Do not own.
Summary: Luce has a conversation with a Luce of a different kind. [If you are uber-Christian and take offence to anything having to do with the Devil, don't read.]
Fire-Hewn
It was one of those nights.
A long, sleepless, horrible night.
So here she was, once again moving across the sand quietly as a wraith. It was cold; cold as death, or ice. Maybe not as cold as the mood Luce was in, though.
It was empty here, so empty. Thanksgiving was coming up, and what did she have to be thankful for?
She was practically estranged from her family with a new friend already dead and buried, a two thousand year old boyfriend missing-in-action, and probably a hefty bounty on her head for whatever reason she couldn't seem to figure out.
And what the hell for? For a guy. Not to mention, one that couldn't seem to stick around longer than maybe ten minutes. A guy that set her on fire, literally.
Luce felt overwhelmed. She wanted to do more than bleach her hair blonde. She wanted her statement to be louder than that. Maybe she would strap a cardboard sign to her chest that read, 'Please help, falling apart inside'. Then Daniel might extract his head from his butt long enough to see that yes, she really was.
She settled into a spot close to the water. The moonlight was shining and silver as mercury, its soft tendrils soaking up every bit of warmth left over from the newly departed sun.
Maybe she would pull a Bella Swan and try to drown herself. It would be a death so opposite of all the other ones she'd had. It would be freezing, agonizingly slow, peaceful. It would be lonely, it would be frightening. It would leave many people grieving, and Luce didn't want to cause any more grief for anybody. Besides, she was way too good at treading that water.
"Rough day?" asked a quiet voice from only a few feet away.
Luce could have jumped clean out of her skin. She turned toward the voice, and there most certainly was someone behind her.
She didn't know how on Earth she could have missed the guy. Sitting cross-legged to her right was a man that couldn't have been more than a few years older than her. He immediately struck her as Nephilim. His dark hair was a tumbleweed of tangles, and his eyes were golden as a sunset.
Luce knew there were supposedly a lot of people out to get her, but this kid didn't give off a threatening aura at all. She suddenly felt glad of the company. He was probably just a student with the same annoying sleeping problems and rebellious habits as her.
"Um, yeah," she told him, feeling a bit like she should at least have the decency to be reserved and wary.
If he were a bad guy, he would have just killed her right then and there, right?
"Mm," was his mumbled reply.
Okay, Luce thought, maybe not.
After a moment of awkward silence she said, "Have you been here the whole time? I didn't see y—"
"I have been here for a long time," he told her. To her, his answer felt heavy with an unsaid meaning.
She was silent, then tried again, "Are you having a rough night, too?"
He laughed a saccharine laugh that made warmth bloom in Luce's chest. "Rough night, rough century, what's the difference?"
Luce backpedalled. "So you are Nephilim, then?"
He finally turned his gaze from the ocean to her. A small smile turned his mouth up. "Nephilim? No."
Luce inched back a bit unconsciously. "What did you say your name was?"
"I didn't," he answered coldly.
Luce got up from the sand and brushed herself off quickly. Now she did feel a little threatened. "My friend, you know—we're just doing this thing, and I'm late." She faked looking at a non-existent watch.
"You don't know what time it is, and you don't have a watch on. I know you don't, Luce."
She gaped at him, tensed and ready to bolt. People that mysteriously knew her name were usually out to obliterate her.
"How do you know my name?"
He smirked. "We share a name," he said. "Well, almost."
"Your name is Luce?" she asked dumbly.
The other Luce rolled his eyes at her. "His perfect creations were always so unbearably slow. So easy to deceive."
His perfect creations?
"Luce as in Lucifer?" hissed Luce.
"And two and two does equal four after all," he commented wryly.
She took what felt like a hundred steps back. That couldn't have been enough. "Lucifer as in the Devil as in Satan as in the Father of Lies? What do you want? Am I going to Hell?"
Lucifer scoffed. "I'm not the one that desires your never ending torment so badly."
"Then why are you here?" Luce was having trouble controlling the volume of her voice. She was wishing that Daniel would magically appear right about now.
"I like to talk," was his simple explanation.
"You like to talk," she repeated.
This was the Devil in front of her, the Devil talking to her in a civilized manner, saying that he was speaking with her just because he felt like it.
"You're lying," she accused.
"I may be the Father of Lies, but not everything I say is a lie."
"And, so, what did you come to talk about? I mean, forgive me, but I don't want to end up eating an acorn and making California fall off the face of the Earth or whatever."
Lucifer full-on belly laughed. "You know that I have bigger plans than that. Unlike some of us, I prefer to focus on things other than petty, two thousand year old grudges."
She had her own opinion on that, but preferred to keep it to herself. This was Satan in the flesh she was talking to. He probably already knew her thoughts anyways.
"Oh, darling," he said, "you are the one they all speak of. And here you sit, contemplating drowning yourself."
Luce felt her face flush with anger and embarrassment. Of course he would know that that's what she had been thinking. And he would probably have even ushered her soul if she had been stupid enough to actually do it.
"I—"
"You want to deny it so badly, but I know your heart just as well as He does."
That silenced her.
"Did you know that at this exact moment, there are approximately fifteen thousand, four hundred and forty nine young women wishing to be right there in your size seven brown knitted boots?"
She thought of all the death and destruction and sorrow that seemed to follow her wherever she went, through every life she was in. "Why?"
She hadn't blinked, yet Lucifer was suddenly by her side. She shuffled backwards in the sand, tripping over driftwood, and he was suddenly behind her helping her regain her lost balance.
She shuddered at his unwanted touch, not because it was cold—because it wasn't, it was searingly hot—but because of the lost, betrayed feeling it inspired within her. The feeling bloomed toward wrath and then arrogance that she had something so many others wanted, then siphoned away to nothingness.
"No one has ever had, nor will they ever have, what you have, Lucinda. An angel, a pure being with a direct line to God's desires, fell for you. You were chosen over the Highest Being. Not many can boast that. Not even I."
"But," she reasoned, "Eve chose to obey you instead of…Him."
"Eve was as empty-headed as a satchel of rocks. You can't call it 'deceiving' if you simply point out something and the person immediately starts chewing on it. For a while, I thought about writing a one thousand page book detailing my half of the story. But I quite like being the most feared being on Earth."
"A third of the angels, then?"
"Cowards. The truth is, darling, that our God is a jealous God, and He'll burn you up till there's no soul left to burn. The Bible preaches that He's everything that is good, He's all love, all forgiveness. But He hates that his fire-hewn boy obeys his clay toy better, and He'll never forgive you for making Daniel love you so ardently."
Stiff silence filled the glacial air between the two as she processed what he was telling her.
He reached up and ran a thumb along her cold cheek, offering up a smile. "But don't let me persuade you. When you choose, you should just choose good."
Lucifer turned and walked a few feet down the cold, damp beach. He called over his shoulder, "Daniel loves you. Never fear, child."
Luce stared after him as he walked down the beach, the cold darkness greedily swallowing him up. She turned to walk back to her dorm, and then—
"Who were you talking to?"
She gasped. Daniel's worried face was a few inches from hers, his warm hands finding her upper arms.
She glanced around behind her, but there was no sign of Lucifer ever having been there, not even footprints left in the sand.
"No one," she told him. "Just myself."
The books have heavy religious undertones, yet neither God nor the Devil have been mentioned in either one yet (I don't think). So, technically, the existence of angels equals the existence of God equals the existence of the Devil. I've been on a religious-fact binge and I kind of agreed with Steven when he called God a tyrant. But these are just personal opinions. Please don't slander them, as I respect all of yours. So review and tell me what you think!
Thanks to all those who read, reviewed and favorite my other story, Desire.