Re: [The piano bar: Misha & Lucifer.]
"The thing that makes humans more than angels, is they got their free will. We don't up there, and word is you reckoned you should, and that's why you were cast out," Misha said. There were a whole lot of tales, whispered, course, since all the ones that were loyal to Lucifer fell right on with him. "They say you were jealous, on account of your daddy loving humans more than you," he went on. They were stories, far as Misha knew. Words, myths, legends, and stories changed from truth to be their own kind of telling in time. He'd heard a whole bunch of tales, and he had always known not to just believe what he was told. Like he'd said a whole bunch of times, it wasn't true that Heaven was good and Hell was bad, not how folks reckoned.
His foot jiggled 'neath the table as he listened. "You got kicked out, and then you decided to start a war?" he asked. "You ain't living quiet down there without tempting folks or having demons make deals, so you ain't innocent of taking part." He was real willing to hear his daddy's side of the story, but he wasn't keen to buy no whitewashing. He'd heard too much from Janus, and he knew how it went below. He'd seen it himself, and it wasn't no Heaven. "Why not give the dead nice places to stay 'til reckoning? Why feed into sinning? Why not make a Heaven of Hell, 'stead of doing what he wanted from you?"
Free will, it was something Misha had thought on plenty. "Folks are going to do good things and bad things, and every single one's got the ability to do both. It don't mean anyone's all good or all bad. I don't reckon Hell's needed. I think could be that once upon a time folks curbed their behavior on account of fear of burning, but that fear ain't got power for folks no more. No one thinks of it 'til they're on their deathbed. It's something that was needed once, that worked once, but it don't no more." He was young, but he sounded plenty sure. Theology, it wasn't something Misha discussed often, but you could say it was in the boy's bones. He was real passionate 'bout folks, 'bout humans, and 'bout their condition. "And the whole point in creating free will is to let folks be. He says folks have free will, but He's been sticking his fingers in since it started. That ain't real free will. That's free will on the end of a leash."