't help but smile, too.
"We should probably get up before someone comes to yell at us again. You weren't supposed to stay over." He strokes my hair as he speaks.
"No, I outrank you, and I say we're going to stay right here. I don't care what anyone says."
"You're not a Ruler yet, so you're still under me." He laughs, but he also doesn't let me go.
"It looks like I'm beside you, not under you."
"Don't sass me, princess." He smiles as he kisses me briefly. "I'll never leave this bed if we don't get up now." He doesn't—can't—wait for my response as he pulls away from me.
"What do we even have to do today?" I watch as he stands and looks around for the clothes we threw to the ground last night. Knowing I'm the only one who has gotten to be with him in his room like this, I'm grateful he chose me to share it with. More than just because he's beautiful, but because he makes me feel beautiful.
"I don't know, but I can tell you it's not fucking all day long." He says as he buttons his pants.
"Are you tired of me already?" I wonder if that's even a thing that could happen. Could I ever get tired of him? Could this feeling of animalistic need for him ever subside?
"Never." He shakes his head. "But I don't want to give anyone an excuse to barge in here demanding to know why I've tied you to my bed naked instead of teaching you how to kill me properly."
"That was an accident." I fake-pout, though it does sting a little. He sighs at me as he throws me my clothes and comes to sit by my feet.
"I hate that anything about me made you feel like you weren't safe. I'm still working through that."
"It wasn't you." I say as I put my shirt on. "Ever since Emmanuel beat me up on Earth, the nightmares have gotten worse and worse... It's like I can't escape it."
"I've been there, too. He gets in your head and it feels like he'll never leave." He takes my hand in his and holds it tightly, forcing my focus on him and not the darkness that constantly lurks in the back of my mind.
"What made it better for you?"
"I stopped running away from the things that hurt me, and I had to face them instead. It was hard. You help, though. You make it better for me."
I don't say anything, instead opting to stand up and finish getting dressed while I consider what he said. Emmanuel is the thing that hurt me, but I can't face him without a fight I'll lose. So what else can I do to try and face my very valid fears?
"What if..." I pause and look back to find Kal finishing putting on his own clothes. "What if we went back to Earth? Back to where Emmaneul gave me my scars?"
"I don't think I'm going to be allowed to take you back." He looks a little troubled by my suggestion. "Taking you to the waterfall was a risk. Michael would have my head if he knew I did that. If my dad found out..."
"What if I asked Lucifer to go with us? He was with me, so maybe having him there would help. He wouldn't tell Michael about it."
"We can ask, but don't get your hopes up." Kal shrugs. "You didn't see him after you two came back. He was pretty screwed up about what happened."
"What do you mean?" I know Selaphiel said he showed up in Heaven, covered in blood, but I saw him when I woke up and he seemed fine. He's been fine since.
"He wouldn't let anyone near you. He sat next to the bed until you woke up... He wouldn't even let me see you. When we finally got what happened out of him, he went really quiet for a few days. I haven't seen him like that since Emmanuel killed my mother."
"What?" I stare at him, barely blinking. "Emmanuel killed Lilith?"
"You didn't know?" He looks at me like I'm the one who just said something Realm shattering.
"No! No one talks about Lilith. I didn't even know that statue was her until Ast told me." I pause as something else crosses my mind, something that makes me immediately uncomfortable. "Kal, if you knew about what he did—"
"I was a kid when it happened." He says quickly, but he doesn't look at me as he speaks. "I didn't understand how bad he was until it was way too late. I used to be pretty screwed up, too. He used to be good at hiding his sedition." We both fall silent for what feels like too long. I have so many questions I want to ask about his time with Emmanuel, but I don't want him to think I look at him the same way everyone else does. I don't want him to feel like I don't trust him or I think any differently of him.
"Used to be?" I smile and go up to him. "You're still kind of screwed up."
"Yeah." He sighs with his own smile. "But you still like me."
"I never said that." I feign innocence, and he laughs.
"You didn't have to."
––––––––
Lucifer's office is uncharacteristically open when we get there, and even stranger, we hear laughter as we get closer. When I appear in the doorway with Kal close behind me, I expect to feel nervous, but I don't... I'm immediately distracted by the person who has managed to make Lucifer think anything is funny.
"Allie!" Selaphiel beams when he sees me. "And Kalav, my two favorite people!"
"Selaphiel was just here to check on you." Lucifer smiles. Actually smiles. "I suppose Michael decided that walking in on original sin wasn't what he wanted to do today."
"And I was saying if Lucifer tried original sin, he'd be much happier." Selaphiel smirks. I think he's the only one who could get away with saying half the things he does.
"I was hoping to talk to you about something, Lucifer." I step inside the office with Kal directly behind me.
"All right." He straightens up, like he knows I'm about to ask something potentially awful.
"I... want to go back."
"Go back where?" But he knows. The look on his face tells me he knows.
"She wants to go face her fears." Kal says for me. "I told her you'd probably say no."
"I want to go back to Earth. Where Emmanuel attacked us."
"Why would you want to go back there after what he did to us?" Lucifer watches me carefully.
"Because he doesn't get to have that kind of power over me anymore." I sound so much more confident than I am. Lucifer stares at me, like he's trying to find a crack in my resolve to do this with or without him, until Selaphiel speaks up.
"I think we should go." His usual levity is replaced by a more serious tone. "She's grown quite a lot, maybe this would be good for her."
"If you freak out while we're there, I won't be gentle with you. I'll drag you right back here until you calm down. I won't have you acting out like you did in Purgatory." Lucifer watches me as he speaks. In another life, I may have taken extreme offense to his words, but now I can see he's right. Right to be worried, and right to promise that kind of response.
I nod, unable to articulate what I'm feeling. There is dread, and there is fear inside me at the thought of seeing the plaza again and standing where I almost died. There is also the knowledge that if I never face what happened, I will never be able to move past it.
"All right." Lucifer shrugs. "I don't have anything better to do today. Let's go."
Walking to the port-out spot, Selaphiel and Kalav whisper together. I know they were close friends, so I don't intrude, but it leaves me walking with Lucifer in awkward silence. I don't always know where I stand with him, and he doesn't seem pleased to be going back to that place.
"You're sure you want to do this?" He asks in a hushed voice as we get closer to the port-out spot. "I know you're strong, but this is..."
"I'm sure." I say, even though my breath catches in my throat when I see up-close the place we came back to, still stained with the shadow of blood. Mine, his, or both, I can't tell. Maybe he's right. I wasn't expecting the feeling in the pit of my stomach to feel like drowning over something so small. Why did I think facing my fear of this place, of this memory, wouldn't be scary in and of itself?
"If you need to leave"—I know he can sense my wavering conviction by the tone in his voice—"you will be no less brave than you were the first time. You'll get no judgment from me."
"I need to do this." I exhale and try to send my anxiety out with my breath. "But I'll tell you if it's too much."
"Are we ready?" Lucifer turns to Kal and Sel once we are standing over where the pool of blood has forever changed the ground. Both agree, and just as Kal gives me a small smile for reassurance, Lucifer grabs me by the wrist and I feel the sickening rush of weight and wind that comes with entering the human Realm.
Looking around, it looks the same as when we arrived the first time, though there are fewer humans in the plaza and fewer cars on the roads around us. The river still flows violently behind the metal fencing, and as I look side to side, I see the "believe" display and the stained-glass whales just as I left them. Our blood may still be on the streets of Hell, but here it's gone, as if the fate of all the Realms had not almost been decided by the very spilling of it.
"Are you okay?" Kal gets my attention off the statue, and he is full of concern as he comes up next to me and puts his hand on my shoulder. "You're paler than usual."
"I'm fine." I say quickly, but my racing heart begs to differ.
"It's okay to not be fine."
"You went through something I don't think anyone has ever survived before. You both did." Selaphiel comes up next to me and stands beside Kal. "I'd be very worried if you were okay after that."
"You could have easily left me here." Lucifer gestures to the place below the whales where Emmanuel had thrown him, where he stood with his foot on Lucifer's chest. "I thought I was going to watch him kill you."
"That was my plan. I just... wanted to give you time to get away." I say quietly, and I can feel the three tense up at the suggestion.
"He was never going to kill you here." Kal says, his voice equally as quiet. "He would have taken you and tortured you until he could take your powers. He would have made it fun for himself."
"Asmodeus, this isn't the time—" Lucifer starts to chastise him, but I stop him.
"He's right." A weird calm tints my words. It blankets me. I know I should be scared, and I was, however it's giving way to something else. There's an odd sort of knowing that washes over me as I stare at the place between the railing and the whales, the last place I was ever going to be seen. "Lucifer," I turn to him, understanding what I need to know now. "Tell me what happened."
"You were there." He looks at me like I've lost my mind.
"I want to know how you saw it."
"I saw you being stupid." He huffs. "He kept throwing you around, and every time he came back to finish me off, your dumb ass stood back up and taunted him. You were more blood than being, and then he..."
"That's when"—I reach up to my face and run my fingers where Emmanuel dug into me and left his mark—"he gave me these."
"It took everything I had to get to you and get us out." Lucifer speaks almost under his breath.
"When I saw him at the gates, I thought we had lost you. It didn't feel real." Selaphiel adds. My heart drops seeing him anything other than his goofy life-of-the-party self. I hate that he was that worried about me.
"All I could think about was making sure Lucifer could get away." I feel disconnected from it. It wasn't a conscious choice I made, it was the only thing I could think of and something I still stand by now. I wouldn't do anything differently, except now I could fight Emmanuel longer. Maybe I'd even be able to use Neutrality this time, like he did on me. I wouldn't run, though. I wouldn't put someone else in danger to protect myself. I'm not that dark. I'm not that selfish. I couldn't hurt anyone who didn't deserve it.
But you did.
Hurting Kal was a mistake.
Was it, though?
"Allie?" Selaphiel gets my attention back with a worried look. "Do you need to go home?"
"No, I'm fine." I lie.
"How exactly did he give you those scars?" Kal gets a glare from his father and a sigh of actual annoyance from Sel when he asks, but I would want to ask the same thing if our roles were reversed.
"He grabbed me." My voice sounds far away. "His whole hand fit over my nose and my mouth. I couldn't breathe or scream." I raise my hand up facing away from me, curved like his was around my face. I try to picture what it must have looked like from Emmanuel's eyes. "He lifted me up." I mimic the motion of raising myself off the ground. "And he squeezed." I try to imagine what that would feel like, but I can't picture creating that much pain inside another being, not even when I wanted Kal to hurt.
"Fuck." Kal sounds disgusted, but I don't take my eyes off my hand. With the whales just beyond my fingers, I allow myself to really remember for the first time. I came here for this. I have to face it. I can't be afraid of it anymore. I can't let fear control me.
"He said something to you." Lucifer says. "The look on your face was awful. What did he say?"
"He licked the blood off my face and he said..." I choke on the words as they come out hoarse and dry. "He was going to enjoy breaking me. My pain was artwork... He wanted to ruin me."
"We won't let him get near you again, Allie." I know Kal means well, but they know they can't protect me. I breathe without a response, looking at my hand in the air.
Emmanuel has the upper hand. He threw me around like I was nothing. He wants to be a God, and the only thing stopping him is me. So insignificant, so useless, yet too stubborn to die or submit.
I try to make sense of what he did. I try to understand what makes a being turn into something like Emmanuel. I want to picture his face in my hand, but I see Kal instead. And his face isn't in my hand, it's on the ground after I blasted him in the library. When I hit him, when I stormed out, when I snapped. Kal said I was just like Emmanuel then, and that scared me... but not as much as realizing he was right.
"Is Emmanuel what I'm going to become someday?" I wonder out loud.
"Absolutely not." Selaphiel says quickly.
"You're not him. Trust me, Allie... I know what he does to people. You're not capable of that." Kal says. I don't believe him. He's the one I hurt. He shouldn't be defending me at all.
"I hurt you, Kal. I wanted to... and I liked it." I remain with my hand stretched out while I play over and over how I was so okay with taking my anger out on someone I care about. How seeing him in pain on the ground was no different for me than Emmanuel seeing me on the ground, hurting, covered in blood. I was proud of myself for a moment, I wanted them to fear me. It felt good.
"That wasn't you." Lucifer says. "You came to your senses very quickly. No one thinks you're like Emmanuel."
"But I could be." Tears sting my eyes. This. This is what I was afraid of. Not Emmanuel, not this place. It was me. I was afraid that he held up a mirror and showed me what I am going to become someday. "What if I can't stop myself? Will I become a monster, too?" A tear falls down my cheek as my fingertips grow cold, and I know that's my answer. An answer I hate. An answer I already knew before I asked the question.
Yes.