Disclaimer: I do not own His Dark Materials, characters wherein, or original ideas spun by, Phillip Pullman.


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A/N: This is a short unconventional musing of, maybe, sympathy for the personified devil that was (or permanently is) Lord Asriel (since he dies forever) and his Little Girl. When you're warned about bad news boys and how they love you and break your heart--no one ever tells you about or expects the dangers of your own father loving you...especially when he's taking over the world…s…


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Summary: Very Short. Lord Roke reflects, now that time has passed by and his particles disperse…he argues with himself on what could have been Lord Asriel's most twisted weakness or greatest pretend...that side dancer, that footnote, that steals your eye from the main sopranatic drama.

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"Yes," he said, his voice clear and sharp, his eyes glittering like droplets of ink, "your child, my Lord Asriel: I know about her. Evidently I know more than you do."

Lord Asriel looked at him directly, and the little man knew at once that he'd taken advantage of his commander's courtesy: the force of Lord Asriel's glance flicked him like a finger, so that he lost his balance and had to put out a hand to steady himself own Lord Asriel's wineglass. A moment later Lord Asriel's expression was bland and virtuous, just as his daughter's could be, and from then on Lord Roke was more careful.


--The Amber Spyglass

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Cryptic words meander

there is a song beneath the song


One day you'll soon discern its true meaning

That interesting detachment--

Is a listless poem of love sincere

(So when I say)

It's not a love, it's not a love
It's not a love, it's not a love, it's not a love song

(I really mean…)


--"Song Beneath the Song", Maria Taylor

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Soon.

(not now but in time…)

Lord Asriel's memory will pass, his shadow will gradually fade until the tale that briefly washistory will be that in a story book to impress sleep on small children. His influence will relinquish, I know, and life will forget. The details will lose their fine cut, versions will multiply, and reality will be swatted away as nonsense, just as before.

And that new Eve, she will move on, I doubt she knows of the sacrifice her parents made to let her live and be safe. Maybe it is better that she would never know, always thinking they were indifferent of her future outside their own gains from it.

I'm dying. I'm dying and pulling at things, last puzzle pieces that my mind's hands are frantically trying to put together before it's too late…there's a particular thought that I have to settle:

It couldn't be called love.

No, not even in my limited view of human practice and interactions with them, no, never. Not even with my own short-spanned life could I possibly have anything to conclude it as that--it had to be something different because it was far, far too morphed. Wrong--nonexistent!

Then what had it been?

It was nothing new, that moment in the study: the blazing inferno of danger that coiled at rest inside the man always. Powerful? Once I would have laughed and said 'God, yes,' before reaching for another drink and a grin. Now in my mind's eye I can only stare into my empty glass that once held life and contemplate the inability for anyone to voice that statement again…because that man destroyed God. Because God, the whole Alpha and Omega, creator of life and death, yadda yadda yadda…was an annoying fly in his way.

But…there was something there that day, a remnant of something before.

It was before a child, an oblivious little girl, almost shattered every universe ever shaped, and brought them to her knees.

But…before that too, she broughthim to her knees, and I bet neither of them had any idea of it. If I expected to live past the next few moments I would need a drink, thinking about them together…so alike.

And so secure in the fullness of their established hate for the other.

I was stupid like that once; I was secure like that in my position that I could assert an infamous knowledge of one human girl.

I chose the wrong girl.

His eyes made my heart twitch, made me sweat so suddenly, so profusely, as if he'd flipped a bodily switch with those powerful eyes. It would have been more preferable if I had dropped dead then and there when I implied carrying a more expansive knowledge of his own offspring than him.

This must have been how God felt like knowing Lord Asriel was coming; I never felt more like a fly to be swat.

Something in his eyes had burned with intensity deeper than the Catholic's hell-fire could ever conjure, than a whole firing squad or sweep of his army, than any torture mechanism the Romans had ever thought up: the lion den, the crucifix, the drowning, being pulled apart by rampaging horses. Just one sweep of those eyes from that man, and I knew it could be over for me so quickly.

And somehow I knew in the depth of my pathetic, measly soul that if anything had happened to the girl there was no force in any world that would have stopped him from performing them all. It was pure, complete hate, his leopard daemon staring in the same way: death, spelled out across my brain, she watched, probably heard, my tiny heart. Even now, I feel that if the forever dying man had any thought that I had not been competent…no hole, not even an endless abyss could save me from his wrath.

But it couldn't have been love…

Never…

The problem with tradition is that even the cruelest intentions, the best deceptions, hold flaws too—they are merely so grand everyone else fails to see them. Lord Asriel's flaw was unseen by me, himself, or his child…unseen perhaps by everyone. But it wasn't love--it couldn't be--it was just…weakness…just weakness. Any other day the mention of her name would have illicit an indifferent shrug, or perhaps he would have ignored the comment altogether, and the statement theoretically would never have existed…she would not have existed. I know by firsthand sources that he treated her like this in person.

It was suicide to go in after her; I didn't understand why he focused so many resources to rescue a daughter that, quite frankly, had no impassioned desire to be rescued in the first place, much less by him. The Church would take her, no, they wanted to kill her, but that boy was there with the knife; we knew from the angel he was going to her himself. They had made it that far so they weren't completely stupid. And that psychotic woman, her mother (though never Asriel's wife), what an ugly mess that whole thing would result in, so what was the point?

And to attack with such…I believe that I might have been the only one to notice. He planned the retrieval with a dark, avid fascination, tapping fingertips lightly over the place on the map he knew she was, staring at it like a crystal ball that could call her countenance for his viewing pleasure; murmuring things to himself, thoughts to himself, alone, much to the annoyance of his animal. He could sit there each time he had the few spare minutes away from his invasion plans to heaven, with miscellaneous objects I couldn't see…items perhaps somehow either touched by or pled to have been touched by her.

I was, after all, in charge of those being sent, the military leader; I knew how to attack…and Lord Asriel, again, maybe I read too much into it and the facts were blurred. Looking back I wonder if I'd have dared turned and asked for the reason to pluck a crying, disobedient larva from what you deem insecure and absolutely obliterate those that had tried…who on any other normal day (when you're taking over the universe…es…) you would have denied knowing?

Figures that he'd be the one to never die, damned ironic because it's the one thing his kind seek, immortality…and he couldn't die now even if he wanted to; just fall and fall forever struggling with God's most powerful angel and the woman who's screwed you literally once and metaphorically thrice…all for your daughter.

Who he doesn't love, of course.

Never.

The Lady smiles at me, I sigh shakily as thoughts pass between us. So many years…oh, my Lady…

The child dragged us down through hell and carried us back up again. The sun feels so warm, her hands... I can't protect her too much longer, a fact that frightens me little, she's proven to be...

/He wouldn't have raised an army for Marissa./

What does that say? It's getting hard to think but I can smile at that, because I didn't really like her; I find it amusing to conclude to which of the two the feelings were stronger for…more twisted for…

What does that say?

It is in death that all questions are answered.

Or maybe it's just mine; the ecstasy on the faces of the surrounding dying are really relief and acceptance, not divine revelation. But inside me…I think this is divine revelation…as divine as it can get without a God to take any part in the divinely revealing bit.

I remember doors whispering and servants weaving the story of how Lord Asriel opened the door the worlds, before he ripped open mine. Now, everyone knows the general story: the soul of a child, a boy, and those animals they are connected to, released the energy for him to manipulate the Aurora fibers tying us all together and keeping us all so far apart. Again, everyone knows. It's the small details from those tiny dancers on the side of the opera stage that add to the drama at the center, and bring it all together. I...I see those side dancers of Asriel's thoughts as he and his daughter stand in the middle.

Dancer One, the one that keeps up and barely noticeable: The boy was Lyra's friend.

Dancer Two, who awkwardly looks around and obviously off step: Lyra, for a few seconds, had been the lamb.

Stop there and all you can think about is the monster, the beastly lion to even contemplate his own cub's sweet blood to spill down an unnecessary, unblessed altar. Am I correct? But here, your chin is yanked to take in the stumbled of a third dancer, who has completely tripped over her bloodied slippers: let your eyes be kidnapped from the bellowing soprano and dare to digest that Lord Asriel physically recoiled in horror.

I did not believe it at first when I heard statements of this. He shows nothing for anything. He does not raise his voice, it goes to a low and quiet growl; his eyes perform what lesser men with wilder tempers do to their victim's necks. At setbacks his face is im.passive, his eyes are im.passive—he does not stiffen, does not freeze, he does not allow his mouth to slack and show the world his brilliant mind's wheels slamming to a stop.

Yes, dancer number three is very important. Because while you are trapped by the fact that this dancer has broken the original meaning of the aria, so does the context of the tale twist: he was afraid.

Afraid? Afraid of what—he doesn't even love her! He's faced death and all his instruments—then killed Him. What does he have to fear! What?!

That was what you went into the show believing. The Beast hated his Beauty. Lord Asriel did not love his daughter. It was when the wolves went after her, someone else threatening to peel the layers of flesh aside from himself, that drove him mad. Someone else holding more control of Lyra sent him mad. And then after the Beast saved his Beauty…

Implications. Perhaps it's best Lyra was never "rescued." Because if they had met again...

I don't know, I don't know I don't know I don't know. There is know way to know--there are too many different sides of the dice and shadows they cast to even make a conclusion.

But...that look in his eyes when I was cocky about simplifying her.

I tremble, and I don't know if it's at the stiffness creeping up my body, slowly…this is how our kind dies. Inwardly, our bodies from our toes to our head become our cocoons, our tombs. I wonder if the memory of his look is killing me faster…What humans see as rigamortis is reaching my heart, I grasp my Ladies hand and reflect on my love, reflect on servicing the most powerful God and Devil to ever walk the earth…reflect that I commanded the armies he orchestrated continuous victory.

Reflect…as I physically digress molecule by molecule that perhaps I personally had seen him first fall...in love.

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And then he was there, an eager look on his face. But it vanished in a second when he realized who she was.

--The Golden Compass

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"She came to me on Svalbard and I ignored her," he said. "You remember the shock…I needed a sacrifice, and the first child to arrive was my own daughter…But then when I realized that there was another child with her, so she was safe, I relaxed…Where in hell's name can she be?"


--The Amber Spyglass