abraxaslogs | [closed] they told me all of my cages were mental

Wilhelm is half right.

It still means he's half wrong.

"If I didn't care I would have just let you die--I should have just let you die, I didn't have the power to spare for it! Who else would've missed you, anyway?" his shouting dips down wickedly, taking Wilhelm's anger and looping through his own. And he knows; he knows exactly what the kid is going through right now and how much Lucifer uses that in his verbal attack, too riled to stop. "You get so easily attached to people I bet you don't remember a single one of them right now."

He teeters forward and is straightened on his feet again, jerking towards him. "Name one."

Lucifer rises to his feet, and Wilhelm curls up on his knees. He wants to saw his heart from his chest. He wants to split open his skull, pull back his skin, and tear out every nerve. He wants to to hit Lucifer, kick him in the shins, shove him to the ground. He wants to be held.

"I..."

Because he can't. He can't think of anybody who would miss him if he were gone. There must have been somebody at one time. Friends. Family. Didn't he have a brother? What was his name? The face is a blank blur, the voice white noise. In the place of memories gape dark cavities.

He isn't yelling anymore. Now his voice is like the blackened wick that's left after the candle burns out.

"It would've been better if you just let me die."

Lucifer presses both his hands to his face and does not scream but it's a near thing. The air around him vibrates with barely-contained power, nearly alive.

This is absolutely what he was trying to avoid happening.

Good job, Lucifer. Real winner.

His voice is muffled when he asks, "Is there any of the Summoned in this city you can name?"

Assuming that he's being taunted, he lifts his head to lob a glare up at Lucifer — though with his eyes a wobbly red, it's about as effective as chucking a wet piece of paper.

"I already said I can't, I can't remember."

He spits the words out like broken teeth. He hadn't actually said it. He hadn't wanted to confess to the loneliness in which he's cloistered, but now it's coming up.

"I don't... They're not my friends. They don't know me, nobody knows me."

Burying his face in his hands, he tries to regulate his breathing, which has gone all gulping-and-gasping hysterical. The fucked up thing is, no matter how furious he is at Lucifer, no matter how wounded he is by the knife in his back, he still craves his reassurance. Nobody else will tell him that it's going to be okay.

There goes that shining bit of hope that maybe the kid felt indifferent about anyone he actively knows.

"That's not true, not that I expect you to believe anything I say." He drops one hand, the other pressing thumb and forefinger into his eyelids.

"There's a god named Sannleikr. Some... creepy thing that waltzed through my dreams and is why you can't remember anyone. I can't control it. And I'm extremely certain you're under a similar problem." Because otherwise Lucifer would never have been in this situation to begin with.

He hopes that maybe when this effect has faded, Wilhelm will at least remember those words.

He has two options here. Maybe.

Option 1: "There's a Summoned that sleepwalks. Sometimes just found staring off into nothing, zoned out. Lanky individual. Talks a lot. Kind of annoying. Sound familiar at all?"

Loneliness is nothing new to Wilhelm; he knows its shape well. His title wedges a distance between him and other people, and his upbringing only encouraged the walls to rise higher. Everyone knows the prince, but nobody knows Wilhelm, not really. It was this loneliness that left the door open for Lucifer then, and this loneliness that cultivates the ideal soil in which Sannleikr's influence can push its roots deep.

This is a fresh, bleeding hurt. The reminder that nobody ever cared bruises, but the realization that the only one who believed in him only saw him as a tool to use — that the only one he could turn to is now a dead end — gouges deep.

"I don't know, I don't know!" he answers with an emphatic gesture of his hands.

With Lucifer's words like shrapnel buried in his brain, and his heart hemorrhaging, it's hard to make much sense of anything right now. Wilhelm digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, heaving himself up onto his feet. His breath is still ragged, his voice raw.

"Why are you...why are you pretending to help me? I'm not a fucking idiot! You already said it — nobody gives a shit, and that includes you."

Everything in him wants Lucifer to contradict him again. Prove him wrong. Take back the secrets he'd spilled.

"Uh huh, yeah, okay," Lucifer mutters, lacking heat to the words.

For his sanity he's mostly checked out of this conversation by this point.

He would really just like to walk away. But Wilhelm is a timebomb that Lucifer himself accidentally set off and while he's not the most responsible person in the world, he knows he has to handle this to a degree.

"Here's what we're going to do, unless you want to set half these gardens on fire--which I would not recommend--I'm going to drag you out of here if I have to and into town and plop you in the teashop, get something warm in your gut, and free yourself from my," he pauses, then draws out, blatantly sarcastic and full of disgust towards himself, "evil machinations."

Leave me alone, he almost yells. The words stick to the roof of his mouth, like his tongue is reluctant to let them fly. Lucifer deceived him, used him, hurt him — but at least he's someone. In the silence that hangs between them, Wilhelm turns away and pushes his hands through his hair, gathers his breath like the pieces of something broken and forces it out. He tries to wipe his face dry. He tries to stop himself from reading too much into Lucifer's offer disguised as a threat.

"Fine," he finally mumbles. A bedraggled white flag of surrender. His eyes avoid Lucifer, his arms curl around himself. "I don't...I don't fucking care anymore."

Which is a fucking lie. He stumbles into a step backwards, then turns and keeps walking.

If Lucifer were less mature he would toss his arms up in a what can you do hopeless gesture--

Who's anyone kidding, that definitely happens as he turns around and follows after Wilhelm.

Mildred is going to kill him for this, that's all he can think. But he doesn't know what else to do, it's why he was hoping maybe, somehow, Jack would work. Could probably still work, really. They already don't like each other, what's breaking a child going to do; Jack would hardly be surprised.

It's a long, agonizing walk. Worse than the walk through the Hunting Grounds. He sometimes lags behind the kid, sometimes takes the lead, mostly makes sure Wilhelm doesn't wander off in the distracted bedraggled duckling that he is.

The only blessing is that when they get to the Winking Cauldron Kell isn't on shift. Lucifer doesn't think he's really seen him in a while.

He frog-marches Wilhelm to a table, not Lucifer's usual, putting him in a corner instead of having his tears all on display by a window. Then he moves to the counter and hollers towards the back.

Mildred takes one look at Wilhelm, then immediately turns sharp eyes back to Lucifer. He spreads his arms, nearly pleading, more because of Mildred than Wilhelm.

He had a good thing here. He's not so sure how well that will hold up after.

"I'm sorry, I don't know, please get him something warm that isn't an experiment and something simple to eat and just take care of him for a little bit--he doesn't want to be around me so I need to go."

"What you need to do is talk about this," she argues, hushed. "What did you--what happened?"

"Me. I happened. Please."

"Fine, only because he looks like he needs help. Go, get out of here. You owe me, Lucifer."

"I know, I know."

He slumps back to Wilhelm's table, hands shoved deeply into his pockets and looking like a tense bowstring. "Don't run off. She'll chase you down if you do. She'll take care of you."

And unless Wilhelm says anything else, he's gone, not even walking out the door, just disappearing from thin air.

On the slog to the Winking Cauldon, Wilhelm keeps his head down and his arms crossed, as if intending to hold himself together through physical force. He sets his countenance in the sullen anger that marks someone who is trying to pretend he wasn't just crying. His face stays dry, though his glossy eyes betray him.

Somewhere along the way, he wonders why the hell he's still following. He wants to be alone to lick his wounds, but the thought of being alone also makes his chest tighten. The empty silence of his room seems suffocating.

Somewhere else, it strikes him that Lucifer could have left at any point. And he chose to stay, to ensure Wilhelm wouldn't be left alone. He chose to stay despite his awkwardness in dealing with others' emotions. Wilhelm doesn't know what to do with that ill-fitting piece. Clutch it close or fling it away.

Once inside the teashop, he folds into a chair at the table he's led to. He avoids looking at Lucifer; he says nothing. For his trouble, he gets a half-shrug, a tensing jaw. When Lucifer vanishes, the world doesn't end, though his heart momentarily contracts like one of those stars that's burned up all its fuel. Mildred scoots something hot and fragrant in front of him, and a warm hunk of bread slathered in butter to go with it, which gets a terse thanks out of him. He tears into it less because he's hungry, and more because it provides a reason not to talk.

Like the tide going out, Sannleikr's influence recedes. As familiar faces repopulate his memory, the sharpest emotion he's left with is his anger. Used again. Betrayed again.

But it's never that simple.

[closed] they told me all of my cages were mental

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