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

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

WHO || Des, Azrael [Closed]
WHAT || Des learns some unfortunate things
WHERE || Chicago
WHEN || Sometime during the trial, immediately following this [backdated]
HOW || Actionspam. Single thread.

AND SUDDENLY DES FINDS HIMSELF... on a roof. Above what looks like is still Chicago. There's a bit of a chill wind out but it's still November, not the arctic chills of January, so they can deal. Azrael releases himself instantly and moves to sit on the ledge, looking down at the city.

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Then hell should be earth. The only way anyone gets redemption is by not making the same mistakes that dragged them down. It ought to be every bad choice removed from God's worldview and played out until the answer's clear and they make the right choice . That would be my hell. I don't know about anyone else.

Yes, but how would they learn that what they had done were even a mistake? There are those with strong consciences who realize their errors as they live with the consequences, but there are some who simply kill, and torture, and bring about suffering because they enjoy it. The capacity for empathy and understanding is beyond their experiences in the world. The earthly system is too random in who it rewards and who it punishes and how, to ever accomplish what you're suggesting.

Earth may seem hellish from what we both know of the suffering there, but it's my job to tutor souls towards meaning, and God's system would make pain a meaning all its own.

No - Hell must be a place where people realize what they've done to others in life; where they face every detail of it, and realize every particle of it, so that they would never, never even consider making that choice again - not out of fear of punishment, but out of a realization of the great evil in their actions and the suffering it wrought. A place where souls are reformed, literally, by knowledge of what they've done wrong and how they could have avoided it, and what they should have done. When they understand, as the Elect of Sheol did, when they can forgive not only God for this big mess, but themselves for their own failures, their own horrible angry reactions, their own spite and meanness, when they love everyone totally in complete forgiveness and empathy, then any soul would be worthy of ascension.

Hell must be a place where they see the consequences of their actions, but with a full merciful comprehension of how little they themselves know.

To know what has hurt others, to realize that you didn't know, that nobody gave you the knowledge, yet still you had the power! And to forgive that, and to forgive your victims, and forgive God, and forgive yourself. And how else to gain this complete and utter empathy?

By experiencing everything you've done - from the other side.

Oh.

[well when you put it that way.]

That would've been my second guess.

[he is pretty prepared to not like hell.]

It is as terrible as you imagine. I created it and I run it to make whole again the souls of the just and the unjust, those who have suffered and those who have done cruelty. And the only lesson of that Hell is Love.

He Loves my souls when they come to him. And He sees each one as a justification of His way!

War is magnificent to Him, and disease is like the color purple in His eyes, and self-sacrifice seems to Him a personal magnification of His Glory. As if He's ever done it! He tries to overwhelm me with numbers. In the name of the cross, more injustice has been perpetuated than for any other single cause or emblem or philosophy or creed on Earth.

And I empty Hell so fast, soul by soul, by revealing truth about what humans suffer and humans know and what humans can do that my souls go flooding through His gates.

And who do you think comes into Hell feeling most cheated? Most angry and unforgiving? The child who died in a gas chamber in an extermination camp? Or a warrior with blood up to his elbows who was told that if he exterminated the enemies of the state he would find his place in Valhalla, Paradise, or Heaven?

[ he sits forward, commanding des' attention more deliberately, as azrael watches silently. ]

Hell is where I straighten things out that He has made wrong. Hell is where I reintroduce a frame of mind that might have existed had suffering never destroyed it! Hell is where I teach men and women that they can be better than He is.

But that's my punishment, Hell - for arguing with Him, that I must go there and help the souls to fulfill their cycle as He sees it, that I must live there with them, and teach them. And that if I don't help them, if I don't school them, they may be there forever!

But Hell is not my battlefield.

The earth is my battlefield. Descant, I fight Him not in Hell, but on Earth. My followers and I roam the world seeking to tear down every edifice He has erected to sanctify self-sacrifice and suffering, to sanctify aggression and cruelty and destruction. We lead men and women from churches and temples to dance, to sing, to drink, to embrace one another with license and love. We do everything we can to show up the lie at the heart of His religion! We try to destroy the lie He's allowed to grow as the Universe Unfolds itself. And we work tirelessly to turn his would-be Chosen Ones from their path to the Tree of Absolution. We bend the pressure of the world onto them, we make them believe themselves beset on every side, and we do what we can to get them to embrace the joys he would have them deny themselves.

He is the only one who can enjoy suffering with impunity! And that's because He's God and He doesn't know what it means and He never has known. He's created beings more conscientious and loving than Himself. And the final victory over all human evil will come only when His Religion is dethroned, once and for all, demystified, or ignored, repudiated, thrown aside, and men and women seek for the good and just and the ethical and the loving in each other and for all.

[Des actually smirks.]

Now you really are speaking my language.

Will you serve our cause, then, knowing that sometimes we may require you to go from Earth to Heaven to that filthy Hell of painful recognition? Soon, like us, you may come to find Heaven just about as unbearable in its pitch as Hell. Its bliss will make you eager to heal the evil He has done, and just as we seek Hell to work on those tortured confused souls, to help them up from the morass and into the Light, you will grow more determined to cast down his system and help them. When you're in the Light, you can't forget them! That's what it means to serve me.

[ he pauses, looks to az, and then back to des ] Do you have the courage to see it?

It's not about courage, Lucy. [He stands up, barefooted and determined.] You set me on a path- I stay on it. It doesn't matter what happens. I don't stop until I get what I'm after. That's the one thing good about me.

[He grins, showing his teeth.] I'm stubborn.

[ a small, almost sympathetic twist of the lip ] I was talking about Hell.

[des keeps smiling but the light leaves his eyes as he's unable to hide what his posturing failed to conceal. He's terrified of Hell, of what he might feel there. He's no murderer or rapist, but he's no saint either.

After a second, he swallows.] I can do it.

I warn you, it's Hell.

Yeah, well. I came this far, right? Why would I putz out now?

Because, like any rational being, you're afraid of it. You're wise to fear. But you've never been more ready for what we have to reveal.

Azrael will take you into Hell. Just as in Heaven, in your earthly body, you could not survive the environment on your own, but as long as you remain close to one of us, you will be fine.

[ he turns away from them, black wings unfurling once more ] Before you see the heart of it, you'll meet our compatriots - the other Fallen, who rule each Circle. I will see you again at the bottom of the Pit, in my palace in Nessus, where I will take you to see my school firsthand, to witness our work.

[Des turns to Azrael, sighing.]

This is gonna be good...

[so. dryly.]

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

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