behindcloseddoors | CLOSED ♔ and who shall i blame for this sweet and heavy trouble

Hi.

[Des pulls a 27 will save out of his ass to not be a little awestruck by all of this. Where Azrael straightens, he slouches, glancing down at the silent city beneath them.]

I'm starting to think I'm more popular than I gave myself credit for.

[ looking down at the city allows him to see what he missed before - everything has stopped. cars are paused mid-movement on the streets, pedestrians perched mid-step.

he comes to a stop a few respectful steps away from them both, giving a small nod at azrael, but keeping his attention focused on des. ]

You're beyond the bonds of mortality, something most humans can't understand. While it makes you valuable, which they're quick to comprehend, it carries with it a weight of its own.

I understand you're seeking liberation from that weight.

I've wanted liberation from that weight the moment it happened.

[Maybe it was true cowardice, maybe it was fear of surviving and ending up enslaved or worse. He doesn't know anymore. But he's done his time. He hasn't learned a damn thing.

He sighs.]

And I have been fucking over every goddamned asshole who thinks I'm worth something, because I wanna win this on my own terms. I get it. I can't win that way. So show me what I need to do, what I need to know. I'll still win it my way, in the end.

[ the edge of his lip twitches up a bit in true amusement ] Oh, I have little doubt about that, Descant. But I think you will come to understand things very well from my point of view along the way.

I'll tell you everything, and then you'll understand why I have to win. Truth be told, you're not the only one who feels the weight of the ages. I'm tired. Tired of this fight. Of the job I do.

I've been watching you for centuries. You might not like to advertise the fact, but you always have had a conscience. That's precisely what makes you ideal to assist us. It doesn't stop you from doing whatever you feel to be necessary - but you have it.

It doesn't gall me in the least whether you respect me, believe in me, or fear me, Des. All I ask is for you to understand me: Lucifer. If you use a name, that's the one I'd prefer.

[Blink. Blink. He looks at Azrael, he looks at Lucifer, he looks back at Azrael.

He sits back down on the ledge.]

Well, I'm fuckstrucked.

Even a self-proclaimed atheist is familiar with that name - but I assure you, my enemies are famous detractors. Neither God nor I tell lies, per se. But if you don't help me, if we let God keep doing things His way, what he's done to you is what he'll continue to endeavor to do to everyone, until it might just destroy the world. His ways are bloody and wasteful and exceedingly dangerous. You know that better than most. You've lived through wars and famine and worse.

I don't expect for a moment that you should accept me on faith. I didn't come here to convince you of things through conversation.

I'll take you to Hell and Heaven, you can talk to God for as long as He allows and you desire. Not God the Father, precisely, not En Sof, but...

Well, all of this will become clear to you. Only there's no point if I cannot count upon your willing intent to see the truth, your willing desire to turn your life from aimlessness and meaninglessness into a crucial battle to take the reigns on your own fate - and the fate of humanity.

[Des crosses his arms over his chest.]

You know me. You gotta know me, if you've been watching this long. I'll do whatever it takes to get what I want. I'm already in, but the minute anyone tries to slip a leash on me while I'm not looking? I don't care if you're Lucifer or the belle of the ball, I'll walk.

[He runs his hands through his hair.] I may be aimless right now, but I'm free. I'm not gonna be anyone's dog. You get me? So if you're promising me my life back, you better assure me it doesn't come at the cost of handing the reigns over to someone else. That's the only stipulation.

If you were anyone else, things might be different. For a regular human to assist us, their mortal form is... insufficient. Yours is already immortal.

All we'll ask, if you choose to help us, is that you swear not to betray our cause. The consequences of which would be ones you'd welcome, not fear.

Oblivion.

But if all goes right for all of us - our sights are set on Heaven, for you.

[It sounds like a lot of crap he doesn't want to be involved in, but he's running low on choices. He gets up off the ledge and steps forward.]

All right. I'm all in.

[ they exchange a look, and then azrael nods to him. ]

Alright, my beloved one. Then we'll begin now.

[ ♬ pinion - nine inch nails

abruptly, des is in the whirlwind and the whirlwind is a tunnel, but between them all is a silence in which he can only hear his own breath. azrael is close to him, her arm locked around him, her face in profile, and her hair against the side of his face.

this time, he definitely can see them unfold - dark, iridescent wings, rising just out of his focus and folding around him, against the force of the wind.

as they rise, steadily, without the slightest reference to any sort of gravity, two things become apparent at once. the first is that they are surrounded - by thousands upon thousands of individual souls: shapes in the whirlwind, some completely anthropomorphic, distinct spiritual entities or individuals, and very faintly he can hear their voices - whispers, cries, and howls - mingling with the wind.

the shoot through the throng upwards, turning as if on an axis, the tunnel narrowing suddenly so that the souls seem to touch them, and then widening, only to narrow again.

the second thing is that azrael's profile has changed - it's bright, and even translucent; so are her shapeless unimportant garments. she looks crystalline and reflective, but feels pliant and warm and alive. one moment she seems to carry the shape of a woman - the next a man, and back again.

she speaks to him in a voice that may not be technically audible, though he recognizes it to be her: ]

Now, it is difficult to go to Heaven without the slightest preparation, and you will be stunned and confused by what you see. But if you don't see this first, you'll hunger for it throughout our dialogue, and so we're taking you to the very gates. Be prepared that the laughter you hear is not laughter. It is joy. It will come through to you as laughter because that is the only way such ecstatic sound can be physically received or perceived.

Edited 2014-01-31 21:12 (UTC)

[Let it be known that taking a man whose soul desire is to die up into the gates of Heaven is like taking a starving man to a four star restaurant- he knows he can't have anything that he sees there, so he's left unsated and distraught, licking his lips and desperate enough to take a swipe from any passing plate that comes by.

After what feels like forever, he has to close his eyes to keep from being overwhelmed completely with the desire to freefall into the abyss.]

[ ♬ blue sky - nobuo uematsu

For one moment, a light floods Des' eyes and he has to shut them, but it wouldn't take long for him to realize the light is entirely benign - not painful to look upon.

When he opens them, he'd realize they are once again amid hundreds of other individuals in a garden on a bridge over a stream, and on the banks of the stream and in all directions he sees beings greeting each other, embracing, conversing, weeping, and crying out. As before, the shapes are in all degrees of distinctness. One man is as solid as if he'd run into him in the street of the city; another individual seems no more than a giant facial expression; while others seem whirling bits and pieces of material and light. Others are utterly diaphanous. Some seem invisible, except that he somehow knows they're there. The number is impossible to determine.

The place is limitless. The waters of the stream itself are brilliant with the reflected light; the grass so vividly green that it seems in the very act of becoming grass, of being born, as if in a painting or an animated film.

Azrael turns to look at him in this new light form, yet the face has the very same strong features she always had, and the eyes have the same tender scowl echoing the angels and devils of William Blake. She nudges him across the bridge. ]

Now we're going in.

Uh-huh. [He drawls, mind suddenly at odds with his normally glib tongue. He can't think of a smartass retort to this. In fact, as he follows, he finds his eyes wandering, lingering, but his step never slows, as if in between all the awe, he's in a hurry to distance himself from it.

He can't keep it right now, so why bother lingering on it. He quickens his pace and falls into step beside her.] This is, uh... a great place you got here.

When we get inside, you must be strong. You must realize that you are in your earthbound body, unusual as it is, and your senses will be overwhelmed. You will not be able to endure what you see as you would were you dead or an angel or a fiend, as my assistants.

[ ♬ ambient tour - chance thomas

There's no time to argue. They pass swiftly across the bridge; giant gates opening before them. They can't see the summit of the walls.

The sound swells and envelops them, and indeed it is like laughter, waves upon waves of shimmering and lucid laughter, only it's canorous, as though all those who laugh also sing canticles in full voice at the same time.

What he sees, however, overwhelms as much as the sound.

This is very simply the densest, the most intense, the busiest, and the most profoundly magnificent place he's ever beheld. Language needs endless synonyms for beautiful; the eyes can see what the tongue cannot possibly describe.

Once again, people are everywhere, people filled with light, and of distinct anthropomorphic shape; they have arms, legs, beaming faces, hair, garments of all different kinds, yet no costume of any seemingly great importance, and the people are moving, traveling paths in groups or alone, or coming together in patterns, embracing, clasping, reaching out, and holding hands.

All around him, and in every direction are multitudes of beings, wrapped in conversation or dialogue or some sort of interchange, some of them embracing and kissing, and others dancing, and the clusters or groups of them continuing to shift and grow or shrink and spread out.

Indeed, the combination of seeming disorder and order is the mystery. This is not chaos. This is not confusion. This is not a din. It seems the hilarity of a great and final gathering, and by final I mean it seems a perpetually unfolding resolution of something, a marvel of sustained revelation, a gathering and growing understanding shared by all who participate in it, as they hurry or move languidly (or even in some cases doing very little), amongst hills and valleys, and along pathways, and through wooded areas and into buildings which seem to grow one out of another like no structure on earth he's ever seen.

Nowhere does he see anything specifically domestic such as a house, or even a palace. On the contrary, the structures are infinitely larger, filled with as bright a light as the garden, with corridors and staircases branching here and there with perfect fluidity. Yet ornament covers everything. Indeed, the surfaces and textures are so varied that any one of them might have absorbed the eye forever.

it's impossible to convey the sense of simultaneous observation felt in sequence.

There are archways, towers, halls, galleries, gardens, great fields, forests, streams. One area flows into another, and through them all he travels, with Azrael beside him, securely holding him in a solid grip. Again and again, his eyes are drawn to some spectacularly beautiful sculpture or cascade of flowers or a giant tree reaching out into the cloudless blue, only to have his body turned back around by Azrael as if he were being kept to a tightrope from which he might fatally fall.

They're in a vast hall suddenly. The books and scrolls are endless, and there seems nothing illogical or confusing in the manner in which all these documents lay open and ready to be examined. ]

[Des is completely overwhelmed by it all. A bitter, jaded soul like his has never felt such elation and he feels suddenly unburdened by all the hardness that pervades his life. All he can feel is joy and delight and bliss reverberating around him as if he were tuning fork. He feels like he's vibrating with emotions and he can't get his tongue around the means to express any of them, so he's left making incoherent, dopey sounds and when he arrives in the hall, he's still not quite able to shake off the overabundance of emotions. He's just so... contented.]

[ on the ground are flowers of complete perfection; flowers that are the flowers that our flowers of the world might become, so well realized are the petals and the centers and the colors. The colors themselves are so distinct and so finely delineated that he'd be unsure suddenly that our spectrum was even involved, as if there were some other set of rules. Or it was merely an expansion, a gift of being able to see combinations of color which are not visible chemically on earth.

The waves of laughter, of singing, of conversation, become so loud as to overwhelm his other senses; he feels blinded by sound suddenly; and yet the light lays bare every precious detail.

Great leaves surround them gently waving to and fro, and Azrael smiles, reaching to stop him from trying to touch anything, from trying to grab any of the magnificence. ]

Look. Look at them. Look!

[ she turns his head forcibly to stare right into the multitudes. And he perceives that these are alliances he's witnessing, clans that were gathering, families, groups of kindred, or true friends, beings whose knowledge of each other is profound, creatures who share similar physical and material manifestations. And for one brave moment, one brave instant, he sees that all these beings from one end of this limitless place to the other are connected, by hand or fingertip or arm or the touch of a foot. That, indeed, clan slips within the womb of clan, and tribe spreads out to intersperse amongst countless families, and families join to form nations, and that the entire congregation is in fact a palpable and visible and interconnected configuration! Everyone impinges upon everyone else. Everyone draws, in his or her separateness, upon the separateness of everyone else. It's dizzying, near to collapsing, but Azrael holds him, whispering fiercely. ]

Look again!

[ Yet with this powerful sight comes the unsettling realization of his own sense of separateness. Yet each and every being he sees is separate - fully individual still, even within this massive collective. ]

Edited 2014-02-01 07:10 (UTC)

[Des takes a shuddering breath, overwhelmed by the sight, and rubs his knuckles against his eyes as if he's wiping tears away or clearing spots from his vision. His chest aches with longing and he can't look anymore, fixing his eyes on some spot on the floor.

If he didn't have enough incentive to go through with this before, he has it now.]

This is where it's gonna end. [He chokes the words out.] I get this?

[ "If we win," Lucifer says calmly. "This belongs to everyone."

They stand in a doorway. Beyond appears vista upon vista and Des is vaguely sensible suddenly that over the nearby balustrade there lies below the world.

The world as he has never seen it in all its ages, with all its secrets of the past revealed. He has only to rush to the railing and he can peer down into the time of Eden or Ancient Mesopotamia, or a moment when Roman legions had marched through the woods of his earthly home. He would see the great eruption of Vesuvius spill its horrid deadly ash down upon the ancient living city of Pompeii.

Everything there to be known and finally comprehended, all questions settled, the smell of another time, the taste of it. The truth behind every mystery left unsolved.

There's a strange pull to it that he can't resist with his will save of 14, and he is drawn to it, but the distance to it seems impossible, and suddenly he becomes intensely aware that this vision of Earth will be mingled with smoke and fire and suffering, and that it might utterly demolish in him the overflowing sense of joy. He still has to see, however. He's not dead. He will not remain here.

Azrael reaches out for him, but his legs begun running faster than she can grab him.

An immense light rises suddenly, a direct source infinitely hotter and more illuminating than the splendid light that already falls without prejudice on everything he can see. This great gathering magnetic light grows larger and larger until the world down below, the great dim landscape of smoke and horror and suffering, is turned white by this light, and rendered like an abstraction of itself, on the verge of combusting.

Azrael pulls him back, throwing up her arms to cover his eyes. Des would realize she and Lucifer have bowed their heads, and that they are hiding their own eyes behind him. He hears them sigh, or is it a moan? He can't tell. For one second the sound fills the universe; all the cries and laughter and singing; and something mournful from the depths of Earth - all this sound - is caught in their sighs.

Suddenly, he feels Azrael's strong arms relax and release him.

Looking up, in the midst of the flood of light he sees again the balustrade, and against it stands a single form. Eyes are locked on to his, the gaze terrifying and powerful.

Des is overcome with the feelings he usually experiences only when on the verge of death.

The being draws him towards itself, a light flooding from it that mingles with the light behind him and all around him, so his face grows brighter yet more distinct and more detailed.

And then he speaks loudly, pleadingly to Des, in a heartbroken voice, a voice strong and masculine and perhaps even young. The voice overwhelms, fills him to the brim with every kind of emotion there is. It speaks his name, but it's not Desmond Descant that it says - Des would recognize suddenly an older name of his own, his once, when he was born to the world. ]

You would not do this, to your brethren on earth, to God himself, would you? This is not you, my Son. You are not of their ilk, no - not you!

[He can count some things he vaguely remembers from nightmares and half-formed memories when he peers down, but most of it is things he's only heard about in passing, but somehow still close to him- a heavy burden weighing on his heart driven by countless centuries of waiting and watching and trying to be rid of it. He knows the world as it is- all the suffering, the pain, the fact that it never changes.

But now he sees how little he really knows. How much his suffering and everyone else's has just been for... what? This agony.

When Azrael pulls him away, he tries to fight, but it's a feeble attempt and he sucks in a breath, composing himself. When she releases him and the new figure arrives, he swallows hard and slouches a bit, eyes narrowed, like a wary dog on its belly, unsure of what it's rolling over for. He tenses at the sound of a name he hasn't heard in millenniums and drops his eyes completely.]

No. [No snark. No quips. Des is suddenly a few thousand years younger and if he wasn't speaking plain, albeit heavily-accented English, he might have sworn he slipped back into that ancient language he used to call his.] No one deserves to suffer like that.

[He'd take a hammer to a Talisman because he wouldn't want anyone learning the hard way what the cost of immortality is. He sure as hell wouldn't stand by and let something like this happen. He's selfish, but he's not cruel.]

[ the voice rises in thunderous tones: "YOU WOULD NOT BE OUR ADVERSARY!" And ever so abruptly, des is torn out of the presence, in the whirlwind again and heaven is gone.

Azrael tightens her grip around him, straining with all her force to carry him downward, to force him to begin the descent.

the big comedown - nine inch nails

They plummet, an awful falling, terrifying, as the swift currents of souls all around them ascend, watch, descend, the darkness coming again, everything growing dark, until suddenly they travel through the moist air, full of familiar and natural scents, and come to a soft and soundless pause.

It's a garden again, still and beautiful. But it's no heavenly domain. The sun is shining down on the three of them, and Azrael and Lucifer look down at him, wings immense and then slowly fading until they are both more humanlike figures, though azrael's hair is a mane of gradually settling light. ]

[Des blinks in the disorientation and he's not quite as dignified or poised as he was in Heaven, reeling from the descent and the shock of being pulled away from something so beautiful. The disappointment and petulance is clear in his tone.]

That was a little much.

Of course it was. You glimpsed the full potential majesty of God's mere presence - you, who are unaccustomed to anything but the darkness of the earth.

I meant the shouting and the- [He waves a hand to indicate the drop. He trails off and looks around.] Where are we?

You would call it the Shadow World. Or a memory of it. We are far in the past, but outside Time.

Is this where you tell me how it all began? [outside of the overwhelming nature of heaven, he's all snark.] The whole twisted mess?

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