I don't trust, but I see right in front of me

[thedevilwhorose]

Who: Lucifer, others
When: May & June
Where: Thorne, Nott, Nocwich, the Horizon
What: OTA prompts and some closed things
Warnings:
Nocwich with Castiel: Cyfaill-induced Problems.
Nocwich with Istredd: A Lot of Blood, animal death, part harvesting, ???? it's a weird thread




I don't know who to betray. ♫
[Will match style.]

Comments

[ordinar]

He used to wonder, back when his mending trust balanced on a knife's edge, when Lucifer was telling the truth and when he was fabricating a lie designed to twist his emotions. Now, he can tell by the manic slant of his words that these are his real feelings spilling out.

Maybe it should bother him that he's breaking bread — well, figuratively speaking, as neither of them are eating at the moment — with someone who's just admitted to trying to instigate the Apocalypse, but... Wilhelm understands rage. The kind that glows so bright and hot that you just want to use it to burn something else down. Especially the things that have kept you bound for so long.

And sometimes, it smacks him that this is the honest-to-god devil sitting across from him. He forgets, because the villain condemned as the enemy of mankind or whatever feels so far removed from the person he knows. Like a game of telephone, where what comes out on the other end is complete nonsense only vaguely recognizable as what it began as. He's looking at Lucifer now instead of the table between them.

"I like it better when you're honest."

This comes with a crooked curl of his lips. He means it, of course, but he's also stalling before wading into everything Lucifer has said. His shoulders slump with a sigh.

"I guess we have some time to figure it out. More than we would've had, anyway."

What shape they want their lives to take. What purpose they want to carry. Not a second chance, because there's no such thing as a clean break from the past, but it's a different chance to make what they could never have made in their original worlds.

[thedevilwhorose]

"Honesty can be just as brutal, if not worse, than lies," Lucifer points out. It's why he used to primarily deal in honesty. So much more hurt could be felt through the truth.

The pain from the truth was nearly impossible to shake.

But he does get where Wilhelm is coming from. Lucifer's spoken words to the kid were all true, but boy were there so many holes, things left unspoken, and the fulcrum of his actual identity missing that made it all one big manipulative story.

"More time might be a hindrance," he says. "Get listless, without direction, without a deadline."

[ordinar]

Wilhelm knows that, of course. It hadn't been Lucifer's lies that sent him crumbling into an emotional breakdown. The truth hurts, but it heals too, and Lucifer's actions tell him that other kind of truth.

He realizes Lucifer is right about the drawback to having so much time lying wide open in front of you like a boundless plain. It's easy to get lost. For all that Wilhelm has talked about this world being a new opportunity, a new beginning, he still hasn't made much of it. He wants to try.

"So...doing things for yourself," he repeats. He has finally abandoned his fork.

There's a difference, he thinks, between doing whatever you want and doing something for yourself. When he loses hours to wallowing in his head, it's not like it's for anyone else, but it's definitely not for himself either. The deliberateness of it matters — like when he trains with Kyle or practices his magic, and he feels control in a way that has eluded him for most of his life. He tilts a look at Lucifer.

"What about you? What do you do for yourself?"

[thedevilwhorose]

He folds his arms. For this, he actually has answers. It's built up differently over time but in some outlandish way, for all of Lucifer's chaos, he has some of a routine. Some options. Some work.

"Train people in combat." A few guards, a few Summoned. "Take enchantment classes." Some of it is mind-numbing boring. Something to just keep his mind busy on a task, keep him from crawling up the walls. His face scrunches up a moment and he sighs as though his next words pain him greatly, "Garden a bit."

Not spoken is how many people he bothers on a regular basis. The familiar faces he had obsessively keeping an eye on after the rescue--both for the pit Summoned and those that had to tough it out together--and how just checking on with them every now and then had felt normal.

[ordinar]

His lips quirk into a grin at the inclusion of gardening on the list. So it has grown on Lucifer.

Unknowingly, his thoughts wander in the same direction as what Lucifer has left unspoken. While strengthening his body and his control over magic has provided, if not a sense of purpose, then at least some moorings to prevent him from drifting aimlessly, the people he's grown attached to provide a sense of belonging that he never expected to find here. That's a kind of tether too. It's not that he never feels lonely, or overwhelmed by everything this world dumps on him, but there are people who make sure he doesn't drown.

"I think...choosing who you spend your time with, too." Under the table, he kicks affectionately at Lucifer's boot. "I know it sounds weird, but there are less, like, barriers in the way here."

Not the physical kind, though the Horizon makes that true too. He means the invisible kind, like your status or your reputation.

[thedevilwhorose]

This dumb kid shouldn't have gotten beyond all of Lucifer's defenses and yet in Lucifer trying to use and manipulate him and then failing and... everything that followed...

Well.

Here they are.

Wilhelm breached Lucifer's defenses before even Istredd did, and that is the most crowning achievement possible.

"There is an... advantage here that I never had expected," he admits. They are trapped, yes, but Wilhelm isn't wrong that their immaterial barriers are lessened. And then, an aggrieved, put-upon sigh, "And the people in this faction," specifically Thorne, thanks, "don't completely suck."

There is the bare underlining of genuine fondness to those words.

Lucifer has. Become very... attached to many of the Thorne Summoned. Not just Istredd, and Wilhelm, and Kell, though they are the prime factors.

[ordinar]

That's one crown he'll happily take. Maybe Lucifer didn't get the spy he was trying to mold, but somewhere in all that raw messiness the truth split open, Wilhelm found a better reason to give his loyalty to him. While Lucifer sighs, Wilhelm smiles.

"I'm touched."

It's shaped like a joke, with a hand exaggeratedly clasped to his heart, but he means it too. He hears the fondness pushing at Lucifer's words like uncertain shoots unfurling from the earth. He knows that he has a hard time allowing his emotions, especially the kind with soft underbellies, to just breathe.

[thedevilwhorose]

"Yeah, yeah, don't let it go to your head," Lucifer says, as though Wilhelm hasn't had an abundance of allowances. That Wilhelm could commit any crime and Lucifer would just think 'hm, How to Cover.'

But, he supposes, they've already done that. Lucifer's certain the truth of what happened with Wilhelm's tarot card and their first time in Nocwich will never come out. There's too many safety precautions, including (still) throwing Lucifer under the (metaphorical, thanks, Future Bay) bus.

"Try not to get kidnapped again, alright, my sanity can't handle all this."

All the Teenage Drama, as though that was the source of Josselyn's Schemes.

[ordinar]

This crooked smile says that he's letting it go to his head at least a little. Surely that's preferable to the sharp uncertainty Wilhelm used to hold in front of him like a weapon, back during the dark months when so much space lay between them.

"I'm not planning on it."

Though, he thinks about it more than he cares to admit. It follows him with the persistence of a nightmare, the fear that somehow he'll get snatched up again, taken somewhere dark and obscure. The enchanted trinket in his pocket is a small reassurance he'll hold on tight to. He pats it again, pushes his hand through his hair.

"Hey, let me know if you ever want some help in the garden again."

wrap here?

[thedevilwhorose]

Well, it persists in Lucifer's thoughts, too. That he's going to wake up and they're all going to be gone again, at once. Shouldn't be a problem, shouldn't have ever been a problem, but it is, and it haunts him.

He chuckles at the mention of gardening, because he has..... actually kept up with it. At this point it's both a joke and something to fill his day with, because he can't really just shut his mind off and list away through decades like he did in the Cage. He has minutes and hours and days and months and now over a year to fill.

"I could always use a hand."

He gets up then, gets an actual plate of food, but retakes his seat and settles into the odd familiarity that they've cultivated.