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tossawary · 6 months ago

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So, in SVSSS, Shen Yuan makes a few really interesting assumptions when he sits down to speak properly to Airplane Bro for the first time. The first assumption is that Shang Qinghua is a transmigrator. Two of the other assumptions he makes, connected to this first one, arguably contradict each other slightly in fascinating ways. (I will put the full relevant scene fragment / quotation from these chapters under the cut at the end.)

Shen Yuan's assumption that Shang Qinghua is a transmigrator appears to be built first and foremost on the fact that he heard SQH say, "WTF!" during the conference. Shen Yuan also reveals: "At the time, Shen Qingqiu hadn’t heard him particularly clearly, so he hadn’t paid it any mind. But afterward, the more he’d thought about it, the more suspicious he’d grown." (Ch5)

So, Shen Yuan belatedly decides that he hadn't misheard this one accidental slip during a chaotic attack that damaged him both physically and emotionally. He decides that he definitely heard that correctly! He's confident enough that he invites Shang Qinghua over to his house and then immediately and calmly accuses his fellow peak lord of treason.

Shen Yuan very casually says: "How was it inadequate? You clearly overexerted yourself. You even found demonic creatures like the ghost-head spiders, Nu Yuan Chan, and bone eagles—none of which ever enter the Human Realm of their own volition. How could Shixiong rebuke you for inadequacy?" (Ch4)

Shang Qinghua sputters, jumps to his feet, turns red, blusters with offense, sneers, brushes Shen Yuan's hand away.

"“Why wouldn’t I? I have a clear conscience. Why would I fear a false accusation?” With a sneer, Shang Qinghua brushed away his hand.

“Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky?” asked Shen Qingqiu." (Ch4)

When Shen Yuan says Airplane Bro's ID, Shang Qinghua pauses and says, “You… How do you know my ID?” (Ch4) And the scene immediately switches from a confrontation between two peak lords regarding treason to a transmigration reveal.

But hey, let's go back to that first version of the scene! What if Shang Qinghua hadn't been a transmigrator? Shen Yuan must have mentally reviewed what happened at the conference and all of their previous encounters, but he still could have been wrong in this assumption. He might have misheard and misinterpreted.

In which case, throwing out Airplane's ID wouldn't have stopped the scene and Shen Yuan would now have to deal with a belligerent traitor who 1) isn't admitting to what he did and/or 2) may turn violent in self-defense. Shen Yuan even admits: "He’d only wanted to study Shang Qinghua’s reaction to this name to determine if he had also read Proud Immortal Demon Way—but given his reaction…he wasn’t just a reader, was he?!" (Ch4)

Shen Yuan has no proof of Shang Qinghua's crimes and everyone thinks he's out of his mind with grief, probably searching for someone to blame, though Yue Qingyuan might indulgently open an investigation anyway and might actually end up finding something. If this had been Original Shang Qinghua, this confrontation could have broken out into a fight.

It was reckless. But I'm not reading it as "recklessly stupid" so much as "recklessly aggressive".

If Shen Yuan had been focused purely on revealing a fellow transmigrator, he could have opened this conversation with something like, "Have you ever heard of the writer 'Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky'?" And whatever answer he received then would have told him if he was dealing with a fellow transmigrator, who could be disarmed by this revelation, or if he was dealing with Original Shang Qinghua, who would just be mildly confused. Once he had that information in hand, Shen Yuan could go from there.

But no, Shen Yuan opens with Shang Qinghua's crimes first. Which makes me suspect that he is angry with the man for causing the disaster at the Immortal Alliance Conference. If Shang Qinghua hadn't let in the demons, Shen Yuan wouldn't have been forced to push Luo Binghe into the Endless Abyss. I personally don't think that Shen Yuan would have minded here if this confrontation had turned violent. He's perfectly capable of dealing out violence. He's a pretty good fighter, even with the Without A Cure issue, and with his confidence here... I'm going to assume that Shen Yuan thinks he could take Shang Qinghua in a fight. He may be right.

He's probably also confident that Yue Qingyuan would side with him if he had to kill a fellow peak lord (a traitor) in self-defense. I agree with this assessment. I think Shen Qingqiu's reputation would take a hard hit, as would Cang Qiong, but Shang Qinghua is a traitor here. If they could find any proof whatsoever, then the other peak lords would probably begrudgingly go along with this story.

To be clear, I don't think that Shen Yuan is entering into this conversation thinking about killing Shang Qinghua. I think he would attempt capture first. But he IS entering into this conversation resolved to either 1) unmask Shang Qinghua as a transmigrator or 2) unmask Shang Qinghua as a traitor and accomplice to murder. He accuses the man before anything else! This is going to end in a transmigrator reveal or in eventual violence.

If Shen Yuan is wrong, he cannot take this accusation back. He is either finding a "friend from his hometown" or he is making a very serious enemy here. If Original Shang Qinghua manages to pretend he's innocent and shake off these accusations, clearing any trial Cang Qiong holds for him, then he's presumably going to be secretly gunning for Shen Qingqiu from then on.

Shen Yuan is betting a LOT on not having misheard a phrase that he admits he didn't hear very well! He admitted that!

I do think Shen Yuan starts this confrontation off being angry - angry at Shang Qinghua, angry at himself, angry at the situation - underneath his calm. I think he's ready for a fight if necessary. I kind of think he might want one on some level. I think he's feeling a little reckless in his fresh grief and loneliness.

Because the other option is that Shen Yuan entered this conversation unprepared for the possibility of being wrong about there being another transmigrator. And also unprepared for getting a really bad reaction from Original Shang Qinghua. And I'd really like to think that Shen Yuan is smarter than that. Shen Yuan can be pretty clever. It is totally possible that he is just not thinking beyond his assumption here, though. Shen Yuan can also get caught up in his own ideas and emotions sometimes.

I think this would make a fun Alternate Canon / Canon Divergence AU: "Shen Yuan is completely wrong about Shang Qinghua being a transmigrator and has just revealed to Original Shang Qinghua that he knows what the man did. Uh oh."

ANYWAY! That's just the first assumption that Shen Yuan makes: Shang Qinghua is another transmigrator. Connected to this first assumption are a couple other assumptions about this other transmigrator that are both also really interesting.

The second assumption is this: "As the one who’d masterminded the event (or the logistics of it), Shang Qinghua was subject to the irresistible pressure of the plot[.]" (Ch5) Shen Yuan assumes that the plot forced Airplane Bro to smuggle these beasts into the Immortal Alliance Conference, much like he himself was forced to push Luo Binghe into the Endless Abyss.

I would have to go check the Airplane extras to be sure, but we don't know that this is true. I do remember from the Airplane extras that the System would have been cool with Airplane Bro killing Mobei-Jun, who is arguably an incredibly important character to many PIDW plotlines. I've often interpreted this as Airplane Bro having far more freedom to make his own decisions. We the audience later confirm that the System forced Airplane Bro to stay with Cang Qiong Mountain Sect and to become the head disciple of An Ding Peak. We don't know for sure that the System put pressure on Shang Qinghua to make the invasion of the Immortal Alliance Conference happen. It's implied when Shang Qinghua gets the return home feature from the System that he doesn't see it often.

Shen Yuan doesn't know these things. Shen Yuan is assuming here their transmigration experiences are very similar. Shen Yuan doesn't really directly ask.

Personally, I do think that the System was involved somehow, even if Airplane Bro's consequences for failure or disobedience weren't nearly so dreadful. With a second transmigrator and their desires in the mix, and the beginning of the real plot with Luo Binghe, it's possible that System put more restrictions on Airplane Bro and locked him onto this path (freeing him after the original outline with the romance deviation is complete). I personally headcanon that Airplane Bro could have wriggled out of the Immortal Alliance Conference without any serious punishment from the System, because I think it's funny if Shen Yuan's most hated event could have suddenly not happened if only Airplane Bro had decided not to do it, but I think that that Airplane Bro didn't try to buck the System because 1) he was generally okay with keeping the plot on track and 2) he was unwilling to challenge Mobei-Jun by resisting any orders on this front. He chose to save Mobei-Jun, now he has to live with that.

Shen Yuan doesn't seriously take Airplane Bro to task for all of the deaths and injuries at the Immortal Alliance Conference. I think a large part of this is that Shen Yuan not-unreasonably assumes Airplane Bro was forced into doing it by the System and Shen Yuan simply doesn't really interrogate Airplane Bro thoroughly to be sure. I think he unconsciously wants this assumption to be true in part because that means there's someone who really understands what he was forced to do to Luo Binghe, he's invested in the Endless Abyss being necessary, but also because now he isn't alone generally and has someone to help him fake his death. Shen Yuan is first and foremost out to save his own skin at this point in the story.

To be clear, I think it's very reasonable for Shen Yuan (and the audience) to assume that another transmigrator is also being strictly forced to follow the plot. He doesn't know Shang Qinghua is the author at first. He doesn't know just how different their transmigration experiences have been. The assumption is valid. It's just not actually certain.

The third assumption by Shen Yuan here is what really stood out to me during my reread. It's what made me start thinking more seriously about this confrontation and its setup. Shen Yuan thinks to himself: "As the one who’d masterminded the event (or the logistics of it), Shang Qinghua was subject to the irresistible pressure of the plot—yet he hadn’t released the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python that should have starred in numerous scenes. This was suspicious in itself, but if you considered the possibility that he had failed to do this intentionally in order to hinder the development of the plot—to sever the tragedy of Luo Binghe’s fall into the Endless Abyss at its roots—it made sense." (Ch5)

In the original PIDW, a Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python appeared at the Immortal Alliance Conference, and opened the Endless Abyss with its spatial-rift-creating scream. Mobei-Jun does it in SVSSS, appearing hundreds of chapters early. (I wrote a long meta piece on how I think Luo Binghe's seal works, and why it had to be something or someone with space-manipulation powers breaking it. It's under the "luo binghe demonic seal" tag.)

Shen Yuan noticed that the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python failed to appear and also decided that Shang Qinghua was genuinely surprised by Mobei-Jun's appearance instead. Shen Yuan assumes here that the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python's absence was an intentional act on the Shang Qinghua transmigrator's part in order to stop Luo Binghe's fall into the Endless Abyss. This is a WILD assumption!

It's possible that Shang Qinghua just failed to get one. It's possible that there was one somewhere else in Jue Di Gorge, but they simply didn't run into the creature.

It's also possible that Shen Yuan is right. Maybe Airplane Bro decided to quietly remove the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python from the conference, single-handedly preventing 1) Luo Binghe's demonic seal from being broken and 2) the Endless Abyss from being opened. Maybe he thought the System would overlook this until it was too late? But something about this interference made Mobei-Jun suspicious and he showed up to investigate instead.

Or Shang Qinghua organized Mobei-Jun's appearance and interference somehow, because MBJ breaks the demonic seal cleanly in SVSSS, whereas PIDW Binghe needed the Xin Mo sword to completely remove the seal only partially broken by the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python.

We really don't know what Shang Qinghua was doing. Or what Mobei-Jun was doing.

I think this assumption is fascinating, because Airplane Bro being able to omit the BMRP kind of contradicts the assumption that he was forced by the System to ruin the conference. Not completely, of course. Shen Yuan may be assuming that Shang Qinghua's System-given quest spoke of beasts generally, rather than the BMRP specifically, and Shang Qinghua was trying to work futilely around the System's wording in order to prevent Luo Binghe's fall. It's possible that the System did not tell Shang Qinghua directly to ensure the opening of the Endless Abyss. The System may have only demanded that he assist in the demonic invasion generally.

But these assumptions still bump up against each other in interesting ways, to me, even if they don't directly contradict each other. Shen Yuan thinks that pushing Luo Binghe into the Endless Abyss was demanded by the plot, but he also thinks Shang Qinghua's meddling with the BMRP could have stopped it somehow? Or that Shang Qinghua simply tried to stop it by removing a necesssary plot device and the System compensated with Mobei-Jun, because Luo Binghe's fall is an inevitable event? Shen Yuan thinks Shang Qinghua was forced to release beasts on the conference, causing a great deal of death and injury, but he also assumes that Shang Qinghua was able to pick the beasts on some level. Maybe he's assuming that Mobei-Jun picked the beasts and Shang Qinghua simply got rid of the BMRP somehow?

It makes way more sense that Mobei-Jun both collected the beasts and released them into the conference, using his spatial manipulation powers, and Shang Qinghua only helped with intelligence and keys to the security. Shen Yuan comments on how dangerous these creatures are. I really don't think that Shang Qinghua collected them personally or put them into Jue Di Gorge personally; I think that would have been pretty dangerous and that lots of people on An Ding Peak and beyond would have noticed during event planning and setup. And if Mobei-Jun did most of the work (and entered the conference properly himself in SVSSS, rather than just disappearing without being seen in PIDW, I assume), then I don't really see how Shang Qinghua could have done much of anything to stop a BMRP from getting in. Maybe he asked Mobei-Jun to avoid BMRPs, please, and that made Mobei-Jun suspicious?

My assumption here is honestly that Shen Yuan isn't thinking too hard about what Shang Qinghua is personally responsible for, because he just doesn't want to think about it. If this is Original Shang Qinghua, Shen Yuan can bring him to justice. If this is a fellow transmigrator, then Shen Yuan has an accomplice / friend. He's trying to move forward so he doesn't have to look back.

I don't think his assumption that Airplane Bro got rid of the BMRP on purpose is out of nowhere. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume another transmigrator, if there is one, might have been seeking to change the plot for the better somehow and the System didn't allow it. I just think this particular assumption is a little wild, because Shen Yuan doesn't really confirm it. (I haven't thoroughly reread the whole scene. I could be wrong about this.) Shen Yuan does not clearly confirm Shang Qinghua's intentions or motivations. Or Mobei-Jun's.

Shen Yuan and Airplane Bro go on to have a different transmigrator argument, distracted by the revelation that this is the author and not another reader, and Shen Yuan doesn't try to confirm his theories. He doesn't ask Shang Qinghua if his wild (if plausible) assumption is actually correct. Like Shen Yuan doesn't really want to know for certain whether or not they could have changed things.

But, anyway, wow, that assumption is an interesting and funny Canon Divergence AU plot! What if Airplane Bro quietly removed the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python from his traitorous invasion, and Mobei-Jun didn't show up instead, so Luo Binghe's seal simply didn't break and the Endless Abyss never opened? Would the System still demand that Shen Qingqiu push Luo Binghe into an Endless Abyss that isn't here? Would the System glitch? Would the System simply have to recalculate because it wasn't specific about what it needed Shang Qinghua to make happen here? Would the System just let Shen Yuan and Luo Binghe go back to Cang Qiong again?

RELEVANT QUOTATION (end of "Chapter 4: Conference" into the very beginning of "Chapter 5: Bai Lu"):

Shang Qinghua said nothing but sighed along with him. “Ah, Luo-shizhi was a heroic youth, such a pity. Those demons brought such disaster upon us; they are truly hateful. The whole world mourns with us. Shen-shixiong, my condolences.”

“If Shang-shidi truly felt it was a pity, this tragedy would not have occurred,” Shen Qingqiu said faintly.

At this, Shang Qinghua stiffened. After a moment, he seamlessly smoothed things over with a smile. “What does Shen-shixiong mean by that? Is he rebuking our An Ding Peak for inadequate administration? If so, Shidi should truly apologize.”

Shen Qingqiu refilled his teacup. “How was it inadequate? You clearly overexerted yourself. You even found demonic creatures like the ghost-head spiders, Nu Yuan Chan, and bone eagles—none of which ever enter the Human Realm of their own volition. How could Shixiong rebuke you for inadequacy?”

“Peak Lord Shen—to make such outrageous accusations!” Shang Qinghua shot to his feet, his face rapidly changing colors.

Shen Qingqiu put his hand on Shang Qinghua’s shoulder. “Why is Shang-shidi getting so excited?” he asked solemnly. “Let’s sit down and talk. Let me say something. Do you dare respond?”

“Why wouldn’t I? I have a clear conscience. Why would I fear a false accusation?” With a sneer, Shang Qinghua brushed away his hand.

“Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky?” asked Shen Qingqiu.

In that instant, it was like a bolt of lightning from the heavens had struck Shang Qinghua in the head, rendering him unable to speak.

After a long time, he managed to stammer out, “You… How do you know my ID?”

In that moment, it was like Shen Qingqiu had also been burnt to a crisp by the aforementioned bolt of lightning.

He’d only wanted to study Shang Qinghua’s reaction to this name to determine if he had also read Proud Immortal Demon Way—but given his reaction…he wasn’t just a reader, was he?!

After three long seconds, Shen Qingqiu jumped on him.

“It’s you?! How could I not know your ID after reading your entire fucking novel?! If you hadn’t let something slip when Mobei-Jun appeared, I really never would have known what hole you’d really crawled out of, ‘Great Master’!”

Volume 1, Chapter 4: Conference

The moment Shang Qinghua had seen Mobei-Jun suddenly appear, he had accidentally let out a “WTF!”

At the time, Shen Qingqiu hadn’t heard him particularly clearly, so he hadn’t paid it any mind. But afterward, the more he’d thought about it, the more suspicious he’d grown.

As the one who’d masterminded the event (or the logistics of it), Shang Qinghua was subject to the irresistible pressure of the plot—yet he hadn’t released the Black Moon Rhinoceros-Python that should have starred in numerous scenes. This was suspicious in itself, but if you considered the possibility that he had failed to do this intentionally in order to hinder the development of the plot—to sever the tragedy of Luo Binghe’s fall into the Endless Abyss at its roots—it made sense.

Volume 1, Chapter 5: Bai Lu

#tossawary svsss #tossawary rereads svsss #fic ideas #shen yuan #shang qinghua #spoilers #pidw shang qinghua #shen qingqiu #luo binghe demonic seal #black moon rhinoceros python #long post

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allpiesforourown · 24 days ago

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I love the idea of the Washer Woman being the sensible adult in Binghe's life in the Demon Prince Binghe Au. I can see Tianlang reading him romance novels as a kid while Su Xiyan chooses books on cultivation and how to crush ones enemies. Washer woman has lectured them both on child appropriate practices more than once, Tianglang more than Su Xiyan.

Imagine young Binghe getting cursed as a puppy one day and wandering off, tired, hungry, and injured only to be rescued Qing Jing Peak Disciple Shen Yuan who nurses him back to health . Washer woman ends up being the one to retrieve the prince since she's human and not considered to be a traitor like Su Xiyan.

Afterwards, Binghe can't stop gushing about his fateful meeting with the beautiful shimei he met (Shen Yuan was so pretty he thought he was girl).

Tianlang: That's my son, not even ten and he's already found his future wife! Not only that, but a cultivator to boot! But wait, the Cang Qiong Mountain Sect despise demons and would never permit one of their own to court a demon which their love would be forbidden! Ahh this just like the plot of Love Amongst Thorns where the heroine ends riding into battle on a dragon and then diving into a volcano to save her lover, the enemy general!

Xiyan: If she is a cultivator like you say, you'll have to become strong enough to defeat the peak lords Cang Qiong Mountain sect, for they will not let her go without a fight. Of course, it's a war they want, it's a war they'll get.

Unamed Washer Woman:....

Unamed Washer Woman: Or you can just thank her for taking care of your "dog" and get to know her as friends.

BONUS: I just picture Shen Yuan being the equivalent of a Disney Princess in this AU but being completely oblivious to it. Except instead of cute woodland creatures, various monsters and other creatures are drawn to him. He is also confused as to why so many people are surprised he's a guy

NDJDHB YEAH. she's the only sense of reason

Binghe: how do I tell someone I like him..

Tlj: beg him for money and become his sugar baby. That's how I got your mother

Su xiyan: show him your strength and he won't be able to resist you

Washerwoman: how about we try something like flowers first :)

Personally I was imagining shen yuan as some wandering cultivator. Binghe's hanging out in a forest when some demon planning to kidnap the prince shows up and is immediately beaten up by the handsome man who was passing through.

Binghe: PLEASE COME HOME AND MEET MY PARENTS

Shen yuan: aww if you insist..

Shen yuan is a bit nervous but overall glad the demon prince protagonist doesn't seem to hate him. Binghe is ecstatic the nice man agreed to have a meeting with his parents to discuss marriage ..

Shen yuan actually gets hired to be binghes tutor. Binghe needs to work on his human cultivation as well as his demonic cultivation, and while su xiyan would be happy to be her sons shizun, she's getting so damn annoyed with binghe bringing shen yuan up every two seconds

#demon prince binghe au #svsss #luo binghe #su xiyan #tianlang jun #tianxi #unnamed washerwoman #bingyuan #shen yuan

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thaleleah · 6 months ago

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𝓖𝓸𝓭𝓵𝓮𝓼𝓼 (𝓟𝓪𝓻𝓽 𝓞𝓷𝓮)

Pairing: Billy The Kid x Fem!Nun!Reader

Warnings: ***NON-CON***, Dub-Con, Dark!Billy, Virgin!Reader, Oral (female receiving), Fingering, P in V, Corruption Kink, Creampie, Possessive Behavior, Masturbation, Wet Dreams/Sex Dreams, Seduction, Emotional Manipulation, Religion and Religious Beliefs, Explicit talk of gunshot wounds, blood, and the bullet's removal (kinda? Idk if it's explicit explicit, but its a little more than just mentioned), Mention of physical abuse/child abuse (not from Billy), Childhood Trauma, Mention of alcoholism, Moral/Religious conflict within one's self, My bad Spanish, Nun breaking her vows, Probably too quick of a healing process to be fucking someone but I'm not a doctor so 🤷🏻‍♀️, Using the word "drawers" instead of "panties" which is kinda cringe to me but I wanted to be somewhat accurate

Word Count: 9.6K

A/N: Billy's passed out for most of this but I hope y'all like it anyway. Please know I'm posting this and then running away. Okay, byeeeeeeeeee

Summary: When Billy stumbles into your clinic, hurt and in desperate need of care and refuge, you don't hesitate to help him. Perhaps this is God's will. Perhaps He has brought him into your life to help heal the parts of him that the cruelness of the world has soiled and broken. You are a healer by trade, both of the physical body and of faith. If this is to be God's mission for you, then it shall be done. How could you have possibly known that the young man who begged for help that fateful night would turn out to be the devil himself?

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Translations:

Por Dios - Oh my God

Que Dios te bendiga - May God bless you

Qué sorpresa! - What a surprise!

Y él no quería que su mamá lo supiera. Así enterró la carne en el jardín - And he didn't want his mom to know. So he buried the meat in the garden

Pero el perro la desenterró y ella se descubrió de todos modos. Tuvo que lavar platos él solo por dos meses - But the dog dug it up and she found out anyway. He had to wash the dishes by himself for two months

Ese niño - That kid/child

Parece que era un buen amigo - Seems like he was a good friend

Sí, él era - Yes, he was

De nada - You're welcome

Gracias, Hermana - Thanks, Sister

They say the devil can take on many forms.

He is a demon figure - with the face of a goat, horns, hooves, and a blade pointed tail.

He is a great dragon - large and terrifying, destructive and formidable in the power he holds.

He is a roaring lion - hungry and fierce as he stalks God’s children, waiting for them to fall into his trap before he attacks them like prey.

But the devil was once God’s favorite angel, amazingly beautiful and wise. The angel of light, God’s morning star - a traitor now, a trickster . . . evil.

The Lord teaches love for all, compassion and understanding despite another’s upbringing or current situation. All humans are God’s children, all made in His perfect image, brothers and sisters in unity under His loving and eternal care. You are thankful to know this, grateful that you can feel His presence coursing through your veins despite the horror that you’ve come to face daily while working at the clinic. His gift to you is your endless drive to help those in need, sitting by the bedsides of the sick and dying, applying a cool rag to their sweaty foreheads, or spoon feeding them soup to give them strength when they are too weak to do it themselves.

It is a taxing life, and the sorrow you feel when you cannot nurse someone back to health is ever present in your heart, but the Lord is clear in your life’s mission and you will be forever thankful for the lessons you learn in this lifetime.

He has made you a healer, using you as a vessel for His healing touch for all you come across - regardless of wealth, status, religious affiliation, or criminal record.

Which is why when he stumbles into the clinic during the late hours of the night, face pale and hand pressing hard to his side where blood is streaming through his fingers despite the pressure, you don’t hesitate to help him.

You think you should have - should have let him bleed to death on the clinic floor. Would God have abandoned you if you had?

“Sister Maria!” You cry instead, running to the injured man and looping his arm around your shoulders to help him lean against you. “We need fresh towels and water! And sutures! Hurry!”

Sister Maria runs in the room, bedsheets still cradled in her arms from where she had been turning over a recently discharged patient’s room. She gasps at the scene, dropping the linens on the floor as she rushes to the main utility closet. You guide the man to a bed, helping him drop onto the thin mattress with a tortured groan. One of your hands splays over his, helping to maintain pressure on the wound until Sister Maria can bring in the needed supplies. Your other hand lays gently on his sweaty forehead, thumb caressing the straight line of his nose trying to soothe him.

His baby blue eyes stare up at you through their pained haze.

“P-please, help,”

The devil can take on many forms and carry many names.

And yet, despite all you’ve heard about who he is and what he’s done, you never once considered Billy the Kid to be one of them.

Misguided and uncared for - sure, but never evil.

He’s so young. You can’t even imagine what horrors he must have had to go through to lead him to the path that he’s on now.

Perhaps it’s fate that you’ve been brought together, an opportunity for you to spread the healing power of your Lord’s love and mend not only his body but his bruised heart as well. You’ve seen too many times where hardships have hardened the minds and spirits of others, caging them off from God as they struggle with their wavering faith.

“Don’t you worry,” You say. “The Lord is here with us. He will see you through.”

Whether he groans from your words or the pain, you’re not sure.

Sister Maria is quick to grab the supplies, dumping them on the side table. She dunks a clean cloth in the water, wringing out the excess, but pauses when she sees his face.

“Is that— ”

“Nevermind that!” You hiss, pulling the cloth from her hand.

You lift his shirt, exposing the injury and the dirt dusted skin framing it. It looks horrible, blood seeping from the laceration in a steady flow and a part of you is thankful that the sight of blood doesn’t make you immediately drop to the floor like your cousin, Paul. He gasps when you touch the cloth to the wound, blood immediately seeping into the white of the cloth and marring the pure color.

His fingers dig into the fabric of his trousers, gripping it tight as he clenches his teeth against the pain. Your free hand rubs lightly against his forehead, trying to soothe him as best you can while you clean the wound.

You think it must be God’s mercy that he passes out before you can pull the bullet out. The pain of the forceps digging into his body as you pulled out the thick ball of lead and the shock that would have come with it would have surely dragged him under had blood loss not gotten to him first. It’s better this way - he’s safer cradled in sleep’s loving hold rather than crying and jerking about as you try to save his life.

Sister Maria holds a small bowl out in front of you with one hand while the other delicately holds his wrist, feeling his pulse between her dainty fingers.

The bullet comes out easy, your forceps finding the lead and guiding it out of the wound’s entrance with ease. It clanks as you drop it into the tiny bowl, and you send up prayers of thanks for allowing such a quick and simple removal. The grace of your Lord has certainly just saved this man’s life.

With quick fingers, you stitch him up, practiced movements securing the wound shut before covering it with a generous dressing of cloth to keep it clean from any dirt and debris.

His sleep isn’t restful, the pinch in his brow and the way his cheeks twitch in the flickering candlelight of the small room make that clear. Your own brows pinch as you reach a hand out to trace the furrowed skin, smoothing it out with a gentle thumb. You don’t like seeing people suffer, but it’s more often than not that the people you come into contact with while working in the clinic are in pain, or suffering, or at Heaven’s doorstep. You help who you can and pray for the souls of the ones you can’t so they may be guided to God’s kingdom where they can live in an eternal paradise by His side. It always hurts when you can’t heal someone, the feeling of failure is a stark reminder that ultimately it is the Lord who chooses to give us life, and he can choose to take it away just as quickly.

It feels different this time though, somehow more personal in a way you can’t understand. The young man before you still has his whole life ahead of him, still so much to do and so many lives to touch. The sins that he’s committed thus far can be forgiven, if only he lifts them up to Him and asks for forgiveness. You can feel it, deep in your bones, that you need to save this man. You can’t fail.

He’s alive, for now. And you can only do your best to make sure he stays that way.

“He cannot stay here,” Sister Maria says quietly, gathering the red stained water and rags. “They will find him.”

You nod, gathering the small bowl with the bullet remnant and the sutures kit. “We’ll keep him here tonight and move him to the back room in the morning after he’s rested a while,”

“No,” Sister Maria says. “He cannot stay here. Helping an outlaw is punishable by death. They will hang us,”

“God will not abandon us,” You say, firmly. “We are all His children, servants and outlaw alike. He wouldn’t want us to toss him out on the street to die.”

You look over your shoulder towards the sleeping man again. His brow is furrowed again, the sweat on his face glistening in the light. You sigh before turning back to Sister Maria. “Don’t worry, Sister. I’ll think of something,”

The pacifying words seem to offer Sister Maria no comfort, and her worried eyes snap upwards as she looks towards the ceiling, voice cracking as she breathes a pleading, “Por Dios,” up towards the roof.

The room is silent to her plea.

You don’t leave Billy’s side the entire night, sitting in the chair directly next to the bed, dabbing at his heated face and neck with a damp washcloth and changing his bandage when the first one had soiled through. He wakes a few times during the night, icy blue eyes fluttering open and locking on yours for the briefest second before slipping closed once again, a quiet sigh escaping through his slightly parted lips.

This is the hardest part - the waiting. Waiting to see if your hard work to heal someone was enough. You keep a close eye on him, looking for signs of pain or illness, keeping an eye on the injury site to try and prevent infection. You flushed it with alcohol during the dressing change, having found an extra bottle hiding in the supply closet while grabbing some fresh cloths. Supplies like alcohol for disinfecting, while needlessly abundant in saloons and brothels, are difficult to acquire for the clinic. You think it's foolish, wasting something that can be used for healing purposes on something as pointless as getting drunk. Your father had been a drunk, drinking away his cares and woes, his only goal was to make it to the bottom of a bottle.

You wish you would have found it sooner so you could have actually disinfected the entire wound instead of just the outside and stitches, but this is better than nothing, you suppose. The smell as you pour it over his wound makes your stomach turn, reminding you of all the times your father came home reeking of the stuff, belly full of poison and his mind, hazed with drink, still evil enough to find your mother and make her suffer as if she were the reason he deemed himself a failure in life. Billy lets out a pained moan in his sleep, body subconsciously tensing in pain as the alcohol flushes the stitched up skin, but thankfully he doesn’t wake. You don’t want him to be in pain, but there’s a part of you that selfishly thinks he’s sharing your own pain, the memory of your childhood trauma somehow seeping into his brain as you recover his wound.

You know it’s not true, but you’re thankful he’s there with you anyway.

When morning arrives, you’re beyond exhausted.

The night shift always takes more out of you than the day shift and your eyes have been threatening to close since the first rays of the sun started spreading across the dust covered floor of the clinic.

Sister Ann and Sister Catherine arrive before the sun does, the first rays of it only starting to spill over the New Mexico horizon line when their footsteps echo through the entryway. You lean forward in your seat at the sound of them, glancing over at Billy’s still sleeping frame as Sister Ann’s gentle humming of a nursery song her mother used to sing to her spreads throughout the clinic. Quick footsteps cut through the song, the humming stopping entirely as frantic whispers sound from the entryway. And then three sets of running feet are getting closer to the corner room.

“Oh, good heavens,” Sister Catherine breathes, eyes locked on the special patient taking up the small bed.

Sister Ann has a dainty hand clasped against her mouth in shock and Sister Maria nervously wrings her own together from behind them.

“He was hurt,” You say, immediately defensive of the injured man. “We couldn’t leave him to die. The Lord says–”

“You don’t need to preach to us, Sister y/n,” Sister Catherine interrupts. “It’s the right thing to do. The Lord is on our side.” She’s confident in her words, and it gives you comfort you didn’t know you needed to have your beliefs validated. But she pauses, eyes flickering once again to Billy before they meet yours - the fear in her brown orbs clear as day. “The law, on the other hand, will not be.”

“We need to move him,” You say.

“To where?” Sister Ann whispers frantically. “The sheriff and his deputies are sure to show up here. They know he’s been shot, it’s only a matter of time.”

“It is a blessing they have not come already,” Sister Maria adds.

They’re right. With Billy injured, they have to know he couldn’t have gotten far. Their only saving grace is that the Sheriff more than likely would have never believed Billy would have come to the clinic for medical attention if on the run from the law. Perhaps holed up in some abandoned alley, bleeding out while propped up against a wall. Or maybe they think he tried riding out of town, desperate to get as far away from the people hunting him as possible before inevitably succumbing to his injuries and falling off his horse in a nearby field.

You rise from the chair, leaning over the bed slightly to rest a gentle hand on Billy’s forehead. It’s still clammy against your palm and he shivers slightly in his sleep, subconsciously pressing his head a little harder against your hand looking for comfort in his pained state. He needs to get away from here, away from any prying eyes because if he’s found, his life on this Earth is over. He is in no position to run or fight for his life. The road to recovery for him is a long one if he hopes to heal well enough to regain his strength and usual mobility. The only thing he will have to look forward to if discovered before he can is a necklace of rope and a quick fall.

“Help me get him to the back room,” You say, sternly. In moments of uncertainty and panic, someone needs to be the guiding light. Your fellow Sisters are still as stones in their spots, all in various states of distress as they look at the man who, if discovered under their care, could very well be the catalyst that marks the end of their missions here on Earth. The Lord brought Billy to you - you need to protect him. “He can stay in the alcove until we can figure out where to take him.”

“He cannot stay in the clinic!” Sister Maria exclaims. “They will surely check every room searching for him!”

“Trust me,” You soothe. “Please, Sister. We need to move him before they come or we will all surely pay the price.”

There is a short pause, but to your frantic brain it feels like an eternity before Sister Catherine nods and gently nudges Sister Ann to the opposite side of the bed.

“Let’s hurry,” She says, reaching to pull away the thin blanket you threw over Billy’s shaking frame at some point during the night. “I fear we don’t have much time left.”

Together, the four of you lift Billy from the bed. It’s a struggle. Even for multiple women to carry a fully grown man, it's a task and a half just to get him from the small patient room to the back area of the clinic. He whines in his sleep, his wound jostling and stitches pulling from the regretfully poor stability you have on his body as you carry him. But, somehow, he doesn’t wake.

The back room is small, but comparatively large compared to the patient’s rooms. The entire width is the size of two patient rooms combined, but that’s not giving it much grace. It makes you sick sometimes, to see people with money spending it on lavish items, large houses and grand parties just to show off their wealth when there are people in need all around whose lives would change if they only had a fraction of the wealth the ones in good standing do. As it is, the back room of the clinic is despairingly bare - limited backstock of supplies, linens, and food are scattered among the wooden shelves lining the room. If only those wealthy men who think to only fill their pockets would hear the Lord’s call to give to the needy instead. It would make your heart happy to see these shelves filled just once.

There’s a small alcove in the back of the room that you and the other Sisters use when times prove most trying. On the days when things are difficult, emotions are too much for you to handle alone or a patient isn’t doing well and there’s nothing you can do other than wait and pray for their recovery, you visit the alcove. It's been adorned with simple yet revenant items, a small yet beautiful cross nailed to the center of the wall, a small ceramic dish holding a wooden beaded rosary placed on the floor below it, resting on a pleasantly fluffed up pillow - ready to help guide their prayer.

Resting against the side wall of the alcove is a folded up cot. It’s not uncommon that one of the Sisters might have to sleep at the clinic during their off shift. More often than not, they are able to return to their lodgings to sleep and reenergize for their next shift. But there are times when too many people are injured, too many of the townspeople have fallen ill to whatever flu or illness that’s crossing through the town and all hands are needed here. The foldable cot is their home away from home, and while it might not be the most comfortable, you are thankful the Lord was able to provide it lest you be made to sleep on the floor behind the extra blankets neatly folded on the shelves.

You all adjust your grips on the young man allowing for Sister Maria to release her hold and pull back the thick blanket shielding the entrance to the alcove. You grunt under the presence of the additional weight, the awkward grip you all have on him unhelpful in the way his limp body bears down on you all. Sister Maria is quick in tying back the privacy blanket so that it stays to one side, and works to wrangle open the finicky cot. Once it’s unrolled, you help in depositing Billy down onto the makeshift bed, quickly checking his wound to make sure no stitches accidentally ripped in the journey back here before turning to accept the fresh blanket Sister Ann hands you from the shelf.

Billy’s brow is furrowed again, breathing a little harsher probably from the pain of being jostled. You lay out the blanket over top of him and pull it up to his chin, your hand reaching out to smooth the wrinkled skin between his eyes again.

“What do we do now?” Sister Ann asks, and Sister Catherine pulls her hand away from where it was plucking nervously at the skin at the sides of her fingers.

“We wait,” She responds, cradling Sister Ann’s damaged hand delicately between her own. “We won’t be able to move him out of the clinic before the Sheriff arrives. We’ll have to keep him hidden here until then and pray they don’t find him.”

The thought of the Sheriff and his men finding Billy here makes your stomach churn. The undeniable fate that waits for you if he’s discovered is one that you’re willing to sacrifice. He’s come here for help, God has brought him here to you for your healing and protection and you can’t fail Him just because your humanity makes you fearful of your end. It’s supposed to be a beautiful thing - death. The moment when your soul on this Earth fulfills its mission here and your granted eternal life at the side of God in the Kingdom of Heaven. It’s what you’ve wanted your whole life, a life of peace and serenity that seems so out of reach here on the soil. Fear will not keep you from looking forward to it. But you’re not done here yet, you have many years left of helping others and spreading His love to those in need. This is not your end. But if it is, it’s worth the sacrifice to try to save Billy.

You’ll hang with him, if need be.

Your fellow Sisters though . . . the thought of them hanging for your own choice, regardless of if you think it was the right thing to do, makes you sick. Your decisions are your own, and they shouldn’t suffer for your choices.

Billy’s forehead unwrinkles under your gentle fingers, and you can feel your heart break as you look down at him. He’s so young still, a young man just at the beginning of his life. He has so many fine years ahead of him. He’s handsome, fit and strong - he would make a fine husband for some lucky lady, a dutiful father for his children. He’s not as evil as they say. You’ve learned to trust your instincts when it comes to people. Sometimes the most misunderstood people are the kindest, and you can’t help but think Billy is the most misunderstood of all. You can’t sense a single whisper of badness in him.

You stand up and pull the privacy blanket back in front of the alcove, hiding Billy from sight in the safety of God’s makeshift altar. Together, you and the other Sisters make your way out of the back room. A few rooms down a sickly man is coughing up a storm, and from how hard and continuous his coughs are, you know his throat is raw. Sister Ann shoots the rest of you a worried look, but turns to grab a water carafe off of a side table before rushing down the hall towards the coughing man and away from the current situation.

“You can head back, Sister Maria,” You say, placing a calming hand on her shoulder. “Get some rest. It’s going to be a long day and we’re going to need you for the night shift.”

You can tell she’s torn, both wanting to stay and help in any way she can but seeming to know that there’s nothing she can do. All there is to do is wait. After a few moments, she nods, her own hand coming up to rest on top of yours. “Que Dios te bendiga,”

You watch as she makes her way towards the front, pushing open the wooden door before jerking to a halt. “Sheriff Garrett! Qué sorpresa!”

Her words sent a spark of panic through you. It’s so soon! You knew it was coming, but it’s still so incredibly soon. You had hoped for at least a while longer to try to gather your thoughts and think of a plan of where you can take Billy, but it feels like time moves slowly as the Sheriff and two of his deputies step into the clinic.

“Sister,” Garrett responds, respectfully tipping his hat.

Even through your panic, you still feel a twinge of irritation. A gentleman would take off his hat, but you suppose it’s better than the two men standing behind him who do nothing but trail their eyes around the clinic's entrance suspiciously (and with a clear bout of judgment).

You know for a fact these men with gold lined pockets have never given so much as a dime to the clinic.

Sister Maria turns back to look at you and Sister Catherine, desperation clear in her eyes and you're glad that none of the men are looking at her anymore or you think her obvious distress might have given you all away.

“Have a good rest, Sister,” You say, urging Sister Maria away. Thankfully, she listens, nodding to you and then Garrett before scurrying out the door.

“How can we help you, Sheriff?” Sister Catherine asks.

Garrett takes a few leisurely steps along the entryway, observing the interior of the clinic with the aura of a man who thinks he can see everything. You suspect he sees nothing at all.

“I apologize for the interruption, Sisters. I know you’re hard at work," He says. “But we’re looking for an outlaw on the run.” He pauses, looking over at the two of you with pointed eyes. At your silence, he continues. “William H. Bonney, otherwise known as Billy the Kid,”

“Oh, dear,” Sister Catherine gasps.

You feign concern also, bringing your fingers to your mouth as a sign of shock. Garrett nods in agreement at your supposed horror.

“As you no doubt know he is a very dangerous, very unlawful, man,”

“So we’ve heard,” Sister Catherine says, nodding solemnly. “Is that what brings you in today?”

“Yes,” He says. “There was an altercation last night between him and I. I was able to shoot him so he is very hurt, but he got away before I could arrest him or finish the job.”

“Kinda stupid to come to a clinic when you’re a wanted outlaw, Pat,” One of the men behind Garrett grumbles. “We’re wasting our time here.”

You can’t help but agree, despite that being exactly what Billy did. But maybe that’s what makes it smart. You're hopeful that Garrett will listen to his friend, will assume that Billy couldn’t possibly be here and leave the clinic without investigating it.

The small spark of hope dies as Garrett laughs without mirth. “The Kid’s not stupid. But we’re covering all our bases,”

“Helloooooo,” A voice calls from another room opposite the patient still occasionally coughing up a lung. “Can someone please pay attention to the sick people around here? Hellooooooooooo?”

Sister Catherine smiles tightly. “Mr. Taylor,” She says by way of explanation. “A rather problematic patient here. He’s a good man, just impatient.”

Sister Ann’s voice can still be heard attempting to soothe her own charge, so Sister Catherine has no choice but to tend to Mr. Taylor. When she disappears from sight, you turn back to Garrett, trying your best to deter suspicion.

“I can assure you, Sheriff, that we haven’t seen any sign of Mr. Bonney around here,” The lie leaves your lips far too easily for it to feel like the sin that it is.

Garrett nods, and you can tell he believes you, but puts his hands on his hips all the same, one hand pushing aside his coat to rest freely on the hilt of his gun. “Mind if we have a look around?”

You force a smile on your face. “Not at all. As long as you don’t bother any of the patients. They need their rest,”

“Certainly,”

You lead him around the clinic allowing him and the deputies to search the rooms for their missing outlaw. When they get to Billy’s old room, the room they just vacated not minutes before the Sheriff arrived, you tell them that a patient was recently discharged and that you hadn’t had the time to turn over the room yet.

“Why is there blood on ‘em?” One of the deputies asks, nodding to the blood stains still covering the stark white of the sheets.

“A cooking accident,” You reply. “An incorrect knife hold can sometimes do that,”

Another lie. You feel this one a little more than the first.

Eventually their search comes to the back room. You can’t keep them out, that would be too suspicious, so you allow them to walk through the half filled shelves. It's more than clear that there’s no place to hide anyone here other than the alcove and you're naively hoping they won’t even realize it’s there.

It’s a large blanket hanging on the wall. Of course, they’re going to notice it.

And, sure enough, one of the deputy’s eyes cut to the blanket. He heads towards it with a gruff “What’s behind here?” but you intercept him, rushing over to stand between him and the alcove.

The Sheriff and his deputies have their eyes on you now, each one closing in closer to you and the alcove, much too close for comfort.

“Sister,” Garrett says, voice stern with authority. “What’s behind the blanket?”

“It’s our place of prayer here,” You say, voice calm despite your nervousness. “Our altar.” You can’t mess up now. If you show any sign that you’re being untruthful, both you and Billy as well as your fellow Sisters out front will be on a one way trip to the courthouse. You’ll all die hanging from its top banister. “When healing doesn’t seem to be enough, it helps to have a place dedicated to God to call upon his everlasting power to perform miracles.”

Garrett nods. “Mind if we take a look?”

“Yes, actually. I do,” Your quick denial clearly catches him off guard, his eyebrows raising towards his hat. “Just as God bids us to modesty with our clothing, we must also show privacy and modesty in our places of worship. They’re sacred spaces. Surely you understand that, Sheriff,”

The words feel like poison on your tongue. Using worship and prayer to cover up a lie is the catalyst that makes bile feel like it's rising in your throat. It’s not a lie, you have to remind yourself. It is a makeshift altar, you do use it as a place of worship and prayer. Just . . . not right at this moment.

The reality of the situation is catching up with you, and you hide your slightly shaking hands by folding them together in front of you. You haven’t lied in years. You lied a lot as a child, a necessity of living with a father who’s anger could strike at a moment’s notice. You resented having to do it back then, forced to sin for the sake of trying to keep peace in the home. It’s much like the situation you find yourself in now, having to lie to try and protect another person. To protect yourself.

When you found refuge at the convent all those years ago, you were told you would never have to be untruthful ever again.

“God is granting you freedom from your woes,” You were told, and you remember how light those words had made you feel. “Thank him for His good graces with your undying loyalty and strive to always be who He guides you to be.”

You hadn’t lied since, no matter how tough things seemed. Sickly patients lying on their deathbed, scared and begging you for any kind of reassurance that it wasn’t the end for them. You wouldn’t give them false hope. Instead, you would tell them to turn their worries to the Lord, clasping their hands in yours and praying with them.

“Your soul is strong, bright and ever-present,” You would tell them. Sometimes you would let them hold your rosary so they can find comfort in it. “The body is a temple, and we do our best in our life to care for it. You’ve done that. If it weakens now, it is because God is calling your soul back to Him.”

The guilt is clawing at your chest, but you force it back as best as you can as you meet Garrett’s eyes. “I ask that you don’t force us to desecrate that,”

Garrett just stares at you, an unreadable expression on his face. One deputy just looks between you and Garrett, uncertain with how to proceed in the face of defying authority, and the other deputy that sneered at the thought of Billy even coming to the clinic scoffs at your words.

“Listen, lady, the law–”

“John, enough,” Garrett interrupts, voice shockingly hard as his eyes cut to his deputy. “She’s a Sister and you’ll show her respect.”

You feel a quick spark of satisfaction at the way the deputy’s confident, power hungry facade dies under the Sheriff's ridicule. He mumbles a quick apology to which you accept with a nod despite how insincere it sounds.

Garrett nods his head towards the door, silently gesturing for the other two to head towards the exit before he tips his hat at you directly, thanking you for your time and apologizing for any inconvenience their visit may have caused.

You want to tell him it was no inconvenience at all, but you’ve already sinned enough today and you can’t bear the thought of intentionally adding to the tally without justified need. Instead you settle on curving your lips into a convincing smile, thanking the men in return for their brevity and understanding and wishing them a good rest of their day as you usher them out of the back room and towards the front entrance.

Every single muscle in your body relaxes once they are completely out of the clinic, relief washing over you as you whisper out a quick prayer of thanks to God for allowing everyone to get out of the overwhelmingly dangerous situation unscathed - at least for now.

Sister Ann and Sister Catherine peek out of their respective rooms when they hear the front door swing shut, their wide eyes mimicking the relief you know is shown in your own.

“I can’t believe they didn’t find him,” Sister Ann admits, and it pains your heart to see tears begin to well up in her eyes. “I thought this was truly the end for all of us.”

You have her in your arms in an instant, cradling her small frame against your chest as she begins to cry in earnest. For as scary as it’s been for you so far, you can’t imagine what she’s been going through. Sister Ann and Sister Catherine have only known about Billy for less than no time at all. And yet, despite the short period of time between finding out about Billy, getting him into the alcove, and the entrance and departure of the Sheriff - you’re sure it probably felt like an eternity to her.

“Hush now, Sister,” You whisper, running a soothing hand along her back. “You’re safe, I promise.”

Sister Catherine places one of her hands on Sister Ann’s back as well, but she’s looking at you when she speaks. “He still can’t stay here,”

You know that. You know. You got lucky that the Sheriff didn’t find Billy this time, but who's to say that he won’t come back when he’s unable to find his missing outlaw anywhere else? Covering all his bases, that’s what he said. He’ll come back again when he sees that his other ‘bases’ have turned up nothing but dead ends.

Your older brother, Joe, has a cabin just outside of town. It’s a hidden place, specifically built for peace. No visitors. He lives alone, no wife or children to keep him company and he prefers it that way.

“If I’m alone, I can’t turn into him,”

You're positive he wouldn’t. Your brother is far from being anything like your father, but the task of trying to prove that to him seems to be out of your skillset. He tells you he’s happy with his life, that he’s chosen the path he feels he needs to be on just as you have. Who are you to pass judgment?

Joe likes the solitude, that much is certain. But he also has an adventurous spirit which guides him on lengthy trips from town to town, exploring all the world has to offer while never having to be tied to one place. He’s away now according to the last letter he sent you, planning to stay in Chihuahua, Mexico for a while and that he’s not sure yet when he’s going to be back.

“It’s dangerous,” Sister Catherine pushes, taking your silence as reluctance.

“I know,” You say. “I know. I think . . . I think I have an idea.”

The cabin will be empty. Joe isn’t due back for the immediate future, and even if he does return earlier than you suspect he will, you and Billy won’t be in danger. Joe can be trusted. He’ll help you, if need be. You can’t imagine that the Sheriff would ever know about it. It’s secluded - far off of any of the usual paths. It’s safe there. The perfect place to hide the wanted outlaw for a while. He can rest there, heal up uninterrupted for a few weeks until he can safely move around on his own two feet again.

Sister Catherine listens openly to the idea, but her face is pinched in displeasure.

“We don’t have much of a choice,” She says, reluctantly. “It seems like the best place for him to disappear to until he’s healed.”

You can hear the underlying pause in her agreement loud and clear. “But?”

“The clinic cannot spare two of us. We would lose half of our staff and it is too much for one person to handle alone per shift,”

“I wouldn’t ask any of you to come with us,” You say. No, for as much as you believe God sent Billy into your life for a reason, this was your mission to bear. You’ve already put your fellow Sisters through enough.

“You want to go alone?” Sister Ann sniffles, raising her head up from your chest.

“You need to think about this,” Sister Catherine says, sternly. “You shouldn’t be alone with him. He is a child of God, yes. But he is also an outlaw and a man. Sometimes, one of those is worse than the other.”

They’re being protective. The more rational part of you is grateful for their concern, and you think that if the positions were switched and one of them were in your position instead, you would react the same way. But a part of you is bitter. They’ve heard the stories. You know exactly how cruel men can be and you know exactly what they’re capable of. It’s a risk you’re taking, but you feel called to take it anyway. Billy needs your help, and God would never put anything in your path that you can’t handle.

“The Lord will protect me,” Despite the truthfulness of your words, you can see how they do little to reassure them. Your next words are better. “The Lord will help me protect myself.”

Sister Ann looks at Sister Catherine, once again bringing her hands together to pick at the reddened skin at the edge of her nail. Sister Catherine sighs, and the back of her hand reaches up to tap her forehead as if feeling the temperature or wiping away sweat.

“Alright,” She relents. “How do we get him to your brother’s cabin?”

“I don’t know,” You admit. “We need a wagon. Or a large wheelbarrow that we can put him in and attach it to a horse. I haven’t ridden a horse in a long time, but I’m sure I can manage.”

“Where are we supposed to get that?” Sister Ann’s tone borders on exasperated.

As if answering your unspoken prayer, the door to the clinic opens once more, this time revealing a bright faced Samuel Anderson, carrying a crate full of fresh supplies. And behind him, lit up by the sunlight like a bright blessing, is his wagon.

Sam Anderson is the son of local store owner, Edward Anderson, the clinic's top provider for basic supplies that are not strictly medical. While medicine shipments and more specialty items are donated from suppliers farther away, and frankly much less frequent than necessary, Mr. Anderson and Sam never fail to come through with plenty of food for you to make soups and nutritious meals for your patients. On occasion, you even have enough to give away to the families who are stacked together in a small two bedroom on the edge of town. With eight children total between two families, you're honestly not sure how they manage - but you do your best to help when you can.

Seeing Sam walk through the front door is like a beacon of light from Heaven is shining down on him. He’s smiling already, the crate of food handled carefully between his hands as he lets out a cheery, “Good morning, Sisters”. But as soon as he sees your faces, more specifically when he sees the tear tracks still visible on Sister Ann’s cheeks, he’s placing down the crate and across the clinic’s entrance in a second.

“What’s going on?” He asks. His hands automatically reach out towards Sister Ann’s face as if to cup it, but he stops himself. Instead he just looks at her worriedly, his concerned gaze leaving her face for only a moment to glance at you and Sister Catherine before they’re back on her, voice low and gentle. “What’s wrong?”

It’s no secret that Sam harbors some romantic feelings towards Sister Ann. There are days when you feel sorry for him - a young man, good and kind and generous, who you have no doubt would make a fine husband to any lucky woman is in love with one of the four women in the entire county who are incapable of returning his affection. But it’s moments like this when it’s easy to see God’s presence in other people. Sam is as respectful and kind as they come. He accepts his feelings can never be reciprocated and in turn uses his undying love and loyalty to Sister Ann by helping you all at the clinic with anything he can.

Somehow, he doesn’t expect anything in return, never stares at Sister Ann with an ounce of lust in his eyes, and it warms your heart to see the godly quality that’s usually so absent in men so prevalent in him.

“Something’s happened,” Sister Ann tells him, her voice still wobbly with emotion.

“What?”

“Sam,” You say, calling his attention back to you. “I know I have no place to ask this and I won’t fault you if you decline, but– I’m asking.”

“Tell me,” He insists, pulling his hat from his head and holding it to his chest, and God bless how the sincerity in his voice bleeds into his words. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it,”

So you tell him everything. Sam listens with wide eyes, shooting panicked glances at Sister Catherine and Sister Ann when you tell him about the Sheriff’s visit, and he’s genuinely sorrowful when your voice gets caught in your throat as you tell him that you had to tell some lies to get him to leave without discovering Billy. He’s nodding already when you mention your brother’s cabin.

“I’ll take you there,” He offers before you can even ask the question. “My wagon is always at your disposal.”

“It’s dangerous. If we’re caught, you would hang with us,”

Sam lets out a breath, unconsciously glancing over at Sister Ann again. “If the four most wonderful and religiously minded people in town hang for trying to do the right thing, then this isn’t a town or even a world that I want to live in anymore. Please let me take you. It would be my honor,”

A small smile graces your lips as you reach out and gently cup his cheek in thanks. For as many men pull and grind on your nerves with their endless greed and manipulation tactics, Sam is a breath of fresh air - a truly God-fearing man with a good heart.

He’s another person that you’re putting at risk, another life in danger because of the choice you’ve made. You try not to think yourself too selfish. Surely the fact that Billy has turned up in your life is God’s plan, and He does not put obstacles in your way that you cannot overcome.

He tells you that he’ll come back tomorrow. He has a delivery that’s expected in a town over and if he’s going to make it there and back before nightfall, he needs to leave before the sun comes up.

“I’ll stop here first,” He says. “We can load him into the back of the wagon while most people are sleeping and make the trip to your brother’s before I head on my way.”

“Thank you, Sam. Honestly,”

“My pleasure,” He nods his head at you, replacing his hat and tipping it kindly towards Sister Catherine and Sister Ann. “Until tomorrow, Sisters,”

The door swings shut behind him as he leaves and you let out a deep breath, hands smoothing over the dark veil covering your head just to feel a bit more grounded before you pick up the crate of food Sam brought. Billy needs to eat something. You're not quite sure how long it's been since his last meal, but even if he ate a minute before bursting through the clinic’s doors in the early morning, he would surely still be hungry and in need of sustenance by now. His body is weak and it needs nourishment to heal.

Billy’s still sleeping when you peek around the privacy blanket. His head is turned to the side and buried in his pillow as much as he can get it, mouth hanging open as he breathes. Your hand itches to reach out and touch him again, to smooth against his forehead or cup his cheek, maybe place your fingers under his chin to help close his mouth in hopes of him breathing through his nose instead so his mouth doesn’t dry out.

You’re not sure where this desire is coming from. You’re as affectionate with your patients as any nurse should be - kind and supportive, offering comfort when needed, but not overly so that it can be considered inappropriate. You’re all brothers and sisters, children of God - yes. But there are still social norms that must be considered.

It feels different with Billy for some reason.

“I’m going to get you to safety,” You whisper. You’re unsure about if he can hear you in his sleep or not, but you feel the need to tell him anyway. “I promise.”

You fall asleep at some point during the night, slumped against the wall next to the alcove’s entrance.

You don’t remember falling asleep. You remember feeling tired, exhausted by the stress of the day’s events, and how your eyelids were threatening to close permanently more and more with each blink. The soup you had made still sat out in the small kitchen, and you had wanted to stay close to Billy so that whenever he awoke, you would be there ready to help feed him.

Instead, you wake to the sound of Sister Maria giggling to your left and a low, unfamiliar but still soft voice speaking in Spanish to her.

“Y él no quería que su mamá lo supiera. Así enterró la carne en el jardín,” The voice lets out a small chuckle, the smile on his face evident in his tone despite you not being able to understand most of his words. “Pero el perro la desenterró y ella se descubrió de todos modos. Tuvo que lavar platos él solo por dos meses.”

“Ese niño,” Sister Maria laughs. “Parece que era un buen amigo.”

You can’t see his face, but you can hear how he loses the smile in his voice. “Sí, él era,”

Pushing yourself to your feet, you step over to where Sister Maria is kneeling in front of Billy’s cot. It’s only now you see the mostly finished bowl of soup in her hands. Billy’s sitting up slightly, back propped up against his pillows enough to allow him to sit up a bit straighter but not enough to pull too much on his stitches.

At seeing your movement, his eyes snap to your approaching frame, big blue orbs staring up at you and you can’t help the relief you feel at seeing them.

“You’re awake,” You breathe, a small smile pulling at your lips. “Thank the Lord,”

His lips twitch a bit in what looks like a suppressed smile. “Kinda sounds like I should be thankin' you,” He says, and you notice how prominent the shift in his accent is as he seamlessly switches from Spanish to English. “Sister Maria says that you’re the only reason I’m alive right now.”

You shake your head, humbly. “Oh, no. Sister Maria and I work together as a team. I couldn’t have done it without her aid,”

“You show no fear,” Sister Maria insists. “Where I hesitate, you show mercy and strength. It is because of you that we are all alive now.”

“See?” Billy says with a blinding grin, and you can’t help but notice how handsome he is while no longer at death’s door. “My angel,”

You feel your face heat up at the endearment. An angel. Surely the comparison shouldn’t fluster you like it does. You’ve thought of your fellow nuns as the embodiment of angels before, angelic beings put into human bodies by the grace of God to spread His word. You know that’s not exactly true, that you’re just using your belief of what God’s angels would be like and seeing those beings in your fellow Sisters just like Billy is doing with you now, but you’ve never once thought yourself to be comparable to such a holy being and the compliment makes you flush.

You run a hand across your face, feeling the warmth under your palm, and clear your throat. “Oh, well, thank you,”

Sister Maria stands, taking the nearly finished bowl of soup with her. “He has eaten plenty and I changed his covering as soon as he woke up. You will want to change it again when you get to the cabin.”

“That’s great. Thank you,”

��De nada. I’ll go check on the patients and keep an eye out for Sam,”

She nods to you and Billy before she turns to leave, a small smile pulling at her lips when Billy rasps out a soft, “Gracias, Hermana,”

When she’s gone, you take her place in front of Billy, kneeling at his side and placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better thanks to you,” He responds, wide eyes trained on yours, a smirk playing at his lips as he continues. “Don’t feel much like I’m dyin’ anymore,”

A small laugh escapes you at his morbid joke. “Well, I’d say that’s a very good thing then,”

“Sister Maria said the Sheriff came lookin’ for me,”

“He did,” You confirm. “The Lord kept us all safe though and has given us an opportunity to get you to safety.”

Billy’s eyebrow raises skeptically. “Sounds like it was more your doin' than the Lord’s,”

You try to not let the slight against God rattle you. You had sensed this was coming anyway. William H. Bonney a.k.a Billy the Kid is an outlaw afterall, and no outlaw becomes an outlaw while still maintaining a positive relationship with the Heavenly Father. He’s gone through many hardships no doubt, and has more than likely deemed his bad luck in life as God’s personal vendetta against him.

“The Lord speaks through all of us, if only we have an open heart to hear him.” You tell him. “Fear can make His words harder to hear, and I’m thankful that He was able to guide my mind and heart enough through the fear for us to get to safety.”

“Hm,” Billy hums, and you can tell how much he doesn’t believe your words. He doesn’t argue though. “And where exactly is this safe place you’re gonna take me?”

“My brother has a cabin just outside of town. It’s well secluded and unknown to most. We’ll be safe there until you’re healed enough to go on your own.”

Billy’s eyes drop to your hand still resting on his shoulder, thick dark lashes casting shadows on his cheeks before his bright blue eyes are locked on yours again. “You gonna be takin’ care of me, Sister?”

“Of course, I will,” You reply. “We shall see you well again, Billy. I promise.”

His own arm crosses his chest so his hand can rest on your own, his eyes wide and so earnest as he whispers a quiet, “Thank you,”

It’s only about an hour longer before Sam arrives. It’s still early morning, the sun still a ways away from coming up behind the horizon line, and town is silent. Sam pulls his wagon up to the back door of the backroom before coming around the front to help push it open from the inside. It’s been so long since it’s been opened. The door was once used for the scheduled delivery of goods for easy access to the storage area, but as years went on and the county and surrounding counties became overrun with greed and poverty, the shipments became less frequent. Now, anything needed just comes through the front door. It’s never too much anyway, so what’s a trip or two to the backroom while carrying a crate.

Sam slams his body against the door a few times, the wood groaning in protest under his weight before it finally swings open. Billy watches from his place on the cot, his eyes threatening to close but forcing himself to stay awake. You want to tell him to sleep, he needs his rest to help him heal and recover, but you’re too busy checking your bag to make sure you haven't forgotten anything before tossing it in the back of the wagon. You need to leave before the townspeople start to wake up. If someone sees you, if just one person witnesses you smuggling away a wanted outlaw, then all of this would have been for nothing.

“Sister y/n,” Sam calls, squatting at the head of the cot. He’s got his arms wrapped around Billy’s torso. “Come grab his legs. We’ll do our best not to jostle his wound,”

You come to a kneel at Billy’s legs, placing a comforting hand on his knee. “Do your best to relax, okay? If you tense, you might tear your stitches,”

Billy lets out a harsh breath through his nose, clearly nervous, but he nods anyway, brows furrowed in determination.

Together you and Sam hoist him up. He gasps, groaning as his wound pulls but you can see how he’s trying to keep his stomach untensed. Getting him into the back of the wagon is not graceful, and you find yourself spewing endless apologies the whole time despite the relatively short journey.

Sam’s laid out a bed of hay covered by two thick blankets throughout the entire bed of the wagon. Crates of food and other supplies take up half of the bed, but he’s managed to make it so Billy will have enough room to lay comfortably on his designated side. Billy sighs as he’s laid down on it, one of his legs bent at the knee and his palms pressing into the makeshift mattress as he cranes his neck up to look at you. You ball up a spare blanket, tucking it under his head before you push him back down with a gentle hand on his forehead.

“Rest now, Billy,” You tell him, crawling out backwards and helping Sam slide on the rectangular backing on the wagon to secure it shut. “We’ll be there when you wake up,”

His eyes stay locked on you as you circle the wagon towards the front. Sam helps you up onto the spring seat before jogging around the rear and hauling himself into the driver's seat. You smooth out your tunic, looking around the dark street for any suspicious or wandering eyes that might be peeking out from around buildings or through windows. You don’t see any, even as one of the horses whinnies when Sam urges them forward. The clinic is located towards the edge of town, so it only takes a few minutes of nervous eyes and your head on a swivel before the wagon is passing the final few buildings that mark the town’s end of population and you can relax.

You blow out a deep breath, meeting Sam’s equally relieved gaze as he snaps the reins and nudges the horses a little faster. You look over your shoulder to check on Billy and you’re expecting to see him sleeping, no doubt still exhausted from the trauma of taking a bullet. Instead, he’s looking at you, head twisting so he can see your elevated frame from his laid out position. His eyes seem to pierce into yours, so blue and intense as he watches you that it makes your breathing hitch in your throat.

You’ve never seen eyes so beautiful before. Like endless pools of glistening water. Surely God must have taken much care when crafting them for him.

You feel your skin prickle under his stare, body straightening in your seat. He doesn’t stop watching you.

“Sleep,” You tell him. “You’re safe, I promise.” And thankfully he listens, eyes trained on your face for just a moment more before closing his eyes. The tingling feeling in your body dissipates with the removed gaze.

Your gaze turns around the front again, looking out to the vast stretch of land before you as you leave the civilization of town behind.

“Sam,” You start, looking for anything to pass the time and distract from whatever unusualness just happened between you and your charge. “How’s your mother?”

#𝑇𝑎𝑙 𝑊𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑠 ✎#billy the kid smut #billy the kid x reader smut #billy the kid x reader #dark!billy the kid #tw: noncon #tw: non con #tw: dubcon #tw: dubious consent

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cherryxblossxms · 1 year ago

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Hehe yes let's cuck Mephisto with Luci too ~

I think he's planning a prank (or maybe sabotage?) with the anti Lucifer league and he doesn't quite get out of Lucifer's office fast enough when he hears the two of you coming. He scrambles into a closet right when you and Lucifer come in, too busy making out to notice the closet door slightly ajar.

Mephisto is disgusted at first. He can't look away, it's so horrible. He watches as you strip each other, Lucifer puts you on his desk. Your incessant moaning and his groaning...

Mephisto didn't really notice how intently he was watching, nor did he notice how hard he was until his cock throbbed at the erotic display... He palms himself, feeling dirty at enjoying such a thing but he's mesmerized and stuck in this closet anyway.

I'm so sorry I'm getting to this so late 😭 I ran to the notification when I first got it but I just could not find the spoons to respond

Godddd this whole thing is so 🥵🥵 I could not stop myself from making this into. Idk whatever this is, but anyway I need that man badly (and maybe need to make him suffer a little lmaoo)

[Nsfw obv, mdni. GN reader, voyeurism, implied cucking/getting caught at the end ehehe~]

At first, Mephisto is so disgusted by what's he's seeing. The two people he detests most— the angel traitor saved by his gracious Lord Diavolo, and the weak unworthy human representative of the exchange program— and you're locking lips like its your job, knocking into Lucifer's desk in your excitement. And of course you two would be drawn together, it's only expected that two unsavory types would be getting up to such indecent activities together. The wet noises of your mouths meeting and the way you're groping each other, it's perverse, Mephisto thinks.

He has half a mind to report you two to Lord Diavolo, what you're doing has to be a problem, right? Just thinking about it is titillating, as he remains hidden in the closet, not wanting to get caught and maybe get some good dirt on either of you. Maybe he'll get some kind of reward for alerting the Young Lord about these transgressions. In fact, maybe he'll even—

His thoughts are interrupted when you unleash a soft whimper, the sound sending shivers through his body and his heart pumping. He didn't even realize, you two had gotten partially undressed already while he was lost in thought, shirts pulled open and halfway off and Lucifer's hand disappearing beneath your waistband, the demon sucking on the side of your neck as his hand clearly worked you into a frenzy.

Suddenly it's like he can't tear his eyes away from his peeping spot in the closet, almost holding his breath just waiting for what happens next. Watching as Lucifer marks you up to satisfaction, his hand working a steady rhythm between your legs as you writhe against him, still making that delicious needy noise, before its clearly not enough for either of you. Before Mephisto can react, Lucifer has you set on his desk, tugging your bottoms down and off and working his own open just long enough to free his leaking cock, losing no time as he quickly enters you.

If Mephisto thought your prior noises were indecent, the moan you let out now is downright sinful. The noise of a rattling desk fills the air as Lucifer pumps into you, and whether it's by a miracle or a curse, Mephisto can see it all clearly. See the way you manage to fit Lucifer's cock, see the way you grasp onto the desk or onto Lucifer, whatever you can reach, as your face is twisted with pleasure. He couldn't quite make out Lucifer's face from his angle, but that was perhaps for the better.

Mephisto suddenly becomes all too aware of how tight his pants have become, a distinct need in his groin calling to him. Just the thought of stroking himself to you two is offensive, he tries to convince himself. But it's like his body can't control itself, his hand reaching down to relieve the ache anyway, not long before he's fisting his own leaking cock in time with Lucifer's thrusts into you. He can't even manage to tear his eyes away, eating up every little change in your expression and the things you respond best to.

He bites his knuckles trying to stay quiet, still trying to stay hidden until he can safely escape. But he's quickly lost to his own desires, imagining it's you he's fucking into. He'd show you how much more superior he is to Lucifer, show you what a true born-and-bred demon can do in bed. Lucifer could never compare, and he'd finally have you on your knees, begging for more, if he so wanted.

Just the thought of being the one to bring you to completion is enough to push him over the edge, hard, the climax catching him off guard. It's a miracle he manages to catch his spend in the palm of his glove before it can get on anything else. But what he fails to do is suppress the groan he makes as he cums, and his lusty haze clears quick in the following panic, looking to see if he'd been found out.

Thankfully, you'd all seemed to finish at the same time— he can't help but regret he hadn't seen your face as it happened— and you were clearly still recovering atop Lucifer's desk, the demon himself still buried deep inside you and his hips finally still. Mephisto instantly relaxes, thankful he wouldn't have to explain himself. He wasn't sure what he'd do if Lucifer of all people found out that, not only had Mephisto broken into his room, but was watching and masturbating to you two having sex like some kind of freak.

However, in his eagerness to relax, Mephisto missed the way Lucifer's lips quirked up, crimson eyes sparing the briefest glance in the direction of his closet.

#mephisto x reader #lucifer x reader #obey me lucifer #obey me mephistopheles #obey me smut #obey me shall we date #mephistopheles x reader #the minx can write ✍️#spicy minx 🔥#˗ˏˋ꒰ minx replies ꒱#i wanna ruin this man and ride him into the ground thank u for listening to my ted talk #cant believe i forgot who mc is fucking lmao

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satogacrank · 1 month ago

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Humanity's last hope, a scruffy looking demon lord, a traitor to his own kind and his human host.

DevilmanAU doodles.

#devilman #devilmanAU #amon #amonfudo #akira #akira fudo #demon #human #human form #human amon #ova amon #amon ova #amon apocalypse of devilman #digital art #artists on tumblr

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shipburner · 3 months ago

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Where Do Paw Patrol Characters End Up In Dante's Inferno?

Cap’n Turbot: First Circle (Limbo, virtuous pagan). Our guide into Adventure Bay the Inferno.

Skye the air rescue dog: Second Circle (Lust, crime of being a girl). Your helicopter cannot save you from the violent winds.

Zuma the water rescue dog: Third Circle (Gluttony). You’re a surfer, ergo a Californian, ergo you smoke weed. Enjoy being savaged by Cerberus!

Chase the police and spy dog: Seventh Circle (Violence) (Ring 1, violence against neighbors). Boil in blood you fucking pig.

Tracker the jungle rescue dog: Seventh Circle (Violence) (Ring 2, violence against self). Sadly his paranoia has resulted in a visit to the Wood of the Suicides.

Rubble the construction dog: Seventh Circle (Violence) (Ring 3, violence against nature). Your soft heart has earned you the fate of all homosexuals: running in circles in the burning desert.

Everest the snow rescue dog: Eighth Circle (Fraud) (Bolgia 1, panderers and seducers). Crime of being a girlboss. March forever, whipped by demons, just like a living sled dog!

Rocky the “eco pup”. Eighth Circle (Fraud) (Bolgia 10, falsifiers, specifically of things). Recycling is a form of alchemy. Fortunately there are no baths in this ditch of disease!

Marshall the fire dog: Ninth Circle (Treachery) (Judecca, traitors to their lords). His clumsiness was the downfall of the whole PAW patrol.

Ryder the human: frozen instead of Satan in the exact center.

#paw patrol #dante's inferno #bringing this back from discord years ago

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satansaidnottoday · 1 year ago

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Filthy traitor.

Info: Belphegor x GN!Mc, OG Game.

| Part 1 | Part 2 |

Can't stop thinking of Belphegor with an MC who was sweet and genuinely cared about him before the event. But then became extremely bitter because of his actions.

Warnings: Entrapment, Murder, Choking (not the sexy kind), Lesson 16 spoilers, Toxic Behavior.

He hated humans, all of them. He blamed them for everything: His sister's death, the fall, his brother's depression, and his imprisonment. If it wasn't for that stupid human student, and for the idiot demon lord who brought them, he wouldn't be trapped in the attic.

He should have killed them all, every last one of those stupid, useless, vain creatures. But from that cage, all he could do was cry and sleep and refuse to eat for long enough that Lucifer stopped coming to check on him.

When you finally arrived at the house he thought of punishing you. Haunting your dreams. Making you relive all of your most painful memories, repeating them so many times, until your brain turned into mush and your mind is lost forever.

But he realized he could use you to get out and get his revenge.

So when you gave in to his pleas for help and made your way to the attic, he played his best innocent act. You were just a poor, naive human. He could manipulate you, make anything of you. Then kill you off just as easily the moment he got what he wanted.

Even after you figured out he was the youngest brother, he still thought you were stupid. You kept helping him after all, like a good loyal puppy.

You went to see him every night. At first, you just sat there and talked to him, you told him about what had happened that day. Mammon's newest scheme, what Satan was reading that week, what Beel's new favorite food was. He engaged in the conversation only out of necessity, or at least that's what he told himself. He had to gather intel and convince you that he was on your side. So it really was just all part of the plan.

You started saving a portion of whatever dinner you were having that day and snuck it up to him. You told him it was so he didn't feel left out of the family dinner. What a stupid thing, he thought. He was being held captive by his own brother, he was not part of that family anymore.

But still, he ate. And he laughed along as you told him stories about his brothers. Sometimes he would tell you his own stories of them before everything had turned bitter. He found himself waiting around the door every night for your arrival, getting nervous if you ever were late, thinking you wouldn't come. But of course, you never failed to show up, not even once.

He started to think of you late at night after you had left. He wondered about you. For as much as you talked, you never said much about yourself. What kind of life did you have before? What were your hobbies? What were you thinking about that very moment? He started to ask about you during your visits, and with every answer came more questions.

He told himself he was interested only because he was bored. You were his only source of entertainment, it was only natural. And of course, he'd want to extract every drop of information that could be useful. He was using you after all.

You saw through him. The fake smile he had while you were leaving. He was deeply, undeniably lonely. Every day you brought him more things, little gifts and trinkets. Books and games to keep him company in your absence. But you knew it wasn't enough. It would never be.

And you worked so hard every day. You had learned from Solomon that you could draw from a demon's power if you had a pact with them. You could use it for your own magic, and you did just that. You trained with Solomon every day, learning to control the magic flowing through your body. You knew with enough power and practice you'd be able to set him free.

You had to free him.

So he could be happy. So he could be with his people again. So he could heal with them. And maybe, if you were lucky, so he'd be yours.

And the fateful day came when you knew you were ready. With Mammon's help and an enchantment you had practiced a thousand times before, you broke the seal keeping him from you. Immense joy shocked your body. You had done it, finally. You proved to him just how much you loved and cared for him. You wanted nothing more than to hold him.

All of his rage fell on you like boiling hot water. Your body slammed to the floor, blood seeping from the crack in your skull. The air left your lungs. Before you could try to breathe in again, his hands tied themselves around your neck. You felt your body growing limp, you could almost see yourself dying.

Yes, you could. You saw your corpse there on the floor. What killed you in the end? Was it the blood loss? Or were it his hands? You wondered. You could also see Belphegor's smile. A genuine smile.

Everything changed in a moment.

As he saw the life leave your eyes, he realized something horrible. Something terrifying.

He loved you. He loved you so deeply and so desperately. Regret replaced all of his anger, all of his sadness, even his grief. He could not feel anything else.

Your corpse mocked him. It held your form, but nothing was left inside. He could not reach you. And he needed you.

Oh, how much he needed you.

This ended up longer than expected so I'll be dividing it into two parts. Hope you liked it and thanks for reading!

#belphegor x reader #belphegor x mc #belphegor x you #obey me fanfic #obey me #obey me x reader #obey me!#obey me shall we date #shall we date belphegor #obey me belphegor #om! belphegor #obey me headcanons #om! shall we date #Dividers by @cafekitsune #obey me brain rot

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tiredrxtz · 6 months ago

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New beginnings: down with the sinners [Part 1/3]

T’was a dreary night when two stars destined apart finally aligned, their shine— blinding yet enrapturing —seen throughout both heaven and hell alike; a symbol that shattered through Japans history.

This was, without a doubt, the recreation of two beings that died two very different deaths on the same hour but on two very different days...

It was so dreadfully boring being kept in the depths of a citadel dungeon in the middle of the forest, hanging from the wall by nothing but chained wrists. There was no telling what time of day it was; days could’ve turned into nights and Fyodor wouldn’t have know.

However, despite being conducted to such torture methods, Fyodor did not yield nor did he give into the aching sensation that settled within his body— a silent plea that forged many to confess their crimes.

Yet he was no criminal, in fact he was a traitor— that’s what he was deemed to be. On the orders of Count Bram Stocker, he was played for a fool; he had been charged (mostly under suspicion) for trespassing into forbidden land and being a spy from a neighboring land.

What a joke. Like he’d allow some useless king to have the upper hand over him...

Being a prisoner held at capture for such heinous things did prove to be quite the bore. There was nothing to do but stand around and listen to the conversations of the guards that often switched places between dusk and dawn. Everyday was practically the same; but today was rather different and Fyodor appreciated the change...

“The Count want this criminal at mid city?” One of the knights abrupt disbelief echoed through the small underground chamber. Fyodor’s eyes gleamed a sinful crimson at the sudden news— today will prove to be a spectacle indeed.

Unlike all those fantasy books that scribed the tale of criminals being killed while in transportation portraying a fake reasoning, Fyodor’s journey to the city centre was rather peaceful— the guards left him alone and he had the chance to gaze into the evening skies once more.

That alone meant that something important was to occurs and he was summoned to witness the deed on purpose— on an order perhaps?

There were thousands, if not, millions of people gathered around the spectacle housed in the centre when Fyodor was forced to his knees next to the vampire that captured him. The people didn’t pay heed towards his figure and yet instead continued their chanting of—

“Down with the sinner, long live the lord!”

As much as Fyodor liked the ideology of being gods messenger, he truly wondered if the beings inhabiting earth were even human; the violent verdicts conducted on those who wronged the rules were nothing a human would recommend but be such things a demon would spew.

Reality was a confusing spectrum that not even he understood but there was one thing that settled in his mind at the end of the day: Sinners must die and the lord must live— and being the messenger of the Devine meant becoming a sinner to unravel the blade of divinity...

“Proceed with the onslaught.” Bram commanded lowly, his piercing crimson gaze never strayed far from the sight before him.

Eyes boring into the crowd, Fyodor could just about make a discrete vision of a silhouette perched upon a stage, their hands restrained to the pole that loomed above them; it was a girl...

The female didn’t seem much older than he was, perhaps she was even younger; She stood unaffected by the common people’s discrimination and simply gazed at the wooden surface below her own feet.

Ah, an execution.

”With being charged several times with the allegation of witchcraft, today, Y/n L/n shall no longer take her final stand against humanity and instead will be purified by the flames of god!” A man preached from beside the young girl, holding a flaming torch to the people in accomplishment, earning cheers of joy from the crowd.

what a pity.

Fyodor expected the girl to plead for mercy before the executioner like most did when put on similar trials of death, but... she did nothing at all...

For the first time in his life, Fyodor wished to know what was going on in somebody else’s head— he wanted to know everything that played before her in her mind as the man dropped the source of fire onto the stack of hay surrounding her.

he...wanted to know her name...

“A pity, really.” Bram spoke sternly yet not directly towards the crown or his guards, this was directed towards him.

“May I ask what it is that you find so pitiful?”

“You humans taking another’s life just because somebody pointed a finger—what kind of humans are you if all you do is play follow the leader?”

“sometimes people need someone else to take their blame, it’s a natural way of life. Humans cannot feel nothing more than humanity if they do not commit a sinners act.”

The Count did not dare speak after that but Fyodor could feel his piercing gaze on him as he sat motionless on the ground, peering at the burning corpse of the young girl.

The beige maiden dress cascading her figure was burnt from the waist down as the flames grew higher and higher. For the first time, Fyodor met her [e/c] eyes head on.

They were just like his own; blank yet held an abyss stronger than hell itself...

The guards surrounding the Count and himself gaped in disbelief and horror, as did the crowd, when the girl being burnt to death before their very own eyes managed to remove a single hand from the restraints and reach outwards.

Fyodor couldn’t compel himself to gaze away. Her hand was covered in the soot of the flaming ashes spewing into the atmosphere but that didn’t seem to stop her from cradling the air as if it were a face.

“....A human born to be different from the rest; a wondering soul that carried humanity to its end...”

From there on out, Fyodor couldn’t help but visualize that very girls death over and over again in his mind. Even when he was escorted back to the dungeon, those fake flames of god burned at the pure self hidden away deep within him, leaving the impure counterpart behind...

The sinner he had been made to act as was no fake facade, he was a sinner born through both spirit and soul....

T’was a night so dreary when Fyodor was impaled by a spear, a death recommended by the Count Bram Stocker himself.

A suitable way to rid the world of his sinful body.

What had made history was never seen again because, after both dreadful nights, the two stars that shone hand in hand, despite being destined apart, vanished and never shone again...

That left the sky devoid of purity, leaving nothing but a vulnerable canvas of evil...

#bungou stray dogs #bsd #bsd fyodor #bungou stray dogs Fyodor #fyodor dostoyevsky bsd #fyodor dostoevsky #fyodor x reader #manga spoilers #chapter 114.5 #bsd dazai #dazai osamu #bsd nikolai #nikolai gogol #bsd sigma #sigma #decay of angels #Season 5 Bungou stray dogs #prison arc #dead apple

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sun-and-moon-mushroom · 9 months ago

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Day 11: Time Loop

AO3 link

(Based on the AU in this post)

(cw for canon typical torture, suicide, implied SA)

During Luo Binghe’s first life, he was one of Shen Qingqiu’s favourite students. It wasn’t something he achieved right away, but rather something he worked for, until his shizun could look at him with pride. Among his martial siblings he was one of the strongest, and was overjoyed when he was given the chance to defend the sect from a demonic invasion. When Shen Qingqiu was accused of murdering the Bai Zhan Peak Lord, Luo Binghe was his most ardent defender, making sure that the Bai Zhan disciples that attacked their peak would never disturb his work or rest. Shen Qingqiu might seem cold and cruel to others, and Luo Binghe wouldn’t deny that he was — it was just that those were the traits he admired in his master, the ones he dreamed of emulating some day.

When the seal on his demonic heritage broke, he was terrified for the first time since he was a child. It was something he’d been having nightmares about for years — that his nature as a demon would be discovered, and that Shen Qingqiu would think he was a traitor and cast him out. What happened instead, after a tense interrogation, was his shizun ordering him to jump into a rift that led to the Endless Abyss, warning him that if any of the other cultivators in the area saw him — a heavenly demon in the middle of a demonic invasion of the largest cultivation event in years — he would be dead within moments. Luo Binghe left, but not without promising Shen Qingqiu that he would be back as soon as he could.

He could never figure out why a flash of sorrow flew across Shen Qingqiu’s face at his words, not until he returned to the human realm once more, six years later, to the news of his imprisonment by Huan Hua Palace for his crimes — something the sect leader, who had always been apologising to Shen Qingqiu for some unknown failing when Luo Binghe was a disciple, had stood by and let happen. Luo Binghe had stormed Huan Hua with an army of demons, intent on keeping his promise, but in the end, he was too late. Shen Qingqiu had died of his injuries just a few days before.

Even as he went on to become Emperor of both the human and demon realms, amassing a harem of a hundred women and becoming more and more powerful with each year, that old promise still lingered in his mind. He made it a point to return any kindness shown to him at least ten-fold — if Shen Qingqiu was still alive, he would be safe and living in luxury, perhaps as one of his advisors, while the sect that betrayed him burned. He wasn’t though, and so the thought remained, until Luo Binghe came across rumours of a rare technique.

It was an ability said to send the user back in time, into the body of their former self, in order to fix their past mistakes. Luo Binghe made it his mission to track the technique down, spending years on the project, until he finally found it. There was an aspect to it that none of the rumours had told him about though — if he returned to a time after he had begun to cultivate, the shock of the transition would send his body into a qi deviation, one that would probably be fatal. That was fine by Luo Binghe though — he knew the perfect time to go back to. The next time he opened his eyes he was back in the body of a child, right before being accepted into Qing Jing Peak.

Things were different the second time. He wasn’t sure what he could have changed — maybe it was just something he said, or maybe Shen Qingqiu was able to see the spark of his older self in his eyes. Either way, when the other disciples started bullying him, when they pushed him out of the dormitory and into the woodshed, he let it happen — it must just be Shen Qingqiu testing him, right? What once was an affectionate nickname becomes a cruel insult. He doesn’t even notice how wrong his cultivation manual is until much later, just using the knowledge from his first life to progress.

As much as he hopes for it, his relationship with Shen Qingqiu in his second life never gets better. He doesn’t know what went wrong for his shizun to hate him so much, doesn’t know what went differently in this life compared to the other. At his worst moments he starts to wonder if the Shen Qingqiu of his first life ever actually cared for him, or if he had simply seen his potential earlier and wanted to claim it for himself.

Years later, the Endless Abyss is open once more, and the sign of his demonic heritage is clear on his forehead. Shen Qingqiu looks at him with rage as he pushes him over the edge while he’s still unsteady from the unsealing, and he wonders if this was how it was always going to be. He makes it through the Abyss faster this time, returning to the human realm after only five years. Xin Mo seems louder in his mind, but it’s nothing he can’t handle.

This time, it’s Luo Binghe who orchestrates the trial, using every piece of knowledge he has to bring Shen Qingqiu under his power. As before, his martial siblings are quick to abandon him, like the cowards that they are. When he first visits his former master in his cell, Shen Qingqiu calls him a beast as he spits at his feet, and in a sudden moment of rage, Luo Binghe tears off his arm. His mind becomes clouded with fury as he thinks back to everything he endured, all out of a hope that Shen Qingqiu would care for him again, only for each and every effort to fail. If Shen Qingqiu won’t love him, he concludes, then he can face the consequences of his actions, here in this cell.

Years later, when Luo Binghe sits on the throne of the combined realms, with six hundred wives, Shen Qingqiu finally dies, and Luo Binghe goes back in time once more.

In his third life, he leaves for the demon realm instead of Cang Qiong, and takes his place at it’s rightful heir by the time he’s fifteen. He comes with Sha Hualing when she leaves to attack the sect, and in the chaos of the fight, he manages to capture Shen Qingqiu. He’s still injured — from the caves, from Liu Qingge’s death he assumes — so he can’t fight back as well as he could. Luo Binghe brings him to the palace he’s been rebuilding, the one that once belonged to his father, and locks him inside a set of luxurious rooms. Maybe, if he sees what accepting Luo Binghe will get him, he’ll be more open to it?

Instead, Shen Qingqiu slits his throat in his room before Luo Binghe can even feed him his blood. He spends the next few years recklessly cultivating, until he is once again strong enough to use the technique that will send him back in time.

In his fourth life, he resolves to make sure Shen Qingqiu will not die, not without his consent. He becomes a disciple again, and slips his blood into his food after breaking his seal in secret. He uses the chaos of the Immortal Alliance Conference to capture him this time, keeping him in an enforced sleep until he finds somewhere safe to keep him. This Shen Qingqiu thinks he’s a spy, thinks he betrayed the sect and kidnapped him to weaken it. He laughs at the idea of a ransom — they both know that the other Peak Lords would never agree to it.

Luo Binghe almost dies in that life, impaled by the blade of Xuan Su, but he manages to survive it, turning his own blade on it’s wielder. In the moment of panic before he breaks free, he pulls on his blood parasites and they tear Shen Qingqiu apart — if he can’t have him, nobody can.

The lives go by, again and again. He’s familiar with the sight of Shen Qingqiu flinching now, with his rare tears of pain, but the way his smile looked is starting to fade from his memory. In one, he tries wiping away his memories, in another he tries wearing a different face, but each time it ends in failure. In one life, he even takes Shen Qingqiu as a concubine — the pills he’s fed provide an illusion of love, but Luo Binghe knows it’s not the real thing. Nothing he tries seems to ever work.

This is what Luo Binghe doesn’t know — Shen Jiu remembers each life as well. Not consciously, not the details, but the impression of the emotions he felt remains. From that first life, where he died alone and cursing his own hope that a half-demon disciple would ever keep his word, he’s been turned against Luo Binghe from the start, with each successive timeline only making things worse and worse, as the hate and fear he feels for him grows.

In a life long after the first, Luo Binghe opens his eyes, once more about to become a disciple of Cang Qiong. Instead, he feels a hand press against his forehead, breaking the seal on his demonic heritage too early. The next thing he feels is a sword through his chest. He looks up at Shen Qingqiu, who is standing there with his sword outstretched — and sees that same look of sorrow he remembers from so long ago.

#svsss #svsss au #shen qingqiu #shen jiu #luo bingge #time loop au #bingjiu #technically!#my writing #febuwhump 2024 #febuwhump

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k-s-morgan · 1 year ago

Text

Those Gentle Slopes: Snippet 1

So, prompt 3 won, which was Ciel and Sebastian interacting with Ciel's look-alike that Sebastian made contract with! Here it is. Since people's wishes really differed, I'll post the remaining two prompts from this list anyway, but later. And thank you all <3

------------------

Almost reluctantly, Ciel looked up, and his heart dropped when he saw the so-called owner of this gaudy, tasteless house.

Like Sebastian said, it was a boy. He looked older, but Ciel couldn’t determine by how much.

What Sebastian hadn’t said was that this boy bore an eerie resemblance to him. A resemblance too strong to be a coincidence.

Biting his lip hard enough to hurt, Ciel examined this— person, his skin crawling just from the fact of his existence.

The boy had similar eyes and hair. Similar complexion. Similar bone structure. It was already hard to swallow, but the worst thing, the absolutely worst thing, hid in their differences.

This imposter was better looking.

The dismay that suddenly flooded him at the thought was startling enough to render him speechless.

Ciel had never compared his looks to anyone else’s before. This had never occurred to him, he’d never been concerned with such things, so it was all the odder that this particular realisation stole the ground from under his feet. He wavered, somehow even more upset now than he’d been five minutes ago, and Sebastian instantly reached to steady him.

“Don’t touch me,” Ciel snapped, reeling away and sending him a warning glare. Sebastian pursed his lips. He didn't say anything, so Ciel returned to observing his supposed replacement.

The boy was taller and had softer features. His hair curled in a way Ciel’s never had, and Ciel was suddenly seized by resentment so vicious that he had to fight a fierce impulse to grab a knife and cut each of those locks off. His blood boiled, sending heat to every part of him, and whatever expression he was wearing must have frightened the boy because he flinched back.

“W-who are you?” he stammered. “Are you… are you a demon, too?”

A demon? Ciel let out a derisive snort, watching the boy with narrowed eyes, trying to understand what could have possibly motivated Sebastian to make a contract with him.

If he were just hungry, then maybe, possibly, Ciel would have understood. But this boy looked too much like him for it to be an accident. What was this supposed to mean? Where had Sebastian even found him?

“My lord,” Sebastian said quietly. He was a disgusting traitor, but Ciel still glanced at him. “What would you like me to do?”

“Are you talking to me?” the boy asked. He sounded a little braver now. “I mean, you are, aren’t you? You are my demon.”

Rage, dark and burning, rose up to block his airways. Ciel clenched his fists, biting back a growl.

He wished he were a demon. Then he could rip this stupid excuse for a human apart with his own claws. He wished he had a demon he could trust to do this task for him. He wished he had a demon who would have never done what Sebastian did, who would have looked at this boy and dismissed him like a cockroach instead of elevating him to the status of someone special, choosing him, preferring him.

How could Sebastian do this? He’d nearly choked the life out of Ciel for thinking he’d been communicating with another demon, and meanwhile, he had this little second contract stashed in a hidden house? There was no punishment Ciel could think of that would rival what Sebastian deserved.

But he would think of it. He would make Sebastian regret looking away from him long enough to notice another contract.

He certainly wasn’t looking away now. All his attention was on Ciel.

“My lord?” he repeated. He didn’t even glance at the boy, but it was a very small comfort after everything he’d done.

“Kill him,” Ciel ordered through clenched teeth. Then he thought about Sebastian consuming this little idiot, taking his soul — kissing him. Because that’s how he’d said demons took souls. Through a kiss.

Nausea gripped him, chased by new floods of helpless anger.

Would this indignity never end? Would he be forced to watch Sebastian kiss this… abomination right in front of him?

No. Never.

They’d have to change their plans, then.

#my fics #sebaciel #black butler #kuroshitsuji #ciel phantomhive

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clanwarrior-tumbly · 1 year ago

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Could you do John and Gary x a demon reader with memory loss?

A powerful demon that got a head injury, and after being taken in by a human hospital, comedicly thinks they're a human, despite being a little too big for that. When they say "oh I'm a normal human, like everyone else", they're saying it genuinely, because they think their "condition" (being a demon) makes them look weird.

I think it would be funny to see headcanons of John trying to go along with it like "sure buddy, that house fire you were TOTALLY in sure messed up your face bad, glad that you're working well at the local library- sure man your face 100% doesn't scare me-"

While Gary is trying to convince this extremely powerful demon of his past only to be hit by "Oh, Sorry. I'm an atheist. I don't believe in demons, or god." By the poor oblivious demon lord.

I love this idea fhhshfw Demon!Reader just forgor

.......

John Ward

He was visiting the library to look for any leads regarding Gary Miller and finds you just,,,,chilling at the register.

It's broad daylight, it's semi busy, and everything seems a bit too normal.

But John still senses a great evil radiating from you and believes every human here is in grave danger.

Yet it's strange seeing you, a big and scary demon wearing their clothes, not have any urge to kill them or paint the halls with blood.

Meanwhile you only see a man who looks lost, forgetting that HE was the one Gary assigned you to eliminate.

"Are you finding everything okay, sir? Ready to checkout?"

"Um..not yet. Thank you." He speaks with great caution, nervously fidgeting with his crucifix. "You wouldn't happen to be the notorious demon-?"

"Demon?" You cut him off with a sigh. "...listen, I know my face looks scary. But that house fire gave me some pretty gnarly scars. I promise I'm a normal human being, just like you."

"....I see." Poor John is terribly confused, especially as you uttered that "normal human being" bs.

It appears you were brainwashed into believing you're human, and you attributed your demonic appearance to burns from a fire you supposedly escaped.

But in reality, you did get a severe head injury while punishing some defecting cultists for trying to burn Gary's writings.

You torched their home, although your physical form got viciously attacked..and a good samaritan found you passed out not long afterwards, taking you to the hospital.

The doctors saw your human skin (aka your disguise) sloughing off but assumed it was from the burns.

By that point you had terrible memory loss, forgetting your time in Hell, Gary's cult, your mission....and even your own species.

But you've quickly adapted to human life, as you began working full time at the library after recovering.

Still, John's not convinced. So he tries asking around, believing somebody was covering for you or was in allegiance with Gary.

Yet he gets only rude stares and remarks of how you were just a friendly volunteer trying to do their best.

He soon realizes you won't be of any use in helping him figure out Gary's plans...as you didn't even know who he was.

All you said was that he sounded like a "nice guy".

Gary Miller

Being just a rank below Malphas, you had the potential to wield great influence over the thralls/cultists on Earth.

So Gary summoned you to weed out the traitors in his cult who spoke of burning his books or revealing them to the public, but doesn't realize what ended up happening to you until much, much later.

A thrall spotted you leaving the hospital, and at first he thinks the cult's cover was blown.

Lucky for him, you apparently made up a story for the human doctors and they 100% believed it.

The next time he meets you for an update, you're happily working at the library dressed in human clothing.

Yet when he privately visits you during your coffee break, he realizes that this little "act" you're putting on may not be an act after all...

You don't remember him at all, and he wonders if this is some trick or not.

Becoming Astaroth for a moment, he forcibly summons you in Garyland, bewildered but trying to stay calm.

He still holds a great respect for all demons, of course.

"Tu es ultor animarum...what has changed? I've done everything you've asked me to and more. Do you grow weary of your duties?"

"....um.." You stare at him weirdly. "Was that Spanish you were speaking just then? And the only "duties" I know of are back at the library, so-"

"You recall...nothing? You don't even recognize the Great Duke of Hell standing before you?" He grows frustrated. "You were a great lord. You've dragged traitors into the Unseen World to-"

"Listen, no offense but...I'm atheist." You bluntly tell him. "It's fine if you believe in God and demons and stuff, but it's just..not my thing. Now how do I get out of here? I don't wanna miss the sweet old lady who comes in every now and then to see if we have any new cookbooks."

#clanask #anonymous #faith game x reader #faith x reader #faith the unholy trinity x reader #john ward #father john ward #john ward x reader #gary miller #gary miller x reader #headcanons #platonic #demon reader

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new-tella-us · 9 months ago

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Finally finished this thing! I posted the draft like weeks ago.

Okay, story time! This is a continuation of Damien’s main bad end “A demon til the day you die”.

Our story picks up 2 human years (so 10 demon years) after the bad end. Mika is gone and Damien is being tortured at his father’s request. The brothers all searched for any sign that Damien was alive but when they found Mika’s body, they assumed Damien was gone too. The war had turned out for the worse and the brothers, with their wives, were evacuated back to earth. Meanwhile Damien suffered, misery and hatred bubbling in his heart. He was so close to getting his happy ending but even that was stripped from him. However, in the darkness of his cell, he saw a little spirit. A purple orb with a weakened but potent aura. There was no doubt, it was Mika. She was gone but her soul wouldn’t rest until Damien was free. With the last of her power, she managed to briefly possess a guard and have them unlock Damien’s cell and chains.

Damien used his new found freedom to immediately exact revenge, taking the energy of any soldier that dared to cross him. He was part brute demon after all, he doesn’t need a kiss to take their energy. With energy stored and hatred on his mind, he fought his father once again and narrowly won. He was beaten, bruised, and bloodied but he had his father’s head. From there, he took the throne. Damien, the bastard child who should have had no connection to the throne, was now the next demon lord.

Now, Damien wasn’t a bad ruler. He was known to be fair. He gave back land that his father stole and paid for reparations. But he was an… odd king. He could read your thoughts so being within his circle meant forcing yourself into having 100% loyalty to him or else he would know. He also became powerful with easy energy to take out of any traitors. He was fair…but terrifying. Especially to those who’ve wronged him. The servants who took pleasure out of hurting him got to keep their lives and their jobs but they live in constant fear that Damien is planning some form of punishment.

It doesn’t help that Damien doesn’t seem the most mentally stable. He talks to an entity he calls “Mika” but to anyone looking on the outside, he’s speaking to thin air. Is her spirit simply so weak that only his mind reading can detect her or is she truly gone and he’s hallucinating? It’s hard to tell and that’s scary to others. Madness, after all, is an actual disease. If their new lord goes mad, it would be the Demon Lord’s reign all over again. Some have been talking about an assassination. Damien wouldn’t deserve it but, do they have a choice? They speak, unaware at just how powerful Damien’s mind reading has become. Even from miles away, he hears their plans.

Can he never even get a break? Even after forgiving his father’s wives for calling his mother a whore, even after forgiving the servants who harmed him, even after giving kingdoms back their land, including the Lilith kingdom. After all of that, and people want to cause him harm? Doesn’t he deserve some mercy? …It doesn’t matter. He has his eyes set on a different goal. Once he gets it, they can take his kingdom if they want, he’ll willingly give it to them. All he needs to do is bring back his love.

Mika. The one person who never left him behind.

A side note: Notice that Damien’s hair is now about half black. That is his true hair color slowly taking over as he has not been able to dye his hair. It’s meant to be a little symbolic. Like his life in the human world is fading away and he can’t bring it back. But also, he might be slowly going mad, like his father before him.

#seduce me #seduce me the otome #seduce me demon war #seduce me damien #redesign #seduce me fanart #this poor boy

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quite-right-too · 9 months ago

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Top five speeches from the Tennant era ?

1. The Satan Pit

But then you're clever enough to use this whole system against me. If I destroy this planet, I destroy the gravity field. The rocket. The rocket loses protection and falls into the black hole. I have to sacrifice Rose. So, that's the trap. Or the test, or the final judgment, I don't know. But if I kill you, I kill her. Except that implies in this big grand scheme of Gods and Devils that she's just a victim. But I've seen a lot of this universe. I've seen fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods, and out of all that, out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her.

2. The Christmas Invasion

I don't know! See, there's the thing. I'm the Doctor, but beyond that, I just don't know. I literally do not know who I am. It's all untested. Am I funny? Am I sarcastic? Sexy? Right old misery? Life and soul? Right handed? Left handed? A gambler? A fighter? A coward? A traitor? A liar? A nervous wreck? I mean, judging by the evidence, I've certainly got a gob. And how am I going to react when I see this, a great big threatening button. A great big threatening button which must not be pressed under any circumstances, am I right? Let me guess. It's some sort of control matrix, hmm? Hold on, what's feeding it? And what've we got here? Blood? Yeah, definitely blood. Human blood. A Positive, with just a dash of iron. Ah, but that means blood control. Blood control! Oh, I haven't seen blood control for years. You're controlling all the A Positives. Which leaves us with a great big stinking problem. Because I really don't know who I am. I don't know when to stop. So if I see a great big threatening button which should never, ever, ever be pressed, then I just want to do this.

3. The Family of Blood

He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing. The fury of the Time Lord. And then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons, why he'd run away from us and hidden. He was being kind. He wrapped my father in unbreakable chains, forged in the heart of a dwarf star. He tricked my mother into the event horizon of a collapsing galaxy to be imprisoned there forever. He still visits my little sister once a year every year. I wonder if one day he might forgive her, but there she is. Can you see? He trapped her inside a mirror, every mirror. If ever you look at your reflection and see something move behind you, just for a second, that's her. That's always her. As for me, I was suspended in time. And the Doctor put me to work standing over the fields of England, as their protector. We wanted to live forever, so the Doctor made sure that we did.

4. The End of Time (Pt. 2)

You weren't there in the final days of the War. You never saw what was born. But if the Timelock's broken, then everything's coming through. Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-have-been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-weres. The War turned into hell. And that's what you've opened, right above the Earth. Hell is descending.

5. The Waters of Mars

Yes, because there are laws. There are Laws of Time. Once upon a time there were people in charge of those laws, but they died. They all died. Do you know who that leaves? Me! It's taken me all these years to realise the Laws of Time are mine, and they will obey me!

#thnks fr th asks #hey nonny nonny #my post #tenth doctor #doctor who #david tennant #rose tyler

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daytaker · 10 months ago

Text

The Adversary

“What happened?” he kept asking. “What the hell happened?!” But I was Wrath, and Wrath doesn’t speak with words.

AN: This is a modified chapter from a longer fic of mine called "Let's All Be Shadows". (Link leads to ao3.) There are references to events from that story, but this can be understood without reading the long-fic.

POV: Satan Nightbringer Timeline Word Count: ~ 4500 Synopsis: Satan recalls his earliest months in the Devildom and a new revelation that hit him just recently. CW: violence, rage, blood, manual choking

Most of the fic is below the cut.

----

Nominative determinism.

That’s a philosophical theory that argues that people gravitate towards interests, careers, or behaviors that align with their name. Nominative—named. Determinism—fate.

The name Satan comes from an ancient human language; the Hebrew word הַשָּׂטָן (hasattan), which means “accuser” or “adversary”. So, following nominative determinism, that is my role. I am the opposition. I am the adversary.

And, following this human theme, if you asked the average human today, they’d probably tell you that Satan and Lucifer are both names for the same entity.

They wouldn’t be completely wrong.

----

The first thing I knew was a white hot pain. It exploded through me, starting at my core and bursting outwards. I was on fire. I was dying.

It’s ironic that birth and death must feel so similar.

I was in a fugue, then, for what felt like a long time. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t speak. I could only rage. Everything that approached me, I tore to shreds. I was feral. I was out of my mind. Flashes of memories are all I have of the beginning. There’s the taste of copper in my mouth and blood smeared over my face, on my hands, in my hair. I’m tearing at something that used to be alive. Then oblivion, and the next thing I recall is writhing on the floor in a dark room, the rough masonry scraping my bare back. I bled all over the Demon Lord’s dungeon, and I never stopped screaming.

I screamed until my throat bled, and after that, I screamed in choked, gargled bursts of sticky blood and saliva.

After the rage, the blinding heat, the blood, the broken nails and torn hair and shattered restraints… After that, there was him.

I hated him.

I knew who he was; what he was to me. It was instinct, the way a baby knows its mother. Lucifer was my mother.

I’ll never forgive him for that. I’ll never forgive him for making me.

Because he did. He made me. He put me here, a struggling, suffering, raging mess of tissue and blood and bile and hate.

I don’t think I can effectively put into words how badly I wanted to die. There’s no way to say it without sounding pathetic. But I wanted death in a way I can barely understand now. Everything hurt, and now he was here, and every nerve ending in my body seared with a sort of fuming hatred that I couldn’t understand. I still don’t understand it. The idea that I could end my own existence never crossed my mind, though. That didn’t feel like an option. He made me. I was his responsibility. He should be the one to liberate me.

Instead, he tied me up, cast enchantments, and put me into bondage; he prevented me from moving. 'For my own good,' he said. And there, where I couldn’t lash out with my body, when I couldn’t strike and bite and rip, when I could no longer express myself physically; that’s when I spoke my first coherent words. They were like pebbles on my tongue, awkward and slathered in saliva, garbled, but intelligible.

"Traitor," I growled in a strange voice; a voice I'd never heard before. "Look at the mess you made."

I used those words to remind him what he was. That was my violence. Words like:

Coward. Failure. Hypocrite. Pathetic. Weak. The worst thing to ever happen to the people who trusted you.

It was a chorus of insults designed to burn him. Babies nurse on their mothers. So did I. I nursed on his pain. I wanted so badly to hurt him the way he hurt me. And maybe, possibly, he’d do what he should have done the instant I was born into this world. Maybe he would lose his temper. Maybe he would kill me.

He didn’t. Obviously. He never even responded to what I said, in those early days. He’d just look me over, examining my body, treating the rash of scabs on my back and shoulders. He’d put this cooling salve on the sores, and it burned like ice on my skin. I screamed and I bit at him and I tried to show him what words, still so new and ineffective, refused to do for me. “I hate you. I will kill you.”

Sometimes he’d get this look on his face… This awful, sick… sad… sour look. Pity. It was just pity.

And it enraged me. How dare he pity me when this was his fault? I told him as much.

I told him everything back then, in those earliest days. Every thought that entered my head. I only knew three things: pain, hate, and Lucifer. And only one of those things could understand me.

My memories from then are fuzzy. Rather than a narrative, I recall a tapestry of impressions and sensations; reds and whites and blacks, flashes of green, and long stretches of gray. But some incidents stand out in my mind, clearer than all the others. In one, I was bound and naked—I wouldn’t wear clothes then, in the earliest days; I just shredded them when I had my hands free, and I screamed and tensed and scraped my body on the walls when I didn’t. I hated how they felt, hot fibers rubbing against nerve endings that were so raw I could barely think. But I was naked, and I was bound to a bed or a chair or something in the Demon Lord’s castle, and I was screaming, and tears and blood stung my eyes, and I told him:

“This was inside you all along, Lucifer! Look at me! I was inside you! This is you! I am you!”

And he sighed. He looked so tired, so pathetic. He ruffled my hair with a gentleness that ignited the rage inside me to a maddening level. And he said to me:

“I am me. You are you.”

I told him to eat shit, and he shrugged and cleaned me up.

I wonder if he was punishing himself, the way he always took care of me on his own. Or maybe it was just one of his self-imposed responsibilities; another thing he could do to convince himself he didn’t deserve to be miserable.

Back then, in those early days, he treated me like I was his child. I was his child. It always makes me sick to think about it that way, but he was my parent. He gave birth to me. He nursed me. He raised me. And just like so many parents since the dawn of time, he made me into a miserable facsimile of himself. I was Lucifer, but worse. I was Lucifer, but broken and ashamed and out of control. I was Lucifer, if Lucifer hated Lucifer. I didn’t want to be Lucifer.

“I am me. You are you.”

That’s easy enough to say when you’re the original. What about when you’re the parasitic thing that exploded from someone’s wounded body and heart? What then, Lucifer?

----

In spite of everything, I somehow made progress. I learned to dress myself, and to wear clothes without tearing them to shreds. I learned how to walk without erupting into an inferno of fury. I learned to speak without screaming. And that awful mother of mine was always with me, it seemed; always by my side. “Remember to breathe,” he’d say, or “Focus on what’s in front of you.” And I’d mutter curses at him, and I’d try; I’d try to do what he told me to do, and I’d feel so ashamed . But when I did what I was told, he’d give me things. Books, mainly, but also different foods, changes of scenery… So I did what I was told.

In some ways, I was as naive as a child. I remember the mystery of my first snowfall, touching it and putting it to my lips and staring at the impression of my handprint in the white blanket on the ground. But there were also plenty of things I never had to learn. I knew how to read and write; I understood, conceptually, that there was a Celestial Realm and a Devildom, and which one I was in. I knew that Lucifer had brothers and a sister, and I knew the sister was gone.

I knew about Lilith.

Lucifer says I often talked about Lilith in my early days. I don’t remember it myself, but he says I seemed fixated on her. I would sob and rage at him for letting her go, letting her die, twisting what was left of her and warping it into something ugly.

Lucifer said he thought it was because he was so heavily focused on Lilith when I was ‘born’; he supposes he must have imparted some strange impressions on me in his grief. I don’t remember any of that though, like I said, so I had to take his word for it.

I don't think that's the real reason anymore, though.

----

I remember meeting my brothers. Tch. My ‘brothers’....

“This is Satan,” Lucifer said to them. “He is your brother. I expect you to treat him as such.” They all stared at me as I sat bound and chained to a chair, gritting my teeth, and then they glanced at each other. They didn’t know what to say. And then they stared at me again, and I knew they were told how I’d erupted from Lucifer’s body, and I knew they had heard me screaming in the dungeon and down the otherwise quiet corridor of unused rooms, and I knew they were afraid. I knew.

But I was just six weeks old, and I was terrified too. And being terrified made me so angry. I struggled to swallow the rage, but it was only a matter of seconds before I choked out the first coherent thing that entered my mind, the words crescendoing into a grating scream by the end.

“They’re not my brothers!”

My vision wobbled, my head ached, and my muscles burned with an energy that could only be expelled with violence. I broke free from the chains around my wrists, and soon I was throwing things. Whatever I could get my hands on. A table. A painting. A priceless vase. Levi and Asmo and the twins scattered, and Mammon looked like he wanted to join them, but he didn’t. He stood uselessly in the middle of the hall as Lucifer grappled with me.

“O-oi, whadda you need?” he asked Lucifer, who responded by flapping his wings in irritation and grabbing onto my throat.

I grinned at him. I wanted to show him the worst, most sickening face he could possibly imagine. Lucifer’s expression hardly changed, but he squeezed, and I knew I’d succeeded. “Kill me,” I spat. I was crazy. I had lost my mind. It was empty of everything besides the hate. “Kill me, you scum. Kill me like you killed her.”

For a short while, I thought he might really do it. His fingers dug into my throat, his jaw clenched, and there was a rage in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before as I used some of my last stores of strength to strike him with my tail. Yes. He fed off my rage, and I fed off of his, and it was an infinite feedback loop. The border of my vision started to grow hazy, and my pulse was pounding in my ears, and…

He released me far too soon. Far, far too soon. I didn’t even fully lose consciousness; didn’t even get to enjoy a moment of oblivion. I’d just let myself go limp. I surrendered so easily. And that second of lowered resistance was all he needed to cast some binding enchantment on me and leave me irate and screaming, wheezing for breath, my pulse pounding in my face as my blood resumed circulating, and I wriggled on the floor like a worm. I felt like a worm.

Time was still so new back then. I couldn’t follow how it passed, and it seemed to dilate, stretching and squeezing, becoming longer and shorter based on my moods. And now, it all feels so long ago.

It was a lifetime ago, I suppose. From then to now, for me.

I wasn’t kept under lock and key. Not normally, at least. I was allowed to wander the Demon King’s castle. While Cerberus stalked the labyrinth below, I was treading the hallways above. I wonder how Lucifer convinced Diavolo to agree to that…

It never got better, though.

The rage.

I just learned to manage it. Slowly. Bit by bit. I’m still learning to manage it. Sometimes I slip.

I slip a lot, actually.

Books were my main solace in the Demon King’s castle, just as they are now in the House of Lamentation. Because I understand how little I know, and how valuable books are as resources.

But funny enough, that wasn’t why I became so interested in books at the start. I was far less interested in nonfiction than I was with novels. Reading a good novel…a really good novel… It can feel like a possession. Like you’ve entered someone else’s body and attuned yourself to someone else’s mind.

I wonder if others understand what a relief that is? I wonder if anybody can have any idea what others actually feel, and how it compares to yourself? It’s a question I sometimes get stuck on. The question alone takes me out of myself. I like that.

I didn’t care much about the real world when I was new. Why should I? The only things in it were Lucifer and his brothers, and I got enough of that already. I would rather be Azaz the Summoner, the demon who forged pacts with other demons in defiance of all natural laws. Or a young human boy living in the wilderness with wolves. I like stories like that.

No, what piqued my interest in the world outside was the butler.

I don’t know where he got the time, or why he cared enough to be bothered with it, but he told me about his own life. Only in the vaguest terms, of course; never touching on anything that felt truly personal. He talked of how ancient he was, and how he’d walked in the human world before humans ever did. And he told me about his room. He even let me look inside once. It’s shocking. Doors and stairs all over the place, leading to different places and times…

There’s no way for me to know if he was being honest with his stories, but he knew so much, it seemed insane to believe he was making it all up. He knew about the way the Devildom smelled when it was first inhabited by demons; he knew about the sulfur mines that shut down millennia ago, and the infrastructure that transformed the place into somewhere livable…

So I read some books about the ancient history of the Devildom. From what I could tell, his descriptions were accurate, and though he could have learned those things the same way I had, I didn’t feel he did. It felt more as if he was speaking from experience.

But when I read about the early Devildom, I wanted to learn about the fae. And when I read about the fae, I wanted to learn more about magic. And when I learned about magic, I wanted to learn more about curses, and magicians from all three realms, and soon I was no longer reading about fictional worlds, but my own. And I wanted so badly to see it.

----

When we moved into the House of Lamentation, Lucifer gave me the scroll. It was shiny and strange, and he told me it belonged to me, and that I should look it over when I was ready. He told me it had information about my birth. He made it sound like some sort of legal document, and it seemed to me that he wanted me to look at the thing sooner rather than later. So I tossed it on a high shelf and ignored it. I ignored it until you came to my room and started asking questions.

Lucifer came into my room the night I had you over. No knocking. He just burst in, arms crossed, wearing that disgusting look of beleaguered disappointment on his face. Like I’d let him down again. Like I owed him the consideration of trying to do anything else…

“You had a guest today, I heard.”

I was sitting on my bed, reading a book about who-knows-what. I’ve forgotten. He made me forget. And I was suspicious. Why was he speaking like that? Why wouldn’t he just say what he meant? I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of an answer, so I glared at the page of my book without seeing a single word.

Lucifer continued. “Did you become angry? Or were you cruel out of some new, cold sadistic streak?”

I threw my book at him and he dodged it with ease. Then he continued as if I hadn’t tried to smash his face in. “Or perhaps it was unintentional. But it seems you left our attendant in a state of deep distress. What did you discuss?”

“Get out of my room, bastard.”

I turned and lied on my side, back to him, and I dragged my tail over the bedspread. I was working away at it, slowly turning it to ribbons as the threads hooked onto and snapped over the sharp spines. I knew he hated it when I did things like that. And he knew I knew, so he pretended not to notice.

Irritating.

For about three minutes, I laid there, and he stood there, and neither of us said a word.

“Why does it matter?!” I finally snapped. I found myself tugging at my hair in irritation. Every part of my body feels so unnecessary when I’m agitated, from my hair to my horns to my skin. “Why won’t you leave?”

“You should be more careful with whom you share family matters.”

I actually spat out a laugh. Was he serious? I rolled back over and sneered at him. “Why’s that? Anyway, isn’t this all more or less a matter of public record? The entire Devildom knows how I came into the world.”

“Hm. So that’s what you discussed.” He nodded, and there was something supremely cocky in his mannerisms that made me want to strangle him. But I couldn’t strangle him. So I did the next best thing.

“Lilith came up.”

I stared at him, and I saw the flicker of emotion on his face when he heard that name. That name… Lilith… It’s a name I could use to hurt him. That’s all I was thinking when I sharpened it like a knife.

“I don’t understand why anyone would be cautious talking about Lilith with me,” I said nonchalantly. “But I guess my ‘guest’ thought I would be bothered. Tiptoeing around the fact that she died. As if I would be devastated over it.” I laughed, but it was hollow, and I wasn’t getting the reactions I wanted.

I doubled down.

“Really, I’m glad I never had to deal with her. She sounds infuriating. When you get down to it, the entire war was her fault. All because she couldn’t stand some human dying ten or twenty years before he would have ended up dying anyway.”

I could sense his rising annoyance, but it was too tempered. He knew I was trying to get a rise out of him, so he wasn’t as angry as he might have been otherwise.

“She was your sister,” Lucifer said. He had a strange voice when he said it.

I laughed again. “Right. Like they’re my ‘brothers’. But I never even met her. She’s just some idiot who threw away her life and all your lives for a single stupid human. She’s a stranger. She means nothing to me. She has nothing to do with me. And she deserves what she got.”

Lucifer was quiet for a few seconds. I couldn’t tell if I’d struck a nerve or not. He wasn’t so upset that he reacted, though, which annoyed me.

“She has nothing to do with you?” he echoed.

“Nothing whatsoever.”

His eyes roamed around the room, and they quickly fixed on that damn scroll, as if it was a homing beacon.

“You haven’t read that yet, have you.” It wasn't a question.

I felt another sharp jab of annoyance. “It doesn’t interest me.”

“Don’t be pointlessly stubborn, Satan.”

“What do you care?” I snapped. “Did your attendant come crying to you? Did that break your heart? You just can’t stand seeing someone in pain, is that it?”

“It’s not like you to be intentionally ignorant.”

“Didn’t you say it’s just a record about my birth? I don’t want to know anything else about how I was born. I hate what I already do know.” I jumped out of bed and stalked towards him. If he wasn’t going to walk out the door on his own, I’d gladly help him get there. “And it’s completely like you to dodge a question.”

“You weren’t asking that to hear the answer.”

Again, irritating.

“Why does it matter if I read that thing?”

“Because it concerns you. You should understand how you came to be.”

“I know how I came to be,” I growled. “You pulled your wings off and bled all over and cried. Am I wrong?”

Lucifer lowered his arms to his sides and frowned deeply at me, but he didn’t say anything. Something about that...scared me. Something about that filled me with dread, like I’d suddenly found myself on the edge of a precipice. But dread can’t exist inside me for long. Soon, it had churned through my body and hardened into something more familiar.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I growled. He didn’t say a thing, and he didn’t move. My stomach roiled in my gut. The frustration and disappointment were no longer evident on his face. Instead, I felt like I was a newborn again, “Stop looking at me like you’re worried about me! Like you pity me! It makes me want to vomit!”

I lunged at him. He reacted with the strength and dexterity I’d come to expect. I could never land a blow on Lucifer. If I hadn’t been so damn angry I wouldn’t have even tried. But my entire being ached with rage, and I acted without thinking. I felt so weak. I felt so helpless. I stood there, struggling to free myself, and he stood over me, my fists in his hands, that same, awful, pitying look on his face that he used to have back at the Demon King’s castle. Seeing that look…

“Why do you look at me like that?!” Hot, angry tears blurred my vision and burned my eyes. “Your face always makes me sick, but I can’t stand it when you look at me like that! Why can’t you hate me?!”

And before I could do anything else, I was bound up. Again. Just like I used to be, back in Diavolo’s place. I screamed, and I sobbed, and I felt like I had felt when I was first born. Like nothing but wrath, poisonous wrath, was coursing through my veins. And I felt arms around me—his arms, and I couldn’t push him away, so I just screamed as he embraced me. Like he had any right to embrace me! Why couldn’t I make him leave?! How dare he touch me?! I’d kill him. One day, I’d kill him!

It had been a long time since I’d been that angry. I think it took a toll on my body, because I slipped off to sleep without realizing I'd ever slowed down, and when I woke up, I was in bed, unbound and alone.

My body was sore from straining all my muscles the night before, and I felt groggy and unwell, like I’d been drunk on rage and woke with a hangover. I stepped out of bed and looked around the room. I felt I was searching for something.

Again, like a homing beacon. The celestial glow drew my eyes.

My fingers twitched.

I took the scroll from the shelf and untied it. I hated that I was giving in to him so easily. But what choice did I have? I had half a mind to burn the thing unread, but it slipped open and the words appeared before my eyes in a language I barely recognized. A human language, bizarrely. It appeared to be Latin. It used Latin characters, at least.

ANNO MMCDXCI REGNI GARDONI MAGNI A SANGUINE LUCIFERI ET CORPORE LILITHAE IN REGNO QUOD INTER REGNA EST CREATURA NOVA E PACTIONE SANGUINE CONSIGNATA APPARET. EX AMATO AD AMATUM IN ACERBISSIMO MORTIS DOLORE CORPUS CORPUS ITERUM FIT ET SANGUIS SANGUIS ITERUM FIT. HAEC PACTIO IN TERRA NEUTRIUS PARTIS CONCELEBRATUR AB INFERNO CONFIRMATA NEQUE A CAELO RECUSATA. SATANUS, ADVERSARIUS, NATUS EST.

TESTATUM PER DIAVOLUM, GARDONI MAGNI FILIUS NATURALIS TESTATUM PER BARBATOS, DAEMONUS TESTATUM PER LUCIFERUM, ANGELUS LAPSUS

----

I wandered to Lucifer’s study. It was empty. It took awhile to find the right sort of dictionary, but eventually, I had what I needed. And I got to work.

Within the hour, I was rampaging around the house. Mammon tried to get me under control, but he was never able to contain me. Only Lucifer ever did that.

“What happened?” he kept asking. “What the hell happened?!” But I was Wrath, and Wrath doesn’t speak with words.

----

Playing the adversary is hard work. It’s exhausting. It makes me miserable. But I have to do it. It’s my role. It’s my name. And I’m made out of Lucifer’s wrath. He must feel so much lighter without all that anger weighing him down. How nice for him. But when I learned about what else I was…

I’m Lilith, you know? I’m made out of her.

For some reason, that made me crazy.

----

IN THE 2491st YEAR OF THE REIGN OF THE GREAT GARDONUS, FROM THE BLOOD OF LUCIFER AND THE BODY OF LILITH, IN THE REALM BETWEEN REALMS, A CONTRACT SEALED WITH BLOOD BRINGS FORTH A NEW ESSENCE. OF BELOVED, BY BELOVED MADE, IN THE AGONY OF DEATH, BODY AGAIN BECOMES BODY AND BLOOD BECOMES BLOOD ANEW. THIS DOCUMENT BEING LEGALLY SOLEMNIZED ON NEUTRAL GROUND, SANCTIFIED BY HELL, UNCONTESTED BY HEAVEN. SATAN, THE ADVERSARY, IS BORN.

WITNESSED BY DIAVOLO, NATURAL SON OF THE GREAT GARDONUS WITNESSED BY BARBATOS, DEMON WITNESSED BY LUCIFER, FALLEN ANGEL

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