Sweeter than Heaven, hotter than Hell - Jared/Jensen NC-17 [Part 2]
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Jared’s never had a headache, but as he drags his leaden body upright from its prone position, he thinks he finally understands the concept. He’s not a fan.
He drags a hand across his face, pressing at his eyes to try and clear the blur, which is when he notices he’s wearing different clothes. Not the pale, fuzzy sweater and low-slung pants he’d been wearing, but the minimalist crisp-white garb of an angel’s uniform, minus the grace armour designed to layer over it like a carapace. He can’t say he likes the presumption, but at least they’d left him with the same body; he’s kind of attached to this one now.
He’s lying on the floor, which would be bad enough even if the floor wasn’t a kind of cool, unbroken tile, and looking up he can just barely see the structural lines and finely patterned glass of the ceiling high above, before it gets washed out by the golden light shining down.
The chamber - part of the angelic Silver City, he’s guessing - is shaped like a giant, ornate hemisphere, marked with golden architecture and Holy symbols all around its curving walls, pillars of sculpted and sanctified ‘glass’ so clear they’re nearly invisible.
He thinks if he squinted up at the undefined and dazzling light for long enough, he might be able to make out the countless concentrated bursts of infinite brightness as the souls pass up and into Heaven.
As prisons go, it’s definitely the most lavish one he’s ever been in.
On his feet, Jared walks the outside edge of the room, not surprised but still disappointed at the complete lack of any kind of seam or doorway, every surface unbroken and stubbornly unresponsive.
Time probably doesn’t exist here, the Silver City being just to the side of the flow of causality like standing on the bank of a river, but as he paces from one sloping side of the chamber to another, running hands through his hair in frustration and sometimes calling out into the still, dustless air for someone to come and tell him why he’s being kept here, it still feels like the weight of hours or days is slowly pressing down against his shoulders.
It shouldn’t be possible to feel this claustrophobic in a room so large and open, so illuminated from the outside, but that’s not stopping Jared from breathing harder just to have something he can hear in the booming silence, even the thumps of his now-booted feet muffled to near silence.
“Pacing won’t help.”
Jared spins at the sudden voice, not quite holding in the noise of surprise. Or the second noise of surprise when he realises who he’s looking at.
“Remiel?” he asks, even though now he’s put a Name to the grey eyes and coolly measured expression, it can hardly be anyone else. It doesn’t help explain why the angel supposedly in charge of running Hell is up in Heaven instead. He hadn’t Fallen, but Hell isn’t exactly the kind of place you can leave unattended, and Jared doubts that the demons or old, dependable Duma can keep it in hand without a more… outspoken form of governance.
“Don’t sound so shocked, Jared,” Remiel says, standing preternaturally still in his odd-looking suit; angel-white but with interlaced fine lines of inky black-red, like vines worming their way across the fabric.
Jared wonders how deep that blackness runs, now.
“No, not shocked,” he assures pointlessly, maybe taking a step back and maybe taking three. “It’s just… been a while, that’s all.”
Remiel shrugs, a slow fluid move that doesn’t seem to fit him quite right. “Running Hell is a full time job, Jared. As is maintaining the state of affairs on Earth I would think.”
Jared concedes with a nod. “I do what I can.”
“Yes, you do, don’t you. Which is, of course, why you’re here.”
“Meaning what?” Jared asks, then “Where am I, anyway?” since it seems about time he did.
Remiel gives him a curious look, squinting those ageless grey eyes of his. “You don’t know?”
“Well, I’m asking aren’t I?” Jared sighs.
“You’re in the Silver City,” Remiel tells him, and Jared can’t suppress the eye-roll, even though it’s a tellingly human thing to do. It was worth being on Earth, Jared thinks, just to learn to roll his eyes.
“I know that,” he says, “but I’ve never seen this place, where are we?”
The look Remiel gives him this time is almost sad, and might be, if he’d ever actually experienced real sadness. “We’re in the Mausoleum of the Archangels, Jared,” he says, soft and low, resonating in the chamber like the thrum of some absent harp.
Jared feels his eyes widen, his hands going slack at his sides. He almost wants to call Remiel a liar.
Jared might’ve distanced himself from his Choir of Angels, may have stepped back from the messier aspects of Heaven’s work, but he’s still one of the Host. Still one of them enough to feel his ‘skin’ crawl as he cranes his neck to look around his would-be prison, to feel uneasy even with the ethereal sunlight warming his face.
The Archangels aren’t quite as humans would imagine them. The Silver City - the one place in all Creation that predates Creation and exists outside of everything - has a hierarchy, one that’s strictly followed in almost every aspect, but the Archangels were different. The closest analogy would be secret agents; military operatives; or most often, assassins. They were the few noted angels who, because of proven talent or given position, were granted the ability to rise above all but God, to carry out the ultimate will of Heaven.
They’ve been responsible for some of the greatest of Heaven’s works. And by extension, some of the greatest atrocities. Inspiration of the most noted prophets, artists and warriors of mankind. Destruction of cities and whole populations. Casting out those who Fell in the ultimate Rebellion. Expelling the first humans from Paradise.
It’s an exalted position, but one that carries a high price. No Archangel has ever lived past the purposeful boundary of his or her mission. They’re designated, imbued with Power beyond their fellows, and assuming they survive their task, that power then ultimately destroys them. It’s the way it’s always been, either because power so easily corrupts, or because even angels have a limit, set somewhere deep down in their immaterial makeup since the patterning of Creation.
And so the Mausoleum was crafted, in the highest point of the largest ethereal structure within the Silver City. A magnificent and venerated site, where the last few flecks of splintered grace retrieved from the remnants of every Archangel are laid to rest in memoriam for all Time.
It’s the closest the Host has ever come to humanity’s ability to mourn their losses, and create beauty out of such desperate pain.
And almost none of them will ever set eyes on it.
But now that Jared knows to Look, he can see the glinting sparks evenly cast around the golden, flowing curve of the room. Each set into a tall, slender spire of something that looks like silvery glass, but wouldn’t melt or shatter or crack under the highest heat or greatest impact.
Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Chamuel, Jophiel and Zadkiel. The seven Archangels, with strength, knowledge and wisdom beyond every Choir and Sphere. The ones who stood before The Presence; looked upon God’s light and burned with it. All of them dead, but still living on, encapsulated forever as relics; evidence of Heaven’s might.
Jared regrets asking now. The whole place is disturbing in a way he never would’ve expected.
“This is sacrilege,” he points out, facing Remiel again. “Using this, of all places, as a jail for one disobedient Principality. I’m surprised the others let you do this.”
Remiel shrugs again like he’s trying it out for size. “You’ve been gone a long time, Jared. And we’ve grown impatient enough to forgo some of the old… formalities.”
Jared huffs a confused and humourless noise. “So I’m, what? Being kept out of the way? Shoved aside so you can have your war?”
“No Jared,” Remiel says, “you’re here for a much more specific purpose.” He steps closer, light flaring in his eyes that makes Jared think of a train barrelling out of a tunnel. “You’re to be the next war leader of Heaven,” he says, like it’s forgone and concluded, like it’s a good idea. “A new Archangel for a new kind of battle: the war of Heaven and Hell against mankind.”
* * *
Jensen pours himself out the door, tugging it shut with a thought and feeling the protective symbols seal up behind him, and turns around only to barely avoid colliding with two people, who at no point in their combined existences could ever’ve really been called ’people’.
If his day gets any better, no torment in any Circle’s gonna be able to compare.
“Jensen,” one of them drawls, like it’s a coincidental meeting after years of separation, her voice springing from jagged things being scraped across chalkboards. She’s tall, with vibrant red hair cascading down her shoulders like curls of smoke, and a smile sharper than the sharpest knife. In a small touch of creativity, her eyes match her hair.
“It’s been a while,” the other one says, a stocky older guy with a lazy smirk and close-cropped hair, and clothes that Jensen suspects are an exact copy of a random storefront display. This denizen’s idea of ‘passing for human’. No imagination whatsoever.
Jensen slaps a smile across his face like a thin, flimsy coat of paint that’s sure to peel away at any moment, drops his hands nonchalantly into his pockets. “Hey guys,” he says, chipper. “Long time no torture. How’ve you been?”
“Busy,” the guy drawls, smirk getting wider, and beneath his skin he’s all fangs and forked tongue and rotted flesh to Jensen’s Sight. Just what Jensen needs: a traditionalist. “We were runnin’ topside some standard possessions when the boss told us to check up on you. Seems you’ve gathered quite a rep Downstairs for not toeing the party line.”
“I do my job,” Jensen insists, letting some of that occasionally useful inbuilt demonic anger through to the surface, feels it glint in his eyes and making his teeth look sharper in the low light. “I don’t disobey any more than they want me to. Might be why I’ve got more commendations than both you miserable dregs put together.”
They grit their teeth and crack knuckles inside balled fists, the male demon’s eyes flaring with his shoddy temper. “Yeah, but c’mon Jensen, we all know it ain’t just about the job don’t we? What we do’s supposed to be more than that.”
Jensen shrugs like this conversation isn’t gonna end badly no matter what he does. “Hey I’m as up for evil as you guys are,” he insists, “I’m just not as behind the times, is all.”
“Really?” the redhead hisses, disturbingly catlike for the distinctly canine teeth. “You think you’re better than us? We didn’t get ourselves on permanent assignment in this cesspool, now did we?”
Being the old fashioned, dogmatic types who decided even as they flung their halos away like horseshoes to believe everything the more uppity angels said about Hell, Jensen doubts there’s anything he could tell them that they’d find impressive.
Really, Jensen doubts these two’ve been moved by any kind of work since sometime around the fourteenth century. For demons like them, the fourteenth century’s become that one restaurant they used to visit that closed down, and now every establishment they go into has to suffer for the comparison.
There are few things more annoying than a bunch of demons who won’t stop whining about how good they used to have it, even as they ignore just how easy it is to drive humanity to sin with the smallest things. Like those fake pockets that appear randomly on some clothes and not others, purposefully mingled with real pockets just to rub salt into the still-bleeding wound of soul-deep disappointment and burning frustration.
But no, there’ll be no convincing them. Which is why the Dark Council will have sent them in the first place. Hell, Jared had said to him once, is its own collapsing mineshaft. Jensen had voiced the mandatory disagreement, but looking at the bloodthirsty morons standing in front of him, he has to admit there was sense behind it. He hates that.
“So,” he says, “come to drag me Down yourselves right now? Or is this just the in-person eviction notice? I get two weeks to pack?”
“Oh you’re coming with us,” the male demon says with a smirk. “Bosses want you involved in the planning, since you’ve got such… insider knowledge an’ all.”
Jensen tries really hard not to imagine why he’s suddenly of so much interest, or what his know-how has to do with Hell’s plan. There’s nothing they could want him for that he’d call appealing.
“Yeah,” he drags out, pinching his mouth in some fake consideration. “But see, I already told the schmuck exec They sent before you no, and I’ve got kind of a pet peeve about repeating myself. So, you can go back to whatever menial bullshit you were doing, and we’ll just pretend this never happened.” He finishes on a grin like ta-da! even as he’s gripping his fingers around the small-but-powerful objects he’d retrieved from his safe, even more glad he’d never told Jared about them given the mess they’re both in now. Jared would have tutted over them and stuck them on a shelf in a warded vault, lest they fall into the wrong hands.
Well, hands wronger than Jensen’s anyway.
“That’s not gonna work for us,” says stunt demon #2, her fingernails looking less like fingernails and more like talons. “They gave us permission to haul your angel-loving ass to the Pit in pieces if you refused.”
“We’d been hoping you would,” her companion adds. “More fun this way.”
Jensen sighs, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the brimstone stink these two dragged up with them. He takes his hands out of his pockets, fingers clenched and tingles sparking up his arm, in that kind of non-pain humans can only ever experience if they slam their elbows into something.
“I figured you’d say that,” he says, followed by a stream of distinct non-English and an artful spreading flick of his hands out toward them.
Then he tries not to flinch at the horrendous screams that pierce the air, as both the Fallen cronies erupt into fire.
Angels and demons, coming from the same original stock, can summon either Holy Fire or Hellfire. Depending which side you’re on, you’ll be better at summoning one than the other, and more vulnerable to whichever isn’t ‘yours’, but it’s the same transmaterial principle. The hazards of a demon summoning Holy Fire are a little like trying to juggle grenades after you’ve pulled the pins out, and watching an angel summon Hellfire will either involve massive amounts of collateral damage, or be just plain embarrassing for all involved.
Holy Fire is a humming golden-yellow, like sunlight concentrated and aimed by a kid with a giant magnifying glass, while Hellfire is red and black and creeping. Jensen managed to turn his fire a sharp, acid green about a thousand years ago, and never changed it back because it meant he could brag to the others in the Legion of Darkness, and to Jared and by extension the angels. That kind of win-win was just too good to give up once he had it.
Plus, he doesn’t know how he did it in the first place. But no one needs to know that.
The flames spread across and between and around them, rushing with a kind of negative sound that goes past silence and into the awful death-void underneath it. Green light scatters nightmare shadow down the hallway and over Jensen’s skin as he shields his eyes, the stench of the unnatural flame almost worse than the shredding of the demon’s real shapes beneath the illusion of their human skins.
With a last, convulsing rush of boiling air, Jensen’s Hellfire and all trace of the demons is gone, the small corridor so dark in comparison even Jensen has to strain to see past his own nose. Charring scorches mark the walls and floor and ceiling, the kind that’ll never come out even if you tore up everything and rebuilt it, damage going right down to the unseen fabric that lies under the ‘real’ stuff people built on top of it.
Jensen takes a bare lungful of a breath, and coughs most of it back up without hesitation. He’d feel bad for his landlord if he hadn’t just ruined the entrance to his own loft and effectively stuck a big red pin in Hell’s map of the world with a label that reads ‘I’m fucking things up for you, please come and kill me’.
Dusting the powdery leftovers of the Hellfire ampules from his palms like chalky ash, he double-times it down the stairs and out to the sidewalk, the Cadillac faithfully unlocking and rumbling to life just as he reaches it.
Flinging himself into the seat and glaring at his balefully silent cell phone so hard the casing smolders a little, Jensen slams the door closed and encourages the car to make its way faster than the old red-eyed horses that’d been the fashion Downstairs once upon a time.
If he’s gonna make it to LA before The End, the world is just gonna have to deal with a little bending of the so-called unchangeable laws of matter and reality. People get way too hung up on those.
The way Jensen sees it, if he can’t get to Jared and find some way of calling the whole Judgement thing off, then the world will have much, much worse to deal with than a demon who puts a dent in the sound barrier.
* * *
Jared stares at Remiel’s stony expression, lost for words in what a certain demon would say was the first time in centuries. He’d only be slightly right about that.
“Me?” Jared says, completely incredulous. He should feel honour, or a sense of purpose. But he’s having trouble getting past the surrealism. “You want me to be an Archangel?”
“Why do you think you were made our appointed representative on Earth to begin with?” Remiel points out. “Did you think we assigned you without a purpose? When Hell’s attache is one you knew so well even before his Fall? This has been the new Plan since The Creator fell silent. We have no choice, not now.”
“You need an Archangel so badly, then you take the job,” Jared says, waving a hand at Remiel. Then he notices the way Remiel’s looking off to the side, at the nearest shimmering grace remnant, the one belonging to Michael.
“Oh,” he breathes, looking at Remiel suddenly not for who is, but for what he does. “You can’t, can you? Because none who’ve ruled in Hell may serve in Heaven; that’s His Word, immutable right down in the fabric of Creation. It’s why Lucifer never came back, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And you were hoping, what? That the Power would convince me to side with you over mankind?”
“The Power of an Archangel is absolute,” Remiel says, his jaw firming as he squares his shoulders. “It would remake you; rebuild you until you no longer remembered it was not how you always were. It would end this pointless detente you and that demon are so invested in.”
“For the benefit of humanity,” Jared insists, his arms gesturing out from his sides as his voice climbs. “For the ones we’re supposed to be serving.” His hands drop against his sides, and he tries to make himself sound as genuine as he can. “If either side wins, everybody loses, I thought that was clear to everyone.”
Remiel scoffs. “Do you think humanity will be content with their own world forever?” He shakes his head, a sharp and vicious movement. “No, Jared. Eventually, they will climb to Heaven or fall to Hell, in life as well as death, and then our rightful place will be lost.” His voice is rough, almost like he’s choking on the words. “They’ll usurp us, the way they did in His heart in the Beginning. Even in the Garden, the true serpent was always man.”
Jared can feel how wide his eyes are, how his jaw’s gone slack. He’s heard from Jensen and through the angelic grapevine that Remiel’s been taking a harsher stance, but he never imagined it’d come to this. “You can’t seriously think that humans will… will take over Heaven? Or Hell? It’s insane!”
Remiel steps closer, static buzzing in the air and striking Jared’s skin. “How long have you been extolling their grand potential? How much of God’s domain have they blithely plundered already? And how many of them even now consider themselves above us? Above Him. ”
“And you think this is what He wants? He gave them the Earth; and the stars and the universe to explore and discover. We were told to bow before them, not curtail them, and absolutely not to destroy them because of some imagined threat.”
“Imagined?” Remiel snarls. “They’re a dangerous, savage creation, Jared. You live among them but you don’t see. I’ve spent millennia watching the things they’re capable of; the basest acts of their existence. They will rise, in arrogance and defiance, to conquer as they have so many times before; cruelly, and without wisdom.”
“So you’re going to strike first,” Jared mutters, disbelieving but with mounting horror. “Heaven and Hell; finally putting aside the old grudges, just so you can lay siege to the Earth.”
“Their ascendance can still be prevented,” Remiel says in a low, promising voice. “We can scour them from Creation; put a stop to the danger here and now, before they claim our Kingdom for theirs. We expelled them from Paradise, and now we’ll do it again.”
Jared backs away. “I won’t help you,” he insists. “I won’t, Remiel.”
“You’ve had the luxury of time, Jared,” he intones. “And now it has abandoned you. This tomb, dear brother, will soon become yours. You’ve been chosen to lead.”
“I refuse,” Jared says instantly, unequivocally. Righteously.
Remiel smirks, and it doesn’t suit him. “Perhaps ‘chosen’ was the wrong word. You’ve been drafted, Jared. Purposefully selected of all the Host, to become the weapon we need.”
“Call it whatever you want,” Jared mutters, “I’m still not accepting.” Jared’s never wasted his time trying to think of a Holy order he’d refuse. It’s anathema to everything they're supposed to be.
Through the fear gripping at his heart and the anger humming in his veins, comes the unbidden thought that disobeying shouldn’t be this easy. And it definitely shouldn’t feel this… right.
Somewhere, hopefully out of the reach of Hell and all its minions, Jensen is probably smirking to himself.
“You’re one of us, no matter what your time among the humans might lead you to think,” Remiel tells him, seeming oblivious to the painful irony. “If you insist on being intransigent, then you will remain here, as a prisoner. With your influence on Earth gone, and your counterpart dealt with, we can do this without you. You won’t be allowed to interfere anymore.”
Jared tried desperately not to fixate on the dealt with part of that. He’ll just have to trust Jensen to take care of himself, which is something he’s always been good at. Hell probably thinks he’ll go quietly. They’re in for a surprise.
“You know you don’t have to do this,” Jared impresses, taking a step toward Remiel for the first time since he was brought here. “You have a choice.”
“Like you did?” Remiel mocks.
“Yes,” Jared says simply.
“But here you stand,” Remiel points out, waving one arm absently at the chamber around them. “Even with everything you’ve done and tried to do, you are here, and you are ours. What’s your choice worth now, Jared?”
Jared meets Remiel’s impassive glare with every bit of sincere belief he has, every strength of conviction he’s clung to for so long. “Everything,” he says, quiet and intent. “It’s worth everything. Because if this -” Mirroring Remiel’s gesture “- is all I have to look forward to, then my choices are all I’ve got left.”
The way Remiel shakes his head this time is pitying, as though Jared was the one throwing away a literal eternity of service and upholding His wishes for humanity.
Jared liked his existence a lot better when the line between Good and Evil wasn’t smudged so badly.
“It doesn’t matter,” Remiel finally says, and Jared feels like the distant walls are compressing inward, the high vaulted ceiling looming downward instead of allowing Heaven’s light to shine on him from above. This is what true helplessness is, he thinks.
“I won’t help you,” Jared repeats, a sharpness digging behind his eyes and heaviness dragging about his shoulders.
Remiel sighs, but there’s no real remorse or even shock on his face. “Then stay,” he says, a hardness edging into the words. “Stay here, and revel in your empty choices.”
The air ripples, and with a distorted sound like a beating of invisible wings, Remiel’s gone, and Jared stands alone in a gold-lit grave.
* * *
It’s raining, which Jensen thinks is pretty appropriate given the oncoming Armageddon, but it’s not really that sort of rain. Partly because it’s barely a fine mist that’s coating the roads and the windshield of the Cadillac as he slows and ensures himself a parking spot, and partly because it’s raining water rather than fish. Or live frogs.
From the outside, Lux looks like any number of nightclubs Jensen’s been to in this century; it might have a more ‘exclusive’ air, with the doormen dressed sharply and the deep line of people waiting behind the velvet rope showcasing a serious amount of money with their own outfits, but given the management Jensen’s almost disappointed by how ordinary it all is.
Leaving the car to fend for itself, Jensen casually strolls up to the main entrance, already preparing a careful dose of his usual charm in case there’s any issue with him jumping to the head of the line.
Apparently there isn’t, since the moment he reaches them, the towering guys who might be entirely human and might be human with a side of steroids pull the silver and glass door wide, and usher him inside without a word.
He waves off the coat checker and tugs his jacket straight as he steps into the main room, a wide, artfully decorated space with an impressive bar running in a half-circle from the wall, and being tended by two women who are either twins or from the same demonic line.
There’re no signs of security, natural or otherwise, and no sigils or wards that Jensen can feel that might be a problem. It should be reassuring, knowing he’s not about to be cast out or discorporated, but all it means is that the Morningstar wants him to be here, which Jensen thinks you’d have to be plain stupid not to find a little worrying.
There’s a small crowd spaced around the room, some taking up the smooth leather furniture and glass tables set about in threes and fours, and some standing at the bar or in groups. The atmosphere is one of easy charm, but there’s the barest trace of something hiding just out of Sight like a whisper of music on the wind, or the impression of a great monster lurking beneath the surface of a calm lake.
A few people flick glances at Jensen as he passes, eyes either normal or sparking red or white with Otherness before returning to their drinks and conversations. In a place like this, one random demon is just like any other. At least until news of Jensen’s little fiery revolt begins to spread.
A passing waiter with skin so pale it’s basically an inverse of the black tux he’s wearing hands Jensen a drink from the centre of an otherwise empty tray, without even breaking stride. Taking a cautious sip, Jensen finds it’s his favourite drink, made exactly how he’d ask for it, or more likely how he’d make it himself, since so few barkeeps have ever done it justice.
Lucifer might’ve taken his toys and left the sandbox, but he’s still the original Tempter, the first and best at the game of playing to people’s wants and weaknesses.
Jensen can’t help but be a little impressed.
He walks past the bar’s patrons, trying to think how to ask for the boss without getting given a runaround he doesn’t have time for. Or looking like a delusional nutjob ranting about the Devil.
A woman holding court from an elegant sprawl in an armchair points a manicured finger off toward the other side of the room, not once looking up at him or stopping her discussion with the enthralled crowd on the sectional opposite. Or spilling her crystal glass of what Jensen can vouch for as being human blood.
Following the hint leads him to the room’s main attraction; a raised and rounded dais subtly spotlit from above, and displaying a white grand piano and its player, the flawless notes of a piece he’s sure Jared could name unfurling into the air.
Just before he reaches it, he’s intercepted by a woman in a cape and hood, with a white mask covering half her face and dark hair running down to her waist. The fine silver name tag, with a red, stylised L embossed into one corner reads ‘Genevieve’, which definitely isn’t the name Jensen would’ve voiced. Not like he’ll contradict it though, to a creature as old and powerful as she is, Jensen’s just a few rungs from the bottom of the ladder.
“I need to speak with him,” Jensen tells her, tacking on a frighteningly sincere “Please.”
Her mouth - the half not covered by the mask - pinches a little, and her eyes are so black it’s like they go on forever, the void that sits between the stars. Which seems appropriate, considering who her partner is.
She scrutinises him with a kind of depth that Jensen will usually go to great lengths and misdirections to steer clear of, the sort of awareness he hasn’t had aimed at him since he chose his particular path in the order of things. It probably makes her the only person in Creation besides Jared who could read him so well. He’s not sure how he feels about that.
Lucifer must be even more of a charmer than Jensen remembers, to convince her that he’s worth her attention.
“It’s important,” he promises, knowing she likely doesn’t care, but figuring the honesty might be surprising enough to make a difference.
Finally she sighs and nods toward the dais, steps aside to let him pass. Jensen feels the sudden lack of her stare like oxygen pouring into a vacuum.
Stepping to the edge of the platform like he’s walking to the gallows, Jensen makes himself walk onto it, the piano’s seamless melody rising to a cascade of highs and lows like it’d been timed just for him. Which it might’ve been, given the sense of humour of the guy tickling the ivories.
The piece finishes on a light dashing of notes like rain falling onto the surface of leaves, Jensen standing next to the glossy, curving instrument.
Sitting on the short leather bench in front of the keys is a guy probably not much shorter than Jensen, with dark hair too precisely ruffled to be anything but intentional, stubble lining his jaw and eyes the kind of intense blue the sky was before anything had been created under it, the barest hint of a gold ring glimmering around their edges. He’s wearing a silky-looking white shirt under a trim black waistcoat, his feet pressing the pedals in sharp-toed glossy shoes, a blood red cravat slung around his throat.
“You’re a very brave idiot,” he says, long fingers still resting lightly on the keys. The aura of Power around him is like trying to breathe in a room full of steam.
“I don’t want trouble,” Jensen tells him, which is a hugely ridiculous thing for a demon to say, but then context really is everything.
The Morningstar half-turns on the bench to look at him, a physical kind of looking that makes Jensen aware of every atom of himself. The name tag on his waistcoat reads ‘Misha’. Not the strangest name he’s had, Jensen supposes. “Oh I know why you’re here,” he tells Jensen, plucking a wineglass from off the piano’s lid and swirling it in his fingers. “Even if you could hide your intentions from me in my own establishment, word’s been filtering through the ether since Jared was summoned away, and my psychics are very good at what they do.”
“Mixing cocktails?” Jensen says with an eyebrow raise.
Luc--Misha, smiles a little, and Jensen thinks this is how humans must feel when looking at a lion. It doesn’t matter if it likes you, you’re still something to be digested.
“Such willingness to die, for a demon,” Misha muses, with a sip of his drink, eyes flicking briefly to the air above Jensen’s head. “Is it redemption you want? To return to the flock and do His will?”
Jensen snorts like it’s a reflex. “Never really was my crowd,” he says, understating.
“No,” Misha says, something else hiding under his scrutiny now. “Interesting, the way it all works out. I’ll give Him credit where it’s due, He’s a damn good judge of character.” He chuckles a little into a drink of wine, shakes his head as he puts the glass down.
Jensen tries not to shift on his feet, to think about the fleeting pass of moments as that one ultimate deadline creeps closer.
Finally he sighs. “If you’re just dragging out the ‘no’ I’ll get back out there and find some other way. Short on time and all that.”
Misha looks out the nearest window at the dreary darkness beyond, his fingers idly playing out a few smooth notes.
When he turns back to Jensen his eyes are brighter, sharper. “If I’m going to break my long-standing position of neutrality,” he starts, and Jensen tries not to twitch. “Then I’d like to at least know why.”
“You’re the only other angel on Earth,” Jensen says, and Misha makes a show of pondering that for a second.
“True, I suppose,” he drawls. “Unless you count Azrael, but I doubt you’ll be wanting his help. But so little interests me anymore, Jensen. I’d like to know why I should care about your predicament.”
“Why?” Jensen repeats, stalling, mind going a little blank.
Misha nods. “Seems existence is about to suffer the tedium of a violent redecorating; everything in this realm torn apart and remade, and here you are scrambling after a single missing angel. I want to know why.”
“They need him for something,” Jensen says, not a lie but a more convenient truth. “I imagine snatching him back would be a real thorn in their side.”
“Oh no doubt,” Misha agrees with a tiny smirk, like he’s playing a role. Aren’t they all. “But it’s you that has me curious, Jensen. Beyond Heaven’s little schemes and Hell’s machinations, I want to know what motivates you.”
Jensen swallows, the inescapable pressure of the most powerful angel in Creation staring right into his eyes like a vice grip on his temples. “I’m a demon,” he says, shrugging with a wry twist of his mouth. “I want what all demons want. Chaos, entropy, to generally fuck with the man Upstairs.”
That pressure intensifies, making Jensen grit his teeth. “You can’t lie to the Prince of Lies,” Misha says, low and intent. “And I think we both know you’ve never been that feeble-minded.”
Jensen tries to think of any plausible reason he’s asking for help with cracking Heaven like a safe. Then he decides on the deflective option. “S’a lotta smoke you’re blowing,” He grits out through his teeth. “Good thing I’ve built up a tolerance.”
Misha laughs, his eyes sparking and the bubble of nonphysical pressure easing away into the air. “You see? There’s no denizen of the Pit, save maybe the First Fallen who’d dare speak to me like that. Even Gen is rarely that blunt.” He leans away from the piano, and Jensen has to stop himself taking a step back. “Now, tell me why this matters so very much, and you can have your gateway.”
It sounds so simple, like such a small thing to ask. But then all of Lucifer’s bargains feel that way.
Jensen looks into that expectant and infinitely patient stare, can’t help but think that the greatest of the Host isn’t worth a scrap compared to Jared in any meaningful way. He doesn’t so much decide to be honest, since he’s had enough of that to last him another five lifetimes already tonight, but he lets his eyes show things that haven’t seen the light of day since the light of day was a shiny new penny, looking down on a perfect Garden.
“Ah,” Misha says softly, almost to himself. “There it is. I thought as much. That’s good, you’ll no doubt be needing that soon enough.”
Jensen swallows, downs his drink and doesn’t even taste it, waves the glass off onto the bar with a thought. “So you’ll help me?” he asks, still waiting for the impact as the second shoe drops on him.
Misha hums, nods just barely. “Jared’s always been Good,” he says, musing and like it’s the reason Jensen’s just proved it isn’t. “Invested in humanity more than I was ever inclined to be, and he’s gained more influence than he knows because of everything he’s done here.”
“He doesn’t care,” Jensen shrugs. “He just wants to run his blessed bakery, hoard his books and help old people cross the street.”
Another hum. “Like you he’s… unique. Part of the Plan that the rest of the Plan depends on. They need you - both of you - even though there are plenty who’ll hate you for it.”
“That include you?” Jensen asks before he can help it.
“This is all just… entertainment,” Misha drawls, gesturing at the piano and then the bar around them and seemingly at the world beyond that. “One song is the same as another, really; they all end eventually. Who’s to say the next version of Creation won’t be better?”
“Not all of us are guaranteed a seat,” Jensen points out. He looks out at the random assortment of people in the club. “Doubt any of them would get even a second glance. Hope it was all worth it.”
“I have no regrets,” Misha says, following Jensen’s gaze.
Jensen can’t help but wonder if that’s true, or he’s got so many he just can’t tell the difference anymore.
“You didn’t Fall,” he points out. “Not as far as some of us did.”
Misha shakes his head. “I did what He asked me to, that was all. The consequences are… mine to live with.”
“One less big consequence if you help me stop the world from ending,” Jensen says, and Misha breathes a small huff of a laugh.
He raises a hand, and the dark-haired woman - Genevieve or Mazikeen or whoever she is now - appears like she’d condensed out of the shadow, which Jensen admits she may well have done, but he figures she’s just that graceful, that used to slipping around unnoticed.
She hands Misha, a polished wooden box, so dark it looks like light couldn’t escape it’s grainless surface, a deep red line following the seal down the middle length like an instrument case. It looks old, and it feel unmistakably like Hell.
“Something I’ve held onto for a long time,” Misha says, taking the box and running a hand over its lid, soft sounds like whispers pouring from it at the touch. “It might help you, and to be honest I don’t much like having it around.”
He holds it out to Jensen, who takes it the way a hapless cartoon character takes a live stick of dynamite before it explodes. It doesn’t seem to weigh anything, despite the obviously dense wood and whatever relic of the Pit’s inside it. Jensen’s had a lot of experience with cursed objects, dark magic and things imbued with Power enough to drive people insane. He’s guessing that whatever’s in the box is something beyond any of that.
“So, what?” he asks, warily eyeing them both as Misha leans back into Genevieve’s hand on his shoulder. “Do I click my heels and wish real hard?”
Misha smiles, amused and almost fond. “Find where they took Jared from,” he says. “I’ll reopen the door, but once it shuts you’re on your own. I have no sway in Heaven now.”
Jensen doubts that, given just who and what he is, especially with God off in parts unknown. But push any harder and he’s likely to break something. Like his bones when the Morningstar gets tired of indulging him.
He gets a nod from Genevieve, and the look in her eyes is every bit the warrior queen of the Lilim race he would’ve pictured her as.
“Be quick,” Misha says, like Jensen needed the reminder. “And try not to die. If you screw this up I’m going to lose my club.”
Jensen shakes his head as he steps off the stage, strides out of the room as the piano music picks up and follows him out through the doors. The rain’s getting worse, but it’s still just water, not even the holy kind. The Cadillac’s door clicks open as he crosses the street, two parking tickets bursting into flame and blowing away as ash when Jensen gets in. The engine growls impatiently, the sound of an animal that desperately wants off its leash. The gas gauge reads empty, but it’s been saying that for about fifty years now.
Swerving into the road with a shuddering screech of wet tires, Jensen pictures Jared’s apartment in his head and encourages the car the way he might coax a Hellhound into running faster; with a lot of cussing and the promise of some carnage.
The God Squad could’ve nabbed Jared from his bakery, or even from the middle of the street if they were feeling just that extra bit callous about hysterical human witnesses, no matter what the Guidebook of Divine Intervention says, but Jensen knows Jared well enough to guess where he was.
Damn angel’s always been such a homebird.
The Cadillac shoves the world aside, and the road desperately pleads for mercy. Overhead, the sky splinters with lightning like a warm-up act.
Hope is a bastard. But then again so is Jensen.
Part 3