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

"Good," he sounds like he means it. A chuckle. "Hopefully you didn't wallflower the whole time and actually met some new people." He shrugs. "But neutral grounds are important, now more than ever."

Because nowhere is ever entirely neutral--Nocwich should be proof of that. And Lucifer can't be the only one that wanted eyes on that party, to see all the moving pieces.

"Did others see it that way?"

It takes him a moment to understand what Lucifer is asking.

"As a neutral zone?" Chewing on his lip, he thinks a moment. "I guess so. A lot of the people there were from the Free Cities. Don't know if anyone was from Solvunn. There wasn't any drama, I think everyone just wanted a break from everything that's happening."

Of course, he spent about half the night staring at Rhy, so...as far as inadvertent spies go, he's a pretty lousy one.

He wants to press about the party, the guests, but he doesn't think Wilhelm is entirely receptive at the moment to prying. Instead, he voices the thoughts that were rattling around in his head with a dismissive scoff, for better or for worse, "I'm surprised," he says, "I wasn't sure the other Summoned knew what neutrality meant."

He will continue to argue that he did not make the first strike if anyone calls him a hypocrite, and he attacked that woman after Thorne's delegate was in danger. It's meant at an insult to everyone else outside of Thorne. Pushing more and more daggers at the other factions.

He wonders what would have happened if he had gone and actively gave their little shindig a problem, instead of passively. Ha.

"I just worry," he starts, and it sounds mostly true, but then he adds, sharper and a bit frigid, "that someone out there will find a reason and a way to weaponize you against the rest of us."

Ah.

Maybe his "reprieve" isn't as helpful as he needs it to be.

Edited (more daggers) 2022-10-23 01:56 (UTC)

He hasn't forgotten that Lucifer was attacked by Summoned from Cadens. The knowledge of it lurks in the shadows at the back of his mind when he crosses paths with anyone of that faction. Lucifer has never said who'd done it — he probably didn't know their names. As difficult as it is to reconcile that story with his impression of the people he's met from the Free Cities, Wilhelm can concede that he might be a little naive. He's trying not to be.

So he's grateful that while Lucifer has decided to look out for him, to take him under his wing, the man (well, angel) doesn't try to shelter him like some fragile thing.

Wilhelm's halfway to some comment on how singing badly must just bring people together — wasn't there a story like that from World War II or something? — when Lucifer cuts in with this next observation. His expression tightens, nerves prickled.

"What do you mean weaponize me?"

"Look, buddy," he says. He's holding his hands out like he's placating an animal, but his voice is much too light, "I'm not saying it'll happen, but there's that possibility that someone will look at you and see you as an asset--it wouldn't surprise me if Cadens and that military of theirs thinks about child soldiers."

Which he isn't trying to imply that Wilhelm is a child (again), but it's not his fault that's the common terminology. No one bellows about teenage soldiers.

He shifts uncomfortably on his feet, folding his arms over his chest.

"What, so they're going to start kidnapping people from other factions? Come on."

Skepticism drips from his voice. There's no way anyone could look at him and see something worth all that trouble to get a hold of. He doesn't even need the disembodied whispers to tell him that.

"Let's be fair they would probably argue that they're saving you," he sings, jazz hands and all, stepping near the kid, so that he can say the rest under his breath, "Story going around is that Thorne locked everyone up they accidentally Summoned or didn't like when they did their first summoning."

Yes, he'd heard that. From his demeanor — shoulders stiffening, cheek chewed from the inside — it's obvious that doubts are setting in. Not about what Lucifer is saying, but about everything else. Hadn't Jesper said he was working on a way to break the Summoned out of Thorne? He framed it as a rescue; they joked about dashing heroes and damsels in distress.

Jesper is a good person, though. It wasn't some military-industrial scheme cooked up by Cadens, it was the offer of a friend.

What do you actually know about Jesper? probes a whispered voice. He told you outright that he was in a gang. He could be dangerous... And you ran off to swap spit with him at the first chance you got, just because you were feeling a little sad.

"But I barely know the first thing about fighting," he argues, grasping for a response.

"It ain't about fighting, kid," he says, and claps a hand to Wilhelm's shoulder. "It never is just about fighting."

It's only when he feels the familiar rush kick in, settling so nicely snug through him, that he realizes what he did, and he snaps his hand back just as quick, alarmed. Oh, he's only ever been a willing conduit for one god, for a brief time, and this... this is something he thought he had control over and yet--

"Ah," he breathes out, at a true loss of words for what will, unfortunately, only be a heartbeat of a minute.

Wilhelm is caught between jerking away from Lucifer's touch, because he doesn't like what he's saying, and allowing it, because it feels something like reassurance. In the end, he stays where he is, because he's always been desperate for any measure of reassurance.

Though, at the moment, the weight of that hand feels like it's driving him down into the earth too.

A few days ago, he might have been able to shoulder this conversation better. But now, after days of being slowly cannibalized by his own darkest thoughts, he spirals at the slightest nudge. Worst case scenarios reel through his brain as his lungs contract and his words turn brittle.

"Can you just fucking say what you mean?"

"What?" he hisses back, pulled away but a snake about to strike and he doesn't--he needs to stop himself except, "that you're so manipulable into a puppet?"

He bobs to one side, head in the slither motion as he continues sharply, "That I'm concerned someone else is going to use you exactly how I intend to? Little footsoldier. Little spy. Your naivety getting anyone to tell you anything, and something in all of that drivel one day is going to be useful!"

And then the worst case scenarios seem to spill out of his skull and splash into real life. Something grabs a hold of him and squeezes so tight he can hardly breathe. It paralyzes him.

He forgot 'little idiot', cuts the voice through the silence. You should know by now to never trust anybody. August sold you out. Your own mother betrayed you. When will you learn that nobody actually gives a shit about you?

Wilhelm takes a halting step backwards as if he's been punched. His fingers hook into his jacket sleeves. His voice comes out small and tight like a fist, cracked open like bloody knuckles.

"What?"

Lucifer laughs, teetering backwards and smothering his face with his palm.

No, he thinks. Stop, he thinks. He continues to laugh, shaking his head. "You're too trusting, Wilhelm; that's your problem. You try to see the best in everyone, right? The bright side. That's how someone else is going to take advantage of you."

He half turns away. "'Lucia,'" he throws out, from when they first met in the dining hall and Wilhelm was trying to staunch a wound. "Lucia, really? You're so sunk in your own head that you still haven't realized that I am the actual devil!"

The laughter is what shatters him. All the proof that Lucifer never cared is in that laugh that's like something coming off its hinges. With a sharp inhale, he scrubs the heel of his hand across his cheek to smear away a tear that falls loose.

"What the hell are you talking about?" He shakes his head, as if refusing Lucifer's confession. His spinning thoughts are having a hard time holding onto all of this. "You're...just fucking with me now. Is that it? The Devil isn't—"

Real. But there wasn't supposed to be any such thing as magic either, and that was very real here. He stares at Lucifer, trying to sift through everything he knows about him. His claim that he's an angel. His antipathy to people. His broken relationship with his father and family.

It comes to him like a stone crashing through glass. Oh, shit.

The real problem is that there's a fraction of Lucifer that does care, but he doesn't know what to do with that. Because Wilhelm has the capabilities of being a forest fire and Lucifer can't put that out--well, he can, but the clean-up is the problem.

No "fire brigade" is going to be able to spring Wilhelm from prison and Lucifer doesn't know how to keep that from being a concern, and here he is putting fuel to those flames in a way he can't stop.

"Isn't what?" Lucifer whispers, contrasting the laugh from a moment ago. "Isn't real?"

He crouches down, hands laced together. A familiar posture, but his hands are gripping tighter than normal. He doesn't think he can afflict Wilhelm twice but he's afraid what will happen if he does.

"My older brother, the Archangel Michael," he lulls.

'I... have an older brother. Idolized him.'

"He cast me out of Heaven at God's command."

'He rejected me. Took our Father's side.'

"And then God left. Abandoned us, and I was blamed because I didn't see the value in his creation of humans."

'The first time the majority of my siblings blamed me for his taking off. Because I was the 'problem child.' I had the gall to be different.'

"You're a prince," he says this impossibly lower--so if there's anyone that could spy on them, they cannot hear the title spoken.

'I've been a soldier, a general, an advisor, a king. I have experience in more lifetimes than most will ever dream. I've seen a world change, blossom, decay. I've seen how souls become corrupt.'

"I'm the Prince of Darkness."

'Did you say you're a king?'
'Oh yes. With one of the largest armies at my call.'

"King of Hell. Father of Demons."

He spreads his arms, carefully balanced in his crouch on his heels. There is no joy in his proclamation. There is pain at the edges of his gaze, an awareness there eking through that just isn't enough.

This has to be a cruel joke. It has to be. Denial beats through his thoughts as fierce as his heart thudding in his stomach.

But as Lucifer's tirade unravels everything, it drags Wilhelm to the conclusion that it's not a joke, just cruel. All along, he has seen only what he wants to see in Lucifer, and to do that he's bent logic around the things that stuck out funny. Willful ignorance that found in his loneliness somewhere to thrive.

He wants to throw up. He wants to throw fists. Instead, his bone-white knuckles hang trembling at his sides.

"You let me believe you cared about me. You...you believed in me, and I couldn't fucking figure out why...but it made me think that maybe you were right. Maybe I had some kind of potential, and it would come out if I just kept trying."

Word by word, his wavering voice crashes into something raw and splintered. Underneath all the hurt surges a strange sense of righteousness, as if grasping Lucifer's secret lends him some unknowable power.

"I thought it was so great that you didn't treat me like a kid. You actually listened to me, you took me seriously. But the whole fucking time..."

A sharp sniffle. He hates that he's crying in front of him. Sucking in a breath, he spits out:

"Fuck you! I'm done with this."

On shaky legs, Wilhelm starts to stalk away. He swipes at his eyes, almost angrier at himself for being such an easy target.

That's all anyone will ever see in you, insists a whispering voice. A tool to use for their own ends.

Another needles, Look on the bright side: at least you're not completely useless.

As a ward against the whispers, and against the raw memories of Lucifer that now crash down around him, he reaches for counter-examples. But no faces come to mind. At the dark edges of his thoughts lingers someone with a reassuring smile and arms like home. Someone else with eyes that find him and know him. Who was that? All he can remember now is a closed casket. A turned back. The more desperately he tries to hold onto any memories of those who have made life a little softer, the farther they slip from his mind. Suddenly, he can't be sure that any of them were ever real. There's only ever been...

His steps slow, then halt altogether. He doubles over. His arms curl over his head, hands curling in his hair.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks, and the question is like a wound.

"Wilhelm," it's bitten off sharply, commanding, "listen to me," like it's enough to cut through Lucifer's own mind as well as Wilhelm's.

But he loses that line of conversation into the distress of his own mind, unable to take himself back from the influence that's washed over him. He knows that there's two things at play here, overlapping each other and not knowing how to break apart the threads of either one. He's never had to try and undo Sannleikr's work. Never had a need, nor care. He just afflicted person after person, sunk into the rush it gave him.

He doesn't want that right now, the need to crawl out of this skin that doesn't even belong to him, but he's trapped in that as much as he was the Cage.

He runs a hand over his head, still crouched down. Another laugh, this one much more frayed than anything else. This the greatest of his secrets that's waiting as a response, that he's kept close to his chest and a secret from himself. Ignore it, ignore it, ignore it. That's how all problems go away, right?

For a moment, because of his next words, he thinks it even works. "You were so concerned with being useless and I laid the framework for you to be more," he growls. "You can be as furious as you want at me but it will never change that I started your path to be something greater!" And boy, that rage will fuel any flame of the kid's, now a permanent reservoir of power etched through his soul.

This was not Lucifer's design.

And he doesn't escape what he tried to hold back: "And now, unfortunately, I'm stuck with the fact that I care if you live or die!"

As Lucifer talks, Wilhelm is left both trying to hold himself together and wanting to claw out of his own skin. It's a little bit like cradling the broken pieces of some fallen object, stuck on the notion of what those handfuls of glass used to be. A little bit like being a burning building — there's no fire escape out of yourself. Pacing on the spot, arms curled over his head, he ends up crumpled into a crouch too.

"You don't care!" He throws his words like a temper tantrum. "It's just that you can't use me anymore if I'm dead. That's why you saved me in the woods, isn't it? That's why you were so pissed off, you just saw all your hard work at manipulating me going up in smoke. And, hey, even better — it made me grateful to you. It made me so sure you were looking out for me. Fuck!"

A frustrated groan claws out of his throat. He pounds his fists against his skull. Stop crying, dumbass. Stop crying, stop crying. Not the whispering voices this time; just himself.

He should walk away. But he doesn't know where to go, who else to find shelter in. Loneliness, that chasm in him with enough mass to exert its own gravity, holds him there. However much being near Lucifer hurts right now, being alone — truly alone — terrifies him more than anything.

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."

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

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