abraxaslogs | as we circle the moon [open]

Istredd raises an eyebrow and takes a seat next to him. They've spent enough time by now that he assumes his welcome is allowed. It is a little melodramatic, but he doesn't know what Lucifer went through. Maybe it's genuine.

"I'm fairly certain by definition, no one can outrun fate."

There are prophecies and true fate in his sphere, but he's never directly been a part of it before. Princess Cirilla is a child of Fate, and in a way they're now bound together by knowledge, not that he thinks it is a good thing on the other side of it. He pushes that out of his mind to look at his friend.

"Alright, what's going on with you? You've been acting strangely."

"No, not typically," he grumbles. He said as much to Wanda. He rubs a hand over his head. He doesn't answer for long enough that it might seem like he won't, but it's clear enough that he's processing through something.

Important enough that he doesn't fire back with a flippant comment. What's not going on or when do I act otherwise.

He scowls. And eventually, eventually settles into a line of discussion. While it may seem like... little point, he's going somewhere with it.

"I've never asked you about religion on your world. It's not my favorite topic. Frankly, I hate it. It's not someone's faith it's my life. My family." No. Focus. "But other worlds... I've learned pieces from people about how things are for them." He opens his arms and gestures to the city at large, likely as far from it as he can get while still being in it. "The biggest question is if, and who, is the big, great evil. Lurking in the shadows. Blamed for every. Little. Thing."

Istredd is patient so he doesn't push or ask more than that, he simply waits. The flippant answer doesn't come so he thinks he might get a sincere one. Lucifer is difficult to get to know but not impossible; he feels like over their time together there has been an unraveling of defenses. Not entirely, but there all the same.

He lets Lucifer talk and while it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to him at first, he figures this is a preamble of sorts.

"There are religions and gods that are worshipped, but it's not really my way."

Istredd is not an atheist really, he's not claiming that gods don't exist or versions of them don't exist, they probably do, but he's not particularly involved in it. He has to live in the normal world, not in the divine, so he leaves divine struggles to the people who worship.

"So your family life is considered faith to other people and that bothers you?" He's trying to pick out the details that make sense. He knows that Lucifer isn't human after all. A demigod would make some sense.

Does it actually bother him?

"It's just... fairytales," he spits out, circling back to their discussion they had while talking about Solvunn and the old gods and books. "They can't even bother to get any of it correct." Not that he's actually read a ton of scripture, but he can guess! Lord knows the amount of times Lucifer's heard not prayers in his name but contempt.

"A-And I get it! I'm not--I'm not a great guy." He points at himself but he's barely even paying attention to Istredd, now wound up. He's caught the point he started the lead-up to make and then streamrollers right by it. "I did some really vile things--for arguably necessary reasons! But I'm not the source of all evil they've all made me out to be and I'm not so terrible as he now thinks I am thanks to those useless Heralds--"

Annnnnd he shuts up, putting his face in his hands, groaning. Loudly.

Good luck to parsing any of that, Istredd.

Istredd thinks he gets the general idea. There will always be 'evil' people within stories to contrast to the good, although his sphere isn't really that simplistic. It's a very complicated world full of complicated people, Istredd included. So Lucifer is the villain, perhaps, or a trickster, hard to say when he's upset like this, and he's not going to ask questions just yet.

He does the only thing he can think of, really, because he's never been good at this. He's never been someone who had people to try and be good to. It's only recently when talking with Wanda (they're both close to her) that he realized how very alone and isolated he's been, somewhat intentionally, somewhat not. But he puts a hand on Lucifer's shoulder, a quiet attempt at support.

"Everyone got messed up by the Heralds, Lucifer. Whoever you're talking about, maybe you should give him the chance to understand. And maybe you should explain that whatever he's heard isn't the full truth. You have the agency to change the story."

There are plenty of he's in this castle so he can't guess at it.

He laughs, just shy of hysterical, dropping his hands. "It is the truth!"

That's the whole problem, pulled sinewy threads of truth from him from whatever Wilhelm's presence did to corrode him.

It's not even what's happening now. The problem with Lucifer as a person--not an entity--is that he's so extremely reliant on masks around people that when he stops bothering with them he forgets how to draw them up quick enough to stem a tide.

This is exactly the road he went down with Wanda. Pushing something good until it breaks.

It didn't break for her.

So why not try a second time?

"I used him, I manipulated him, ohhh all for my own gain! The long, long project. Building slowly into something valuable. That's right, isn't it?" He barks a laugh, head jerked almost inhumanly to look at Istredd, as though remembering he's there despite holding a 'conversation' and feeling his touch. "'There's no real choice, in the beginning'?" he mocks in a sneer. Lucifer's not one to often forget conversations. "Just chess pieces."

Despite the blatant barbed words, there is a notable pain to his gaze. And Lucifer's usual white-noise of a mental presence is jarred and fragmented enough that even Istredd, who has made it a point not to dig into Lucifer's mind, would be able to sense the frayed edges whether he'd like to or not.

"You just told me that the fairytales and what they said about you aren't accurate. This may be part of who you are but it's not all that you are. If it was all you are, you wouldn't be in pain over it."

He sounds like he believes it genuinely because he does. Istredd doesn't need to be a psychic to tell how terrible a time he's having coming to terms with whatever he did recently, but Lucifer is radiating that emotional struggle right now. He keeps his hand firmly where it is so that comfort can stay, whether Lucifer understands it or not.

"Never underestimate the ability of people to forgive. Be open that your intentions weren't good in the start, but they changed. You care now. It matters. I had a conversation like this with my friend Wanda." Finally the recognition they both have a special connection to her. "I told her if we weren't changing, we aren't living. And you're living, Lucifer."

"I don't even have a soul," he says, cracked. "This isn't--it isn't even my body."

Because he doesn't know what else to do with Istredd's words. They're not for him, they can't be.

Regardless of all Lucifer's constant playing-the-victim every single chance he can get he doesn't care about what he did in the past, what he did to his family, what he did to Heaven, certainly not a damn care what he did to the whole of mankind.

It doesn't matter that he may care about this singular instant.

Istredd's words are for someone that got in a schoolyard fight. Not--

Istredd doesn't realize the monster he rooms with--didn't see Lucifer's reflection in the surfaces because Lucifer broke anything that could show just what writhes around inside of him.

"I'm not really sure what having a soul has to do with this. It's not as if people who have them are inherently good."

Istredd actually isn't that certain he has a high opinion on souls or who has them or thinks they're a gauge of anything. He's too much of an academic to put much stock in the spiritual. He's fairly certain there are people who think mages are soulless and inhuman. They definitely have low opinions of elves. So frankly, if Lucifer doesn't have one, that is not a concern to him. He's not entirely sure he does either.

Istredd moves his hand from Lucifer's shoulder to his back, a continued physical sign of comfort, as weak as it may be, since he isn't sure how much more of it would be welcome. He can sense how distraught his friend is and it makes him want to fix it somehow. He looks out at the town from their vantage point.

"I told you in the beginning there is no choice, yes. Only chess pieces. My mentor was - is - a man named Stregobor, one of the older mages in the Brotherhood. He showed an interest in me at first, in a way few people ever had. I wasn't like the other young mages, I've always been different. I wanted his attention and approval, I was a teenager. So I betrayed the woman I loved to him, a fact he still uses to hurt her to this day."

Yennefer, of course, being the woman in question. That would explain why they're exes and why his feelings toward her mostly involve guilt and not anger. It was only a short time before he came here that Stregobor used it against her again. It never ends.

"He used me and manipulated me and discarded me when I wasn't useful to him. Lesson learned." And a bitter one at that, but at least he knows. "The problem with Stregobor is hundreds of years later and he refuses to change or care about anyone other than himself. I still try, stupidly, to reach him." To tell him about the monoliths and the importance, to argue against the fear-mongering he was using. It's all useless.

"I'm telling you this because I think you have the ability to be better than a self-serving cold-hearted jackass. One way you can prove that is by trying to make amends with the person you hurt. You have the capacity."

Because he associates souls with living. Certainly, yes, there's a difference between being alive and living a life, but Lucifer is picking apart any holes in the words he can out of some screwed-up self-preservation mode.

Is it healthy for an archangel to lose their sense of self?

Unlikely.

The fact that he hasn't thrown off Istredd's touch is split between having limited space to move around and the fact that he's an immovable solid block of ice in this moment.

"I don't know," he says eventually. It seems... like a cop-out, to all of Istredd's talking. It's still the best outcome. Not outright disregard.

He is rage and vitriol and trapped in that cycle that he doesn't know what happens if that breaks, which is laughable because all he's ever beeng trying to do is break his Father's cycles and scripts, knock him off into a void of unknowing.

And yet just as Lucifer is fearful of being Caged again, freedom is just as much a terror.

'I don't know' is best because the only other thing he truly wants to say is I can't.

"That's okay, you don't have to know right now. We're just sitting here at the moment."

It's meant to be a grounding reassurance, that in the moment they are here, and whatever he chooses to do from here is in the future. Istredd would usually say he is not very good at comfort or advice, but he did have some practice during the dig when he was responsible for all the workers. He liked it better with them than with his own kind. They were stuck in a situation together, just like this one in Thorne.

"I've never really had a friend since Yenna - Yennefer."

It might sound like a random thing to say, but with Istredd so many things are connected. Nothing ever comes from no where. Yenna is the nickname only he really uses for her, and she hates when he does.

"I wasn't affected the same way through this experience as others because I avoid connections. I have my books and my research and my magic and myself. It's been that way for over sixty years."

He's not saying he never gave into his loneliness and sought out others, he did, he even had some flings outside of Yennefer, some attempts at connections, but none of them lasted. Istredd just finds himself attached to things that no one else cares about, and they're also never other people. The elves are the closest thing he's come recently to caring a lot more about people than he does about books. And now he's not even sure that was the right thing to do, with Ciri's confrontation in his mind.

"I know that caring about someone is hard and it may feel like it's better to cut things off than keep trying, better for you, better for them. But it doesn't actually make life better, being alone. Simpler, maybe, but not better."

There's the burning need to drop out of the conversation. Slide back into derision, make light. Just brush it all aside as he does, well, most everything. Layers and layers and layers and--

He's not compelled. Throughout this whole thing he has to remind himself of that. Nothing is pulling words from his control. The only fight is, as always, with himself.

"I only felt the true weight of it once, my own affliction pushed back into me. I thought it wouldn't matter. There was nothing there that should matter. Outside of the complications of family there's never been--"

He stops, but the truth is every person, demon, or otherwise can be classified into two categories: fanatics and haters. Nothing in between. His son was supposed to change that, but then they were separated and he knows with disgusted loathing that between the mother, the Winchesters, and Castiel? There's nothing for Lucifer. Dragged his name through the muck before Lucifer could ever say two words to him.

He shakes his head. Continues on a different vein, "I lost the kid, I lost Wanda," he sighs, and, "I lost you." It's the closest to a concession that he can give.

If he backed up into light conversation, Istredd would allow it. He doesn't push these things. He only does it when absolutely necessary or important, it's smarter to let people come to things on their own. But he feels like there's something strong going on here, a bond perhaps sliding into place more firmly. An acknowledgement of one too. He said since Yennefer but it was unspoken there, a continuation that meant until now.

He knows what he means by the affliction, the way it emptied out all memories of anyone that used to matter. They became forgotten names or empty spaces. Gone. For most people that is difficult. For someone struggling with whether or not they want those connections, it's complicated. He slides his hand off Lucifer's back, he's been keeping it there too long, but he's still sitting close. His calm presence hopefully soothing.

The kid finally puts into perspective what is haunting him. Istredd knows about Wilhelm, although he hasn't connected with the boy himself. It makes sense that the pain from that conflict is lingering. For himself, it warms his heart. It means some of his loneliness is stripped away and that is hard because it flirts with loss too. He's been there. But there is strength in knowing what is real.

"The god blinded you, but we never really left you, Lucifer. You just have to choose to open your eyes and see what's in front of you."

He drags a hand over his face, clearly exhausted by now. "You and her are going to be the death of me," Lucifer gripes, not exactly in complaint. Maybe just fact, signed and stamped. He has no idea what to do with that particular point but it tips him towards something other. Unknown territory.

He spent so long in Abraxas trying to manipulate a network of people that would rely on him and thus provide him protection it return. People that had potential to be stronger than Lucifer in his current state. A defense while twisting intentions.

That worked and then nearly completely backfired on him.

Ah.

Hm.

Well.

"For the record," and now he, finally, draws away from that deep dive of talking, but still in some form of seriousness. "The person I thought I had to protect myself from isn't actually here. I thought they were a--brother from another... world. Turns out they're my actual brother. Ha!" he makes a wheezed, winded sound. "Funny how that goes." He's not laughing, but he's not particularly bothered.

"It's interesting you ended up friends with both of us. Wanda is important to me, we share a very strong bond due to our similar powers."

Specifically their telepathy. From the moment she stepped into his Horizon and they mentally connected, his world has somewhat changed, since he too never had such an immediate tug toward someone. And usually in training his mages learn how not to share thoughts so easily, but with her, they've just put it all on the table when they are together. Thoughts, emotions, memories. He also understands chaos magic, despite not having her specific kind of it, he knows that particular sort of madness.

And then there is Lucifer, the first person he truly met here, who they don't share a psychic bond and yet they have a purely real one. He smiles faintly, turning the fact around in his head. Maybe it does make sense. They are outcasts who have made mistakes and seek understanding while also isolating themselves from judgment. It's sentimental but also rational.

He raises his eyebrows when Lucifer explains about his brother. Lucifer did seem very concerned at one point about potential trouble. "I suppose that is a positive thing? Your actual brother is less of a concern than this other version." Istredd doesn't know the first thing about family. The Brotherhood is but a title, none of them really act as family in the end. Colleagues most of the time, sometimes friends.

"Who is your brother?"

"Her and I have a strange... similar understanding, perhaps. Similar outlook at life."

The potential is there, anyway. For prophecy, for darkness, for cages, for what everyone view them as and deciding what they are without ever giving them a chance.

It's a lot to unpack and Lucifer's mostly given up and accepted it for what it is.

"He's still a concern, just one of a different kind. Michael."

He isn't even sure how to describe Michael. He's dragged his brother's name through the dirt but that was before the possibility of him being here. But even... meeting with him. Even in Lucifer's dismal state... his brother had clearly gone through some things.

"It's not that I don't recognize him, but... he's 'further ahead' than I am, I guess. And I'm not sure where we stand. It should be the same place as always which is... oh," he forces a smile, sharp in its own right, "copious amount of violence and vitriol."

"We opened our telepathic and telempathic abilities the first time we met. We can read each other's thoughts and feelings when we are together, completely open."

Lucifer was concerned about having a telepathic roommate once he found out he had those skills, but Istredd has hopefully proven that he has no intention of crossing a boundary. Because he already has a bond with someone else, opened up in an extreme way. That is something they could both technically share with Lucifer if he ever wanted to, but for them it was the most natural thing to happen.

He listens when he talks about his brother. He understands what he means by further ahead, Istredd has experienced that himself. He is from a different point in the timeline than Yennefer, for example, and perhaps Geralt, that is harder to say as their paths diverged quickly. Istredd is not surprised to hear brothers could be violent and angry at each other. Blood thicker than water isn't a concept for him.

"The past need not govern the future, especially not here. We are separated from our world and everything tying us to our fate there. Any conflict you two bring here is voluntary." Istredd shrugs. "In summary, it doesn't have to be copious amounts of violence and vitriol."

Edited 2022-11-29 11:48 (UTC)

One day he might be willing.

One day maybe he will have a mind that isn't just filled with secrets. One day he won't just be Sannleikr and masks.

It didn't seem likely before.

But...

"You and her talk up a similar game, that's for sure. Maybe it is because you're in each other's heads." He grins, though it's small, nearly dismissive. More humor than he's had since Istredd's found him up here though. "I don't have any intention of striking against him first. We'll have to see what he does in response."

Istredd smiles back, shrugging. "We're similar people too." Istredd is far calmer and more collected, but he also is much older than Wanda. He's had decades to get to the icy reserve he has now and the ability to make it real, not a mask.

"I think it comes from a place of wanting to believe it's possible to move forward. It's not just advice. It's a hope."

Wanda from the many terrible things that happened to her, Istredd from his experience with Yennefer, the elves, and a lifetime of isolation. He wasn't really familiar with the sense of loneliness until he came here. Or the interest in filling it. He's still coming to terms.

"What should I do if I meet him?"

Lucifer doesn't understand the concept of hope, but... maybe. He doesn't comment on it though.

"Be a massive pain in his ass," Lucifer says. "He'd hate that." He rolls his eyes. "But I'd prefer you stay in one piece so maybe don't. Try not to piss him off, he holds a grudge worse than I do."

"I wouldn't know how to be that annoying. I'm very charming and likable and no one has ever wanted to beat me to death with my own books."

He says this very, very dryly. As if he has been threatened with that more than once. He's probably been threatened with that more times than anything else, it's the personal touch of being so irritating people want to get more creative than a simple stabbing.

"Come on, you've been up here brooding long enough. I can't teleport us both down, so we'll have to do it the normal way."

Michael better not stab Istredd because Lucifer is going to be genuinely put-out if he does.

He could brood for an eternity, don'tcha know? But, fair. He brushes off his legs and stands, not exactly sure what the normal way even is.

He could easily fly down and Istredd could teleport, no problem.

He chooses not to, and follows after Istredd.

as we circle the moon [open]

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Can wrap here or on yours :D

important closer