(no subject)
Alanna dreams.
There is truth in dreams, if one knows where to look -- an honest approximation of life (or death) based on potential choices. One door opens and another closes.
The trick is to remember which door.
-- -- --
This time, Alanna dies first.
Neither young nor old, she falls in battle at Jon's side, sword clutched impossibly tight in her hand. A week later, they bury her with it.
She couldn't be the best forever.
"I am here," the Goddess says, breath warm and sweet as she kisses Alanna's brow. A dark shadow walks beside them toward the bottom of the well. His arms spread like a cloak of night, muffling the cries of doomed souls.
The edge is less frightening when you have no hope of returning the way you came, and the path ahead promises nothing but peace. "I'm glad I fell fighting," Alanna tells them, finding she has few regrets.
Old battle scars have ceased to ache.
Ever somber, the Black God nods and opens a door. It's warm and smells of honeysuckle on the other side.
-- -- --
The first time he died, Thom was young. Painfully young, with so much promise, and he always felt cheated.
He still feels young, when his sister -- his twin -- dies. It happens a world away from the one he has chosen to inhabit, slowly distancing himself from who he was before, superficially and not. He doesn't like to think of before.
Once a year, she came to visit for a week. It was part of their deal. The year she dies, he goes to the beach alone, drinks alone and smirks at the tiny paper umbrellas alone.
It's cold.
It's cold when he dies, old and carefully maintained, surrounded by rich sheets in gaudy colors. He wanted to die quickly, this time. But it's slow and painful and completely lacking in dignity.
Lucifer laughs and lights a cigarette with a flick of his eternally elegant fingers.
It's cold in the Underworld. The oppressive darkness only serves to amplify the screams. "When do I see my sister?" Thom asks, voice soft and unsure.
The Black God looks (through) at him and unlocks a door. The sound of the key in the lock is familiar; it's the fall of an axe, the tightening of a noose, the lighting of a pyre.
There's no peace for traitors.
-- -- --
Adam disappears after the funeral.
He doesn't go to England, and he doesn't go to Milliways, afraid that the return of his powers will tempt him to do something he knows wouldn't be right. Drunk and torn up inside, he trashes the interior of the cottage and snarls to himself, looking more like a savage, wounded god than mortal man. He wonders if he should even be concerned with right and wrong anymore. It's not his nature, never was, but he has journeyed too far to abandon everything he has become.
"If one more person tells me Tortall will always mourn the Lioness," he growls at Jon a year later, over a game of poker, "I don't know what I'll do."
Thom is the family's face at court. He holds up well under the sympathy, but he is the most frequent visitor to his mother's grave. Jamie pours his heart and soul into the land, and for a while, he and Adam take equal solace in watching things grow.
Bright and sought after, Grace divorces herself from the world her mother had loved so well. It was never really hers. "We have to stop meeting like this," she tells the man perched on the café table, crossing her pretty ankles and giving him a playfully smoldering look.
Rarely one not to indulge her more amusing whims, Lucifer only half smiles and watches her closely. "The Lioness has shuffled off her mortal coil?"
"She made her choices," stiffly, "and I made mine."
Her father comes to visit with increasing frequency as the years pass, and bitterness fades. They don't talk much. Both are comforted.
Grace is there when he dies, peacefully in his sleep, and after finding his body that morning, she sits with him for an hour before calling the authorities. She wonders what Adam was thinking about, why he died with a smile on his face.
He's not smiling when he opens a door and finds himself face-to-face with Lucifer. The length of time they stare at each other, bemused and unsure how to play out this ridiculous happenstance, feels like an eternity. Maybe it is.
Finally, Lucifer laughs, satisfied and cruelly amused. "Welcome home," he smirks, "son."
Adam never smiles again.
-- -- --
Closing her eyes, Alanna takes a deep breath of the heavenly scent wafting through the door, and smiles.
"Thank you, my Mother," she murmurs, feeling the world -- all worlds -- fade.
"It is as it should be, my daughter."
"Is it?" Purple eyes open, refocus and boldly regard the two immortals. "All things must balance."
The Black God offers another nod from beneath his heavy cloak
"And a true balance this would not be," Alanna insists, hearing her voice as if at a great distance. "What if-
"What if they changed places?"
Her crazy schemes have been known to work before.
-- -- --
"It's very hot here," Thom announces, not displeased. "Smells a bit."
"Really. I barely notice anymore," Lucifer replies, dryly.
"So, am I going to be tortured or become one of your minions?"
"I haven't decided yet. The revolting green of that shirt is making me lean towards torture."
"Well," Thom drawls, kicking off his expensive Italian shoes and padding along beside Lucifer, "you have plenty of time to decide."
-- -- --
Adam remembers falling asleep in the orchard. The spring breeze and bright blossoms made it an exceptional place to nap. Jamie had been somewhere nearby, tending to a sick tree, cheerfully whistling a tune he planned to sing his wife that very night.
This isn't the orchard.
It's quiet and spacious, as if whole universes could fit in the darkness, and Adam trails his fingertips through the still air. There's a presence beside him, but he's not afraid. He can't see where he's going, and it should bother him, perhaps, yet he can't be bothered to care. It's not unlike the slow dimming of consciousness as one falls asleep.
A shadowy hand reaches past him, opening a door, and Adam steps through into warm sunlight. Blinking, he holds his hand over his eyes and turns to see no door behind him.
It's the orchard, he thinks, or maybe it isn't. It's more.
The dull sound of unshod hooves falling on thick grass announces her arrival. Eagerly, she slides off the palomino's back and saunters his way, a familiar devil may care expression on her face. "Took you long enough."
"I-," Adam starts, only to find that he can't finish. Not yet. There's too much to take in.
"Don't worry, the confusion will pass," she tells him, smiling and touching his face. With her other hand, she presses an apple into his. "And the apples here are delicious."
Adam smiles.
-- -- --
Well into the night, the sound of a door shutting wakes her up.
"Thom needed his diapers changed," Adam mumbles, pulling blankets and Alanna over him. "You get the next one."
Alanna nods. She doesn't go back to sleep, not because she's afraid of dreams, but because she's trying very hard to remember this one.