Explanation

When Mephisto emerges at length from his chamber, he's particularly disheveled-looking, wrapped, like Semjaza, in a robe, hair in disarray and with high flashes of color on his cheeks. Given the continued noises from behind the securely closed door, and the stench of sex just behind it, it took very little imagination to figure out why. Semjaza tips his helmet approvingly before abruptly vanishing in the barest swirl of feathers.

All is silent for a moment. Mephisto glares at Lucifer, and she returns a look of flat disapproval. I stand to the side, thus far unimpressed.

"We have a problem." intones Lucifer.

"No, we have two." he pointedly jerks a thumb back at the door. "Problem one, being that this is the greatest celebration we've had in a century and I'm not in there enjoying it, and problem two, being that I had a full million riding on that bet."

"Those aren't problems," says Lucifer, giving him an absolutely thunderous expression, at the same time as I cut in, "What bet, exactly?". My eyes are narrowed, and Mephisto regards me rather detachedly, almost imperiously.

"The interesting one. Pertaining generally to the sexual preferences of our fearless leader, and specifically to the gender of her long-overdue first partner." He shrugs.

"Congratulations; now, in the interest of recouping at least a degree of my losses, who topped?"

I stare at Lucifer, who now looks rather like she would like to clobber Mephisto soundly about the head. An indignant look is spared for me.

"Seriously?" I quip, because honestly, if this is the devil, then the devil is kind of a gigantic loser. "You predate goddamn creation, and you're still a virgin? What, waiting for marriage or something?"

She takes a deep breath, closing her eyes and stretching her wings. "It would be unbefitting of my station." She mutters through gritted teeth, still a little flushed in embarrassment. "I'm a goddamn archangel; Heaven and I just have some… creative differences."

"She's also terrified of interacting with people on any grounds that are less than entirely intellectual, and carrying a gigantic torch for Gabriel." Mephisto drawls, ignoring the whiplash turn Lucifer gave to stare scandalized daggers at him. "You look just a little like her, skinny, pale-skinned, girlishly androgynous; hair's just the wrong color."

"Is that so." I mutter to myself, suddenly wishing I was a good deal drunker for this conversation. "Luci, do I really look like your angel ex-girlfriend? Because that's really kind of creepy."

"Wha- NO! Jesus fuck, no, Gabriel wasn't- isn't my, girlf-"

She's spluttering something unintelligible, and I try to cut through. "Yeah, that's…" Mephisto gives me an amused smile. "I think we broke her."

"I'll get you a picture sometime; the resemblance is really quite uncanny." Lucifer looks frantically up at me, and she's literally all panic, trembling slightly, rolling her hands and hyperventilating; feathers puffed out as far as they can go. This is literally the third time this has happened in the last forty-eight hours. Starting to wonder if there's some sort of mental illness at work here.

"We… I didn't…" She says nearly inaudibly, voice shaking dangerously. "With either of them. You- you've still got your money; nothing happened, nothing happened…" She's sort of, drawing into herself, compressing into as small a space as she possibly can, sliding down the wall and wrapping her wings around her as tightly as they could go, into a little feathery tent.

Mephisto sighs. "Of course…" I look at him uncertainly, unsure of the course of action from here on out. Semjaza might've actually been helpful here. "Give me a second, we can all talk in my office."

I watch in equal parts enraptured and horrified fascination as he rolls up the bathrobe, takes a silver knife, which, apparently has just spontaneously appeared from the ether, and slices a clean, shallow line into his arm. Tucking the instrument back into the bathrobe sleeve, he daubes at the blood, paints some sort of squiggly, complicated symbol (Jesus. He's drawing a dick; why?) onto the door and utters some inaudible incantation, before the …symbol… abruptly goes up in flames. All noise from the room ceases.

"They're in another chamber; it's perfectly fine." He says, answering the unasked question. "Surprised maybe, but fine." He then turns to Lucifer, still nervously curled against the wall. "Take a couple deep breaths, get yourself together, then come in and we can talk. I've got Rosshalde, and we're going to chat for a minute while we're waiting." With that he turns and enters the office and I, after a last look at the crumpled archangel (Archfiend?), follow suit.

"So what exactly just happened out there?" I ask decisively as the door clicks shut. Mephisto snorts at that, motioning me over to a rather handsome couch and table set, set up against a roaring fireplace.

"Could ask you the same thing. Brandy?" He proffers an elegant glass decanter to me and I shake my head politely, indicating the Starbucks cup.

"Already been offered something; with all due respect, this is Hell, I'm not going to partake until I'm certain it won't kill me."

"Your loss." He shrugs and then quaffs half of it straight from the decanter, raising the remainder in a toast to what appeared to be the mounted head of a hellhound, and tips it directly into the fire, where it crackles and spits quite merrily.

We watch the flames for a moment. "Your friend out there is having a panic attack." He finally says, rather dully. "It's not the first, won't be the last, and it's probably not an entirely unfamiliar scenario to you."

I think back. In the bathroom. After Uriel appeared. Talking with Semjaza. Azrael, in general. "Not this bad though. She's always been…" I gesture oddly with my hands. "Functional, is probably the best word."

"She's always had a bit of a crack in her chassis; the odd one out." He seems suddenly very quietly resigned. "She, he then, actually, led the rebellion from Heaven, and we all followed him because we thought that he wanted what we wanted. We all wanted free will, certainly, but we tended to want it for the things that come of it. For love, or sex, or worship; things not allowed in Heaven. For her, I think though, freedom was enough." His voice takes on a nostalgic tone, and his gaze suddenly seems to be elsewhere.

"Before the fall, Heaven was a bit like a beehive; the host, your brothers and your sisters, all around you and the Father above. Oneness was… difficult, to find. Lucifer was just the one little cog that couldn't mesh with the others." Mephisto laughs under his breath, a soft huff of noise. "Little… I denigrate our leader. The Morningstar was a prince among the Seraphim, a bonfire in a forest of candles. We all tore away with him, followed the light, fought alongside him, and fell with him." That quiet huff, once again.

"Or, at least, we fell. Maybe he's still falling. Too singular," (Prideful,) My mind echoes, though the word doesn't seem to fit. "for Heaven, too virtuous for Hell, so he goes to find his loneliness in study on Earth. It's why we were all so excited when she descended with you in her wings." Mephisto suddenly seems less detached, drawn up into the heart of subject, and it's a disconcertingly visceral feeling to have that attention directed at me.

"I can't speak for everyone, but I'm fairly content here. It's nothing like Heaven, but that's perfectly fine by me. Lucifer though, she wants the quiet contemplation they've got there, just with a little more solitude."

"She's not happy. She's content, but she's not happy, and she's always been too damn noble, too earnest, too distant to do anything about it. To let us do anything about it. To prove that you can take the divine narrative and trash it all, and then not reap any of its fruits, is just a little depressing. It's why everyone was so particularly intrigued when she brought you here."

And then, with an effort, his mood lightened and he cracked a smirk. "So, I'll ask again. For the aforementioned reasons, I'm glad to pay up, but in hopes of lightening my financial burden, I'd be sincerely pleased if you said you were on top."

"Oh. Um…" My mouth is dry, and I suddenly regret not asking for a bit of the brandy offered to me. "That's the thing." I finally manage, mostly intelligibly. "We never actually did anything. I don't think she meant to take me here; it's what she was going to talk to you about-"

"Bullshit," Mephisto flatly countered, looking me dead in the eyes. "She likes you; but she's just to chickenshit to say anything. Doesn't want to press upon you, perfectly content to pine like a goddamn drowned puppy." He snorts once again, with a fond sort of amusement. "She's good at making the most of excuses, but I guarantee you, if she didn't want you here, you'd be hanging up in Heaven right now. It did have something to do with Heaven, right?"

"We were unlawfully accosted." Came a hoarse voice and we both started. "By the archangel Uriel." Lucifer, still rather bedraggled and flushed-looking, gingerly stepped through the slightest crack in the door and closed with a slow, measured movement as to prevent as much noise as possible.

"Ah." said Mephisto, not moving from his perch on the couch, craning his head around to watch her. "I thought I smelled grace on you. What happened there?" He frowns. "You do realize that I can't help you if you were packing, right?"

"I wasn't packing," she said, slightly petulantly. "I had a chamber of Guf on me, but that was for the birds, and all I used it for was to break through his barrier."

"There was a barrier?" Mephisto asked, now seeming just a bit interested.

"Raphael was incoming, so I just blew a hole in it. He probably picked Uriel up; I'd grounded him."

"Dare I ask how?" said Mephisto, with the air of one who knew he probably wasn't going to like the answer.

Lucifer gave him a rather dead stare, and began impassively rattling out injuries. "Ripped one wing off entirely, burnt and then froze several others down to the quill knobs, broke several ribs and five or six appendicular bones, fractured a vertebrate via blunt force trauma, and then bit out his throat. Self-defense." She turned to me and she suddenly looked more careworn than I'd ever seen her. Kind of burnt-out. "I do apologize for my unseemly behavior earlier; I was in a state of rather extreme distress."

"No," I said, somewhat uncomfortably. "Hey, it's fine, we've all got our crosses to bear." The room at large winced, and I amended myself. "Sorry, awkward work choice, but you get my drift. You don't need to apologize." I tentatively reached out and patted her arm, some of that tension leaching out of her body as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. With that trusting weight in my arms, I slowly maneuvered her onto the couch next to me, as I might've posed her for a sketch, and Mephisto smirked an 'I-told-you-so' sort of expression at me. I half-heartedly flipped him off and he doubled up with silent laughter, a grin overtaking his entire face.

"So can we bring up some sort of injunction against them for this?" her voice is distant and calm, muted like the colors of a winter dusk, quiet as the ending thrum of a violin set. "We were unarmed, only attacked in self-defense, and several bystanders were killed in the conflict. Hell's jurisdiction was disrupted, and we've just gotten on friendly terms with them…"

Mephisto affects a pensive expression, although the ghost of a smile still lines his face. "We could take it up with the pagans; Ahura Mazda would probably side with us, and he still commands some respect up there. I can't promise too much more than an official condemnation of Uriel's actions, assuming he acted spontaneously, but even if it was officially condoned, with the way you trashed him, they won't send anyone besides Michael down for a second attempt."

Lucifer shrugs impassively, gives a slightly strained smile. "So that's our worst-case scenario? Prizefight with Michael? I can deal with that." she presses an elegant fingertip to her temple, rifles through her unruly hair, sighs, and I'm suddenly reminded of the birdlike creature that spontaneously appeared in my apartment; the images overlaid like a magic eye drawing. "Should I send a message or something?"

"I'll get Mammon to do it once he sobers up; gives me an excuse to tell him I don't owe him a damn thing." Mephisto's entire expression is one of smug triumph; clearly, he's to relish this task. "In the meanwhile, I intend to make the most of the event while it lasts and return to my rudely-interrupted orgy, and I recommend you do the same."

Lucifer makes a noise of protest but Mephisto quashes her with a wave of his hand. "The party, not the orgy." He shrugs casually, and I snicker like the teenage boy all of us are deep inside. "Unless you want to, of course; most of Hell would be quite enthusiastic about the prospect. You've got quite the little fan club down here."

With that, he peels himself effortlessly from the couch and fastidiously straightens out his robe, before, almost offhandedly, turning back and addressing me. "A fair warning, Rosshalde, although your caution is admirable, I'd highly recommend quaffing the lot of that little brew you've brought with you. You'll need it, if plan on doing any sort of extracurricular activities tonight." With that, he vanished, leaving us alone.

"So that's Mephistopheles, then?" I ask, quizzically. "Interesting enough fellow; Goethe certainly captured his essence." I pause for a moment, a thought bubbling to the surface. "Is there a Faust down here anywhere?" I'd enjoyed that particular play; the first half, at least. Never quite gotten around to the second one.

"Probably somewhere in this building." Lucifer carded through her hair again, sighed. "One of the most recent residents of Hell; fairly similar to how you got here, actually. Pledged his soul to Mephisto, and all that. That's just about the only way anyone ever goes to Hell, now."

I motion for elaboration, genuinely curious now. Lucifer shrugs. "There's not too much else to say, Gretchen's in Heaven, naturally, and he finally just got over that, so he and Mephisto are sort of heterosexual-lifemates again. I'd be willing to bet that they're probably together right now, blurring lines in one of the atria."

"Perhaps later might be a better time for a meeting then." I remark, flushing just a little bit at the mental image. A natural pause follows, where I become fully conscious of the fact that, somehow, in the process of this conversation, Luci has ended up pressed up against me on the ridiculously wide couch, her wing is gently cradled around my back, and we're exchanging an intense, soulful look. This is awkward. Her eyes are very blue, and she has a very interesting, sharp-lined face and soft, sort of poofy hair, and she's looking at me like she finds me just as interesting, but this is still very, very awkward. No one says anything.

"So." I say, in an attempt to break the increasingly long and ridiculous silence. "Are we staying in here, or…?"

"Honestly?" She sighs, slumps back against the couch, staring at the ceiling. "I'd like nothing more right now."

"Probably should go out there, though." I offer, halfheartedly. It was a very raucous affair out there, and I still wasn't sure I liked all the eyes on us. "Set the record straight, get some work done?"

"It'd be the smart thing to do, yeah."

Neither of us moved from the couch. It turns out that Mephisto, in addition to the spectacular south view of the lake of eternal fire*, kept both terrifying jars of blood and small fetuses, and delicious sandwiches in a small mini-fridge under his desk. The expensive-looking parchment paper, used entirely up in Luci's attempts to fill the room with paper cranes ("For revenge." She had clarified after a couple of Meaningful Looks.) and in mine to produce several differently angled practice sketches of the room's more interesting decorations, was only a bonus.

*HAHAHA A LITERAL** FEUERSEE. Everyone likes German geographical puns, right?

**I suppose that a more literal translation would be "der ewigen Feuersee", but I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that nobody else cares.