Ariel (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} defectedfromgod) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} utr_logs,@ 2010-05-28 16:06:00 |
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WHAT: (Second try) Breakage.
WHERE: Calliope's rooms.
WARNINGS: Violence. And ever see someone going mad before your eyes?
STATUS: Completed
It had been a decent amount of time since Ariel had returned to Calliope's flat from his sojourn, and all of it, aside from eating and washing time, had been spent with the Key. He'd worked until his eyes had given out, falling asleep splayed in the middle of a thousand traps, drawn again and again on all the paper he had at hand. His sleep was blank, or something protected him from the dreams that were likely all of Helena in her tiny enclave of hell.
Dante's Inferno speaks of suicides as trees, denied human bodies in hell for their act of self-destruction on Earth. Minos the Judge flings their souls into the Suicide Wood, and they take root where they land. Their leaves are forever picked at and eaten by harpies, and when they bleed, they may speak, but only then.
The devil's trap was not yet complete; Singer and Lebeau had disowned him. His own intellect was exhausted and in a state of constant fury, but he was doing the best he could. He stayed indoors; if he looked at a single gnarled tree, he would cry and never stop.
It was night now, and the rooms were so high up, there would be no branches casting shadows. He shuffled from his room, looking for something to eat.
She was already there, cooking, eyes focused on her task. He bid her a hello, unable to stop the dreamlike smile from taking over his face.
Calliope noticed, and he saw her eyebrows furrow. "You're smiling."
"Am I?" He looked at her, idly wondering why his stomach had ceased to roil as he saw her back, felt her presence. Even her voice was soporific, calm but firm. She'd done so much for him.
"You are. I suppose it's a good thing, whatever's caused it." She turned back to the pan. "You look hungry. Whatever you've been doing, you've been doing so without a break."
Ariel nodded, figuring he owed her an explanation. He didn't remember giving one. "A devil's trap." His voice was still quiet. "An ancient Sumerian devil's trap fit to hold a prince of hell." And if it hurt the demon at all, Ariel would not object. His voice regained some fire as he went on. "He must free her. I simply have to sweeten the deal enough for him to wish it."
She did not face him, but he saw one eyebrow raise from the corner of his eye. "You might be presuming, don't you think? I mean, you did say he was a demon, and a powerful one at that."
The gaiety in her voice confused him. He laid a careful hand on her shoulder, light enough she could shrug it off by barely moving. "My dear Marguerite - you don't understand. Even if it fails and he kills me, I must try." His fingers couldn't help running with the grain of her skin, moving only enough to know what was under his hand. "I wish you had never met me ... I do, as hard as it may seem to say. Mine was not the only life Mephisto ruined."
He could feel the tension in her shoulder, and wondered why. Calliope spoke again, tone perfectly calm, but something was there, like a flat note at the symphony. "Don't speak his name."
"Mephisto?" Ariel laughed, a sound that sounded perhaps too carefree even to his own ears. "There's no need to be afraid of conjuring him up, I don't think! He isn't Bloody Mary; he isn't anything but a demon trying to push the power of my will!" He was laughing more now. "Mephisto is a fool!"
The hand that snaps around his neck is the first thing that's cut through his haze in a fortnight. He's totally unprepared for the strength in those feminine fingers, the steel in the coquettish eyes. His own blunted fingertips do their best to find a hold, but Calliope's grip is iron, and tighter than Satan's hold on hell.
Ariel can't speak, but the woman can. "It's you who's the fool." Her grip tightens, shaking him like a dog with a rat. "You who think you can overthrow Mephisto with your stupid little spells and your arrogance. He's a prince of hell, and you're nothing but a washed-up, narcissistic junkie."
His feet have left the floor, and his fingers scrabble more frantically, his eyes swimming in shock and betrayal. Can she read thoughts? He can't remember; her eyes have caught him just as tightly as her hands. He can feel himself slipping downstream, like she'd shot him full of opium, but she hisses into his ear, a sibilant sound like a jack-knife in his brain. He can feel her bottom lip touch the skin and fights not to shrink, which only cuts her barbed-wire hands further into his throat, but he's Ariel, and he always does everything he can. "Mephisto loves your lost soul, but I can tell you, Ariel." His name is a curse, a blasphemy unable to be purified. "She's not in hell."
Her grip lessens a fraction, and he can look right into her eyes as his legs spindle uselessly, six inches off the floor. As he meets her gaze, all she's said to him comes spiraling back - a floundering mishmash of assurances, lies, soft smiles, touches scented with brimstone and rosemary, protestations of Loving Him, loving him, loving him.
A long, howling scream of agony wells up inside his chest and explodes, sending his head swimming, but she drops him and he stumbles. His head strikes something violent and metal, and the only thing he can do as he lurches upright is slap her. He slaps her once, twice across the face, hard enough to draw blood in a mortal, still with that ragged scream enveloping his entire body.
Her face turns with his hand, but she says nothing. Helena's smile curves her wicked lips, and he stumbles to the door, half crawling like a drunk, needing to run. The Key is useless now, and that scream is with him. With it comes the album of his memories in sharp and bleeding color, and Ariel knows they will never leave him now.