I come bearing Fic!

[honorh]

Dresden Files, this time. Just a vignette about something that's kind of been bugging me for a long time.

Title: Jephthah's Daughter
Fandom: Dresden Files (books)
Rating: All Ages
Warnings: Existential angst, philosophy, theology
Spoilers: Massive spoilers for Skin Game
Characters: Deirdre, Uriel
Summary: Post-Skin Game, Uriel drops in to have a chat with Deirdre.

It was the isolation that was the worst.

Deirdre had never been alone. She’d always had her father or mother - usually her father - and, most of all, her Fallen. She had never even been alone inside her own mind. Therefore, it was only fitting that her tenure in Tartarus was characterized by utter isolation.

She screamed for her parents, for her Fallen, as she entered yet another empty cavern. Since her death, since opening the Gate of Blood, she hadn’t seen another person. She hadn’t spoken to anyone. Her mind echoed with her own thoughts, with no Fallen there to whisper advice and comforting lies to her.

She was alone, utterly alone, for the first time, and she would have preferred torture.

Occasionally, she did run across monsters. It had come as a rude shock, being powerless against them. In her demon form, she had been a monster herself. Without her claws and scales and razor-sharp hair, she was defenseless, and she had been forced to run again and again. When she hadn’t been fast enough, they had torn her ghostly flesh.

The wounds didn’t bleed. They didn’t even really hurt the way physical wounds always had when she was alive. They also didn’t heal. Mostly, they felt . . . empty. Like she’d lost part of herself with them. She didn’t want to know what would happen to her if she gained too many wounds, or if one of the monsters devoured her.

She cried out for her father again, but there was no answer, only the endless echoes of her own voice. He could find her, she told herself. He could find his way back into the Underworld. The necromancer called Corpsetaker had known how to take over living bodies, ejecting the soul within; surely they could find a way to do so as well. She could live again, take back her Coin, go back to living by Nicodemus’s side.

Soon. He would find her soon. Until then, she just had to hang on. Not let the endless silence within drive her mad.

A roar echoed through the cavern, and a primeval-looking monster charged out of nowhere. Deirdre turned and fled, racing back into the endless labyrinth of rock she’d just emerged from. But the beast was at her heels, and she suddenly found herself in a dead end, screaming in frustration and terror as it leaped . . .

And disappeared. She blinked at the empty space where it had been.

“I thought we should talk,” said a voice, warm and rich and overwhelmingly alive.

Her head snapped around, and there was a man beside her. Not very tall, but well-built. His head was crowned with curling blond hair, his eyes were strikingly blue, and his cheekbones were so chiseled they would make any sculptor weep with envy. More than that, though, he radiated a Presence she understood all too well.

“Angel,” she said. Dread bubbled up in the pit of her stomach.

He inclined his head. “Uriel, at your service, Deirdre Polonius Archleone.”

Her Name hit her like a physical force. She tried to back away from the archangel, only to hit the wall. “Why are you here?”

“As I said, I thought we should talk,” said Uriel. “You present a conundrum. While it’s true you’ve done truly terrible things on a scale most mere tyrants can only dream of, I have to wonder what chance you ever had to be anything other than what you became.”

She gave a bitter laugh. “I’m dead, angel. Aren’t I beyond the reach of Heaven now?”

“Death is such an arbitrary divider,” Uriel said dismissively. “Besides, there was One who came down to the Underworld once. You can still find traces of Him if you know what to look for.”

Deirdre pushed away from the wall and stalked away, back into the labyrinth of stone. She rounded a corner only to come face-to-face with Uriel again.

“Aren’t you lonely?” he asked.

She was, beyond the telling of it. Lonely and terrified. But she wasn’t about to admit it to such as he.

“I won’t be here long. My father will come looking for me, and he’ll find me, and everything will be as it was,” she said.

Uriel shook his head sadly. “You’re a soul in Hades’s demesne. The only reason you were able to breach the Underworld in the first place was because Hades allowed it. It would take a power much greater than Nicodemus’s to remove a soul from the grip of the Underworld.”

“You lie,” she spat.

“I cannot,” said Uriel.

She knew that was true, just as she’d known all along there was really no chance to escape from the Underworld.

She felt emptier than ever.

“Have you come to gloat, then?” she asked. “Is this your victory dance?”

It was the wrong thing to say. Uriel’s Presence all but smothered her as he said, “Deirdre Polonius Archleone, I do not consider your death a victory. You are one more lost soul. You have no comprehension how tragic that is.” His eyes bored into her. “Quite on the contrary. I am here to offer you one final chance at redemption.”

“What do I want with redemption?” she demanded. “I chose my path. I walked it all my life with my father. I gave my life for it. Like Jephthah’s daughter, slain by her father as a sacrifice to God. One of your own precious judges, if you’ll recall.”

That drew a snort of disbelief. “People always misunderstand that story. Jephthah was a cautionary tale, not a good example. He made a rash promise and then faced ruin if he didn’t keep it. His daughter’s courage and willing sacrifice enabled him to keep his position, though the women saw to it that no one forgot what he did. That was his legacy: Lived, judged Israel, killed his daughter. No one even pronounces his name correctly anymore, but they remember his daughter.”

Deirdre glared at him. “Whatever, as the young people say. I made my choice, and you can say no differently.”

Uriel lifted his eyebrows. “If that is so, why did your father take such care to keep Michael distracted while he killed you?”

Deirdre turned away and started walking again. “Carpenter would have tried to stop him. Soft-hearted fool!”

“You know your father could have moved too quickly for him to make any difference. No, he did it that way because Michael would have been given the right words to say to you, to truly give you a choice, and Nicodemus couldn’t be assured that you wouldn’t have listened. Your death was as much about beating Michael as it was about opening the Gate.” Uriel had caught up with her and now cut her off. “Nicodemus never wanted you to have a true choice in how you lived. He and Anduriel created you to be the perfect lieutenant. And that is why I am here.”

Cold swept through her. “What do you mean?”

“You were a baby once, born to two incredibly evil people, yet still innocent. At least, until a Coin was put in your hand. A friend for you to grow up with. You were born and shaped by Nicodemus and Tessa and the Fallen to be a weapon. Your natural childish selfishness was encouraged. Cruelty was rewarded. They took your love for them, your wish to please them, and used it to make you a monster.” Uriel shook his head. “Had you been raised by good people, even with the Coin, you would have been able to make a choice as to how to live your life. That was taken from you. Nicodemus carefully guarded you against any intervention. That is why I can only come to you now.”

She said the only thing she could think to. “Father loved me.”

To her surprise, Uriel nodded, sorrow in his face. “He did. It was the one thing that gave us hope that he might find redemption himself, but he remains too deluded. Too convinced that he truly understands what he’s doing. That he’s in control.”

“He does control the Fallen,” Deirdre hissed. “He’s not some mindless beast of burden such as Magog finds.”

“Your father has proven to be a good partner for Anduriel, Deirdre, but don’t imagine Anduriel couldn’t overpower him in a moment if he wished to. Thousands of years of gentle whispers in his ear, and Nicodemus cannot separate his own thoughts from those of his Fallen. And he will stay on his path, doing his best to destroy the world.”

“We’ll save it!” she screamed, lashing out at the angel with her hands curved like talons. Uriel easily avoided her.

“For whom?” he asked.

It was the reflection of the question Dresden had asked, but much more perceptive. “For the strong. For those who deserve to live. Not this mongrel race your precious God has allowed to grow like fungus on the face of the Earth. The one He claims to love.” Her lip curled with derision. “Tell me, angel, if He loves them so much, why are you given your authority? Why are you allowed to strike them down, like the firstborn of Egypt? What makes you different than such as I?”

Uriel’s eyes darkened. “Because I know what I’m doing.”

Deirdre giggled. “So did I. And it was fun.”

“It was fun precisely because you didn’t know what you were doing.” He pinned her with the sudden intensity of his eyes. “Do you know the names of everyone whose life you have taken over the millennia? I do. Do you know their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their pains? I do. Do you know the wreckage you’ve left behind? All the pain and misery you have caused? Have you experienced it as if it were your very own?” He stepped even closer to her. “I have. And I do. I know the precise value of every single life I have taken. Hades’s vault is not a drop in the ocean of how precious the soul is of even one Egyptian child. That is the price I pay for my aegis.”

He stepped back. “Besides, we both know that physical death is not the worst of all evils. You and your father aimed much higher, after all. You sought to destroy souls, to sow despair and chaos in order to reap a harvest of pure human pain.” Uriel spread his hands. “And now you are a mere human soul, alone and vulnerable. I must compliment Hades on his keen sense of irony.”

A fearsome bellow echoed through the labyrinth. Deirdre couldn’t even tell which direction it came from, so she scampered for what she thought was the exit. Just as she reached it, another dinosaur-like monstrosity leaped at her -

And, like the previous one, disappeared.

“I really wouldn’t advise you to let them eat you,” said Uriel, sauntering around a corner.

Too shaken to summon a scathing retort, Deirdre simply asked what was on her mind. “What - what will happen to me if one does catch me?”

“It will tear away your thoughts, your memories, the substance of who you are,” Uriel answered. “You’ll become another specter in the Underworld, lost and seeking what you no longer know.”

She looked at the wounds torn in her ghostly flesh. What had she lost already? Fear, fatigue and aching loneliness welled up within her. “What would you have me do?”

Uriel was in front of her now, infinite compassion in his eyes. “Let me show you the way to redemption. It will not be easy. You will understand your life through the eyes of your victims. The pain will be greater than anything you can imagine. But there will also be hope.” He looked around at the sterile stone of the labyrinth, the darkness of the cavern. “That’s more than you have now.”

Revulsion and desire warred within her. There was nothing for her in Hades except a slow slide into oblivion. The thought terrified her. To become nothing but an echo of herself, forever alone . . .

Yet on the other side, to accept Uriel’s offer would be to betray her father. And she quailed at the thought of facing what she had been as what she was now. Her former self would have had no mercy for her weakness.

And yet . . . was this human soul not part of her all along? Did it not have value?

“I do not . . . I cannot . . .” she stammered.

Uriel shrugged. “The offer is made. Think it over well. Should you come to desire redemption, I will be here. We’re neither of us getting any older.” A very distant roar echoed faintly through the caverns. “Nonetheless, your time is limited. Use it well. Goodbye, Deirdre. I rather hope to see you again.”

Then he was gone, and Deirdre was alone again.