Fic: The Second Kingdom (1/1)
Title: The Second Kingdom
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jacob, Lucifer, Esau, War
Word Count: 1,022
Summary: There’s a reason that, in this place, he assumes the role of the brother. For missy_useless, who requested “Crossovers” at The lostsquee 2010 Lost Summer Luau. General Spoilers through Season Six (Lost); General Spoilers for Season Five (Supernatural).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title is credit to Dante's Divine Comedy.
Author’s Notes: For missy_useless: This turned out nothing like I’d planned (this is a trend, isn’t it?), but for some reason, what I was hoping would be much more sweeping and much more... tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, turned out a lot more speculative and formal, but also much more brief. Hopefully you like it anyway :)
The Second Kingdom
The breeze rustles, unburdened; the shore recedes and expands, unbound. He didn’t mean to come here; he doesn’t have a choice.
Things are different, here; they play by different rules. They are equals, and when he digs his fingertips far beneath the soft earth at the bank of the stream, the film of wet dirt clinging to the knuckle just above the ring that binds him, anchors him elsewhere -- not here -- he knows he can speak, can move and do and be without fear of rebuke.
The thought itself rankles, but he’s beyond the point of vengeance; action means something new on a timeline like his.
“I think I...” he’s taken, for a moment, by the sheer lack that is everywhere, plain amidst so much space and life -- no room for War, no pawns to move in attack. “I think I missed it here. Things were simpler, in this place.”
He is useless, where he sits; he is nothing.
“That was the point of it, yes.” The man beside him -- so much more, so much less than a man -- always sounds different here, his voice always lighter, as if he truly had been fit to fly, once. “To simply be, for a time.”
“It ended too soon.”
The shade of the trees is a close thing: where the leaves overlap, the fire of the sun burns desperate, reflections of the Pit above, the world turned on its head, bleeding red until the welts -- the sores and cracks in the shell, the layers of skin that contain all that is the Star of Day, betray all that he isn’t -- in the body at his side, marring that face and claiming dominion; in the sunset, the echoes of those marks are too visible, too faint.
His companion, his jailor -- fellow condemned; he breathes. “It always does.”
There’s a sadness, and he feels it; feels it in the way he doesn’t fit, the way this place does not belong; the way he cannot reconcile what he is -- destruction, corruption, devastation -- with the same name as the son of Issac -- not when he himself rained War upon those people, coaxed them to despair.
Esau -- the syllables are thick along the sides, off the tip of his feeble human tongue.
The bare flesh of Lucifer’s feet break the water, collect droplets of it; cool, and he almost seems to marvel at it, almost seems to mourn.
“What is it, Lightbringer?” And there’s awe, when he says it, though not alone; the dynamic here is shifted, in this place, and for good reason: the son of God cannot outrun a Horseman, not forever.
The smile that curves those blood-burnt lips, cracked at the corners and once down the center, darker than humans have any right to spill -- that smile is why the Morning Star can dwell at once in the Great Below. “I’ve missed that name.”
“It fits, here.” And so it does; War can see divinity in the silhouette of him, the way his lines, his darkness is cast against the deep burrow of Light at the heart of this Island, this sanctuary -- Hell on Earth. “But you took another.”
“Mmmm, Jacob,” Lucifer licks at his lips, impatient, his eyes flashing before they narrow. “He was better. Brighter. Beloved.” His voice dips low, drags the riverbed and comes up dry: “The favored son.”
The fingertips of the Host sift over the rocks, the pebbles at the bank; Lucifer himself seems almost to transcend them, to almost pass through this reality -- he smoothes over one, two, pries them up and throws them with venom, their impact in the surface of the water enough to shatter the ground below, the world below that.
“Prince of the Father,” he bites, venomously, and in the reflection he casts long against the ripples, there is the barest hint, the slightest impression of wings: broken, frayed, decimated. “I climbed my own ladder,” he spits bitterly, turning away, and the suggestion of feathers, tattered and lame, vanishes before it can ever take real form; “and yet, here I sit.”
There’s silence, and War turns restless, resentful; he glares at the green, the jungle, the sky -- twists his ring and tries to pull, knows it’s futile.
“We all yearn for that which we are not, don’t you think?” Lucifer sneers, coughs hard, a rattle in his throat; there are bruises in the flesh of his vessel that were not there before. “I’m no exception.”
Then again -- Lucifer is rarely an exception, really; more often, just a particularly cataclysmic exemplification of the rule.
And said exemplification turns petulant, as if on cue, his features darkening and his lips pursing, the ground below them shaking with his rage, his betrayal. “If I am the epitome of sin,” he whispers, but it’s with a heat that sears, that boils and breaks and is only skin deep, only covers coldness and loneliness, only masks a hurt so vast it requires hiding behind the flames of Perdition; “it is only love that’s caused it.”
War’s known enough of Heaven, of Hell, angels and demons and the mortal coil that spins between: he’s known this place and these worlds for so very long -- small, insignificant, but never written off as worthless -- and he knows enough to see it’s so. To recognize in the way Lucifer’s features twist, in the way his eyes grown dim and bright, all at once: in the way he turns his gaze skyward, blinks hard until his voice cracks with the effort, until rain falls everywhere but here.
“It’s only love that’s made it so.”
And that’s where War is different, less single-minded, less selfish and detached than his fellows, his kin: he feels, he sympathizes, and with Lucifer, he pities.
There’s a reason, he knows, that in this place, he assumes the role of the brother.
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Jacob, Lucifer, Esau, War
Word Count: 1,022
Summary: There’s a reason that, in this place, he assumes the role of the brother. For missy_useless, who requested “Crossovers” at The lostsquee 2010 Lost Summer Luau. General Spoilers through Season Six (Lost); General Spoilers for Season Five (Supernatural).
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title is credit to Dante's Divine Comedy.
Author’s Notes: For missy_useless: This turned out nothing like I’d planned (this is a trend, isn’t it?), but for some reason, what I was hoping would be much more sweeping and much more... tongue-in-cheek, perhaps, turned out a lot more speculative and formal, but also much more brief. Hopefully you like it anyway :)
The Second Kingdom
The breeze rustles, unburdened; the shore recedes and expands, unbound. He didn’t mean to come here; he doesn’t have a choice.
Things are different, here; they play by different rules. They are equals, and when he digs his fingertips far beneath the soft earth at the bank of the stream, the film of wet dirt clinging to the knuckle just above the ring that binds him, anchors him elsewhere -- not here -- he knows he can speak, can move and do and be without fear of rebuke.
The thought itself rankles, but he’s beyond the point of vengeance; action means something new on a timeline like his.
“I think I...” he’s taken, for a moment, by the sheer lack that is everywhere, plain amidst so much space and life -- no room for War, no pawns to move in attack. “I think I missed it here. Things were simpler, in this place.”
He is useless, where he sits; he is nothing.
“That was the point of it, yes.” The man beside him -- so much more, so much less than a man -- always sounds different here, his voice always lighter, as if he truly had been fit to fly, once. “To simply be, for a time.”
“It ended too soon.”
The shade of the trees is a close thing: where the leaves overlap, the fire of the sun burns desperate, reflections of the Pit above, the world turned on its head, bleeding red until the welts -- the sores and cracks in the shell, the layers of skin that contain all that is the Star of Day, betray all that he isn’t -- in the body at his side, marring that face and claiming dominion; in the sunset, the echoes of those marks are too visible, too faint.
His companion, his jailor -- fellow condemned; he breathes. “It always does.”
There’s a sadness, and he feels it; feels it in the way he doesn’t fit, the way this place does not belong; the way he cannot reconcile what he is -- destruction, corruption, devastation -- with the same name as the son of Issac -- not when he himself rained War upon those people, coaxed them to despair.
Esau -- the syllables are thick along the sides, off the tip of his feeble human tongue.
The bare flesh of Lucifer’s feet break the water, collect droplets of it; cool, and he almost seems to marvel at it, almost seems to mourn.
“What is it, Lightbringer?” And there’s awe, when he says it, though not alone; the dynamic here is shifted, in this place, and for good reason: the son of God cannot outrun a Horseman, not forever.
The smile that curves those blood-burnt lips, cracked at the corners and once down the center, darker than humans have any right to spill -- that smile is why the Morning Star can dwell at once in the Great Below. “I’ve missed that name.”
“It fits, here.” And so it does; War can see divinity in the silhouette of him, the way his lines, his darkness is cast against the deep burrow of Light at the heart of this Island, this sanctuary -- Hell on Earth. “But you took another.”
“Mmmm, Jacob,” Lucifer licks at his lips, impatient, his eyes flashing before they narrow. “He was better. Brighter. Beloved.” His voice dips low, drags the riverbed and comes up dry: “The favored son.”
The fingertips of the Host sift over the rocks, the pebbles at the bank; Lucifer himself seems almost to transcend them, to almost pass through this reality -- he smoothes over one, two, pries them up and throws them with venom, their impact in the surface of the water enough to shatter the ground below, the world below that.
“Prince of the Father,” he bites, venomously, and in the reflection he casts long against the ripples, there is the barest hint, the slightest impression of wings: broken, frayed, decimated. “I climbed my own ladder,” he spits bitterly, turning away, and the suggestion of feathers, tattered and lame, vanishes before it can ever take real form; “and yet, here I sit.”
There’s silence, and War turns restless, resentful; he glares at the green, the jungle, the sky -- twists his ring and tries to pull, knows it’s futile.
“We all yearn for that which we are not, don’t you think?” Lucifer sneers, coughs hard, a rattle in his throat; there are bruises in the flesh of his vessel that were not there before. “I’m no exception.”
Then again -- Lucifer is rarely an exception, really; more often, just a particularly cataclysmic exemplification of the rule.
And said exemplification turns petulant, as if on cue, his features darkening and his lips pursing, the ground below them shaking with his rage, his betrayal. “If I am the epitome of sin,” he whispers, but it’s with a heat that sears, that boils and breaks and is only skin deep, only covers coldness and loneliness, only masks a hurt so vast it requires hiding behind the flames of Perdition; “it is only love that’s caused it.”
War’s known enough of Heaven, of Hell, angels and demons and the mortal coil that spins between: he’s known this place and these worlds for so very long -- small, insignificant, but never written off as worthless -- and he knows enough to see it’s so. To recognize in the way Lucifer’s features twist, in the way his eyes grown dim and bright, all at once: in the way he turns his gaze skyward, blinks hard until his voice cracks with the effort, until rain falls everywhere but here.
“It’s only love that’s made it so.”
And that’s where War is different, less single-minded, less selfish and detached than his fellows, his kin: he feels, he sympathizes, and with Lucifer, he pities.
There’s a reason, he knows, that in this place, he assumes the role of the brother.