AN: Hello! Uni begins in a week, so of course this is the perfect time to begin a complicated multi-chaptered piece!
Updates will be Tues/Fri nights (my time, so GMT 10.30+)
The daemons used are the same as the ones in my His Dark Mind universe, with the one main difference that Hotch/Reid aren't together in this fic. This one is meant to be read as a standalone, so it will reintroduce those daemons for those new to them.
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For those who are unfamiliar with the His Dark Materials universe, this is basically all you need to know (taken from the wiki)
"A dæmon /ˈdiːmən/ is a type of fictional being in the Philip Pullman fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech—regardless of the form they take—and usually behave as though they are independent of their humans. Pre-pubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily, almost instantaneously, to become any creature, real or imaginary. During their adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes "settling", an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Dæmons and their humans are almost always of different genders."
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Her first impulse was to turn and run, or to be sick. A human being with no daemon was like someone without a face, or with their ribs laid open and their heart torn out: something unnatural and uncanny that belonged to the world of night-ghasts, not the waking world of sense.
Phillip Pullman, Northern Lights
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Perfection was an absolute concept.
When he looked at people on the street, any person at random, he could see the potential for perfection laced upon their very skin. Their bodies, made of a complex tapestry of bones and muscle and matter, shackled to the minds that kept them bound to their imperfect conceptualities of the world.
He despised how ordinary they were. How ordinary they remained, even when he offered them excellence.
He had wanted to be the first. As soon as he had discovered how to become perfect, how to free himself from the beasts, he had desired it with a passion that left him breathless. But he could not. For the glory of others, he suffered in his defective form. Unlike them, he did it out of love.
Because although he despised them, he also loved them, and wasn't it the way of a God to suffer for his people? The people whose glory he alone held the key to unlocking, their salvation in his palm.
One by one, he delivered unto them the gift of the perfection they deserved. And they fought him at first, because it was their way to distrust those that offered them freedom. Was it not Jesus himself who said, 'Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe'?
They would see. He suffered for them, and one day they would know this.
Striding up the hall to the room where the woman cowered in her imperfection, he shivered with the anticipation of her deliverance. Her and the filthy beast that kept her tethered; the earthly creature that filled her perfect body with animalistic thoughts and desires and made her unfit for his regard.
His sin followed behind him with loping strides, the beat of its paws like a drumbeat of his own failings.
And a reminder of the importance of this one woman.
For he must remain upon earth with the beasts, but he would send her to her rapture in his stead, because their sins were one and the same and through her, he would find his release.
He passed rooms with unlocked doors; the inhabitants lost in the ecstasy of their release. He passed rooms with the doors tightly sealed, the screams of the depravities within an audible promise of his importance here in this world.
He found the last door. Unlocking it with a hand that shook, it was the barest sign of his fear and the great importance of this final liberation. She didn't react when he entered the tiny space, the bare walls and floors cast in an even plainer light by her beauty.
She hadn't been screaming. She was stronger than that, he had known that as soon as he'd first touched her. She had simply been waiting for him. Some small part of her had desired this, desired becoming his vessel. Even as the binds cut into her pale flesh, her arms and legs binding her into genuflection, she didn't struggle.
He looked up at the delicate framework of the machine above her, the blade that blurred the air around it with its keenness. The blade that would fall and grant her ascension. Savouring the moment, he almost didn't want to do it. Not yet. He wanted to treasure this moment.
But the rituals must be followed.
"Your name and the term you refer to your animal as," he stated coldly. Her blue eyes stared back, fierce and wild, framed by white-blonde hair.
She would be glorious when saved.
"Answer me," he repeated when she didn't answer. The beast reared up protectively from within the cage it was trapped in, seeking to stop him from removing it from her soul like a surgeon would a cancerous growth. It wouldn't help. No matter how much they fought, none escaped. He sliced the foulness from them and cleansed the remains in fire, leaving them clean.
Black and gold; ash and Dust. He would bathe her in the remnants of her daemon to celebrate her rebirth.
"Go to hell," she spat. The creature, a copy of his own, bared its teeth and arched its back at him, long ears folded back and eyes grim.
Very well. He hated to do this.
The gun was heavy and cold in his hand, a reminder of the power he dealt. Blue eyes tracked it as he aimed it at the animal in the thinly meshed cage. He wouldn't hesitate to shoot it, even if it meant the loss of her.
She was perfection, but he would find another. He was eternally patient.
"Answer me," he said for the final time.
She paled as the gun tracked the small form. "Jennifer," she said finally. Now, only now, did she begin to struggle. Kicking wildly at the framework of its confines, the animal seemed to also realize how close they both were to its end. "Special Agent Jennifer Jareau with the FBI. You don't have to do this. We can help you, if you let us."
He smiled warmly, because this was the beginning of something beautiful, even if she couldn't see it yet. "You're already helping me, Jennifer. You have no idea how important you are. Your beast, speak its name."
The only sound was the faintest cry from the hall and her own ragged breathing. Then she finally answered, and her fate was sealed. The fate of her, and the fate of the devil in the shape of a hare that weakened her.
"Aureilo."
As he dropped the blade, he could hear the sound of it slicing the air, impossibly sharp.
They both screamed.