I Love Luci Ch. 20

Chapter 20: Fractured Fairytale

"I wouldn't, if I were you." Lucifer didn't bother to look away from the black scrying mirror as he listened to the approaching steps behind him. "Whatever it is that you are thinking, Lucifer, do not do it." He closed this eyes for a minute, shutting out the images of Gwendolyn kneeling before Eros, and willed his form back to its baseline shape -- after being shaped and changed and twisted by the perceptions of humanity over the millennia it was almost impossible to say what his true shape was any longer. But he also couldn't bring myself to become the Lucifer that he'd been these past many months. Knowing that she had controlled him so effortlessly left a hollow place in him, and he felt an overwhelming desire to flee... or shatter this creature that had somehow gotten such a deep hold on him.

"I do not recall asking for your advice on the matter, Persephone." He growled softly. "What are you doing in my realm, Goddess of Spring?"

"And Maiden of Death," she added, her lips curling a bit. "I inherited more than my husband's name when we wed. And I am here because I know what it's like to be a woman who is desired by a being many fear." The pretty goddess raised sooty lashes revealing eyes of the purest shade of green, which contrasted in a lovely manner with her sun kissed skin and strawberry blond locks, which were held back from her appealing features with a delicate chignon. She was dressed in a soft green summer dress that left her arms bare and showed her voluptuous and ample curves through gauzy layers of fabric. She wore a ruby pomegranate pendant at the hollow in her delicate, creamy throat.

"This is hardly the same thing," Lucifer growled softly. "You have no idea--"

"She makes you feel weak. Constantly. And yet, also like the most omnipotent creature in the universe," Persephone said, her gaze daring him to challenge her. "And it scares the shit out of you that you love her enough to break the world to have her."

He considered lying, as if doing so could repair whatever damage Gwen's influence had done to his psyche. But the thought left a bitter taste in his mouth. He turned his back on her instead and paced back to one of the elegant wing-backed chairs placed before a cold, empty fireplace and gestured to the Queen of the Underworld to also have a seat in an identical black and red tapestry chair opposite him.

"You have an odd sense of loyalty," Lucifer observed in a low tone. "It was your husband who couldn't leave well enough alone."

"Hades can be impulsive," she conceded. "All three Olympian brothers are a bit lax in the self control department." She primly sat and her expression was full of both compassion and a certain feminine strength he had always admired from the beautiful Celestial. "Regardless of his intent, word of this girl -- these women, because it certainly isn't fair to pretend that there are not two residing inside that shell -- has spread. And people are afraid. It's hard enough when a mass of humans are terrified... make it a mass of Celestials instead and the damage fear can do is infinite and often irreversible." She met his eyes directly, honestly. "This incarnation and I have history... not that I think she has realized my watchful eye on her since before she came of age. She still thinks I'm the product of an over active teenage imagination... but I always talked to Eros of her. I think that is why he trusted that no harm would come to her had I any say in the matter." Her eyes glinted red like rubies. "And I always have a say."

Lucifer regarded her. "The Greeks have no say here, Queen of the Underworld. You are here at my sufferance."

She leveled that ruby-tinted gaze upon him balefully. "Nor did you in The Underworld, yet I spoke on your behalf, Angel. Take care whom you attempt to leverage political power over, Lightbringer. Icarus can tell you what happens then you let those wings get too close to the sun."

He thought about arguing. But, in the end, this was not the hill he wanted to die on and merely gave a small nod as one duelist to another; acknowledging a clean, fair shot. It didn't mean his guard came down, but he was intent to remain focused on this conversation despite the loin-stirring mental images he still had flittering around his brain of all the ways he would punish Gwendolyn for making him feel powerless. Ironically, despite Evangeline being the more dominant of the two, who often sought to take over control sexually, Lucifer felt on steady footing with her. They just understood one another. But Gwen.... Gwen was something that spoke to some cross-wired section of his brain that longed to own and possess yet made him feel so fucking vulnerable when she levered those limpid blue-green eyes at him.

"We both care about her," Persephone said reasonably, the gem tone of her eyes shifting from ruby to emerald once more. "You wouldn't be so angry right now if you didn't give a damn."

Lucifer opened his mouth to argue... but the words died on his tongue. Finally, he all but collapsed back into the chair, all haughtiness drained out of his aristocratic features. "What do I do?" He raised genuinely grief filled eyes to the petite goddess opposite him.

"You let her go."

It was said gently, but the surge of emotion that overtook him caught Lucifer so off guard that he surged to his feet before he had a moment to decide to do so. "No."

Persephone's eyes were full of pity. "Then you come to grips with this fact: she will never be yours. Not completely. You *are* aware that she is married. Has a child? That child speaks to me. Asks where her mother disappears to. You are lucky as hell her husband hasn't had words with his own pantheon and warded their home against you. If she were married to a Muggle, you'd probably have no problem."

Her words caused Lucifer to visibly pause a slow, amused smile crossed his lips. "Muggle?"

Persephone's cheeks flared deep petal pink as she blushed with a rueful grin. "Thoth gave me all the Harry Potter books to read for Yule. It's also what Loki calls all of your monotheists." She blinked and frowned up at him. "Sit down. I know you have this whole bad-boy 'I do what I want, what feels good' vibe, but you need to really look outside yourself for *once*, Lightbringer. Or you can play this game out and lose her because she *will* choose her family. Both of them will. So you can have all the talks with Michael you want, you are going to end up losing this."

"She loves me." It was meant to sound confident, but it sounded more like a question, a sigh, and a wish all at once.

"And she loves her husband. Her child. Herne. Eros. Not one of you does she love in the same way as another. I am sure Eros or Aphrodite can explain it better than I... I've always been a one-God sort of girl, when it came to my bedroom." She smiled softly. "I saw Salome and Asmodeus on my way in. Does *she* know about them?"

"And we're done here," Lucifer said quickly, but he wasn't certain why. That fear that Gwen would never understand him rose once more.

Persephone sighed and stood. "You give her no credit at all, you know. How can you ask for all of her when she only knows half of *you*?"

"We have had more pressing matters... like a kidnapping." His words were sharp as blades, as he remained facing her, looking down at her heart shaped face, which went glacial in expression while in contrast her eyes flared with heat and fire. But after a moment, she closed her eyes and took a breath.

"Tell her, Luce. Tell her everything. And let her decide to stay or go. But you must simply accept one fact: she'll never be yours exclusively. That is the one thing no Celestial outside your own family will accept. Her heart is spoken for."

Lucifer sat back down in the abandoned chair behind him and couldn't help the sardonic smile that warped his lips, lacking even a hint of humor. "I don't want her heart. I want her soul."

*******************************

He watched her sleep, wrapped up in *his* arms. Sean's... Adam's. *She looks so much more peaceful there than I have ever seen her...* He hated that he had the thought. Why did he care if she was his? She always had been, even before she'd been born in this life. Nothing had changed. Wasn't some part better than no part? But was any part too damn dangerous? She made him... feel.

She shifted in her sleep, his name a soft breath as her expression shifted slightly to one of distress despite that she was clearly dreaming. Slipping into her thoughts was instinctual. Her very discomfort caused him to react before he had even a conscious awareness of what he was doing.

He stopped breathing. In her mind, she was living out the dark fantasy he had illustrated so clearly with his words, pulling on the twisted, kinky relationship he had with Salome for inspiration. He'd spoken with genuine heat, waiting for her to run screaming. But those words had clearly affected her, slithering into her brain like the creature he was so closely associated with. It almost viscerally tore him in twain; he was horrified at the tears rolling down her face, her obvious fear and panic, her feelings of claustrophobia eclipsing all coherent thought... and yet, her body betrayed her, making her feel the pleasure she was being forced to endure. And that helpless look on her face as her body dripped it's secret, unspoken desires made him instantly hard.

But... not like this.

He pressed past her natural psychic barriers and pulled her bodily (such as her astral body was, at any rate) from the dream she was in and into a safe realm between awake and asleep, shifting the room, scene and environment around them with that suddenness only found in a dream. He wrapped her spirit in his own lambert, overwhelming aura, protecting her from the images her subconscious was subjecting her to. Morpheus himself couldn't reach her here, so potent was the need to shield her.

She shook her head as if to clear it, shaking, regarding her limbs as if she wasn't certain they belonged to her. Her watery blue-green gaze met his and he merely bowed his head to hers and closed his own eyes; he couldn't stand her gaze knowing what his words had done. He couldn't even find the charred remains of his fury at how she controlled him so. All he cared about was that she was safe.... That they were safe. But something compelled him to want to shield and protect Gwen, most of all. She saw him as some white knight, and it seemed no matter how many ways he showed her he was never going to be that, she still trusted him to rescue her. It didn't make her weak... that she commanded his protective nature so thoroughly spoke of a different sort of strength. Something that rewrote the very fiber of his natural instincts.

Her vulnerable expression nearly brought him to his knees as he whispered to her over and again: "I am sorry. I am so sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," she managed though she was still shaking in his arms.

"For what?" He asked, genuinely confused.

"If I loved you less, I could just let you go and stop dragging you through all of these hoops the Celestials are forcing you to endure. I know what they really asked of you; Eros and Loki told me."

He opened his eyes and met hers, unflinching. "It wasn't all an act, Gwendolyn; that was me. Is still me; I still want to rip you away from all you know and love. I still want to do the most depraved things to you."

"But you haven't." It was said in an ambiguous tone that seemed to be both a statement and a question.

"You force me to remember honor. Your belief in me.... Changes me. And it terrifies me. I want to break you and I want to fall at your knees and remind you that I am not worthy of you... will never be." He pet her hair back from her face, and his fingertips lingered over her cheek and the fullness of her lower lip.

"The things you show me..." she softly confessed. "...the things you make me want... they terrify me, and sometimes makes me feel appalled and horrified that I could find anything remotely erotic in some of the horrors you spoke of." Her cheeks flamed deep red. "I'm afraid of losing myself to you." She raised her eyes, full of anguish, sharply etched within the verdant center and azure edges. Her fingertips mirrored his, soft and tentative across his face and lips.

"Choose me," he almost begged of her. Instead he said: "They can all have your heart. I don't begrudge any of them; I see you as you are, not how I would fashion you." A wry smile twisted his lips. "Consider it a flaw of my upbringing. I was raised to believe wives were for corrupting when they belonged to other men. But I always imagined my wife would be mine alone. It's... different when it's you. I don't want anyone but me to touch you. But...."

"But you know that would end us," she finished, finally putting words to what he knew in his heart; what everyone who knew her had been trying to get him to see and understand. "I won't give up my life... or my service to my own Gods."

"I know."

"It would end something in me if I lost you," she said softly. "But I would also die a little at a time if you didn't let me be myself. Loving someone else doesn't lessen my love for you... often, the variance of forms just makes me appreciate our unique relationship all the more, because it is singular to just ours. No one will make me feel as you do... just as none will make me feel as Sean, Herne or Eros does, because... they are them and there is no substitute. There can never be a substitute for you... I will never feel this fierce, passionate, uncontrollable lust for another. Only your touch sparks me with such a dark, delicious need. I am terrified of you... but my gods, do I love it." She paused, then amended: "I love you."

He couldn't help it. He dragged her up against his firm body and swept her off her feet as he kissed her passionately, his tongue coaxing hers to play. One hand tangled in her loose sunset colored mane, the other gripping her hips to his as he pulled her thigh up so that she was pressed intimately against him. She was still nude, as she had been in her nightmare, but it was a fact both scarcely noticed yet undeniably felt.

"I want you to be mine," he growled softly, his lips against her, his eyes closed in near pain.

"I am," she responded, it was no lie; he could sense the sharp coolness of honesty like a soft breeze over her overheated thoughts. "I am just not exclusive yours. But...you own a part of me I didn't know I possessed until the first moment you kissed me."

He almost stopped breathing. "Say it again."

Her gentle touch brought his eyes open as she laid an almost chaste kiss upon his lips and then leaned forward and on tip-toe to whisper huskily in his ear: "I'm yours." And, as if she knew how it would enflame him, she said, slowly, seductively and succinctly: "You. Own. Me."

It was an almost animalistic, feral sound that poured out from his throat as he unthinkingly manifested a large four poster bed in the blank space of the astral plane where he held her. Her body was still sound asleep in her husband's arms, now still and breathing deeply; breath catching, even in the waking world as he tossed her bodily upon the purely ether-created image of a king sized bed deep within her mind. He had a moment of territorial pride that even in another man's arms, she whispered his name and dreamed of him. Dreamed of how he laid her under his body and explored every warm, trembling, wet inch of her with his lips and tongue, while she writhed under him, moaning his name over and over. Moaned as she repeated those three words until they burned inside him. Became his truth. "You own me. I belong with you."

But this time, he didn't fight it. He embraced the alterations she was making within him, and once he dropped that last wall, he felt himself become one with her in a most unexpected fashion -- it was like she sank into him and swam within the very ichor in his angelic blood. She was as deep in his mind and he was hers. And for the first time ever, when he refocused his vision he saw the shadow of Evangeline in the corner, as if she had been there the whole time, observing. Also for the first time, Lucifer observed there were small differences in how she appeared versus Gwen. In her own mind, she had darker red hair; like a dark Cabernet wine. Her makeup was also darker, her eyeliner more pronounced. Her mental projection of herself was slightly more assertive, strong and commanding, with a more erect posture, and confidence that her twin lacked. Her body was wrapped in a simple black long sleeved, form fitting dress that hit her mid thigh and showed her ample cleavage. It appeared to be made of leather. Boots that encased her lovely calves, looking like suede Victorian ankle boots grave her usual 5'2" frame at least another four inches.

Gwen, by comparison was all soft pastels and jewel tones, even though she wore not a stitch, her red tresses brilliant ruby and her eyes more emerald than their usual mix of blue and green. Her skin was still pink and flushed, having not changed since her dream and and suddenness of his rescue of her, more heated and aroused after being under him. Her lips were moist and soft, flushed a strawberry pink from his kisses. She was still in his arms, her expression one of startled awe and delicate confusion as she saw what he did, following his gaze across their improvised bedroom in this place of lucid dreams and astral bodies.

"Please say you didn't call me in for a twisted threesome," Ev commented, her burgundy-hued lips twisting sardonically.

Gwen's eyes widened as she beheld her body-mate. "Oh, this is just creepy." She blinked a few times. "I am only used to seeing you in the mirror."

"Yeah, I know. We have met in dreams before," she said, thinking about it. "But you usually don't remember; seemed better to let you forget if it kept us sane." She gave a shrug as if to illustrate it didn't really bother her. "But usually it's just us..." Evangeline looked to Lucifer, her darker eyebrow arched in inquiry. "What'd'ya do, Luci?" The drawl was full of polite accusation.

"I stopped fighting." He said it simply, uncertain himself what had caused this. "I just..." he looked at Gwen. "I just didn't want to keep hurting you."

"Oh, you mean you stopped being stupid. Finally." Ev flicked a finger toward them and as effortlessly as Lucifer himself had manifested a bed, she created a black velvet chaise lounge facing the bed upon which he and Gwen were still reclined, bodies wrapped around one another. "Don't let me interrupt. I can manifest some popcorn, if it helps." Evangeline sank down on the chaise, in a reclined manner that would have impressed even Bast at her sheer regality as she observed the devil and his lover; the woman whose body she shared.

"Aren't you the least bit bothered?" Gwen asked, shifting so she wasn't in quite so compromising a position under Lucifer.

"No, why should I be? Do I need to repeat your own words back to you? What you two have is singular to you... I don't feel jealousy save when I am being ignored because you're acting as the pilot of our body and mind and I get locked out. I want to live and feel, too."

Gwen nodded. "I understand."

"Besides," Evangeline added. "I have always known Luci was drawn to us both. In very different ways. He knows better than to play some games with me -- I won't respond the same as you." She leveled those stormy grey-blue eyes upon him and he could swear he saw chips of true silver in there. He could feel her power here; Gwen stumbled into dreams but remained fairly powerless in the astral; Evangeline utterly controlled herself. She was a force here. "You wouldn't get a willing victim in me, and you know it. And I would fight some of your desires with a fire that would incinerate you if you ever forced me. But if you asked first..." her eyes darkened with a sultry desire. "You might be shocked what I would allow. I know I am shameless... and I am not afraid of your darkness. I loved every moment of our time together and more than a few of your most debacherous threats."