[fanfic] lucifer
Title: lucifer
Fandom: Pokémon
Summary: She cleans the taint from your hands and brings you redemption - a supernova to herald your rebirth.
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Friendship, Tragedy, Drama, Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Character Study.
Warnings: speculation, religious themes (in both human and pokémon terms), character death.
Notes: The parallels between D/P/Pt's creation myth and those espoused by Judeo-Christian holy texts are quite similar, if you look closely enough. If Arceus is God, the Giratina most certainly qualifies to be Lucifer/Satan. Thus, in the spirit of this comparison, I wrote this piece (my first from a pokémon's perspective) about Giratina's fall from grace. Inspired by the final scene in BSG. I hope you find this as interesting as I did, and that you enjoy reading it. One of my experimental second person POV fics.
Your vessel is fashioned from the most colorful of all nebulae; the rarest of the rarefied gasses condensed and molded into scales of colors and hues that don't even exist for eyes fashioned by natural selection. But your eyes, plucked from the cosmos by the Creator as shrunken white stars, can see everything there is to see in the universe.They know no limitations.
And into that brilliant array of celestial dust, the Creator breathes life…
The roar that issues forth from your newborn mouth strikes the first sparks of countless suns and the very first supernova. Your body writhes in the ecstasy of life, and you revel in being the very first of Creation to feel this sensation, to open your white dwarf-eyes to see the universe's component molecules hanging still in anticipation, waiting to be fashioned by the same being that created you.
You are the first to see the Creator, to hear His voice and bow before Him.
Yes, you are the first, but you are certainly not the last.
- . . . -
When the Creator brought you into existence, the universe was but a few thousand light-years long and dense with protostars and planetary nebulae. It was a small, unbelievably bright plane (but not as radiant as you). In a time before there was time, you and the Creator spent eternities in that microcosm of limitless potential, the vacuum thick with densely-packed molecules. It was all you had ever known, and you were content, even if you could fly across the entire universe in less than a second.
But simple things always become more complex, and your cradle was no different.
From a nebula the color of the deepest pink the Creator molded His second creation, a creature that would hold sway over the universe's physical dimensions. With its first cry, the universe was rent asunder, and that small, densely-packed sphere exploded outwards in an explosion unlike any supernova you had ever felt against your scales, its heat almost too much for you to handle. As the molecules surged outwards from their confines, the white light that had characterized your existence since your own newborn cry faded to a deep, unfathomable absence of color. It is painful to your eyes that were once suns, this sudden dearth of light where there was once plenty. While the stars had been close enough to bathe in if you so desired before, they are now near-infinite light-years away.
(It is good practice, you realize later, for what will become your existence.)
And then the Creator turns his deep emerald eyes upon a star the bluest of all blues, and in an instant it begins drawing in nearby molecules like a black hole. The star's fires temper the molecules and arrange them so that they shine, so that they can resist the strongest of blows. When your sibling opens its red eyes to the universe and roars, it fluctuates for a moment before settling again. Your eyes strain to see what has changed, and you notice the speed at which the molecules are vibrating. It takes you milliseconds to realize that, beneath the different paces, there is an underlying increment - an order where there wasn't one before.
So it is there, floating in the now freezing cold of space before the Creator, that He inclines His head and rests His gaze upon each of you, satisfied. You can feel His booming voice before you hear it, as He names the two of them, your siblings-Dialga, the Temporal Guardian; Palkia, the Spatial Celestial.
He gave you a name once too. It was beautiful - fit for a god. It denoted you as His equal.
It has been so long though, that you seem to have forgotten what it was (millennia of dull monochrome have addled your brain, it seems).
It is but one of the many things you've lost, yet the most consequential.
- . . . -
For the Creator and His three creations, time held no consequence. Millennia passed in the blink of an eye for you, sped along by Dialga's sway over time. In what seemed to you as seven days, the Creator created a rock, and upon it, he fashioned countless forms of life.
On the seventh day, the four of you descended upon the rock at its highest peak. It struck you by surprise at first, how much color there was on the rock-yellows and reds and blues and their endless permutations. You witnessed the Creator's fashioning of the rock's guiding forces, even helped with the molding of a few, but it was the Creator who shaped the smallest of life forms-single-celled organism like bacteria to the most stunning sedentary organisms He named 'plants.' While you were preoccupied with the balance between land and sea, and the protection of the rock from other celestial objects, the Creator seemed intent on creating an intricate network of dependencies. Upon this rock, everything is connected, whether directly or indirectly. It is beautifully complex, this system. It is even more beautiful than the burst of a supernova.
Sometimes you miss the universe when it was but a microcosm of what it is now - all white light and still molecules, no time or space or life but you and the Creator Himself. But all it takes to convince you that it was all worth it is the sight of your brethren - the inhabitants of this world, living out their lives in peace and tranquility. The colors of this planet, while nowhere near as plentiful as those found on your scales, lead you to fly through the endless turquoise of the sky, dive into the boundless azure of the seas, bathe in the most scalding of volcanoes and hydrothermal vents.
But then the time comes when the Creator molds a new species altogether.
They are mediocre creatures at best. Their talent and abilities are nowhere near as admirable as those that your brethren have.
It seems, however, that this had been the Creator's intention. You had ignored them for their unspectacular nature at first. You were much more content to witness the mew as they were slowly but surely driven toward different evolutionary paths. Eventually, however, you were proven wrong. Those frail, untalented creatures built civilizations, changed their environment to fit their needs.
And so it was that you watched distrustfully as these humans changed the face of the planet and bent the rules of the system to suit their vision for it.
Of all the Creator's endeavors, this is the only one that you do not understand. They are intelligent creatures - this is indisputable, but their greed surpasses even their intelligence. There is no way that they could ever create on the scale of a being like you (let alone the Creator), but they have an intuitive drive to understand, even if it is not their place, and they seek this knowledge relentlessly. They create rules for systems that just are and label them. In recent times, they have even come to name and label your brethren, even the highest among you.
It is not their place, you think. Insects like them should learn it.
Your brethren do not seek understanding. In their simplicity they are pure, for they are non-threatening. The humans, however…
They have grown from a race that coexisted with your brethren into one that is beginning to look at them with calculating interest. You do not like this. They may still look at you and Palkia and Dialga with awe and respect, even worship you as deities, but when they look at the mew and their descendants all they seem to see are resources to be harnessed, just like the plants that they warp into shelters, or the once-pure rivers they use as repositories for their refuse, transforming them into streams of foul-smelling sludge.
Many times you have ascended to the Creator's throne at the peak of the mountain at the center of all, but each time you did He had dismissed your concerns. He says that humans and the creatures need each other, that one without the other makes the world incomplete.
In a world of two, one is only half.
His reassurances do nothing to assuage your suspicions, however. You keep watching them warily, because you just know that creatures like them cannot be trusted.
- . . . -
The day comes when the humans finally overstep their bounds.
By corrupting the purpose of a fruit they call 'apricorns,' they have begun enslaving your brethren by capturing them within. You will not stand for this.
The humans used to call you the Morningstar for your brilliance. It is a title that you never wanted, but it seems fitting when you descend upon the largest of their civilizations and issue forth a roar so powerful that their molecules simply dissociate from the strain of the vibrations you induce on them, leaving nothing but energy, brilliant and bright, in your wake. As you stand in the crater of what had been hundreds of human lives, you revel in the feeling of it. You are a righteous avenger-the most powerful of the Creator's creations. You are a god in your own right.
You attack four more of their civilizations before you are stopped.
The Creator Himself appears, his emerald eyes darkening with fury. He roars at you that you have committed an atrocious crime with your violence, that to attack any of His creations makes you a renegade. You scream that they are enslaving your brethren, try to explain what vile creatures you are. You overtly state that they are mistakes, that He was mistaken when He fashioned them from clay and breathed the gift of Life into them. You challenge his authority, tell Him that such an uncaring Creator is not fit to be a Creator at all.
This, you realize (too late), is going too far.
Banished, He decrees, his voice so full of rage that the entire world quakes.
You make to strike at Him, to cast Him down and claim your rightful place as Creator, but the space around you rips apart, consumes you, and before you can even blink your white star-eyes the color is gone. All that is left is black and white. You scream, try to tear the space apart with your god-like powers, but to no avail. Eventually you collapse, exhausted, your dragon body nestled in gray.
You sleep for eternities longer than the time you spent with Him before Creation, and when you wake up, everything has changed.
- . . . -
You are alone in this place.
Slowly, the antimatter eats at your vessel. Your once-colorful scales become blurred into jaundice-yellows and reds the color of blood. The rest of your body becomes gray and lackluster, and your eyes - your eyes that had been the most brilliant white stars - a are tainted a deep crimson. Your wings, more beautiful than anything else in all Creation, become sharp, tentacle-like appendages.
Whenever you catch a glimpse of yourself, you scream in rage.
You have fallen so very far.
All you have left is your resentment and your hatred. You long to kill the humans in their arrogance, to avenge your fall against the Creator. You drift for infinities with only these things on your mind.
And then comes the moment when you give into the corruptive dimension that has slowly destroyed your beauty. You had expected to disappear. Instead, you hold sway over it. The distortions become a reflection of your anger and hatred. Your body becomes serpentine, filled with venom.
In that world of distortions and illusions, you forget your divinity - your true identity. All you know is the need for revenge, as instinctual and relentless as the humans' drive for knowledge. You wait, and with each passing moment, you become more and more steeped in your exile, until it is inextricable from your very being.
- . . . -
You had a beautiful name, once.
It was the kind that tongues could not pronounce, that mortal minds could not even begin to fathom.
You cannot remember it now, but you hardly care.
It hardly fits anymore, anyway.
- . . . -
The situation had been unprecedented.
When things became unbalanced and the fabric of Creation started to unravel, the boundaries of your prison began to blur with those of the other world. By becoming one with this place, you understand it-it is a reflection of Creation, it is everything it is not. Hence, it is Nothing, yet so inextricably tied to Everything that it is both. You realize that if Creation were to become undone this place would, too.
So you did the only thing you could think of:
You broke free.
From a portal of the deepest darkness you emerged, crimson eyes shining with loathing. Behind you were your siblings, bound by chains the color of human blood. Before you stood a human, dull eyes filled with self-important arrogance and apathy. At the sight, you roared; it is he that was attempting to undo creation.
Arrogant insect, you hiss directly into his mind.
At the sound of your voice, hoarse and rough after millennia of disuse, his pathetic mortal eyes widen in something that looks a lot like terror.
You snarl as your tentacles tear forth and grab his pathetic little body. Oh, how easy it would be to crush it right now, but you pull him to you instead.
You wish to undo Creation? Then witness what your intentions will bring, mortal.
And so you plunge back into your world of blacks and whites, draw him into your world. His fear has melted into something that resembles awe by the time you toss him into the vortex of nothingness. You hiss in satisfaction.
- . . . -
There are three inside this place with you now.
You observe them from the shadows where they cannot see, crimson eyes critical.
The first is the man you dragged in yourself. In his mind you find exactly what you suspected of the humans so many years before-bottomless pride, delusions of grandeur so vivid that the man thinks himself worthy of becoming a god and recreating the universe in his image. His avarice disgusts you, but it is familiar, you realize. This empty human reminds you of yourself, so you do not kill him. Instead, you let him seek you out through the twists and turns of your realm, unknowing that you are in every nook and cranny there.
The second is a woman, and she seeks knowledge. Beneath everything else: the nobility, the selflessness, the pretense of power and position - all she wants to claim for herself is understanding. Unlike most humans, though, this need is not accompanied by greed. Each step she takes is but the slightest bit worried, smoothed down by years of conditioning and preparation. She is both like and unlike the humans you have encountered before, but still, she is uninteresting to you. Why would you care about an insect who seeks to know all you already do by instinct alone?
It is the third that is a mystery. She is a child among her people, her life short and nowhere near close to maturity or the wisdom that comes to humans as they age. Relative to a being like you, she is even more of an infant than she is among her people. And yet there is something about her that you cannot understand. While the man and woman walk with something akin to fear in this place, she walks with the utmost certainty. There is no hesitation in her steps, nor is there fear in her face when she looks into the depths of your world. You cannot understand her, and this angers you.
You long to snuff their lives out, but before you know it, the girl reaches you.
You regard her with you fearsome eyes and let out a roar that should have reduced her to broken bond energy. But she does not run, nor does she flinch. Instead, she speaks.
"Hello, Giratina," she says softly. "My name is Dawn."
A roar rips from your throat in response, and you lunge, snake-like body coiling around her feet, meaning to constrict and squeeze the Creator's breath from her clay-body. Instead, there is a flash of bright light and a blue creature stands between the two of you. It roars fearsomely (protectively) and lunges forward in a plume of water.
Despite the fact that this creature is nowhere near as powerful as you are, you find that you cannot defeat it. It moves with an instinctual power-the urge to defend that which is precious. You had been consumed by this urge when you took your vengeance on the humans for enslaving your brethren all those years ago, and this creature, despite being one of you enslaved brethren, fights you savagely to protect its slave master, a human.
You do not understand. You do not understand any of this.
And then there is a flash of color flying through the air toward you. It is purple and pink, small and spherical, and you coil your tail to bat it away. Except when you touch it there is a flash of red light, and you are pulled into this sphere. You struggle with every molecule in your vessel, but it tears at you with a force greater even than a black hole. You roar, scream, try to kill this human child who has thought to contain your powers, but suddenly there is a click and your world goes dark.
No matter how many times you struggle against your confines, you find that you cannot break free.
And so it is that you are enslaved.
- . . . -
The next thing you are aware of is a flash of blinding light and color.
You are stunned for many moments as your eyes, accustomed to blacks and whites for eternity, are overloaded by the sheer vastness of the hues and colors that surround you. When your eyes finally come into focus, you find that same girl from before standing in front of you, wide human eyes staring at you expectantly.
Your first instinct is to wrap one of your appendages around her neck and kill. Nothing is stopping you, you realize. You could do it now, before that blue-and-white water creature could even try to stop you. Yet when you reach out to do it, you find that you cannot. Your body, you find, has been altered. You are not within your element, here. You cannot slither through the air and strike; your vessel is heavy and cumbersome. After years of exile, this place is no longer your home.
There is the sensation of something soft against your newly-formed legs, and when you turn your smoldering gaze down, you find that girl touching you. You roar and rear back, but she is not afraid. You are confused as she advances toward you again, extends her hand to touch you in the same way as before.
"I'm sorry," she says, voice so soft you can barely hear it. "I took you away from everything you know and brought you here. It must be disorienting for you… I had no choice, but I still feel as if that's not fair to you."
Her words baffle you. You are caught between the instinct to take her life and allow her to keep touching you. For the first time in all your existence, you are wracked with indecision.
"Would you please forgive me?" she asks.
You cannot give her an answer even if you wanted to, so you simply continue staring at her, her colors the most beautifully radiant thing you have seen in an eternity.
- . . . -
You remain with the girl.
In truth, you do not understand why you do. She lets you out of your prison for long enough periods of time that you can escape if you so desired, could trample her beneath your behemoth's feet and snuff out her insignificant life.
But you don't.
She takes you through places you recall only vaguely. It has changed much, this place. You catch short glimpses of it each time she lets you out, usually to sleep along with the rest of her slaves. When the girl sleeps and it is just you and the rest of them, you listen to what they say when they speak to each other. They are devoted to her, it seems, and regard her as a mother would a hatchling. Except that they hold her in the utmost respect, accept her direction, remain by her side willingly. Has the course of slavery progressed so that they welcome human mastery, now? It disgusts you so, what the humans have done to your brethren (pokémon, they call them; to your horror, the creatures have begun calling themselves this as well).
One day, when the girl is in the progress of crossing a vast ocean to reach her ultimate destination and you sojourn on a small island, you deign to speak to the water creature from before.
Why do you stay with this human? you ask her.
"Because she is my friend." she says as if it were obvious.
No matter how many times you try to explain that she and her comrades have been enslaved, she refuses to accept it.
"I chose to go with Dawn," the empoleon argues, voice impassioned and defensive. "I have been with her since we were both hatchlings. We have grown together, experienced nearly everything together. She is mine as I am hers. I am here of my own free will, and will protect her from anything that would harm her. Her dreams are my dreams, her happiness my happiness. Together, we will accomplish things thought impossible."
The other four slaves share this opinion of the girl, much to your continued annoyance and confusion. You do not sleep. Instead, you opt to watch this girl, this Dawn, as she sleeps. You see nothing but the typical human-there is nothing special about her, nothing that sets her above the rest of her arrogant kind.
(If you are trying to convince yourself, you find that your arguments are already starting to sound untrue to your ears. You have witnessed the way she carries herself, with the same instinctual self-assured yet humbled demeanor that most pokémon do.)
- . . . -
The first time you are called out in battle is against the purple dragon of the woman from before in a grand-looking chamber (by human standards). You have learned from the others what a battle is and what it means, and despite your reluctance to be reduced to a tool that the girl would use to achieve glory, you find yourself roaring intimidatingly at the garchomp.
"Giratina!" the girl cries out to you. "Lend me your strength, please!"
The woman across the room smiles encouragingly.
"Our last pokémon…" you realize that she is speaking to the garchomp. "C'mon, Garchomp! Let's show them how strong our friendship is!"
With a resounding roar, the garchomp blazes forward like a shooting star streaking through space.
Like Empoleon, you find that the garchomp is powerful, so powerful that you cannot force her down. It should be easy-you are a creature of immeasurable power. You assisted in the Creation, reduced entire civilizations to craters with a single roar, became near-omnipotent in the Distortion World. Why, then, is it so difficult for you to defeat a regular pokémon like this garchomp?
In the end though, you think you begin to understand.
The garchomp has you pinned against the floor, roaring and slashing her claws against your body again and again and again. Defeat is not too far away, now, you can sense it. You are about to give in when suddenly the girl is yelling for the garchomp to stop.
"Does this mean you forfeit?" the woman asks. "You might not get a chance like this again, Dawn. Isn't this what you always dreamed of?"
You expect the girl to agree and order you to fight to the death. From what you remember of human ambition, your existence would be insignificant to her relative to her dream.
But she surprises you.
"I shouldn't have sent Giratina out in the first place… I haven't gained its trust yet. I won't have it hurt fighting for something it doesn't believe in!"
Dawn's screams are passionate, adamant, genuine. For the first time, you allow yourself to consider the possibility that this girl may have meant what she said when she apologized to you, that her pokémon aren't just brainwashed slaves that she uses as tools to fulfill her aims. You look into that garchomp's eyes, observe the passion and dedication she has for the woman who directs her.
She fights for her, you realize.
"Alright, well, if you insist-,"
No!
You interrupt with a roar and surge upwards with a force unlike any you have produced before. The garchomp is sent flying across the room. It is then that you feel power fill you, power similar to the kind you possessed when you had been in the Distortion World. You shine a fearsome blue, much like the brightest and hottest of stars, and fade out of existence. In seconds, you reappear by the garchomp, and before it can react, you strike it so viciously that it is knocked unconscious with that single hit.
For a long moment, the chamber is engulfed in shocked silence. Then, all at once, the woman is congratulating Dawn on her victory, and the girl herself is running across the field to you, wrapping her arms around your leg, her eyes leaking moisture. You do not fully comprehend the gravity of this moment, but you allow yourself to relax since the first time since she had captured you.
You look at her, this human, as she cries and laughs and runs a hand up and down your scales in appreciation, and you think mine. And then, with considerably more hesitation, hers.
- . . . -
You had a name, once.
It was beautiful, and it certainly wasn't Giratina. This is something the humans came up with to put a name to their cautionary tales about you and label the antagonist in their creation myth. It is a name that speaks of fear and terror. It is an ugly name usually spoken in whispers.
Yet Dawn speaks it so that it has none of these connotations. Instead, when this name passes through her lips, you hear the sound of respect, trust, affection, love. You have never been loved before, but you decide that it is a beautiful sensation, one that you wish to protect, to feel for all time.
So when Dawn calls you and the rest of the team out to sleep at night, you wrap your serpentine body around her and the rest of the team, your head resting by hers. You protect them while they rest, hold their precious lives close to you so that they don't slip away. It must look terrifying - your monster's body coiled around a girl and her pokémon companions. She doesn't seem to mind though, and that's all that matters.
Yes, you had a name once. It was beautiful and spoke of your divinity, of your equality to the Creator.
But you find that you don't care, because you have someone to protect. You love this girl, this Dawn. You will follow wherever she leads because to you, she is the one thing in all of Creation that deserves to be preserved.
- . . . -
Together you are undefeatable.
Dawn has never been the kind of woman that requires human contact like most of her kind do. In its place, she needs constant adventure. Her wanderlust is insatiable. So you humor her, accompanying her to the far reaches of the planet, fighting for her and winning every battle she sends you to.
You fight for Dawn as the others do now - out of respect and admiration and love - and she returns those emotions unconditionally. You stay together for years, watch as she changes from a child into a woman, becomes wiser…
In the end, you are the only one of her pokémon that lives. You stand by her as she buries each one of them. You believe that you are immortal, and while you used to think of this as a privilege, you have now come to think of it as a curse. In what seems like the blink of an eye, the being you met as a child has become an old woman. Her hair is gray and her skin is wrinkled and her body is becoming increasingly frail. She is but an infant relative to the age of the universe, and yet she continues to atrophy. One day she tells you she is too old to continue traveling, so you take her to the center of it all - to the place humans call Mt. Coronet - and you carve out a home for her. You guard her from the wild creatures and any humans that may do her harm.
You stay with her for a few years in that cave, watching as she wastes away, growing ever closer to the inevitable with every passing day.
"G-Giratina…" she says one day, voice low over her gasps. You lean in close to hear her better, make a small sound of longing and heartbreak to encourage her to continue. "Would you take me… to see… the world…?"
And like all things she asks of you, you cannot deny her.
You take her carefully onto your body and fly into the cerulean of the sky. You peer down at the Creator's finest creation, marvel at the colors, at the intricacy of all the interconnected organisms, human and pokémon alike. Dawn, sharing your thoughts, leans into your vessel of space dust and antimatter, smiling softly, her eyes half-closed.
"S-so… much life," she murmurs.
You whisper into her mind soothingly, like a lullaby, as you fly over the Earth.
When the moment comes, you are not ready for it. You had been expecting it since you first saw her, but you are not ready for it. Nothing could have prepared you for this.
The Creator's breath of life passes from her in one last, great exhale - and then, no more…
You are at a loss of what to do. You hover in the air, holding your human's vessel of clay in yours of nebulae and star dust. You turn your crimson eyes upward, toward the endless cerulean, and let out a cry of anguish unlike anything you have ever felt before. Your once star-eyes leak solar wind, the sense of loss echoing through you with an empty pang.
So you remind yourself of her last words, to take her to see the world, and you are reminded of what the world means to you. With a cry, you ascend, higher and higher, holding her vessel tight and tearing through the atmosphere until cerulean and purple melt to the darkest black, until the stars dot the cosmos and you are at your cradle again.
You fly through space, past comets and asteroids and planets yet untouched by the Creator's hands. You think of much during those endless moments as you travel through the dark. You think of your Father and siblings. You think of the humans and the pokémon, both your brethren now. You think of your brothers and sisters who fought alongside you for Dawn, and wonder if she is with them now. You wonder if forgiveness will forever be denied to you. You find that you don't care.
Ahead there is the most brilliant of stars - one a shade of blue that reminds you of your human's hair. Without thought, you fly into its core, shielding your trainer's vessel until you are within it. Her body disintegrates in seconds, atoms scattering amongst the star's core, and you let out one final roar, one that sparks a supernova unlike any you have experienced before. You feel its heat against your scales, and take comfort in knowing that Dawn's atoms will scatter through the cosmos and become a part of nascent planets, of newborn stars, and, undoubtedly, of Life.
Satisfied, you close your eyes to the universe - and allow your molecules to break apart in the explosion…
- . . . -
You had a beautiful name, once.
And as your creation is undone in this star's death, you remember.
- . . . -
From the flames of a brilliant supernova, you are reborn:
Your scales are once again brilliant - resplendent with every shade of color in the universe - but your eyes are now a deep azure (the color of a human who loved you, and who you loved back).
Letting out a roar of rebirth, you shed your names, both that one given to you by your Creator and by the humans.
A new dawn is here, so you take her name, hold it close to your heart…
And fly all the way home…