WHO: Pandora and Angel WHAT: A demon and a reaper meet WHERE: The top of Hope's trailer WHEN: Current time (I think...) RATING: Low (implications of murder and sacrifice) STATUS: Complete!
Pandora wandered the trailers, sucking on a lollipop, hair done back in pigtails and doll that Delilah had given her clutched in her free arm. She loved that doll...she quite liked the sorceress in general. Delilah was strange. She liked strange.
...Strange, like the man perched on top of a trailer. How bizarre. She wasn't used to seeing people on top of trailers.
"Hello. You're weird. What're you doing up on the seeing-without-seeing lady's trailer?"
Angel was perched motionless on the edge of Hope's roof, his body bent and crouched like a gargoyle in the night, his black leather motorcycle jacket and shaggy black hair blending in with the shadows. He looked down only when he heard the voice; she had no soul, and she smelled like brimstone when his nostrils flared. "Watching, demon."
"Oooooh, you know what I am! You look so weird. Come down here please? I'm so short...actually, wait!" Sticking her lollipop firmly in her mouth, she hooked her hands into the edges of the trailer and swarmed her way up. She got several small cuts in the process, but it didn't bother her overmuch...
"There! Now I can see you!"
He didn't move when she approached, climbing up the side of Hope's trailer, but he stared at her unblinkingly. "What do you want?" Almost wary, because no good news could come from someone whose aura was so dark and ominous-looking, a black halo corona around her.
"What, am I not allowed to say hello? Just because you are a new soul-harvester doesn't mean you have to be mean, mister reaper." Pandora fished around in the pocket of her dress, then held out a lollipop.
"Here! Peace offering. Even though I am totally peaceable. I haven't even killed one single person since I've gotten here! Or made a deal or anything. Cuz Arkady said not to!"
"I don't eat," he said simply, not reaching for the lollipop. "And I'm not being mean. I just don't socialize with demons. I know you haven't killed anyone since arriving, because you would've met me before now if you had."
"Why not?" Pandora pouted. "Why wouldn't you socialize with me? Or is it because you were brought up to believe we're terrible people, baby reaper? Did they talk about how dreadful demons are? Pure evil and wicked and monstrous?"
"I know exactly what you are," he told her calmly, not rising to the bait, "and I make my own judgments. I'm not entirely sure why Arkady lets you stay when you're a hazard to the carnival, you and the other demons as well."
"...I'm a hazard to the carnival?" Pandora's eyes flashed, a hint of anger rising in them. "I am? I have done nothing! I have followed the blood-drinker's rules, to the letter! What do you do, death-bringer? How can you say I am unfit, when your whole purpose is the ending of life?"
"There are angels here, grigori. You and the others of your kind, the sulphurous fallen, you invite ancient grudges to the surface. You hunger for violence and mayhem, I can smell it on you as clearly as the reeking perfume of Hell."
"And if I hunger?" Pandora bit cleanly down on her lollipop, pocketing the stick. "I do not indulge." Her eyes flickered, again, and then a slow smile came up on her face. "I am not the siren who eats flesh, nor the drinkers of crimson who indulge in their hunger of a sort that they can't satisfy with beer, or wine, or water. And then there's you."
A pause, then a girlish chuckle. "You're not even supposed to exist, death-watcher."
"Neither are you, outside of Hell, but here you are," he said bluntly, not bothering to hide his disdain. But there was a tiny flicker of something behind his eyes. He knew that he was a made reaper, not a natural one, and that somehow Arkady knew how it had been done. But the ringmaster wouldn't speak to him, and Angel was tired.
"Why are you so disdainful of only me?" Pandora hugged her doll to her chest, and her smile faded. "It's unfair. You know, don't you? You know that you're stuck. It's not right, is it? Well, I'm not right in there. Down there, it's not the best place. It's the worst place, and I would do anything to never go back. It's not fair."
"It isn't only you. It's the other demons as well, and the sorceress, and her daughter," he said, lifting his head to look over the horizon of the campground for a moment. "Defying death and upsetting the balance of a soul's natural trajectory. Interfering with people's destinies." He looked back at her. "Hell is a place for fallen angels. You left when Lucifer did. A bed of your own making, yes?"
"No." Pandora's fists clenched, and she glared at the reaper. "You know nothing. Uneducated. You think all of the demons in Hell were fallen angels? I was a child, cursed by the ill-made decisions of my father! And yes, I remember. I remember my father sacrificing me to a pagan lord--the one you call Lucifer--and losing myself; I remember years of agony, and I remember agreeing to do whatever they asked to make it stop. You know nothing."
Rare it was that Pandora dropped out of her childish, mischievious behavior; rarer still that she got visibly upset. But now, color in her face, tears standing in her eyes...it would be hard to believe she was not an actual child, hurt and upset by Angel's words.
"And now you delight in mischief and the torment of others, the capture and manipulation of innocent souls," he said, looking steadily at the girl and his eyes narrowing slightly. Demons were liars and tricksters, he knew that from the start, but she seemed very sincere. She must be a truly terrific actress. "If you loathe it so much, then why not reform? Or speak to someone else about getting your soul back. A soul shouldn't be able to be used as barter fodder, it belongs to no one but its owner."
"And who would I speak to, little made-reaper? Who would I speak to about getting back what was stolen from me? The thief?" Pandora's eyes were black with fury. "Or would you, little soul-taker, would you go to bat for me? Would you send your pretend-shell down to the fire to ask Lucifer oh so kindly to let me have the heaven I should have gotten? Would you fight through the legions? Or do you suggest I simply succumb to my own unmaking, to disappear into nothingness the way you will when the blood-drinking king has no more use for you? Because he is who made you, isn't he? The others don't have the power. He does."
He stared at her, unblinking, and his jaw tightened. "Demons lie," he spat angrily after a few beats. Of her heart, not his; his was frozen, useless in his chest. "I awoke this way, it was destined for me that I take this occupation here. I remain here out of debt to him, a sentence to serve before I move on to other places. It's none of your concern why I'm here... only that I do my job."
"You think I lie about everything? Then you are even more foolish than I thought." Pandora's voice was almost...pitying. "You think I am the one lying to you, little reaper? I am probably the person telling you the most truth. How long is your sentence? What debt do you pay? Do you even know, or do you follow him like a slave because he has said you owe him this thing?"
Angel went very still, almost inanimate, and a second later he had to channel the anger and frustration and hurt welling in his body. He wasn't supposed to feel anything, wasn't supposed to have emotions. He was supposed to remain a reaper, but Hope had told him the truth, that he used to be a man, that he'd been a man named Noah, and he had ridden a motorcycle. And that anger poured out and hit Pandora, making her heart skip three long beats before it fell back into a normal rhythm.
The demoness sucked in a sharp, shallow breath; it shook her, because she had no other body. She liked this one, very much, and had been using it for almost two decades; unbidden, tears welled up and spilled over, sliding down her face.
"...And I am a monster..." Her words were whispered. "Perhaps you should look to your own heart, before judging mine. I do not claim perfection. I am mischievious, I did like what I did before. ...But I like it here too. I love it here. I love Mister Puck, and the doll lady, and the silly gremlin that makes the funny toys. And I would never kill again, nor steal another soul, if it meant getting to stay. ...Though if the soul is already gone from the sirens, I might ask to play once in a while. And that, new-reaper, along with everything else I have said...that is truth."
Angel lowered his head, and his eyes closed for a long moment. He wished he could cry, could grieve for what he had lost, for what he had become. He was a hollow thing now, a shell of a man and he dealt only in death. Hope felt for him, for whatever reason, and he could feel nothing back except the urge to do his job, to do Arkady's bidding. People knew that he was made, that he was a virtual slave to Arkady. He raked a hand through his hair, a quick, angry motion, grief in his eyes when he opened them. He refused to look at her. "I'm sorry."
"...I am sorry too." She stood distant from him, arms around her stomach, doll clenched in a defiant fist. "I would not wish the fear of unmaking on anyone. I feel it...every day. Even now...even now, you could do it. You are a reaper-man, you could end me as easily as the breaths you do not have to take. And not just this shell, either..."
Her eyes grew serious. "I have met reapers before, little one. You could be my unmaking, if you tried."
"I know," he said quietly. "For what it's worth, which I doubt is much, I'm sorry that your doing was not your choice. A soul is a precious thing that so few think about, and they all take them for granted." He kept his face downturned, his hair hanging over his dark eyes. "I could exterminate you with a thought. Anyone here. But Arkady forbids it."
A moment of hesitation, a pregnant pause; the demon-child reached out with a free hand, let it rest on Angel's head, then gently stroked his hair.
"...Do you want to...?" Her voice was still very quiet. "Exterminate us, I mean?"
He flinched under her touch, but only the tiniest bit before he steeled himself. Hope had touched him earlier. He knew the effect he had on mortal bodies; the gooseflesh, the hair raising up, the clamminess on their skin. He was Death incarnate, after all. "I want to end everything. The suffering would go with it."
"Yours, perhaps..." The demoness's lips quirked up, slightly. "But one reaper-child, no matter how determined, cannot take all of us. And there are many, many here that do not deserve the taking. What of she who sees without seeing? Or the fairy-healer? Or the sweet wolves that chain themselves, to avoid the hurting? I am damned, twice and thrice and forever, my unmaking would be no loss. And some would become nothing, like the drinkers of red and the spirit-haunts and the singers of death-song...but there are the good ones. Would you end them?"
"The world will end itself," he said quietly. "So much suffering, and so much more to come. You know as well as I do that nothing good can stay such." He stood up slowly, perfectly balanced as if this was merely level ground. "Everything will end, and all of us with it. Some of us deserve what we get." He still didn't look at her, and he stepped to the very edge of the roof, glanced down at the ground below, and stretched his arms. He stepped off into space, soundless, calm. There was a rushing sound, like a murder of crows taking flight, and that feeling of foreboding and death that came with him faded. Somewhere nearby, an owl hooted.