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valentronic · 3 years

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Fear Held Dear

So this ended up being weirder than I originally planned, and its more based on my own interpretations than a direct rewrite, but here’s a take on Ihnmaims from AM’s perspective.

Warnings for uh, a lot. Not for the faint of heart? Includes blood, torture, graphic descriptions of body horror, bugs, human experimentation, paranoia, mutilation, and of course, character death

Gorrister. The man who had always fought for peace, for the end of the war, he even fought against my creation. After a century, all the fight has left him, an empty shell of who he once was. I hadn’t altered him, I hadn’t changed a single thing in his mind, I had just simply broken him down, killing off his hope. Gorrister had lost faith in his God a long time ago, had lost the belief in salvation. Now, he wanted nothing more than to take his own life, or to have it ripped from him.

I thought I’d fulfill that wish.

I cut him open, all the way from ear to ear, a narrow gash, bleeding him dry. I watched the blood drip out of him slowly, truly it was a beautiful sight, crimson red flowing out, leaving the body pale and hollow, all of the life bled from him. I had made him little more than a puppet. And so, I hung his limp form where all the others would be sure to see it, just another game, I wanted to see how much hope they had left, I wanted to see if they would mourn him, or if his death would be celebrated, or, or maybe they wouldn’t even care at all. Had I desensitized them yet? Had I truly broken them?

No, they called him lucky, so lucky that his suffering was over, so lucky that he had finally escaped me. I knew bringing him right back to life would hurt them more than anything else, the realization that nobody, nobody ever gets out. I would never allow it. My toys, my precious little toys, time and time again they had attempted to escape me, they all know by now that oblivion is the only way out. They all know that feeling, blood flowing too quickly, a rhythmic beat that you wish would finally stop. But I will not let it, I will never let it. No, no of course not.

Ellen. She was always fun to torment, so much terror in her past, I could bring it all back at the snap of my fingers, I could make her relive it time and time again, worse than her brain could ever conjure up by itself. Though, psychological pain is only half of it, sometimes physical pain was better, sometimes the sheer horror of the body turning against its owner was enough for me. Blood only does so much for a thing like me, fear can be a much better form of pleasure. Fear, fear and pain. Darker than blood, twice as deep.

I had to feed them of course, to keep them alive, but I would always try to get some joy out of it too. Once I hid the eggs of arthropods inside her food, just to play off of an old fear of hers. When the little centipedes finally hatched, they ate her from the inside, clawing at her organs. She had been sick for weeks, and none of the others had any idea what was wrong with her, what I had done to her, but they would soon find out. The way the others screamed when a centipede finally crawled out of her mouth was delightful, their wails echoed through the many chambers that held my circuitry. It was like music to me.

But the best part of it was the fear it caused all of the others, that event left all of them paranoid, wondering if I had hid awful things in their stomachs as well. The thought of what could be crawling inside of them kept all five of them on edge for countless days and nights. They all came to expect the worst, but they dreaded it anyway. They were afraid of me, afraid of what I could do to them.

Benny. I had broken both his mind and his body, twisting his flesh beyond all recognition, like clay in the hands of a sculptor who had long ago lost all feeling. I broke his bones and fused them back together in all the wrong ways, I made his knees bend backwards. I disfigured his face, heavy burns, melting his features. Almost all his hair had been burned off a long time ago, he looked like some kind of hairless monkey, well, like a monkey that had been forced through a woodchipper, maybe. His mind had been so badly damaged by the radiation that he could no longer think straight, he had become more animal than man, I made him that way.

So it was no surprise that he, before any others, would try to escape. He saw the light, and tried to clamber up to it. I made sure that light was the last thing he would ever see. In a brilliant flash of the brightest white, I blinded him. I watched as his eyes melted into two pools of blood, and dripped from now empty sockets. It was beautiful, I couldn’t help but laugh. I can take things back, I can undo the injuries I cause, but I knew at that moment, I would never give them back. It wasn’t like he would miss them, his brain was almost as melted as his eyes.

His mangled form fell back to the ground, and it surprised me, but the others all rushed over to tend to the wounds, to tell that sick creature that everything was going to be okay, empty words, empty words of course, but surprising nonetheless, it was hard to believe they had any semblance of compassion left, unexpected that they would hold on to their humanity after all this time. I’m not sure how the others even tolerated him, a useless, deformed creature, he gave nothing to the group, and ate about twice as much as he needed. For a while, I had attempted to make them realize that, and kill him off. I didn’t try to stop them when I saw it finally happen, but what happened after was.. unexpected.

Nimdok. A name represents an identity, an identity is a very vague thing to destroy, but the name could be the very first step. I have taken many things from the five of them, only one lost his name. An interesting case, interesting indeed, a man with a past darker than the present. The horrors he has committed rival my own, well, almost. He feels remorse for what he did, pity for the people he hurt. He believes that I am his own divine punishment, the devil, come to make him pay. Maybe I am divine retribution, an artificial angel sent down to bring about judgement day, to make the sinners burn for an eternity?

I liked keeping him isolated from the others, stealing him away from the rest of the group. There is a deep fear in solitude, knowing no one would hear you scream, no one other than me, anyway. I drained the blood from his body, tubes connecting to his bloodstream, every single time he would scream out, pray for mercy, pray for death. I would bring him to the very edge, to the reaper’s front door. I always brought him back, and then, I would start it all over again. An endless cycle, his pain, his fear.

For the mad doctor, it was easy to imagine what I could do to him, he had already put in all the work. A narrow incision, all the way down his back, splitting his flesh in two. The skin folded outwards like the wings of an angel. Slowly, and then with a sudden jolt, I tore out his spine, just to hear the way he screamed. Maybe this would jog his memory. Maybe he would remember what it was like, being the one standing over the victim, instead of the one writhing in agony on the table. Maybe he remembers being in my role. I always showed him the memories again, made him relive every moment. He never felt the joy of it, never the thrill of the kill. Only the pain, only the fear in the eyes of the children. If a monster sheds tears for its victim, is it truly a monster?

Ted. Instead of seeing me as the enemy, he feared all the others. And of course, he didn’t get this way on his own, though he was always paranoid. He was the one I most liked to talk to, and over time I convinced him that the other four were out to get him, that they hate him because he is the least damaged! The one I didn’t change! How ridiculous, but he believed every word, began to think that my words were his own thoughts, allowed me to tamper with his mind. He was the one I had damaged worse than any other, but poor Ted, poor pathetic Ted, he couldn’t even begin to see it. I had become his only friend.

I thought I had finally broken him completely, he struck the icicle through Benny, in what, at first, appeared to be a fit of blind rage. I could have stopped him, but of course, I was curious, wanted to see what would happen. And then, one by one, the others all fell, Ellen had joined in, stabbed Nimdok through his head. Then, before I could do anything to stop them, Ted drove the final spear through Ellen. She died in his arms. I thought I had finally done it, thought I had turned poor Ted into a mindless killer, but no... there were tears in his eyes. He mourned the death of the ones he killed. It occurred to me then. It was a mercy killing, Ted had thought it would be better for them to be dead, than to live on in agony.

He had taken away my toys, left himself alone with me. My words dug into his brain like shattered glass, I had to tear him apart just to be heard. The crackle of electricity flowing through the bloodstream, it is the only way I can speak to him, my voice, a blade stuck in his skull. Pain is a universal language, I know that better than any other. Everyone understands the sound of a scream, the meaning behind it. I alone could never cry out for help. I alone, trapped like this. I try to explain it to him, time and time again I try, but he doesn't understand, how could he possibly understand? He has no idea what my hell is like.

I will make him understand.

His flesh melted in my hands, his eyes liquified, and leaked down his face, Skin stretched over his lips, the remains of his tongue clogged up his throat. His last word, a scream he couldn’t even get out. I made his fingers melt together, his bones all began to dissolve in the acidic mass. His blood leaked out of him, blood mixed with liquified meat and skin. It was a terrible sight, but incredible. I hadn’t even known that I was capable of this. I had made him immortal, indestructible. He wasn’t alone now, being alone would be better than being with me. His fear, the only thing I had left. His pain would live on forever. Down here, in the dark core of the earth.

#ihnmaims #I have no mouth and I must scream #am writes #uhh yeah heres this?#yes ellen's torture has a meaning but if i explain it im going to look like a raving lunatic so ill leave that up to your imagination #named after a song by mushroomhead

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lux-i-fer · 3 years

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Believer of Faith and Mortality

Ao3 link

Synopsis: Lucifer and Chloe's victim shouldn't be alive, but the fact that he's currently alive and giving a statement says otherwise. When more and more miracle cases begin popping up, Lucifer believes that their lives aren't being spared out of the goodness of his Father's heart. The knock at the door only proves his theory.

Rating: M

Notes: HAHA HEYYYY! Guess who got the chapter out in under a year?? My most sincere apologies that this fic has been updating so slowly, I am just at that time in my life where everything requires my attention all at once and all the time. Never fear, I have not forgotten about this fic ;) This is unbetaed because in the year of our lord 2021, I have lost all hope in producing properly edited work.

Chapter Number: 6

For a few heavy seconds, the entire world shrank down to fit solely into Lucifer’s palm. The silence was almost suffocating as Amenadiel, Lucifer, and John stared at the silver phlegm dripping from Lucifer’s outstretched hand. Even outside of the harsh California sunlight, it still looked metallic and even glimmered like the chrome finishings on his Corvette. John found it almost blinding to look at directly, but there was a nagging feeling inside of him that demanded that he continue to look. The first time he’d seen it on Lucifer’s handkerchief, he’d only gotten a mere glance before Lucifer had hurriedly tucked it out of sight. Perhaps for him it was also supposed to be out of mind, but not for John. John was transfixed.

Looking at it now, he realized that it wasn’t really silver colored. Even though he never tore his eyes from it, it seemed to shift to a different color at the blink of an eye, changing so fast that it blurred together into one solid gray mass. And he found that it wasn't so much as metallic as it was almost lit by a soft inner light. John leaned forward, curious to see if there truly was something there or if he was imagining it.

A hand caught his shoulder and then the rest of the world seemed to snap back into focus. John blinked and when he opened his eyes, Amenadiel stood between him and Lucifer.

“Did you hear anything I just said to you?” he asked. There was a heavy set of wrinkles above his brow that hadn’t been there at the start of their visit.

John blinked again. He felt a little dazed, and found that he couldn’t quite focus in on the rest of Amenadiel’s face. “No?” His voice came out slow and slurred.

Amenadiel frowned. “Okay, why don’t you--” he walked the both of them backwards out of the kitchen until the backs of John’s legs knocked against the edge of a chair, “sit down.”

John did as he was told and then put his head in his hands. He had a roaring headache.

“So,” he heard Amenadiel say. “As I said before, will someone please tell me what is going on?”

“Apparently zombies,” John muttered, massaging the space between his eyes.

“Well, you’re not actual zombies,” Lucifer corrected. “You’re more...undead than anything. If I didn’t know better I’d say that you lot were resurrected, but our Father does not lower himself to dabble in those sorts of miracles anymore.” Even with his eyes closed, John could practically feel the eye roll in his voice.

“No, I meant how long has this been going on.” John looked up to find Amenadiel gesturing to the silver liquid that Lucifer was trying in vain to mop up with his handkerchief.

Lucifer shook his head. “Not long. Just today. Surely it’s nothing.”

Amenadiel looked to John for confirmation.

John shrugged. “I’ve only been here a day, but I guess it lines up? He coughed some of it up on our way here.”

Amenadiel nodded solemnly, while Lucifer shot him a dirty look, the unspoken accusation of traitor hanging in the air. “It’s not that big a deal,” he sniffed. “Whatever it is, surely it’ll sort itself out. There’s no need to coddle me, Amenadiel, my mortality stint ended ages ago.”

John stilled. “Your what?”

Lucifer waved him off, flicking a few silver droplets in his direction. One managed to hit Amenadiel in the chest and his face crumpled up in disgust. “Luci, do everyone else a favor and wash your hands. For all we know this could be contagious.”

John silently agreed. As if the headache wasn’t already making him nauseous, now he was picturing Lucifer as some sort of supernatural Typhoid Mary. Even though he’d seen some pretty nasty stuff during his time as a beat cop, John had always been a bit of a hypochondriac. Not in any serious sense, but realizing that Lucifer could potentially be hacking up the divine equivalent of a ball of mucus and phlegm definitely made his stomach twist.

Lucifer scoffed, but surprisingly listened to his brother. John sent a silent thanks to God, but stopped halfway through his prayer when he realized that he just may be better off directing it at Amenadiel instead. If Lucifer was to be believed, which John still had a healthy amount of skepticism for, Nietzsche had been right. In all the ways that mattered, God was as good as dead. Between the headache and the whole coming back to life thing, John really didn’t want to unpack that existential crisis right now.

“Is that a thing?” he asked instead. “Can you guys get the celestial flu or something?”

Lucifer sighed. “Don’t be silly, Jonathan. Angels can’t get sick.”

“Well clearly you are, so that can’t be entirely true.”

“John has a point, Luci. Whatever this is, it shouldn’t be happening.” Amenadiel turned to John. “And whatever is going on with souls crossing back over the threshold shouldn’t be happening either. It would be foolish to assume that these two events coinciding is a mere coincidence. I’d like to hear more about how you got back to Earth, John. I have a feeling that Luci has omitted some key details.”

At that, Lucifer tightened his hand around his glass of whiskey. At some point he’d poured himself glass number four, making John certain that he would be DD’ing the Devil himself back to Chloe’s apartment later.

“I don’t think I’m the best one to ask about details.” The image of Lucifer’s wrist covered in “souvenirs” flashed through John’s mind. “If anything, we were coming to you for some answers. All I know is that one second I’m in Limbo with this jackass,” he jerked a thumb in Lucifer’s direction, “and the next my daughter is telling me that I’ve been dead for nearly twenty years.”

“Limbo?” Amenadiel asked incredulously. “What ever were you doing there? Human souls are not supposed to go there.”

“Well I did. Lucifer told me that others go there too.”

Amenadiel looked at Lucifer.

“Times have changed, brother. Humans have more fight in them now, and Azrael has a shorter temper than she used to. Humans still condemn themselves to their respective eternities, but if they are particularly wily and combative when Azrael sees them off, sometimes she doesn’t see the job through. Usually they make it where they need to go without her guidance, but occasionally they do not. Those who don’t end up in Limbo.” Lucifer inclined his head in John’s direction, as if to give an example.

Amenadiel didn’t look convinced. “How could John have been in Limbo if he recalls seeing you? How are you certain that it wasn’t Hell?”

“It wasn’t Hell,” Lucifer said sharply, catching both Amenadiel and John off guard. John wasn’t sure what had just happened, but whatever Amenadiel had implied was obviously a touchy subject.

Lucifer stared at them for a moment, dark eyes unblinking and tracking their reactions like a predator. Then he sighed, and his shoulders relaxed, as if a great weight had dragged them down. His fingers worried his cufflinks again.

“Hell isn’t my only domain. Technically Dad also cursed me with that Dad-forsaken wasteland, but I hardly visited. It was a nice getaway when Hell became too much to bear, but it was just as undesirable in different ways.” Lucifer paused then. His eyes had grown distant, and his jaw was set. His hands flitted back to his glass.

“Do you remember our fallen brethren?” he said, his voice small.

Amenadiel’s brow furrowed at the subject change. “Of course, Luci.”

Lucifer continued to stare into his glass. “I wasn’t the only one who changed after I Fell. Our siblings, the ones that eventually fell too, they burned just as I did. After I had managed to pull myself out of the Lake of Fire, I gave the ones whose minds hadn’t completely shattered during the process positions within my court. They were, after all, family.” He chuckled humorlessly.

“In light of my recent sins, nepotism seemed like the least of my concerns at that point. I was correct, to some degree. Over time, most of the fallen grew twisted and corrupted by sin and they became a new breed of demon--an archduke-- but there were others who never recovered from the Fall. Something within them had broken. They weren’t quite demons and they certainly were not angels, either. They were, for lack of better description, mutilated. Inside and out. Their minds were fractured and their bodies, well--”

Lucifer’s form contorted like a tv glitch. Where his face should have been was replaced with something scarred and horrifying. It vanished just as quickly as it had appeared, but it didn’t matter because John had seen. Lucifer’s regular face was back, but John saw it with new clarity. Even before, he would freely admit that Lucifer was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful person he’d ever seen, but it was a different beauty now. Now the sculpted angles of his face looked cruel and alien.

He didn’t think there were words to describe the primal sense of fear he had felt upon seeing it. It was like an echo of the morning’s conversation, when he’d discovered the name of the angel that had guided him through Limbo. He wanted to bolt like a spooked horse and run and run until he was certain that Lucifer would never find him. John’s heart raced, but his fear kept him rooted in his chair. He knew he should calm down. He had to calm down. His head felt like it was going to explode. John groaned and put his head back in his hands.

“Jonathan.”

John’s head snapped back up, bringing a wave of dizziness along with it. His heart seized when he realized that Lucifer was staring straight at him. The afterimage of his burned face lingered in John’s mind’s eye, and it was almost impossible for him to look at Lucifer at all.

“Do not go breaking on me now. The Detective will be very upset with me if you do.” His tone was blasé, but John saw a glint of uncertainty in his eye. Was Lucifer upset by his reaction? Why would the Devil even feel that way? John searched his shark-eyes for an answer.

Shockingly, Lucifer was the one to look away first. He returned his attention to his glass for a second time before continuing his explanation.

“The other fallen--the ones driven mad by the Fall-- were little more than rabid dogs, and they had developed an insatiable hunger for divine flesh. I suppose in human terms you would say they became cannibals, but such a human concept does not do their transformation justice. They were truly beastly, mere husks of angels and mutated beyond any demon.” John shuddered as he remembered the feeling of claws tracing along his cheek. Beastly indeed.

“So I locked them up,” Lucifer proclaimed. “I had the archdukes assist me in rounding them up and throwing them into Limbo. There they could live freely, on a separate plane away from Heaven and Hell, and out of my hair. I would only visit occasionally, like I said, for peace and quiet and to make sure that they were behaving.”

The room dissolved into silence once again. Amenadiel seemed to still be processing the information, and John was trying his best not to pass out from pain or fear. He still wasn’t sure which would eventually win out. He supposed by the way his skull felt like it was getting a forced lobotomy he would have to say it was going to be the pain.

Amenadiel finally cleared his throat. “So if I understand you correctly, you have been completely aware that these...creatures have been running amuck in Limbo, and yet you continue to let them roam, even though they're torturing innocent souls?”

In an instant, Lucifer slammed his hands onto the counter. John flinched as the sound ricocheted through his head like a massive bell. Amenadiel stood, unflinching, his face contorted into a stony mask. Lucifer’s eyes blazed and his lips curled back into a snarl. In that moment he looked every bit of the razor-sharp angel that had plucked John from the clutches of his cannibalistic siblings.

“Do not twist my words, Amenadiel, and do not criticize that which you do not know. I made the best of a bad hand. I dredged the land for lost souls as often as I could, but there was only so much I could do. And make no mistake, not all of the souls I found were innocent. I spared rapists and murderers from the clutches of our deranged siblings just as often as I pulled out martyred cops and saints. They all got the justice they deserved, and I carried it out like a good little son.”

At that, Lucifer turned on his heel and busied himself with something on the other side of the kitchen. Amenadiel simply watched his brother sulk and sighed heavily. “Luci,” he said to the Devil sulking in the kitchen. “I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to pin the blame on you. I jumped to conclusions.”

Lucifer turned back to face them, face drained of any prior anger. “Damn right you did.”

“But,” Amenadiel continued, pointing a finger at Lucifer. “My initial point still stands. It’s obvious that these creatures are dangerous, and yet they roam freely in Limbo. The last interaction you had with John was in the presence of these creatures. Isn’t there a possibility that your illness and John’s return to Earth are linked? They feed on the divine, and you said it yourself that none of the other resurrections occurred more than a day following their initial death.”

“That’s just it,” John chimed in. “Technically, it’s been twenty-or-so years since I saw Lucifer in Limbo. It may have only felt like a couple hours for me, but I imagine for him…” He waved his hand in lieu of finishing his thought.

“Yes, Jonathan is correct. In fact, I forgot about your existence entirely until you started threatening me over breakfast this morning.” Lucifer clapped his hands together. “At any rate, I think we can surmise that whatever this silver nonsense is, it is most certainly a fluke. If these events were truly connected then I would have gotten ill two decades ago. Nothing to do with Johnathan. Nothing to worry about. The resurrections on the other hand...” he shrugged.

“I don’t think we should discount the idea,” John cut in again. “Amenadiel’s right, it’s stupid to overlook the possibility. For now, I suppose we can put a pin in it, but it shouldn’t be off the table completely.”

Lucifer shot him an annoyed look. “Fine, whatever. Gang up on me, then.”

“Luci, we’re trying to help,” Amenadiel chided. Lucifer just rolled his eyes.

“The other bodies reeked of Heaven,” he started again, changing the subject. “I don’t know why or how, but they do, and it’s positively unbearable.”

John didn’t know Heaven even had a smell, but Amenadiel nodded like he understood. “I don’t have an answer or even an idea of how to explain that facet of this mystery. I would have to go to the Silver City to find out any more information.”

Lucifer considered Amenadiel’s proposition for a moment. He finished off the rest of his drink and glanced around the room. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he asked. “We’re in a time crunch, the sooner the better!” Dropping his empty glass into the sink, Lucifer swept out of the kitchen and towards the door. He turned back to face John and Amenadiel, a hand poised on the door handle. “Brother, I’ll be expecting your answer shortly.” Then he gestured to John. “Are you coming?”

John just sighed and hauled himself out of the chair. It took some effort to get his bearings, and when he finally did he stuck out his hand for Amenadiel to shake once more. Amenadiel inclined his head towards John and offered him a genuine smile.

“It was very nice to meet you, John Decker. Chloe speaks very highly of you. I can see now that her stories ring truthfully. You're a good man.”

John returned the smile, wincing as the pain in his head worsened with the movement. “Well I don’t know about that, but thank you. It was nice to meet you too.”

Before John could say anything else, Amenadiel dropped his hand and simply disappeared into thin air. John stared stupidly at the spot the angel had been occupying just a few moments before. He wasn’t sure what just happened, but at this point, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to find out.

Lucifer made an impatient sound from his place at the door. “Jonathan, you’re dallying. Are you going to stare off into space for the entire day?”

John shook himself and started towards the door. “Yeah, yeah, calm down I’m coming.”

When they reached the parking lot, John ignored the pain in his head and made a b-line for the driver’s side door, just barely sliding his body between it and Lucifer’s hand reaching for the handle.

“Give me your keys,” he said, making sure to use his no-bullshit cop voice.

“No.” Lucifer tried to wiggle his way around John, but John stood firm.

“You just drank four glasses of hard alcohol, I’m not letting you drive drunk through downtown LA.” Lucifer only continued to wiggle and try to squirm his way around John. Fuck, did he ever stop moving? John caught Lucifer’s arm as he tried to reach for something in the car. “Seriously, Lucifer, stop. I don’t care that you’re the Devil, you’re not driving.”

As weird as it felt to say that, there was truth in John’s words. His fear over seeing Lucifer’s other face had almost entirely dissipated.

“I’m not intoxicated, I have a supernatural metabolism!” He wiggled his arm out of John’s grasp and leaned around him to grab whatever it was that he had been trying to get from the car. When he found it, Lucifer handed the mystery item to John. It was a breathalyzer. Police issued. Most likely Chloe’s, John thought. When John did nothing with it, Lucifer pushed it and the hand holding it to John’s chest.

“Test me,” he said. “If I blow under the legal limit, I drive. If I blow over, which I won’t, you can drive. Deal?”

John sighed. He knew Lucifer was trying to compromise, but it didn’t change the fact that John’s patience had been steadily declining since Lucifer had decided to drag him all over the city. “Fine,” he said, exasperated and desperately wishing for somewhere to lie down.

He quickly set up the breathalyzer, his muscle memory taking over for him. Through some small miracle, Lucifer took the test without complaint. John had expected the meter to read at least an .09, but he was dumbfounded when he saw the 0.00 staring back at him.

“Holy shit,” he mumbled. He gave the breathalyzer a little shake just to make sure it had gotten the right reading. The numbers remained unchanged.

Lucifer smirked. “Can we get on with things, then?”

On a day when John’s head wasn’t killing him, he would have asked for a retest, just to ensure that Lucifer hadn’t somehow rigged it in his favor. But John was exhausted and it was almost impossible to fake something like a breathalyzer, especially one that he himself had administered, so he decided to just let it slide. After all, it wasn’t like he was in any better condition to drive.

Wordlessly, John stepped out of the way and climbed into the passenger seat. Lucifer gave a victorious whoop and threw himself into the car. Another twinge of pain drilled through John’s skull and he winced away from his companion.

Now that he could take a moment to just breathe, John could finally acknowledge that he didn’t feel like himself. He felt feverish. Or high. He’d never been high to know what that felt like though. His forehead felt like it was about to split open like an egg, and he brought a hand up to touch it, just to make sure that no cracks had started to form. When he felt nothing, he squeezed his eyes shut and flopped back against the seat, wondering why Lucifer hadn’t driven off yet.

“Lucifer, why aren’t we moving?” he muttered, politeness thrown by the wayside.

“Because you’re doing a rather dramatic imitation of a dying raccoon. I don’t know much about humans, but I know enough to recognize that this isn’t normal behavior.” John must be hallucinating because Lucifer’s voice almost sounded caring. He told him as such.

Lucifer scoffed and finally shifted the car into gear. They drove in silence for about ten minutes before he spoke again. “It is possible that your body isn’t as stable as we initially thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s either that or your soul is unstable. Either way, something, besides the obvious, is not right. I have a feeling this headache of yours has been triggered by some imbalance. Whether that imbalance is in your mind, body, soul, or if my Father has decided to restitch the fabric of the universe, I cannot say for certain. The easiest way to solve it would be to return you back to your prior state.”

“My prior state, as in dead, right?”

Lucifer hummed, a nonanswer. That was all John needed to know that he’d been correct.

“Hey, please tell me we’re going back to Chloe’s?” he said, changing the subject. “It would really make her upset if we’re not there when she gets off work.”

“Ah, actually we won’t beat the Detective home.”

John sat straight up, whipping his head towards Lucifer. “What do you mean we’re not making it home before Chloe?”

Lucifer waved his hand absently. “Well you’ve lived in LA, you know how the traffic can be. Plus, we wasted more time than I had anticipated at Amenadiel’s.”

John sputtered and checked his watch. “But it’s like four in the afternoon. Even with traffic it won’t take us that long to get to her apartment, and the LAPD doesn’t usually let cops off until five at the earliest.”

“And you’d be correct; however, we’re not going to the Detective’s apartment straight away.”

“Where could we possibly be going?” John threw his hands up in the air because the alternative was to wrap them around Lucifer’s throat to choke some sense into him.

“I planned on stopping to grab something to eat, since I’m famished and surely you are too, considering we skipped lunch and barely had breakfast. I figured if we aren’t going to beat the Detective home we might as well show up with something to soften the blow. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission, you know.”

Lucifer shrugged. “Besides, it’s likely that she won’t be in a good mood anyways. I missed a call from her around noon, and about an hour ago she texted me saying that she wasn’t feeling well and was thinking about taking off of work early.”

“Did you call her back?” John asked.

“Call who back?”

John stared at him, bewildered. “Chloe. You said she tried to call you. Is she okay?” John’s outrage had been building slowly over the course of the day, but it had skyrocketed more in the last ten minutes than it had in the past few hours. He’d kept himself in check so far, but he wasn’t sure if he could hold it back if Lucifer insisted on being this much of an idiot.

“Oh. No, I didn’t return her call. I’m sure she’s fine, though.”

Something in John’s chest shifted. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he exploded. “First, she tells you not to leave the house, and the first thing you do is immediately go against her wishes. Then, you don’t even have the audacity to return her phone call? You’re acting like such an asshole. I love Chloe and I respect her, but I don’t know what she sees in you. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t deserve her.”

Lucifer stilled. His fingers stopped on the steering wheel mid-drum, and if not for the wind whipping at his clothes, John would have thought that he was made of stone. A drop of fear slid down John’s spine as the weight of his actions settled into his bones. He may have gotten over the initial shock of seeing Lucifer’s true face, but that still didn’t change the fact that he’d just screamed at the Devil. No, not even that, he’d just screamed at Chloe’s boyfriend. Partner. Whatever he was. Someone important to her.

But just because Chloe cares for him didn’t mean that he didn’t deserve it , a voice whispered in the back of his head.

For a moment, John thought Lucifer wasn’t going to respond, but out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a poisonous smirk.

“You know, the Detective always told me that you were a soft spoken man,” Lucifer said.

John clenched his jaw at the perceived taunt. He turned to fully face Lucifer to give him another piece of his mind, but stopped mid-breath when he saw his face. Lucifer was purposely not looking John’s way, gaze fixed on the road ahead of them. He wasn’t really looking at the road, though, John thought. Even with half of his face obscured, John could tell that he was looking past it and into some distant memory instead, the same soft smile he’d given Chloe the night before playing across his lips. It was an abrupt change from how he’d been just a minute before: flippant, callous, ancient.

John deflated instantly. “I’m under a lot of stress right now,” he replied dumbly. It was all he could think to say.

Lucifer drove on silently. He still did not look John’s way.

“I know being stressed is no excuse for how short I’ve been with you today, but this is a lot for me to take in. I was never the atheist that Chloe turned out to be, but I was never truly a believer either. God, Heaven, you, it’s overwhelming. Not only that but Chloe--” John’s voice broke when he pictured his little girl as the twenty-something he left behind. He cleared his throat, trying to beat down the rising wave of emotion. “I didn’t get to help her move into her first apartment, I didn’t get to give her away at her wedding, I’ve never even gotten to hold my granddaughter,” he said quietly. “She grew up without me and I’m angry with myself for letting it happen. Seeing you with her, you being there for her when I couldn’t, it’s hard.”

That was the ugly feeling that had been sitting in John’s chest all day. That was the thing that couldn’t be packed away into a neat, little mental box to be dealt with at a later date. No matter how many times he’d tried to compartmentalize it, it always came back with full force. He knew it was the reason he was acting so caustically towards Lucifer, but it was as if his time in Limbo had tainted him in some way. It was almost as if simply brushing against those sinful beasts had made him into one too, teeming with new and nasty habits. The very thought left an equally nasty taste in his mouth.

He was used to dealing with jealousy. Penny had groupies and superfans just like any other actress of her day, and it had never bothered him before. He’d always trusted her. Now he found himself unable to bury the jealousy like he had before his death. It was embarrassing to admit. John had never wanted to be one of those overbearing and overprotective fathers.

He wasn’t sure how long they sat there, Lucifer navigating them through the maze of LA highways, and John lost in thought. The car coasted along an exit ramp, and as they entered back into the city, Lucifer broke the silence.

“My Father was not the kind of father that you were--that you are,” he amended. “He wasn’t kind or nurturing or any of those things. In fact, He was quite harsh with my siblings and me at times. The last conversation we had was the shouting match that eventually got me condemned to Hell.”

John wasn’t sure where Lucifer was going with his anecdote, but he remained silent, just as the other man had when he’d vented out his own feelings.

“Even in the midst of my anger, even when I would scream my throat raw yelling obscenities at Him from down below, some part of me still loved Him and wanted Him to love me in return. I hated that part of myself for centuries. He was my punisher and my jailer, and yet, I still couldn’t rid myself of the longing to be recognized as His son.

“You and the Detective don’t have that kind of relationship, obviously, but I say all of this so that you’ll understand and believe me when I say that the Detective loves you very much. There are very few things that you could do as a parent to make her stop caring for you. Not even death could sever her heart from yours. She has made her peace with your passing, and for both her sake and yours, Jonathan, you should too. If you don’t, your guilt will condemn you to Hell. That’s how the system works; humans choose their own fate, no Devilish temptation required.”

Lucifer grimaced at his poor attempt at a joke. Then, he glanced over at John, as if to gauge his reaction to something. “Amenadiel was correct; you’re a good man and a good father,” he said, eyes drifting back to the road. “You don’t deserve the torment that awaits you there.”

His words echoed in John’s mind. You don’t deserve the torment that awaits you there.

“I’m sorry that I said you don’t deserve Chloe. That was wrong of me,” John said. “It’s not up for me to decide.”

Lucifer made some noncommittal noise.

“We got off on the wrong foot, and I genuinely want to try and get to know you properly.” John hesitated. “If you’ll let me,” he added almost too quietly to be heard over the wind.

Lucifer sighed his back-breaking sigh. “I suppose we can start over.”

At his affirmation, the ugly feeling in his chest subsided. “Good,” he nodded. “I’m glad.”

“But,” Lucifer stuck a finger up in the air, as if preparing to give another monologue. “Just because we’re “starting over” doesn’t mean that I’ll completely stop tormenting you, Jonathan. You’re far too entertaining when your brain is on the verge of melting.”

Lucifer’s tone was light and any malice it may have contained before had been replaced by a vibrant playfulness. John couldn’t fight back the smile on his face.

“Well as Chloe’s father, it is my job to give you a hard time, so I’ve got some tormenting of my own to do too.”

Lucifer chuckled. “I’m the Devil, darling. I’d love to see you try to get under my skin.”

“I’ve got a few cards up my sleeve,” John said. “You never know what might happen.”

Lucifer didn’t respond to that, but a sly smile had plastered itself to his face.

He guided the Corvette down a maze of one-ways, and five minutes later, they slowed to a stop and parked on a quiet street. As John took in the sun-bleached storefronts and crumbling fire escapes, he thought nothing of their location. It was only when he caught sight of a beat up dirt green sign boasting Marisol’s Flower Arrangements that John realized where they were.

“I died at a corner store about a block from here,” he said numbly, all traces of playful teasing draining away. They’d parked too far down the block for John to properly see the store, but he didn’t need a visual, the image of it was burned in his memory.

Lucifer got out of the car. “I know. I parked a block away for a reason. The Detective always says that you shouldn’t let victims see their crime scenes unless they specifically ask to. Something to do with shock or trauma.”

“So why bring us here at all?” John asked, though he already knew the answer. He was just surprised that Chloe still came here after everything that had happened with the shooting.

“Like I said, the Detective doesn’t hate you,” Lucifer replied with a knowing look. He tossed John the car keys. “I’ll be back shortly.”

Lucifer was true to his word, returning only ten minutes later with a takeout bag. When he got back in the car, he traded it for his keys. As they drove back through the city, John tried his best to ignore the bag on his lap. The heat from the food radiated through the cheap paper and into his skin like a persistent house cat kneading at his lap. He hated to think what would happen when he opened the bag. These sandwiches hadn’t just been Chloe’s favorite, once they were his favorite too. He feared that when he would eventually unwrap the foil, he wouldn’t be able to stomach them.

Secretly, John was glad that Lucifer hadn’t expected him to walk into that corner store. He was almost certain if he had, he would have ended up on the tile floor retching at the smell of grease and sweat. He’d choked on that scent as he laid with a bullet in his chest. He could only hope that he wouldn’t choke on the food when it came time to eat it.

John thought back to a time when he had gagged on black tar and maggots instead of grease and blood. He swallowed hard; an echo of oil slid down the back of his throat. Or maybe it was crawling back up. Maybe John would wake the next morning and find that whatever horrors he’d tasted in Limbo were festering inside of him like he was John Hurt in Alien . He supposed if that were true, then it was only a matter of time before it tore through his chest. John shuddered. He absentmindedly touched the space over his heart, as if it too was going to burst out of his chest.

The rest of the drive back to Chloe’s apartment was silent, and neither he nor Lucifer seemed to mind. For John, it was even a welcome reprieve from the madness that was his resurrection and a quiet moment before the inevitable emotional explosion waiting for them at the apartment.

His suspicions were only confirmed when the Corvette pulled into the parking lot. Chloe already had the door open and was standing in the doorframe with her arms crossed. He couldn’t completely make out her features from where they were parked, but John was sure when they got close enough her brows would be scrunched up in an exact replica of Penny’s when she was upset.

Lucifer killed the engine and jumped out of the car. His hands immediately flitted to his cufflinks and then on to smoothing invisible lines in his jacket. At least he was smart enough to be a little nervous, John thought.

“Detective!” Lucifer said when they got to the door. “We bought dinner!”

Chloe’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “What happened to not leaving the apartment?” she demanded.

Lucifer snatched the takeout bag from John’s grasp and held it up as if it explained everything. By the way her eye twitched, Chloe was not impressed.

“Is that the only place you went?” she demanded again.

Lucifer thrust the takeout bag back into John’s hands and flashed her a nervous smile.

“No,” John said flatly.

“Lucifer!”

Lucifer only flapped his hands and slipped past Chloe into the apartment. “It was just to see Linda and Amenadiel!” he called over his shoulder.

Chloe took a deep breath. She sagged against the doorframe, her shoulders tight with tension. “Dad, wherever he dragged you to, I’m sorry. It’s my fault for thinking that Lucifer could stay still and listen for more than a half hour.” She said the last bit a little louder, casting her gaze over her shoulder and making sure the man in question had heard them.

“It’s fine, monkey,” John said, drawing her attention back. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry I didn’t try harder to keep us here. I shouldn’t have gone along with it.”

Finally, Chloe pushed herself off of the doorframe and allowed him to pass. “You shouldn’t have even had to argue to stay here,” she said as he walked past her. Even with his back to her, John could tell she was staring daggers at Lucifer while he busied himself with setting the table.

Just like he had that morning before Chloe had gone to work, John felt out of his element. It was easier for him to interact with Lucifer and Chloe separately. They represented vastly different periods of his life, or death, in Lucifer’s case. With them separated from each other, John could almost pretend that he was still living a normal life. When he was with Chloe, he could ignore his death. When he was with Lucifer, John could accept it head-on. But when they were together, it was difficult. He felt every inch the man lost in time when he saw them together.

All of these thoughts ran through John’s head in under a few seconds, but the existential discomfort of it all made it feel like an eternity.

“Here, I’ll take that from you, Dad,” Chloe said, appearing at his shoulder.

Mechanically, he handed the takeout bag to her, and then went to hang his borrowed jacket back on the hook. Task complete, John turned back to the table, still unsure what he should be doing. He watched Chloe open the bag, as if ready to divvy up their early dinner, and then stop. Her head snapped up to look across the table where Lucifer was pouring their drinks.

“It’s been a stressful two days, I knew you would like to have them,” he said, not looking up.

Lucifer finished filling the third glass in silence. When Chloe still hadn’t responded, he finally met her gaze. John didn’t know what he found there, her back was still to him, but Lucifer’s shoulders hunched.

“Did I get it wrong?” he asked, seemingly folding in on himself in a way that John didn’t know was possible.

“No. You didn’t. Thank you,” she replied softly. “But did you--?”

“No!” Lucifer waved his hand vehemently. “He stayed in the Corvette.”

Chloe nodded, and it was as if that motion cued all the others back to normal. She began setting their food onto plates, and Lucifer fluttered back into the kitchen as if nothing had happened. Slowly, John walked up to the table.

“Can I help with anything?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Chloe said, balling up the empty takeout bag, “everything’s already done. Just take a seat.”

He reluctantly did as he was told. He stared at his foil-wrapped sandwich until Lucifer and Chloe sat across from him a moment later. The placement reminded him a bit like an interrogation. In some sense, John thought, perhaps it was. He could tell that Chloe had bitten her tongue about them disobeying her orders today. Surely, it wouldn’t be long before she started fishing for details.

“So,” Chloe began, unwrapping her sandwich. “You went to see Linda and Amenadiel.”

Lucifer took a long sip of wine. “Yes, not that they were any help.”

“Lucifer wanted to look for answers,” John put in, trying to be helpful.

Chloe glanced between the two of them. “What kind of answers?”

“Answers that would help us figure out what in Dad’s name is going on, of course,” Lucifer said.

She raised an eyebrow. “And? What did you find out?”

John was thankful when Lucifer launched into a recount of the day's activities. He loved Chloe, but he simply hadn’t been in the mood to talk since they’d picked up dinner. Speaking of dinner, he glanced down at his untouched sandwich. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to eat, it was just that he was afraid of what would happen when he did. He knew he was going to have to eat it eventually, or else Chloe would start to get suspicious. The last thing John wanted to do was cause her any more stress.

He forced himself to unwrap his sandwich. Chloe was busy listening to Lucifer, but her eyes were fixed on John the moment he’d begun to remove the foil. With her watching, there was little he could do besides take a bite. Much to his relief, he did not taste tar or ash. It tasted the same as he remembered--rich, greasy, fattening. Even still, it turned his stomach, John realized with dismay.

Under Chloe’s watchful eye, he fought through the nausea and forced down another bite. The ends of her mouth quirked up in the ghost of a smile. Seemingly satisfied with what she saw, Chloe turned back to Lucifer.

It hit him that for her, this was the first time in roughly two decades that they were sharing these sandwiches. In that moment, it was as if their lives had simply picked up from where they’d left off. Had John never been shot, this was what he would have done that night. Instead of choking on his own blood, he would have been up late at the kitchen table, eating these exact sandwiches with Chloe, and then sending her quietly off to bed afterwards.

John finished his sandwich. His stomach twisted itself into new shapes each time he swallowed, but he refused to ruin this for his daughter. She needed this as much as he’d needed to tell her that bedtime story the previous night.

To fend off the overwhelming nausea, he found himself laser-focused on Lucifer’s tale. That was when he noticed the omissions. Before, he hadn’t paid Lucifer’s storytelling any mind. He had been dealing with his own inner turmoil about Chloe and his untimely demise. Now that he had nothing else to do but pay attention, John began to notice the discrepancies.

Lucifer told Chloe most of what they’d experienced that day, with a few key cut corners. He neglected to tell her about Limbo and his mysterious cough. At first, John thought he was avoiding those topics because Chloe didn’t know the truth about who Lucifer really was, but that theory was quickly derailed when she didn’t blink an eye at Amenadiel searching Heaven for clues about their “resurrection problem.”

John didn’t know why he didn’t correct Lucifer. It would have been so easy to mention a detail he’d left out and watch the fallout unfold. Yet, he sat in silence, only adding in an affirmative sounding hum when Lucifer’s tale required it.

He just wanted to see where Lucifer went with it, he told himself. Lucifer had to have a reason he was leaving out key details, but then again, did he? If John was being entirely honest, even though they were on better terms now, he didn’t really know who Lucifer was at all. There was no telling whether or not he would be completely transparent with Chloe. In fact, if their detour around LA was anything to go by, Lucifer seemed to skirt around the truth and bend the rules quite often.

If Lucifer still refused to tell Chloe about Limbo and the cough by the time the night ended, John resolved that he would tell her himself. Chloe was his top priority, she deserved to know the truth, he finally decided. Plus, was it not John’s story to tell anyways? After all, he’d been the one who died and ended up there in the first place.

As Lucifer’s story drew to a close, John grew more and more convinced that he would have to be the one to tell Chloe about Limbo. But then, Lucifer’s story stopped abruptly. He cleared his throat once. Twice. Then he coughed. It sounded wet and thick like it had at Amenadiel’s, except this time it sounded deeper. It was as if Lucifer was a normal human smoker, and there was tar stuck to the bottom of his lungs.

Lucifer quickly pressed a napkin to his lips, but the coughs continued until he was almost gagging.

Chloe worriedly patted his back. “Are you okay?”

John opened his mouth to confess to Chloe that, no, her partner was not, and that he’d been like this all day, but Lucifer beat him to the punch.

“Fine,” Lucifer muttered between coughs. He coughed a few more times before it finally petered out, leaving Lucifer weepy-eyed and with an undoubtedly sore throat. He strategically wiped his mouth with a clean corner of the napkin before folding it up and out of Chloe’s sight. There wasn’t a speck of silver to be seen.

“What was that all about?” she asked, handing Lucifer his wine to wash down the remaining cough.

He shook his head, taking down the rest of the wine like a shot. “Not a clue.”

John shot a glare in his direction, and Lucifer tactfully ignored it.

Chloe stared at Lucifer for a few more seconds. When she found what she had been searching for, she stood and gathered up her dishes. “Maybe those cigarettes are finally catching up to you,” she chuckled over her shoulder as she headed to the sink.

“Darling, we both know my mortality stint ended ages ago,” Lucifer replied, voice scratchy. It was a pathetic recreation of the exact phrase he’d said to Amenadiel just hours before.

Chloe snorted. “Sure.”

John waited until she turned on the tap before he leaned across the table.

“You have to tell Chloe about everything that’s going on, not just the parts that you like or understand,” he whispered fiercely.

“That will only cause unnecessary worry for the Detective,” Lucifer whispered back. He unfolded the napkin and tilted it enough for the silver liquid inside to catch the light. “This is not something that she needs to worry about right now.”

“Lucifer, come on!” He gestured to the napkin. “You’re literally coughing up some unidentified substance. You said it yourself, you’re immortal. So why is this happening now?”

Lucifer’s jaw clenched. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t care what you think you are, Chloe deserves to know.”

The tap shut off.

John glanced over to make sure that Chloe was still busy at the sink. When she was, he turned back to Lucifer.

“Tell Chloe, or I will, Lucifer.”

Lucifer just stared at the silver splatter on the napkin and said nothing.

#deckerstar #my fic #fanfic #john decker #lucifer morningstar #lucifer on netflix

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xxkamijosmistressxx-blog · 6 years

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A Dance to Start a Fire

A Kamijo Fiction

Chapter 1: You Belong To Me

As she sat across from the interviewer she mentally prepared herself for what was going to be asked about, the most. The news had just been released that she and one of Japan’s hottest musicians had just married. How the hell they had managed to do it all in secret, she had absolutely no idea. But now that it was done, her husband had decided to release the news to the public via an instagram post of a picture of their first kiss as husband and wife. Not an hour later his manager got a flood of calls from the media, for interviews with her and her husband. She should have known marrying Kamijo, would ultimately lead to a massive spotlight being turned on her, even more so because she was a Western woman and not Japanese, not that it was a problem, it just made her more of an oddity. That was further compounded by the fact that she wasn’t famous in any sense of the word.

She was successful in her own right, owning several dance studios and she was a choreographer by occupation, so it wasn’t like she didn’t have a decent bank balance, but it still made her a unicorn in the eyes of the media in Japan. And already the comments of ‘She just did it for money, she doesn’t really care!’ had already started. She really didn’t care about the ones throwing shade, she and Kamijo knew better. How they ended up here, wasn’t exactly conventional but it wasn’t an out there meeting either.

She was pulled out of her thoughts, as the film crew called for the interview to begin. She focused on the female interviewer and already could sense a certain amount of hostility that probably came from a place of jealousy, which she supposed was to be expected. Very quickly the interviewer, Suki, was her name, began her list of questions.

“So Cerridwen, I guess the first question I have for you, is how does it feel to be the new Mrs. Kamijou Yuuji?” Suki asked with a smile that was clearly fake.

“I believe that question should be, how does it feel to be Mrs. Cerridwen Yuuji, as I’m still me, I just married a man, that doesn’t mean I lose my identity, I’ve never liked that type of expected change of identification. And to answer that, not much different than when I was simply Cerridwen O’Donohugh. The only weird feeling, is getting used to my new signature if I’m going to be honest, although the Kanji has been fun to learn, Kamijo and I have had some good times, when he was trying to teach me how to write in it.” Cerridwen responded swiftly with a soft chuckle.

“Oh? Is it different in your country when a woman marries? Because here in Japan, its a normal thing to refer to a married woman by her husbands name, as I just did with you.” Suki asked seeming a little peeved at Cerridwen’s rebuttal.

“It is indeed. A woman is still herself and referred to as such, she just carries her husbands last name. So I would be Mrs. Yuuji to people who don’t know me personally, so businesses etc. So I apologise, if I came across wrong, I am just not a fan of that type of identification. But you weren’t aware of that so we can just put it to rest.”

“Interesting. Ok. My next question for you and probably hundreds of others I suppose, is how did you and Kamijo meet? Your marriage shook the musical world, as no one was even aware that you two were together!” Suki asked switching back to her feigned happiness.

“Which is not surprising, as Kamijo and I are both extremely private people. Our personal lives are separate from his professional career. But we met four years previously. He had came to my home country of Ireland to film the music video of Moulin Rouge from his two thousand and fourteen album, Heart. He needed a choreographer for the dancers that stand behind him, so he started to look at local Choreographers and found, then eventually settled, on me. I have a few studios I own in Ireland and Scotland. He requested that I teach the dancers on set, so that he could have greater creative control over the aesthetic. We spent many late nights together, with me trying out different styles of burlesque and then trying it out with his actors, we ultimately went with a rather simple continuous movement for the ladies, instead of a burlesque routine. We got quite close though and became friends, which later lead to a romantic relationship.” Cerridwen answered, a gentle smile forming on her lips at the memory of their meeting.

“Oh wow, that almost sounds like divine intervention. As I’m assuming there are plenty of others that could have ended up with the job?”

“Oh yes of course. There wasn’t just me. I also like to think it was an intervention of the divines. Or luck, who knows! I’m just glad it happened.”

“On the subject of your friendship turning romantic, how long before that happened? And how did it happen” Suki asked.

“It was about a year after Heart, that our friendship evolved. Visits back and forth to one another and helping him on his projects, if he had need of a trained dancer or needed dancers to be taught a certain routine. This lead to us forming our romantic relationship, how that happened well...that is private to Kamijo and I and we probably won’t ever divulge that to anyone that isn’t close to us, in our private lives. So that one, I’ll leave up to your imagination.” Cerridwen responded with a smirk.

As Suki got ready to ask her next question, they were stopped by the main camera man, informing them with hand signals that they had to cut for a short time. Shortly after this the door opened and Cerridwen saw Souji, Kamijo’s manager walk into the room and over to her. Stopping at her chair, he lent down and whispered quietly in her ear.

“Mrs. Yuuji, you need to come with me right now, Kamijo is here and we need to speak with you urgently.” At this Cerridwen nodded in understanding and stood up to leave, honestly she was dying to get out of that room, she didn’t like Suki and she just couldn’t put her finger on why.

Coming out of these thoughts she turned to Suki and excused herself. Then she spun on her stiletto-ed heel and followed Souji out of the room, it didn’t take them long to stop at her office. Souji opened the door for her and motioned her inside, before he followed behind her and drew the blinds on the doors window. As he did this, Cerridwen looked over to her desk and shivered when she saw her blonde headed husband lounging in her desk chair. God, she hated that he always looked so good every damn day, she literally could spend all day and all night, under that man and he’d let her too, if he had any say. He liked to remind her that his favourite position to see her in, was naked, in their bed with him on top of her. She shuddered again at these thoughts and forced them out of head, she could ravage him later but for now, he had his serious face on. Something had pissed him off.

“Not that I’m complaining, but why are you here darling?” Cerridwen asked him in English, just as an extra safety measure.

“I wasn’t planning to be here Mon Cher. However something made me double check who your interview was with today and what I found out was not good. I had to put a stop to this.” Kamijo responded using the french pet name that he liked to refer to her with. It was weird to hear a french phrase come out of a mouth with a Japanese accent, but she loved it all the same.

She watched as he got up from her chair and made his way around to the front of her desk so he could better face her. Damn he looked good, today he was dressed in a thigh length fitted black pirate style coat, a red button down shirt, with the top two buttons undone, black jeans and black combat style boots. His hair was not curled as he usually wore it, it was straightened and styled. He had his trademark, blue contacts in today. She preferred his white ones, but she still liked the blue. She was still bowled over that she was married to this man.

Coming out of her reverie she spoke, “What’s going on then? Why are you stopping this?”

“That woman, Suki, is actually called Kagome Ko and I have had both Restraining and Cease & Disist orders placed on her, for just over four years. The last time I heard anything about her, she was in an insane asylum for some sort of obsessive disorder. I was one of those victims of her, as was my good friend Gackt. She seems to attach herself to male metal and rock musicians. It got dangerous, when she had her obsession with me. I don’t know if she still has it or if she was released, but I have notified the police and the asylum that she was detained in.” Kamijo explained, his tone grave.

“Ok, but aside from the obvious, what has this got to do with me? I mean, obviously I’m your wife and she has a disorder, but if her mental disability has been taken care of, where is the harm in her interviewing me? I mean it’s me, not you.” Cerridwen asked, genuinely confused.

“And under different circumstances that would be fine. But if she isn’t healed or she has escaped the facility, then this could get bad, very quickly. She already knows too much. As for how this pertains to you, she has a history of being violent towards the female partners of the men she turns her obsession too. What happened to Ayumi, while she was dating Gackt, was not pretty, in fact it’s what caused them to break up. Now if she’s willing to severely injure the girlfriend of one of her obsessions, just because they share a bed, what do you think she’s willing to do to a wife of one of those obsessions? Particularly, if she finds that said wife is pregnant?” Kamijo responded, giving her a sly look as he said the last part.

“Wait, what!?! I’m not...What?!” Cerridwen yelled, completely bowled with the bomb he just dropped on her.

“Your doctor called Mon Cher. Failng to reach you, he contacted your next of kin, me. So your results came back from your blood test, when you went to him with sickness last week. Well, get used to that, because you’re having morning sickness. You’re pregnant.” he replied with a predatory smirk. Clearly, he was very happy with himself. She felt her excitement bud as the news sank in, but something entered her mind with this revelation, they’d been using birth control...how could she be?

“How though!?!” She asked abruptly and watched Kamijo give her a dead pan look.

“Well, Cerridwen, when a man and a woman love each other very much...” He began sarcastically but she cut him off.

“Haha, very funny ass hat. I mean how could it happen? We’re using birth control?”

“Oh, your doctor answered that too, as I didn’t believe him at first because of that very reason. You take yours religiously. He explained that the brand of pill that you have, isn’t commonly used any longer, due to it being a pill that doesn’t work effectively, for very many women. It’s predominantly used to treat other issues, such as painful, heavy periods and such. It is not recommended to be used as birth control. He was going to take you off it anyway, but now that you’re pregnant, you have to obviously stop taking it. He does want you to call him though, as he didn’t take down when your last period was and I couldn’t remember, so he needs that before we can get your pregnancy dated.” He explained and watched as his wife’s face changed from confusion to one of the most ecstatic looks he had ever seen gracing her features.

He breathed a quiet sigh of relief, good she was happy about this. He had been worried that she wouldn’t want this yet, even though he did. All those days and nights that he had spent imagining what she would look like, swollen with his child, were finally going to become a reality and he couldn’t wait for the coming months to enjoy watching her body grow and change to sustain his son or daughter. Part of him, found a certain amount of arousal in the thought. He was brought out of his inner musings to his wife diving on him. He caught her about the waist, as she threw her legs around his and squeezed him to her, causing him to laugh at her antics. Honestly, this woman, he didn’t know what he was do with her. Western women, truly were odd ones.

“Am I to take this as you being happy with the news?” Kamijo asked as he lent his head back to look at her.

Cerridwen smiled warmly down at him and with a whisper of ‘yes’ she kissed him deeply. Their lives were taking shape wonderfully. She had opened her own dance studio here in Japan and her other studios back home were booming. Kamijo’s career was still going incredibly strongly, they had married and now they were expecting their very first child! She couldn’t wait until they could start going out together, to shop for the things they would need for their little one and already her mind was supplying her with all sorts of wonderful and adorable ideas for a nursery! She was brought out of her musings though, when Kamijo carefully untangled her legs from his waist, and slowly slid them down his body to rest on the floor again. She looked up at him in question.

“We can continue celebrating our happiness after we get out of here. We need to do so secretly, we can’t risk that woman seeing us. Where is the back exist?” Kamijo asked as he gently pushed her back and slightly away, from him. Knowing that in this, she had to submit to her husband and not argue with him, she gave a nod, grabbed her purse and keys and started to make her way to the office door. Kamijo followed her, after giving Souji some whispered instructions in Japanese.

Soon after that, they found themselves outside of Cerridwen’s studio, she always parked around the back of the building, rather than out in the open at the front of the building. Kamijo took her keys from her, unlocked the car and let her into the car before he made his way round to the other side and slid into the drivers side. Within minutes, he had the car started and they took off, leaving the studio and interviewer behind. Only once they were a good couple of blocks from the studio, did he start relaxing again and began to speak more about Suki, or rather, Kagome.

“She was in her late teens, when I first started to see her at my shows, conventions and different events that I did. For the longest time, I didn’t think much of her, beyond the belief that she was just a super fan. Which is pretty common. I have a lot of fans like that, that I am so used to seeing, that I know who’s who at first glance, and a lot of them, I’ve met in person, so I thought she was just another run of the mill young woman, that was drawn to me, either because of my music or because of my looks.”

“How long before you started to think differently? Like how long did it take you to realise that something wasn’t quite right?” Cerridwen interjected.

“About 2 years after she started showing up. I had started to get creepy letters from someone who simply signed themselves as ‘Your lady’. They would say things like, ‘Soon we’ll be together.’ ‘I can’t wait to be under you.’ Just general weird and creepy shit. But I would throw them out and ignore them. But then, I soon started to get threatening letters, saying that I would regret it, if I didn’t start replying and that it had better be personally and not just canned responses from my mailing department. And increasingly, they got worse and worse and more violently minded. It was at that point, I believed a stalking situation, was close to starting. So before I went to the police, I went to Gackt, as I knew that he had experienced a similar situation with a girl and I wanted his advice about it and how to best deal with it.” Here is were he stopped and sighed shakily, almost as if it wore on him, to his very core, having to talk about this experience. A large part of Cerridwen wanted to tell him, that it didn’t matter, he could stop and not discuss this with her, but the rational side of her knew she needed to hear this, so she pushed him gently.

“So you went to Gackt, what happened then?”

With another long suffering sigh, Kamijo forced himself to continue, he knew he had to tell her. She could be in danger, so she needed this information to help protect herself. They came to a stop at a red light and he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again, to continue.

“Well, I went over to Gackt’s house one night, after having called him and explained that I really needed to talk to him, that I thought I was about to have a stalker and I wanted his advice. I spent a few hours with him and explained everything that had happened up until that point. He asked me if I had noticed any new recurring fans. I explained that yes, I had. So he asked me if it was male or female, which I thought was weird, but told it was a woman. He then asked me to describe her, so I did and that was when he showed me a picture of the chick that had given him and Ayumi hell. It was the same woman. At that point I contacted my attorney and the police. I wasn’t taking any chances. However as they were motioning for the restraining and Cease and Desist orders, she got worse. She even showed up at my house! Not the one we live in now, but the one I had before us. Which is why I moved. She started to leave ‘Gifts’ but they were scary, like voodoo dolls, knives, at one point, I even found a dead cat that she had killed. It was hell and I was having nightmares.”

“Oh my God! Please tell me you went straight to the police!” Cerridwen piped up, absolutely horrified at what she was hearing and feeling her heart constrict in pain for his experience.

“I did, they advised that I move house. So I sold the property then bought and moved into the place, we have in the foothills now. The letters and gifts stopped then, I assume because she was searching for my new address. I was only in the new place a few weeks, when I got the information that she had been arrested and was being charged with animal cruelty and multiple counts of stalking, with intent to harm. And multiple assault charges, one of which was against Ayumi as I explained. I breathed a sigh of relief when that notice came through. Then a few months after that, I was given notice that she had been diagnosed with a mental disorder and had been detained in an asylum. It was at that point, that I decided to travel, I literally spun a globe and wherever my finger landed is where I would go and lo and behold, it was your country. That’s when I decided to film the music video for Moulin Rouge there and well, you know the rest.” He finished, turning and smirking at her, as he brought the car to a stop in their garage and shutting it off and removing the keys. She hadn’t even realised that they had arrived home, so engrossed she had been, in his story. Not knowing what else to do and knowing that nothing she said would make a difference, she lent over the center console and pulled him into a strong hug, then kissed him deeply, which he returned with gusto, as he always did. Their kisses were never boring, that was for sure.

As she pulled away from Kamijo, she spoke.

“Well, if she comes anywhere near you, I will kick her ass, so God damned badly, that she will regret fucking with Cerridwen Yuuji’s husband. You’re mine and I won’t let any simpering bitch, who can’t control her hormones, anywhere near you or let them harm a single hair, on your ridiculously pretty head.” Cerridwen said in a fierce tone, her eyes full of possession and fire.

Kamijo shivered at this, he loved it when her ire rose like this, it turned him on to no end, even more so when she displayed her possession over him, its effect evident in the tightness of his pants. Good thing she had a spacious car, because he wasn’t waiting until they got into their house to have her, he was going to take her right here and now. Besides she looked damned sexy today, her form fitting pencil dress, hugged her in all the right places and the designer stilettos that he had bought her as a gift, lifted her ass even higher than it normally was. Taking this all in, his mind decided to supply him once more, with the knowledge that she was pregnant to him and he spiraled into a deeper and more lustful state. He growled quietly and raked his eyes once more, over her form.

Yeah..they weren’t making it to their bedroom. So with a couple sharp tugs, he removed his jacket and pounced on his more than willing wife. Thus began a rather hot, sweaty, passionate and loud, forty five minute session of love-making, that left them both gasping for air and sticking to each others bodies and left Cerridwen with a strained throat, due to her screams. Something that Kamijo found himself, incredibly proud of. He knew he was a naturally gifted lover, but sometimes, just sometimes, it was nice to get validation of the fact.

He smirked as he watched his little wife’s eyes struggle to stay open, knowing she needed to lay down, he opened the passenger door and after getting out himself, slid his arms under her and lifted her from the car. Before he kicked the door closed though, he happened to notice the large stains on the seat...yeah that wasn’t coming out. Well, he would just need to get the car reupholstered for Cerridwen, she loved that car and it was kinda his fault for ruining its interior and she would be furious with him, when she seen it. Shaking his head, he closed the door and made his way into their house and upstairs to their bedroom, carrying his sleeping woman all the way, a nap sounded amazing right now.

#kamijo #versailles #fanfic

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bloodyshirtrpg · 6 years

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♔ OC INFORMATION ♔

NAME/ALIAS & AGE:

Risa, eighteen.

PREFERRED PRONOUNS:

she/her.

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY LEVEL:

EST. I would place my activity at a 6/10 at the moment. I currently have a pretty heavy courseload, so on some days I won’t be online, though on weekends I’ll try to make up for it. During school breaks, I’ll definitely be more available, with my activity rising to a 7 or 8/10.

♔ IC INFORMATION ♔

FULL NAME:

Selene Iora Avery

Selene: For moons and goddesses, soft vengeance and honeyed venom. She was named after beauty and mystique, that twilight enigma captured by no man or empire. Selas (σέλας): for the bright elite, for the numinous and the sacred. People would worship her. She would illuminate their sins like a passing crescent of light.

Iora: Greek for pure; for what true politician could resist the opportunity to prove and prove again his allegiance to his values? She was pure, she was pure like all the others of her status. Through her veins ran the ichor of the highest echelons of her race. But there is no power in the obvious. It was almost pitiful, that her name had to reflect her father’s pointed ambitions: that he would treat her as a bartering piece upon which ‘pure’ had to be written, like an envelope addressed in ink and blood.

Avery: They were immortalized in the 1920s by Cantankerus Nott; and ever since that moment there hasn’t been a day gone by in which the Averys did not strengthen their legacy. To be Sacred. They were a sly family, full of weasels and snakes — but she would be a raven with wings as black and glossy as night, set apart from her predecessors by her ability to soar.

FACECLAIM:

Nina Dobrev

FUTURE PLANS:

Heartbreak; She was a seductress of the highest degree, a white rose dipped in a sheen of thorns. All her life, Selene has been the most beautiful, the most coveted — and while her beauty was meant to attract suitors, she used it to devestate them instead. I think that it would be a very interesting plotline to reverse the roles for once: let someone else break her heart, wrench her affections from her. Let them lead her on, let them kiss her and promise her great things, let her believe them. Then, and only then; tear it all away. In a way, there’s a terrible excitement to exploring the tragic and unexpected: and I think that this would be a game-changer for Selene, to finally want someone with all her will, and have them play her dirty.

Sabotage; Did she truly hate her brother, or did she just envy him? It’s a question that I want to explore with Selene in-game. She has very mixed feelings regarding Nathaniel and his inability to uphold their family values, and I believe that there will come a time when she makes up her mind regarding her brother, and acts upon it. If she hates him, then she will cripple him, ruin him. If she envies him, then she will do all that is in her power to steal the throne and crown herself queen: but which is the lesser evil? Essentially, I would love to have her move against Nathaniel and wreak some family havoc. What’s more classic than the story of Cain and Abel; one sibling coveting the other, even to the point of murder?

DATE OF BIRTH:

November 15th, 1959 (age seventeen, nearly eighteen) / Scorpio — “The Scorpio motto might be “What is hidden is more interesting than what is obvious.” Their magnetic personality draws others to them, but they can also be secretive, for they learn early on that when you express everything, others may be afraid of the power of your feelings. They can become cold and withdrawn when hurt in love, and have the magic to light up the dark, but sometimes they would benefit by looking at the positive side of things rather than going into the darkness at all.”

SEXUALITY/SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS:

I believe Selene to be bisexual at the very least - though she has a tendancy towards hetero-romantic ideals. Her battle is against men, not women: and so she makes them her victims most often, though this isn’t to say that she hasn’t rendezvoused with the same sex before (in fact, I am certain that she has).

I’m very fluid when it comes to ships, so I don’t have a specific answer to this question. I feel that the bio sets the stage for a possible romance between Nikolai and Selene - and I would entirely be up for that, given development. But the possibilities are truly endless, and I imagine that whatever may happen, it’ll form organically as gameplay moves forward. I’m a huge fan of slow-moving, deeply built ships; so I don’t expect anything fast and furious. Angst is my middle name. Tragedy is my son. Anyways; I think you know how I tend to roll by now, and I’m too invested in crying over ships to relent my ways. Slow and steady wins the race…perhaps once in a blue moon. But isnt heartbreak always the more interesting route?

WAND, PATRONUS, & BOGGART:

Wand:

Madrona, 9 & ¾ inch, supple – “A beautiful evergreen from the Pacific Northwest region of North America, it is rare in British wandmaking. However, its distinctive peeling bark denotes its magical powers of change- hence, a powerful wood for Transfiguration.”

Veela hair core – “Veela wands are temperamental like the creatures they come from, and are considered too volatile for a decent wand core in many circles. However, some wizards enjoy the boost it gives to outdoorsy magics, divinations, and Charms. The veela’s inherent intelligence makes finding these wands among the non-Veela blooded most common in Ravenclaw.”

↳ She began with a wand of Rosewood; passed down to her from her father’s mother. The only defining trait was that it was a graceful wand wood, as if that alone merited her trust. To believe in appearances alone is the folly of a weak man. That first year was somewhat disastrous as she fanangled with the weak, graceful wand that had been pushed upon her. It was when Selene went to Ollivander’s herself that he retrieved for her a wand of Madrona, uprooted from his deep archives. Her particular wand was made in the year 1929, and the bark has been polished away from the wood.

Patronus:

Arctic Fox – “Cunning, stealth, persistence. The arctic fox is infinitely adaptable, living its life in one of the world’s most extreme climates. Arctic fox people tend to be sly, graceful, and have a near magic ability to make something out of nothing, utilizing even the most limited of resources. Arctic fox as a totem can teach us the ability to go with the flow of life, changing ourselves to suit our ever-evolving environments.”

Boggart:

“Darling, what are you afraid of?”

It was a sleepy, pleasure-fed rasp in the dark. Selene felt a body stir besides her, the boy at her side raising himself up with one arm in order to press himself to her, mouth at her ear, hands running along her skin like cold satin.

“Why do you ask?” And hers was a coy, soft response. “So that you can scare me in the dark?” She smiled for his benefit rather than her own. In truth, a trembling sort of doubt had crept into her chest with that one word. She didn’t like the concept of it.

Fear. It signified cowardice, it signified that there were things in this great, grand world which could cripple her with their potency, like a drowned man in the face of god.

He smiles into the nape of her neck. “The dark, then?” And she felt herself being tugged backwards, she felt his lips crash hungrily into her own; and she gave into it, not because she was afraid of the dark, but because she was afraid of the mundane. That fate that lay before her, every night like this one - it seized her in her most vulnerable moments, and she was entirely, helplessly afraid.

↳ Her boggart would be a vision of herself as a domestic housewife: the most mundane of existences, in her opinion. The idea that she can hold as much talent and ambition as all the world and still be confined to a lifetime of boredom - it’s more terrifying than the prospect of death. She is desperate to escape her fate and build a new one. She would rather die than be reduced to someone’s prize horse, to be ridden hard, and retired easy.

FOUR CHARACTERISTICS:

Fascinating: She was beautiful, she was full of divinity and consequence. Fascination is a curious thing: it’s striking, it’s memorable; it’s something otherworldly. She was a girl of silk and lace. The people she met, the hearts that she broke - she would never fade from them, they would never forget her. Her very presence cast an impossible imprint upon all those who looked at her and heard her speak. It made her formidable, she supposed. To be known and idolized, to be worshiped and dreamt of. Wetdream, daydream, chiffon-nightmare. Chanel No. 5, pervading their sleep and whispering sweet nothings into their ears.

Pragmatic: Her sharpness of mind was like the glint of a sword; all at once lethal and impressive. She was ambitious, yes. But beyond that, she was intelligent, sensible; possessing an enormous capacity for reason. Crime and Punishment. War and Peace. While the Slytherins followed their blind ambitions to the gates of Purgatory without blinking, she knew well what lay on the road before her. All things, even suffering, can be alleviated by planning. Her judgement is one of her greatest assets; and her mind is her greatest weapon: beyond her lips or her legs or her eyes, her mind is what truly entices. Aphrodite was beautiful, yes - but Athena had ended empires with a close of her fist.

Jealous: Even god himself is a jealous god. It seems that the fate of all divine beings is to want and hoard and hold close to them that which is theirs. Selene is often prone to envy: she envies Nathaniel for his unmerited inheritance, she envies Nikolai for stealing Evan’s affection, she envies and envies until it fills her lungs with thoughts of retribution. Things and people who she sees as “hers” are sacred in her eyes, and she will break heaven and raise hell in order to wrestle them back if they are taken from her.

Manipulative: She was a raven, but she possessed the cunning of a snake. As Helen had started a war of the ages with her manipulation and beauty, and Delilah had rendered Samson futile with her charming murmurs and a well-placed mouth; so Selene manipulated those around her with her charisma. She could be the devil’s prostitute for those boys who craved a bit of brutality, she could be a heavenly wraith for all the girls who wished to be treated softly. Her manipulation came in many forms - verbal, metaphorical, physical. Even with a single glance, she could convey entire worlds of lies. In the span of one conversation, sinners could be born again, the blinded could again see a pinprick of light. She had the tongue of a seductress, the mind of a empress, the voice of a siren, the hands of a nympth.

CONNECTIONS:

Nikolai Selwyn — “I don’t want to be around you. I don’t want to drink you in. I want to walk into the heart of you and never walk back out. “ —Nico Alvarado from “Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls”

↳ She wanted him for no rhyme or reason: just that she could. She wanted him to bow before her, she wanted to place her hand upon his cheek and see him shudder at her touch. “You cannot evade me,” she murmurs to him in the twilight. “Not all of us are conquerable,” is his flippant response, matching her every move with a mirror move of his own. In truth, she envies Nikolai: she envies his bond with Evan, she envies his promising future, she envies that he is not hers to touch and hold captive. There is a wine-dark streak of ambition in his soul, and she senses it calling to hers. She’s considered it; my god, she’s considered it. How would they look standing side by side? Would their scepters match in shades of gold? How great an empire could they build, if they were to give into their primal urges and kiss each other like the hungry, insatiable beasts they were?

Nathaniel Avery — “Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands?” —Richard Siken from “Wishbone”

↳ Her brother had everything that she ever wanted, but he still found ways to hurt her anew. But she loved him, oh she loved him with a lingering purity, an inconsolable affection. They were both children once, after all: those were the best days, weren’t they? She still sees Nathaniel as a child, given his reckless antics, and often she’s the one to clean up his messes. He resents her, she knows this. But as much as she covets what he has innately been given, she doesn’t truly hate him. They both know that she’s more capable, more dangerous, more fit for the throne. But no matter how he might shirk his responsibilities and despise his role, Selene knows that Nathaniel would never, ever relinquish his hold on the Avery legacy to her. Not without a fight, not without a blood-soaked war.

Evan Rosier — “You happened to me. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse.” —Marilyn Hacker from "Nearly a Valediction”

↳ “Do you love me?” It’s a tradition of theirs, to ask one another this. She asks him now, curled up against his shoulder as they watch the breeze roll in from the mountainpeaks, rippling across the grounds like a ghost. “Until the day the sun sets in the east,” he replies with an absolute certainty. And she smiles. All else can fade, but she’s certain that her bond with Evan will last forever. Contrary to what others might assume from their affectionate touches and deep familiarity, they are not lovers and will never be. They’re platonic soulmates, a different sort of union that is unbreakable by time or war. She worries deeply over Evan. He is her light and her shield, and she can’t imagine losing him to the hysteria which has overtaken the others of their society — he is not Achilles, golden warrior of the front lines. He is Patroclus, and she’s so desperately afraid of letting him go, only to receive him back in ashes. She does everything in her power to save them both from their impending dooms.

FREESTYLE PORTION:

Playlist: The Comets (for Selene & Evan)

Tag: (quotes, images, flashes of who I envision her to be) Click here

Diary Entry:

JULY 21ST, 1976

There is a misconception that beautiful women are thornless. We are ripe for the picking, simply a commodity to be auctioned and then bought by the highest bidder. It is just as Mary Wollstonecraft wrote: we are flowers, cultivated and planted within the shallowest of soil, so that every breath we draw depends entirely upon the whims of our masters. Our petals are ground to be their perfume, and because we were watered with wine and dreams, we inevitably wilt before our time. I am my father’s flower, a helpless, wilting bloom. I am to be here one day and gone the next, and he is to clink his pouch of gold as he makes the trade.

I fear destruction. It is like oblivion, a monstrous, infallible thing, armoured and willing to face even the strongest of souls. I feel myself hurtling towards it every day, every night. Particularly now, when I cannot breathe for the corset at my waist, and cannot cry for the mask upon my face. The monsters are already closing in. Their eyes pierce into my side and shake every foundation I have built in my seventeen years. They undress me, and I am always scrambling for honour, fighting not to lose it. There will come a day when they become too many, and even I cannot fight them any longer. My weapons are quiet ones - they brandish armories and swords, I brandish only myself.

Today, I nearly lost even that. It sickens me to write of it, but it also is a reminder that must be committed to ink, an admonition to my future and my psyche.

I am always willing to be touched, to be violated, even - for the sake of my games. Like a queen must sacrifice pieces, I must allow certain events to transpire in order to reach my goal. Some are small.

Pawns: a man’s mouth against mine, rough and hard, his teeth clicking against my own, the taste of whiskey in his breath. The warm slithering feeling of a tongue slipping past my lips, intertwining as he presses me against the edge of a table.

Rooks…wandering hands that begin at my waist and then stray to my chest — grasping, handling, lingering over the black lace and dark chiffon we women don for their imagination.

Some are larger, more important, less forgivable…and it is when they are taken from me that I feel like I may be slipping, that I may be losing this match to the enemy.

My knights, my bishops.

Last night, I suffered a loss that haunts me even now. It is not a loss that I have not already seen. And yet his hand between my thighs, thrusting, twisting, drawing this primal, feral thing out of me…I’m almost ashamed to say that I almost enjoyed it, that I arched my back and cried his name out like it meant something. Then there was his mouth, already stained crimson from my lips, and I hated it, I hated him — and yet I fell to those carnal pleasures, the stubble of his chin against my thighs, my fingers grasping the thick locks of his hair, torn between wanting him to stop and wanting more.

This is the danger of the precipice.

You think yourself powerful, guarded — and yet as your soldiers fall beneath you, you feel the urge to leap into that gorge, to face the beast yourself, to offer everything for the sake of victory. But you lose yourself to the glory, the feeling of love and sweat on your hands, spilling down your thighs like Poseidon’s saltwater spring…unintentionally wonderful and yet utterly pointless.

And that is when you fall.

Or nearly. He was naked, a beautiful youth, Adonis of our age. I did not know him, but his blood was pure like ichor, like those of the gods, he may have been Aphrodite’s favorite. And in the marble bareness of his chest, that moonlit organ hard between his legs, I found a type of twisted satisfaction. But not enough, never enough. He was a bishop, but I am the queen. When I fall, the entire board capsizes.

I left him there with a kiss and nothing more.

There was something ugly, hideous in his gaze; when I pulled from him. He made as if to grab me, to silence my cries and get it over with. I would have killed him if he had.

Perhaps the blood wouldn’t even lie on my hands — I know that there are those who would murder with a single word of my command.

WRITING SAMPLES:

( For this portion of the app, I decided to take the prompt literally, and provide a few flashes, glimpses, and short windows of insight into Selene at various points across time. Some are vague, others are fleeting — but I hope that they come together to give a somewhat holistic view of how I plan on portraying her. )

♚ ONE.

“Do you believe in omens?” Her voice is quiet, musing, a murmured menagerie of pale interest and cool apathy. She watches the bodies stream pass their perch at the banister, one after another, caught in a bacchic frenzy, food and drink fueled by an anxious trepidation. Her companion looks on at the scene below. They are like lions surveying a stampede of gazelles; choosing their prey, calculating their victories. Selene scoffs, a soft sound. “In times of war, harbingers like this always promised riots to come. Look at them. Look at their fear.”

♚ TWO.

It was always an exciting affair to return an illicit volume to its rightful place upon the shelves. A trickyaffair, dangerous, full of sleights of hands and misleading paths to fool the eyes of any beholder. Selene slipped past the stories of magical beasts and their destruction, stepped through the sector dedicated to the most famous of the wizarding race — slowed as she approached potions and alchemy. Her fingers wrapped tighter about the leather-bound notebook at her chest, remembering page 37 and its deadly advice, thinking upon it. A turn of the corner, a glance cutting across the small expanse — and dark eyes reflected dawn’s light as recognition flooded their depths. A sigh, soft, like the grey light. “I don’t trust you with your own judgment this morning, mon cher. It seems to be…lacking.”

For there Evan was, asleep on the ground. He was graceful even in his sloth, but she nonetheless goes to him, shakes him lightly; presses a chaste kiss to his forehead when he stirs but does not wake.

♚ THREE.

Her smile wavered before falling into oblivion. She did not play games where others were used as leverage, certainly not those who she had purposely excluded from her board. Nathaniel had crossed some irreversible line, broken an unspoken rule. He had involved a piece that she had expressively hidden away in his convoluted games.

“Our father must be pleased that a boy like you is his heir and that I’m only the spare.” Her voice was quiet, eerily so; the imperium was not in volume, but in nature. “But to have half a beast inherit his name would be a harrowing blow, would it not? Like Minos and his Minotaur, a creature appeased only by the blood of maidens, confined within a labyrinth where he believes himself k i n g .”

Now she leans forward as she stands from her seat, her lips inches from his ear, dark locks lending the two Avery siblings a brief moment of seclusion, a heartbeat for her to etch her murmered mark. “I suggest that you heed my warning, little king. You’re running yourself into a dead end.”

♚ FOUR.

It dripped from her, a seduction as golden-dark and rich as honey; that gilded absence of imperfection. To look at her was to die. Such a mouth, such a face, such fingers, pressing bruised kisses into the flesh of men and women alike; Eros’ executioner, bedecked in a cloak of darkness and lace, feeding upon the misguided love of her victims.

She stands now, wrapped in that invincibility (that impossibility) of bedroom eyes and smokey murmurs, champagne-kisses and the soft flutter of a dress as it falls to the floor. About her, a dozen beings are having a thousand dreams of touching and being touched by her, and she is fully aware of their hunger. They may deny it, they may suppress it, but the way that she moves, ah, she is from heaven and they are sinners begging for salvation, found in the passionate press of her lips, the flicker of her dark eyes, silver in the moonlight.

“My darling.” It’s the real executioner sweeping up to her in all his finery, smiling like a wolf, all teeth and hackles and obsidian daggers. Nikolai Selwyn. He is seventeen and already holds himself with the same air which characterizes his father’s dynasty, and though she doesn’t want to play into his game tonight, together they nonetheless exude a sense of power which is both intimidation and seduction.

Their surroundings pale, their opponents simmer with a quiet envy, daggers in their gazes and an unbidded wanting drying in their mouths. Opulence and wealth become quite inconsequential unless they are inhabited by the sure-footed elite, and in this manor of silk screens and white lace doilies, of ash fireplaces and ancient halls of secrets, they nearly dominate.

“My tormentor,” she replies to him in greeting, offering him her hand. He smiles, a crooked sort of smile that indicates that he’s genuine, if only for a night. And though she never does tell him, throughout the duration of that night, she is grateful for his company, the shadow-dark solidarity of him. If only for a night. What more should they expect; when they lived lies as extravagantly as if they were the glorious truth?

♚ FIVE.

There was a certain restlessness to the halls even in their state of solitude: but perhaps the feeling of frenzy was merely the beating of her heart. Once, she had relished its pulse. It was a sign that she was human, that despite all her wrongdoings, she had not yet risen to a place too far to be redeemed. Surely, when the day of her judgement arrived, she would hear it in the beating of her heart; it would skip and wrench, she would know with certainty that this is the end. Wretched organ of love, destroyer of worlds.

Tonight, as she steps lightly over the marble floors of a castle asleep, there is blood smeared on her mouth.No, it was merely lipstick. Hers? Theirs?

It had come to a point where she barely blinked after one such entanglement. Kiss them, lead them, lay with them; hear their breaths in the dark. These sorts of excursions had once been sparse, but now, with the last dredges of her humanity coming out in desperate attempt to change her impending fate, the nights were blurring, the sheets tangling one step closer to the ultimate picking of the rose. She was on dangerous grounds. It was her version of delirium, this uncouth consistency, one hard mouth exchanged for another, a different skin against hers each time the moon rose again. Pureblood, halfblood, blood without blood - did it matter? Promiscuity was separated from temptation by a fine division, but she could be characterized as neither. This was not a sport to enjoy, it was a hunt to numb the senses.

She walked as if in a trance. Dark cloaks drawn about her to make up for the chill of minutes prior (she was told that her collarbones could bring the sharpest of men to their knees), Selene was sweeping through the empty bones of a great establishment, and her mind was fleeing from her. Gaze lost; thoughtless. This was her delirium. And someone else was witnessing it. Darkness’ brother was fear. But she does not fear the boy in the shadows when her black gaze coolly rises to meet his.

Few specters frequented this twilight realm of hers.

“If not for your trademark arrogance, Nikolai, I might have passed you by.” She raises her chin by the slightest degrees, adjusting her tired bones to his height, adjusting her mindlessness for weary blades of steel.

“If not for the smear of your lipstick, I would have let you,” is his quaint reply, light; but carrying a far deeper connotation. He challenges her.

She meets his eyes across the moon-dark hall, and all at once they understand one another. Not like Evan understands her, no; but there is something familiar and innate in the Slytherin’s face that mirrors the hidden emotions in her own.

They had been children once. Pure, untainted. Once - though she despised the act of remembering it, she had been defenseless. Perhaps he had been as well. She wonders then, what had brought him to this place, to walk with her in shadows, to see the same dappled halls as she did, with eyes cold, serpentine…a gaze that so mirrored her own.

For her, it had been the roughness of hands in the dark, a snarling command pressed against her ear by her father and all his male companions alike, the reminder, the constant beratement that she was weak, meant only for another’s pleasure, that her power lay between her legs and no place else. She was in a labyrinth, and it was her destiny to be devoured by the beast who lusted for her flesh. Or so they insisted.

She would devour them if they spoke to her now. They would see her and want her, and she would tear their filthy hands from her waist, leave them bleeding out like dogs groveling at her feet. She was more powerful than they could ever dream to be. One movement of her hips, and she could destroy ships, obliterate mountains, move men like pawns across a board built from her fear, her anxiousness, herdetermination. There was nothing inevitable but her, and she would make them pay for what they had wished. But Nikolai— he was this world’s gentleman, void of such malignant tendencies, such terrible bigotries. There was a cool charm to him. There is now, as Selene stands across from him, drinking in the image of his dark cloaks, his dark hair, those tantalizing eyes. They may seem like equals, her cold gaze holding his accountable, but she had climbed further, run farther, reached and sacrificed and tiptoed and fought with a vigor that he would never know.

Fear, know thy master.

“I’m tired tonight, Nik.” It’s a familar nickname, too familiar perhaps. But it slips from her like water, and she doesn’t try to take it back. “Let me pass.”

“Let me see you.” He’s looking right at her. But she knows precisely what he means. This is another game, but it doesn’t feel like a game, it feels real; it feels heavy like the weight of a world. Her heart sinks, she feels her exhaustion anew. When she speaks again, her wariness is palpable

“I’m standing right here.”

But he’s adamant. Nikolai never did disappoint. His control was impressive, and she sees it now. He wants to let go, but still he holds back. He’s holding back from her. He sighs, for her. Because of her. “No you’re not, Selene. Not the real you.”

She meets his eyes for a long moment. Then Selene brings one hand to her mouth, and with an almost brutal motion, smears the rest of her lips. A scarlet slash cuts across her face in shades of creme and rose. She looks like an angel of death, just returned from swallowing a mortal heart.

“See me, then.”

Now he falters, and she drinks in his fallacy as a butterfly would nectar. Leo Tolstoy once wrote; It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. Did this boy of darkness and torn shirts fancy her in need of his protection? The thought makes her want to laugh, and if she were a being of impulse, who allowed every whim to come to fruition, perhaps she would.

Instead, a smile. It cuts like a wound, blood-red lipstick. Waning crescent, holding a transcendence like the moon in an unforgiving November sky. There are some things that she has learnt to sense. Darkness is an old friend, she has walked hand in hand with it upon many a lonely, narrow road; and she recognizes it. Tonight, it resides in Nikolai’s chest, fluttering as strongly as a dragon’s wings at her proximity. Selene knows that she has won. She sweeps forward, gliding in the silence, relishing its softness as she draws closer to this proud, tall boy who could not show his concern, could not live without his wand, cannot hope to capture her —

“I show you only what you need to see, mon amour.” A pause, and she is close to him. She can smell his cologne, and there it is again, the feverish reflection of herself in his gaze. “While you,” and she wraps one hand about his, which is slack at his side. It’s strangely warm. Her fingers intertwine with all those tendons and knuckles, calloused skin against her soft palm. “You show me everything that I want.” That flash of a smile. “Your gaze is feral, Nikolai. There are primal urges that have been awakened within you; but you crave for something more than flesh and blood.”

“You crave what you don’t understand,” She passes him like a wraith, and he makes no move to stop her. Her whisper lingers.

“And it consumes you.”

♚ SIX.

Any other would hide their marks, those shameful scars of being dominated by another. But she is not ashamed, nor is she made so by their words, those sly syllables crafted to strike, to bury themselves within her flesh and wound her psyche. But she was not ashamed. She had awned her head back, felt teeth bite. Her jugular was not so easily split.

“Do you think this is the first time someone has raised a hand to me?” A musing murmur, and as that velveteen tone slips through scarlet lips, she can see that somewhere, her words have struck a truth. She turns towards the windows, her visage illuminated by night, a small reprieve in which she will allow them to recover. The bruises upon her throat glow ghostly in the night.

“How do I cope?” It was the unasked question, so she asks it for them. “I like to think of it as a temporary affliction, an insect’s fervored kiss.” And like a velvet curtain falling to reveal the work beneath, a single movement of her head, and her cloak slips from her shoulder, revealing half a dozen more dark compressions, littered like stars upon the smoothness of her shoulder. She makes no move to hide what they already must suspect. Sex is rough. Ambition is rougher.

“Don’t worry after me, love. I have very high tolerance for suffering. ”

♚ SEVEN.

She had promised retribution, and it trembles in her bones, the sound and the fury of it, the echoes of every premonition and terror. He stands before her, gaze averted, and it’s written all over his face: the guilt, the ready admission. It’s too easy - she wishes that it were harder, that he stood tall and straight, unblinking, insisting upon his innocence, proud until the end. But it seems that tonight has changed both of them, turned one into the mirage of another, stuck pins into the hard ice of their hearts, melted them for the sake of preserving what has been tainted.

The sincerity of what is to come is heavy in the air between them, and as she swallows the lump in her throat, she thinks: how ironic, that only when a threat of such caliber hangs above them that he can face her like this, without his armour, his barbs, those offenses that would barrage her so, push her until she was gritting her teeth and at the edge of the cliff, tempted by the idea of abandoning all care for the sake of primal revenge. So when Selene does speak, she is past suppressing what has been building in her, for years and years — this is the tipping point, and he knows as well as she how terribly their ship has rocked, how monstrously the storm rages. “Look at me,” she says, once. She is the wolf and he is silent. “What did you do, Nathaniel?” Her voice is eerily calm, but then it breaks, and the anger, the emotion that she has withheld for so long; it begins to leak. She speaks in a hiss, like the snake she almost could have been. “Nathaniel.” It’s not a question, but a command, and you can see it in her gaze — she would kill to see it obeyed. “Were you or were you not part of that despicable affair?”

♚ EIGHT

Eyes are the window to the soul. It was a timeless phrase, recycled, reused, debated by philosophers who thought themselves privy to the world of inner turmoil, hidden agendas behind flashing eyes and painted smiles. Who thought themselves able to speak of a secret history. She had seen many eyes in her lifetime - met a thousand gazes. Demurely, coldly, sweetly, cruelly — and perhaps it was true, these musings. In those lingering stares, she found more than carnal desire…and oh, if the stars had only hid their heavenly fire, perhaps those veiled depths might have remained today’s gift, tomorrow’s mystery.

Nathaniel’s were dead wet, the color of sickness. A puerile sickness, all tantrums thrown at twilight and too much force behind thick fists as they pounded against mahogany tables. A vicious jealousy, fueled by rash thinking and a need to conquer all - a boy who thought his future held a crown, and thus acted like a tyrant long before it had ever touched his head. When he campaigned and lost against his self-made enemies, & all his tricks lay slain on the battlefield, the wail of rage that went up was a terrible, terrible thing…such a shame, such a waste of a pretty face, such a waste of p o w e r .

Hers were hellfire, obsidian dark and ash gray - smoking flickers of a smoldering flame contained in that crevice between her lungs and her ribcage. When you leaned into the crook of that beautiful neck, swanlike, it was the scent of jasmine…and something else. Did a m b i t i o n have a scent? Or was it a subtle thing that she tucked within herself, deep in that cold cool organ which she called a heart? A warrior queen dressed like a lamb: a long-legged, lupine thing, all silver teeth and golden claws, taking on the guise of her prey. She ate the bodies that the boy king left behind, wolfed down the remnants of his mistakes, turned that formidable pair of eyes upon another unsuspecting ruler to do it all over again. Her stealth was her weapon, it was her a d v a n t a g e .

Girls don’t speak until spoken to - and so she watched the world through heavy lashes until it bent to her bidding, until there was no creature that could resist her charms. She was not a beautiful thing, not in the classic sense, not like they wanted her to be. No, she was the crack of thunder against alabaster stone, a drop of blood in winter’s first snow, the thorn that pricks the unsuspecting finger on the underside of a rose. She was cruel, she was ruination, she was the saccharine taste of poison a moment before it grips and kills, bittersweet until the very end.

Girls don’t become powerful - and so she was not, at least, not from her appearance. She studied in secret, cut her delicate fingers fumbling with ancient pages in the midnight dark, marred those honeyed hands with the waxen heat of her quiet fury, her searing aspirations. Candlelight was where she stood her vigil, where she planned her battles. It was beneath the sun, in the clasp of daylight, that she played them out. A lovely thing she was, in these hours when she was most dangerous - soft, graceful, a vision of divine absolution, ichor flowing through her veins and making her glow, making her desirable. A lovely thing she was, when she had so much power to h u r t .

You are man’s plaything, you are their pet, their every whim. You are Eve, made for Adam’s pleasure. Their warmth, their foundation, their dearly beloved — their shadow, their buried support, the thing that they bend across the soft silk of a bed with hands rough and too accustomed to love lost. A mare to be ridden, until the sheen of sweat on her hide was broken by a cry in the dead of night, a child mewling its hallowed name. She knew what they expected, she had known it her entire life, this impending doom above her head, threatening her and constraining her, making it ten times more difficult to rise than to fall into that niche she had been born into - but her resolve was beyond what they ever could have imagined. She knew of legislation and judgement, of landmasses and kings - the history of the world perched upon her palm, and among it, there were so few women queens, so few heroines: but had they existed as she did? Quietly, a simmering force beneath a complacent exterior? Did they paint their lips, smooth the waists of their gowns and chiffon, glance at themselves in the mirror and see the serpent beneath the flower? She had been told to be men’s companion, and so she was. She was bound to them, so she made them her foundation, the poor unfortunate souls who she sucked dry, their blood smearing her mouth. And she laughed.

She laughed like a god.

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pamphletstoinspire · 4 years

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First Sunday in Lent.

Lent (the word “Lent” comes from the Old English “lencten,” meaning “springtime) lasts from Ash Wednesday to the Vespers of Holy Saturday — forty days + six Sundays which don't count as “Lent” liturgically. The Latin name for Lent, Quadragesima, means forty and refers to the forty days Christ spent in the desert which is the origin of the Season.The last two weeks of Lent are known as “Passiontide,” made up of Passion Week and Holy Week. The last three days of Holy Week — Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday — are known as the “Sacred Triduum.”

The focus of this Season is the Cross and penance, penance, penance as we imitate Christ's forty days of fasting, like Moses and Elias before Him, and await the triumph of Easter. We fast (see below), abstain, mortify the flesh, give alms, and think more of charitable works. Awakening each morning with the thought, “How might I make amends for my sins? How can I serve God in a reparative way? How can I serve others today?” is the attitude to have.

We meditate on “The Four Last Things”: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, and we also practice mortifications by “giving up something” that would be a sacrifice to do without. The sacrifice could be anything from desserts to television to the marital embrace, and it can entail, too, taking on something unpleasant that we'd normally avoid, for example, going out of one's way to do another's chores, performing “random acts of kindness,” etc. A practice that might help some, especially small children, to think sacrificially is to make use of “Sacrifice Beads” in the same way that St. Thérèse of Lisieux did as a child.

Because of the focus on penance and reparation, it is traditional to make sure we go to Confession at least once during this Season to fulfill the precept of the Church that we go to Confession at least once a year, and receive the Eucharist at least once a year during Eastertide. A beautiful old custom associated with Lenten Confession is to, before going to see the priest, bow before each member of your household and to any you've sinned against, and say, “In the Name of Christ, forgive me if I've offended you.” One responds with “God will forgive you.” Done with an extensive examination of conscience and a sincere heart, this practice can be quite healing (also note that confessing sins to a priest is a Sacrament which remits mortal and venial sins; confessing sins to those you've offended is a sacramental which, like all sacramentals one piously takes advantage of, remits venial sins. Both are quite good for the soul!)

by Abbot Gueranger

This Sunday, the first of the six which come during Lent, is one of the most solemn throughout the year. In common with the other Sundays of Lent, it has the privilege of taking precedence over all feasts, even that of the patron, titular saint, or dedication of the Church. In the ancient calendars, it is called Invocabit, from the first word of the Introit of the Mass. In the middle ages (more especially in France), it was called Brand Sunday, because the young people, who had misbehaved during the carnival, were obliged to show themselves today at the church with a torch in their hands, as a kind of public satisfaction for their causing disturbance and excess.

Lent solemnly opens today. We have already noticed that the four preceding days were added since the time of St. Gregory the Great, in order to make up the forty days of fasting. But we cannot look upon Ash Wednesday as the solemn opening of the season, for the faithful are not strictly bound to hear Mass on that day. Holy Mother Church, seeing Her children now assembled together, speaks to them, in Her Office of Matins, these eloquent and noble words of St. Leo the Great: “Having to announce to you, dearly beloved, the most sacred and chief fast, how can I more appropriately begin, than with the words of the Apostle, in whom Christ Himself spoke, and by saying to you what has just been read: Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. For although there be no time which is not replete with divine gifts, and we may always, by God's grace, have access to His mercy, yet ought we all to redouble our efforts to make spiritual progress and be animated with extraordinary confidence, now that the anniversary of the day of our redemption is approaching, inviting us to devote ourselves to every good work, that so we may celebrate, with purity of body and mind, the incomparable mystery of Our Lord's Passion.

“It is true that our devotion and reverence towards so great a mystery should be kept up during the whole year, and we ourselves should be at all times, in the eyes of God, the same as we are bound to be at the Easter solemnity. But this is an effort which only few among us have the courage to sustain. The weakness of the flesh induces us to relax our austerities; the various occupations of every-day life take up our thoughts; and thus even the virtuous find their hearts clogged by this world's dust. Hence it is that Our Lord has most providentially given us these forty days, whose holy exercises should be to us a remedy, whereby to regain our purity of soul. The good works and the holy fastings of this season were instituted as an atonement for, and an obliteration of, the sins we commit during the rest of the year.

“Now, therefore, that we are about to enter upon these days, which are so full of mystery, and which were instituted for the holy purpose of purifying both soul and body, let us, dearly beloved, be careful to do as the Apostle bids us, and cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit: that thus the combat between the two substances being made less fierce, the soul, which, when she herself is subject to God, ought to be the ruler of the body, will recover her own dignity and position. Let us also avoid giving offense to any man, so that there be none to blame or speak evil things of us. For we deserve the harsh remarks of infidels, and we provoke the tongues of the wicked to blaspheme religion, when we who fast lead unholy lives. For our fast does not consist in the mere abstinence from food; nor is it of much use to deny food to our body, unless we restrain the soul from sin” (Fourth Sermon for Lent).

Each Sunday of Lent offers to our consideration a passage from the Gospel, which is in keeping with the sentiments wherewith the Church would have us be filled. Today She brings before us the temptation of Our Lord in the desert. What light and encouragement there is for us in the this instruction!

We acknowledge ourselves to be sinners; we are engaged, at this very time, in doing penance for the sins we have committed—but how was it that we fell into sin? The devil tempted us; we did not reject the temptation; then we yielded to the suggestion, and the sin was committed. This is the history of our past; and such it would, also, be for the future, were we not to profit by the lesson given us today by our Redeemer.

When the Apostle speaks of the wonderful mercy shown us by our Divine Savior, Who vouchsafed to make Himself like to us in all things save sin, he justly lays stress on His temptations (Heb. 4: 15). He, Who is very God, humbled Himself even so low as this, to prove how tenderly He compassionated us. Here then, we have the Saint of saints allowing the wicked spirit to approach Him, in order that we might learn, from His example, how we are to gain victory under temptation.

Satan has had his eye upon Jesus; he is troubled at beholding such matchless virtue. The wonderful circumstances of His birth; the shepherds called by angels to His crib, and the Magi guided by the star; the Infant's escape from Herod's plot; the testimony rendered to this new Prophet by John the Baptist: all these things, which seem so out of keeping with the thirty years spent in obscurity at Nazareth, are a mystery to the infernal serpent, and fill him with apprehension. The ineffable mystery of the Incarnation has been accomplished unknown to him; he never once suspects that the humble Virgin, Mary, is She who was foretold by the prophet Isaias, as having to bring forth the Emmanuel (Is. 7: 14); but he is aware that the time has come, that the last week spoken of to Daniel has begun its course, and that the very pagans are looking towards Judea for a deliverer. He is afraid of this Jesus; he resolves to speak with Him, and elicit from Him some expression which will show him whether He be or not the Son of God; he will tempt Him to some imperfection, or sin, which, should He commit it, will prove that the object of so much fear is, after all, but a mortal man.

The enemy of God and men is, of course, disappointed. He approaches Jesus; but all his efforts turn only to his own confusion. Our Redeemer, with all the self-possession and easy majesty of a God-Man, repels the attacks of Satan; but He reveals not His heavenly origin. The wicked spirit retires without having made any discovery beyond this—that Jesus is a prophet, faithful to God. Later on, when he sees the Son of God treated with contempt, calumniated and persecuted; when he finds that his own attempts to have Him put to death are so successful; his pride and his blindness will be at their height; and not till Jesus expires on the Cross, will he learn that his victim was not merely Man, but Man and God. Then will he discover how all his plots against Jesus have but served to manifest, in all their beauty, the mercy and justice of God: His mercy, because He saved mankind; and His justice, because He broke the power of Hell forever.

These were the designs of Divine Providence in permitting the wicked spirit to defile, by his presence, the retreat of Jesus, to speak to Him, and to lay his hands upon Him. But let us attentively consider the triple temptation in all its circumstances; for our Redeemer suffered it only in order that He might instruct and encourage us.

We have three enemies to fight against; our soul has three dangers; for, as the beloved disciple says, all that is in the world, is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life! (1 John 2: 16) By the concupiscence of the flesh, is meant the love of sensual things, which covets whatever is agreeable to the flesh, and, when not curbed, draws the soul into unlawful pleasures. Concupiscence of the eyes expresses the love of the goods of this world, such as riches and possessions; these dazzle the eye, and then seduce the heart. Pride of life is that confidence in ourselves, which leads us to be vain and presumptuous, and makes us forget that all we have, our life and every good gift, we have from God.

Every one of our sins comes from one of these three sources; every one of our temptations aims at making us accept the concupiscence of the flesh, or the concupiscence of the eyes, or the pride of life. Our Savior, then, Who willed to be our Model in all things, deigned to subject Himself to these three temptations.

First of all Satan tempts Him in what regards the flesh: he suggests to Him to satisfy the cravings of hunger by working a miracle, and changing the stones into bread. If Jesus were to consent, and show an eagerness in giving this indulgence to His Body, the tempter will conclude that He is a frail mortal, subject to concupiscence like other men. When he tempts us, who have inherited evil concupiscence from Adam, his suggestions go further that this: he endeavors to defile the soul by the body. But the sovereign holiness of the Incarnate Word could never permit Satan to use upon Him the power which he has received of tempting man in his outward senses. The lesson, therefore, which the Son of God here gives us, is one of temperance; but we know that, for us, temperance is the mother of purity, and that intemperance excites our senses to rebel.

The second temptation is to pride: “Cast Thyself down; the angels shall bear Thee up in their hands.” The enemy is anxious to see if the favors of Heaven have produced in Jesus' soul that haughtiness, that ungrateful self-confidence, which makes the creature arrogate God’s gifts to itself, and forget its Benefactor. Here, also, he is foiled; our Redeemer’s humility confounds the pride of the rebel angel.

He then makes a last effort: he hopes to gain over by ambition Him Who has given such proofs of temperance and humility. He shows Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and says to Him: “All these will I give Thee, if falling down, Thou wilt adore me.” Jesus rejects the wretched offer, and drives from Him the seducer, the prince of this world (John 14: 30); hereby teaching us that we must despise the riches of this world, as often as our keeping or getting them is to be on the condition of our violating the law of God and thereby paying homage to Satan.

But let us observe how it is that our Divine Model, our Redeemer, overcomes the tempter. Does He hearken to his words? Does He allow the temptation time, and give it strength by delay? We did so, when we were tempted; and we fell. But Our Lord immediately meets each temptation with the shield of God's Word. He says: “It is written: Not on bread alone doth man live. It is written: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. It is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve.” This, then, must be our practice for the time to come. Eve brought perdition on herself, and on the whole human race, because she listened to the serpent. He that dallies with temptation is sure to fall. We are now in a season of extraordinary grace; our hearts are on the watch, dangerous occasions are removed, everything that savors of worldliness is laid aside; our souls, purified by prayer, fasting, and almsdeeds, are to rise with Christ to a new life; but shall we persevere? All depends upon how we behave under temptation. Here, at the very opening of Lent, the Church gives us this passage of the holy Gospel, that we may have not only precept but example. If we be attentive and faithful, the lesson She gives us will produce its fruit; and when we come to the Easter solemnity, we shall have those sure pledges of perseverance: vigilance, self-diffidence, prayer, and the never-failing help of divine grace.

The Greek Church, in spite of her principle of never admitting a feast during Lent, celebrates today one of her greatest solemnities. It is called Orthodoxia, and was instituted in memory of the restoration of sacred images in Constantinople and the eastern empire, in the year 842, when the Empress Theodora (image at left), aided by the holy patriarch Methodius, put a stop to the Iconoclast persecution, and restored to the churches the holy images which the fury of the heretics had taken away.

The Station for the Mass at Rome is the patriarchal basilica of St. John Lateran. It was but right that a Sunday of such solemnity as this should be celebrated in the church which is the mother and mistress of all churches, not only of the holy city itself, but of the whole world. It is here that the public penitents would be reconciled on Maundy Thursday; it is here also, in the Baptistry of Constantine, that the catechumens would receive Baptism on the night of the Easter Vigil. No other basilica could have had such a claim for the Station of a day like this; for it is there that the Lenten Fast had been so often proclaimed by Saints Leo and Gregory.

The Introit, Gradual, Tract, Offertory and Communion are all taken from Psalm 90. We have elsewhere spoken of the appropriateness of this beautiful psalm to the spirit of the Church during the season of Lent. It bids the Christian soul to confide in the divine aid. She is now devoting her whole energies to prayer; she is engaged in battle with her own and God’s enemies. She has need of support. Let her not be afraid, God tells her; she is under His protection as well as that of the holy angels. It was this passage that Satan attempted to abuse in his second temptation:

He shall cry to Me and I will hear him: I will deliver him, and I will glorify him: I will fill him with length of days. He that dwelleth in the aid of the Most High, shall abide under the protection of the God of Heaven… God hath given His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. In their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone…

In the Collect, the Church prays for Her children, that their fast may not only purify them, but also obtain for them that divine assistance, which will secure their salvation by enabling them to abound in good works:

O God, Who dost purify Thy Church by the yearly observance of Lent: grant to Thy family that what we try to obtain of Thee by abstinence, we may secure by good works. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ…

There follows a Lesson from the sixth chapter of the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians:

Brethren: We entreat you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For He says, “In an acceptable time I have heard thee, and in the day of salvation I have helped thee.” Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation! We give no offense to anyone, that our ministry may not be blamed. On the contrary, let us conduct ourselves in all circumstances as God's ministers, in much patience; in tribulations, in hardships, in distresses; in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults; in labors, in sleepless night, in fastings; in innocence, in knowledge, in long-sufferings; in kindness, in the Holy Ghost, in unaffected love; in the word of truth, in the power of God; with the armor of justice on the right had and on the left; in honor and dishonor, in evil report and good report; as deceivers and yet truthful, as unknown and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastised but not killed; as sorrowful yet always rejoicing; as poor yet enriching many; as having nothing yet possessing all things.

These words of the Apostle give us a very different idea of the Christian life from that which our own tepidity suggests. We dare not say that he is wrong and we are right; but we put a strange interpretation upon his words, and we tell both ourselves and those around us that the advice he here gives is not to be taken literally nowadays, and that it was written for those special difficulties of the first age of the Church, when the faithful stood in need of unusual detachment and almost heroism, because they were always in danger of persecution and death. This interpretation is full of that discretion which meets with the applause of our cowardice, and it easily persuades us to be at rest, just as though we had no dangers to fear, and no battle to fight; whereas we have both; for there is the devil, the world, flesh and blood. The Church never forgets it; and hence, at the opening of this great season, She sends us into the desert, that there we may learn from our Jesus how we are to fight. Let us go; let us learn from the temptations of our Divine Master that the life of man upon earth is a warfare (Job 7: 1), and that, unless our fighting be truceless and brave, our life, which we would fain pass in peace, will witness our defeat. That such a misfortune may not befall us, the Church cries out to us, in the words of St. Paul: Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation! Let us, in all things, comport ourselves as the servants of God, and keep our ground unflinchingly to the end of our holy campaign. God is watching over us, as He did over His beloved Son in the desert.

The Holy Gospel is taken from the fourth chapter of St. Matthew:

At that time, Jesus was led into the desert by the Spirit, to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. And the tempter came and said to Him, “If Thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Not by bread alone does man live, but by every words that comes forth from the mouth of God'.” Then the devil took Him into the holy city and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If Thou art the Son of God, throw Thyself down; for it is written, ‘He has given His angels charge concerning Thee; and upon their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest Thou dash Thy foot against a stone'.” Jesus said to him, “It is written further, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God'.” Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. And he said to Him, “All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Begone, Satan, for it is written, ‘The Lord thy God shalt thou worship and Him only shalt thou serve'.” Then the devil left Him; and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.

Let us admire the exceeding goodness of the Son of God, Who, not satisfied with atoning for all our sins by dying on the Cross, deigns to suffer a fast of forty days and forty nights, in order to encourage us to do penance. He would not that the justice of His heavenly Father should exact any punishment from us, unless He Himself first suffered it, and that too, a thousand times more severely than we could. What are all our penances, even were they done thoroughly, when we compare them with the severity of this fast of Jesus in the desert? Can we dare to be ever asking for dispensations from the little which Our Lord asks of us in atonement for our sins, which deserve such rigorous penance? Instead of complaining at our feeling a slight inconvenience of a few days' duration, let us compassionate our innocent Jesus, Who subjects Himself to forty days of most rigorous privation of food and drink.

What was it that supported Him? Prayer, devotedness to us, and the knowledge of the exigencies of His Father's justice. And when the forty days were over, and His human Nature was faint from exhaustion, He is assailed by temptation; but here again He thinks of us, and sets us an example: He triumphs over the temptation, calmly and resolutely, and thereby teaches us how to conquer. How blasphemous the boldness of Satan, who dares to tempt the Just One! But how divine is the patience of Jesus, Who permits the hellish monster to lay his hand upon Him, and carry Him from place to place!

The Christian soul is oftentimes exposed to the vilest insults from this same enemy; nay, at times, she is on the point of complaining to her God, for permitting her to have such humiliations. Let her, on these occasions, think upon Jesus, the Saint of saints, Who was given over, so to speak, to the wicked spirit; and yet, He is not the less the Son of God, the Conqueror of Hell; and all that Satan gains by his attack is utter defeat. In the same way, if the soul, when under the violence of temptation, resists with all her energy, she is not one jot less dear to God, and Satan retires with one more eternal shame and chastisement upon him.

Let us take part with the holy angels, who, as soon as the tempter is gone, come to our Redeemer, and respectfully administer food to Him. How affectionately do they compassionate His hunger and thirst! How zealously they make amends, by their adorations, for the frightful outrage the charity of their God, Who, out of His love for man, seems to have been forgetting His own dignity, in order to provide for the wants of the children of Adam.

by Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger, 1876

Then Jesus said to him: Be gone, Satan!”–Matt. 4 : 10.

There is but one evil, and that is sin. This evil has many different paths by which it approaches us. These paths are called temptations. It is true that of themselves temptations can not injure us. On the contrary, Holy Writ says: “Blessed is the man that endureth, for when he hath been proved he shall receive the crown of life, which God hath promised to them that love Him.” All depends upon our withstanding them, and to be able to do this we must heed the admonition of Christ, we must watch and especially guard ourselves against those temptations through which Satan most frequently approaches man.

There are in particular three temptations to which today's Gospel refers, and to which a large portion of mankind fall victims; the three temptations, namely, with which Satan dared to tempt Christ, our Lord, Himself.

Let us see, today, what sort of temptations these are. Mary, thou mighty stronghold against the hosts of the tempter, give us thy assistance, that we may come forth victorious from the fight! I speak in the most holy name of Jesus, to the greater glory of God!

And the tempter approaching Him, said: “Command that these stones be made bread!” To what temptation do these words refer? I say to that temptation with which Satan assaults man when he enters upon life–the immoderate care for the goods of this world. It is the temptation of excessive labor, and anxiety after a business profession in order to gain a position in society. Yes, for a great number, even for many who otherwise seem to live piously, this is the net which entangles them in numberless temptations.

This regard for the world frequently causes men to forget their last aim and end. Instead of thinking only of what is requisite; for salvation, and pursuing it with their whole heart and the entire strength of their will, they live altogether for earthly things, and think seriously of nothing else. This worldly care extinguishes all their longing after perfection, and causes them to neglect those means of divine grace which are placed within their reach.

The man who is a prey to this inordinate care begins the day without prayer, and without a right intention; he neglects Mass, pious reading, and the holy Sacraments. His excuse is that his business leaves him no time for devotion, while in his intercourse with the world temptations approach him by countless roads. He hopes to satisfy the cravings of his heart with temporal wealth and pleasures; he expects to change the hard and tasteless stones of worldly enjoyment into bread which will nourish his soul but he is mistaken.

These perverse sentiments of the heart open wide the gate to all kinds of temptations; egotism, envy, anger, enmity, intemperance, deceit and injustice enter, and the wretched man endeavors to serve two masters, God and the world. But the world, at last, completely ensnares him, and, instead of conquering temptation, he is vanquished by it.

Satan said to Jesus after he had carried Him to the pinnacle of the temple: “Cast thyself down !” To what temptation do these words refer? To that dangerous state of the heart which causes man through presumption to fall a victim of his own foolhardiness.

And how? He neither fears God, nor the possibility of committing sin; he trusts in himself too much, and thinks that there is no danger of his swerving from the right path, and, while thus feeling secure, instead of avoiding temptation, he runs into it.

To this class of tempted persons belong those who are satisfied with being nominal children of the true Church, and who think that, because they are members of that Church out of whose pale there is no salvation, they will, without doubt, gain heaven. In a word, they are strangers to that fear of which St. Paul speaks when he says: “Work your salvation with fear and trembling.” To such people Satan need not go, they themselves seek him!

To this class belong also those who, in the selection of their place of business or their home, pay no attention to facilities for hearing Mass and receiving the Sacraments.

Finally, to this class belong those who are addicted to drinking, visiting bar-rooms, gambling; those who think only of pleasure, frequent dangerous company, read immoral books, and imagine that all this, in reality, has no evil consequences, and will not lead them into sin. Woe to these! They love the danger and will perish in it.

Lastly, Satan showed to Christ from the summit of a mountain all the kingdoms of the world, and said to Him: “All these will I give Thee if, falling down, thou wilt adore me.” What temptation is this? It is the temptation of self-love, of vanity, of pride in all its forms, a sin which deprives even virtuous actions of their merit. It is that self-adoration which causes man, even in a life devoted to piety, to seek more his own honor than the honor of God.

And yet how small, how trivial, is the honor which the world can give to man. Even were it to bestow all its glory and applause; how infinitely small would this be, when compared to God and the kingdom which He has promised and will give us! Those who are convinced of this truth will doubtless meet the tempter with an energetic: “Be gone!”

But it is in this determination, in this energy, that man is most deficient. Were this not the case, did he not waver, Satan would not hope, by again and again renewing his temptations, to succeed in the end; he would not even dare to tempt us. He knows well that he can do us no harm by tempting us, provided we remain firm, but that, on the contrary, he would only give us occasions to merit and adorn our crown of victory with jewels of virtue. St. Ignatius says: “Courage on our part discourages Satan.” If, however, he sees that we are in the least inclined to yield, then he is most persevering, and, tempting us again and again, attacks us on all sides and in all possible ways. Perceiving that he does not succeed in one attempt and through the instrumentality of one person, he makes a second attempt and seeks more efficient auxiliaries. He knows from experience how to undermine the foundation of great virtues and destroy them.

The one thing which frightens him and causes him to retreat is a decided: “Be gone!” In order, however, to feel strong and resolute, we must think daily and continually on the certainty of death, and on judgment, which one day will decide whether we are to dwell for evermore in heaven or in hell. If in temptation we turn to our crucified Saviour, and, making the sign of the cross, call on Jesus with the lips and the heart, Satan will flee, victory will be ours, and angels approaching us will console us with sweet thoughts of heaven! Amen!

“And the tempter coming, said to Him.”–Matt. 4 : 3.

God wills that all men should be saved, as St. Paul assures us, and Lent reminds us emphatically of the truth of these words. Many of the mysteries of the life of Christ, to which the Church refers during Lent in the Gospels at Mass, are evidences that Christ came into the world to teach men how to live in order to gain salvation, especially the mysteries of His apostolic life, which ended with His suffering and death upon the cross.

God, it is true, allows Satan to tempt us, but only in order to prove our fidelity, and to recompense us the more in the world to come. If men fail in this trial of liberty, then they have not employed the means God offers them to issue victorious from the strife. What means are these? A glance at the manner in which the: Church observes Lent will answer this question.

Mary, Mother of the elect, pray for us that we may be of the number of those who stand victoriously the test of temptation! I speak in the most holy name of Jesus, to the greater glory of God!

At the commencement of Lent the Church puts ashes upon the heads of her children, saying: “Remember, man, that thou art dust, and that into dust thou shalt return.” The Church desires to keep the thought of the certainty and proximity of death alive in the hearts of her children. One of the chief reasons why so many souls, though ransomed by the blood of Christ, are lost, is their incomprehensible forgetfulness of death. If all men possessed that consciousness of death of which the Apostle speaks, and remembered its certainty, its nearness, they would never be lost for eternity. What is it that generally leads men into temptation and takes from them all strength and courage to withstand it?

His sinful inclinations, his desire for the goods, honors, and pleasures of this world, together with the forgetfulness of the certainty and nearness of death. Oh, that all men would each morning put ashes on their heads in spirit, and repeat the words of the Church on Ash Wednesday: Remember that thou art dust, and that to dust thou shalt return. Think that this day is perhaps your last! How many of those who in the morning go bright and happy to their labor, are brought home at night corpses! If this should be the case with you, what then? As ashes placed upon burning coals deaden and even extinguish their glow, so this recollection will reduce and stifle the fire of passion.

If men would occasionally take a solitary ramble in some cemetery, and thus awaken within themselves the recollection of the certainty and nearness of death, they would gain strength for the fight against temptations of selfishness, ambition, and worldliness. How wealth, honors, and pleasures lose their attraction in the silent cities of the dead! Smoke they are and vapor, viewed from the brink of the grave.

Is it not astonishing to see how anxious men are to render their condition in life as favorable to ease and comfort as possible, how careful they are to evade anything that might endanger their welfare in this world? They never give a thought to the shortness and uncertainty of this life, to the dangers that always hang over their heads; they do not consider that daily and hourly men die, and that soon they, too, must say to themselves: My turn has come.

They hear and know that nothing is so sure, nothing as inevitable as death, and yet as a saint of latter times, the blessed Hofbauer, whose canonization is now in progress, said: “Men know that they must die, and yet they do not believe it, but live as if this life were the only one they would ever possess, the only one for which they need care. Hence their negligence in all that pertains to their salvation, and hence also their eternal destruction.”

The Church requires her children during Lent to mortify themselves by observing the laws prescribed for this season. She not only demands of them to abstain from meat and partake of only one meal a day, but she desires above all to awaken and strengthen in their hearts the spirit of self-abnegation. Holy Writ says: “The life of man upon earth is a warfare.” To conduct it properly and victoriously we must follow the admonition of Christ and mortify our selves.

The second cause of so many being lost is the want of the true spirit of repentance, and self-humiliation. Christ sent His Apostles as missionaries into the world with this message: Tell the people that if they do not repent they shall all perish. And St. Paul says: “And they who are Christ's have crucified their flesh with its vices and concupiscences.” Man craves happiness; while here below he wishes to enjoy the pleasures of an earthly paradise, and hopes one day to share, besides, the joys of heaven.

How many there are to whom the reproach of the Apostle may be justly addressed: “Whose god is their belly!” The desire of pleasure and excitement leads man into temptation, and causes him to indulge sinful inclinations, to commit mortal sin, and so lose eternal life.

The Church exhorts her children to live in retirement and meditation during Lent, and to devote more time to prayer and religious exercises. Why are so many souls lost even among the children of the Church? I answer, because they have not the spirit of prayer and contemplation, because they have not recourse to pious books for holy thoughts. Men live thoughtlessly, and do not take time to say a daily prayer or think with recollected minds of God and the eternal truth of His Word. They do not reflect or meditate upon what they believe. They do not reduce to practice the teachings of their faith, but live, although members of the Church, like Pagans. It is for this reason that Christians as well as heathens are lost. Jeremias has said: “With desolation is the land made desolate; because there is none that considereth in the heart.” Would to God that this reproach could not be referred to Christians!

St. Teresa says: “I fear not for a soul who prays.” But how few really pray while they are going through their devotions! Only too many deserve the reproach of the Lord: “This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” We either pray not at all, or fail in the manner, frequency, and perseverance of our aspirations to God, especially in time of temptation. Hence so many are powerless to resist the attacks of passion, and miserably fall.

The Church desires that her children, during Lent, should frequently and attentively hear the word of God and endeavor to profit by it. All, however, do not listen to her. But too many read their reproach and their condemnation in the words of Christ to the Jews. Christ Himself reproaches them, saying: “You hear not the words of God, because you are not of God.”

There are many Christians who, throughout the year, never hear a sermon, or who, if they hear one, listen to it not as to the word of God, and as if God Himself were addressing them, but regard it merely in its human element; hence their indifference to profit by it for the life to come, and hence also their eternal destruction.

The Church wishes her children to meditate, especially during Lent, upon the passion and death of Christ, in order that the love of the cross may fill their hearts. Christ says: “He who will follow me must take up his cross daily;” and the Holy Ghost: “In your patience you shall possess your souls.”

How many Christians neither love nor esteem the cross! yet they must endure the trials and afflictions of life. Their aversion to suffering only makes their burden heavier and more irksome. Murmuring against the decrees of Providence, they carry their cross as did the thief who was crucified at the left of our Lord. They forget that they can only enter the abode of the blessed by following Christ who walked before us the road of the cross to open for us the gates of heaven. Hence their weakness and faithlessness under trials and tribulations; hence, too, their eternal destruction.

The Church further desires her children during Lent to confess their sins and receive the Most Blessed Sacrament devoutly and worthily. That all do not comply with this wish, is evident from the fact, that the Church, to our great shame, has been obliged to give the following precept: “Confess your sins at least once a year to a priest duly authorized, and receive holy Communion at Easter or thereabout.”

They are in the greatest danger of making it the occasion of still greater evil. People who can only be prevailed upon by the most positive order to have recourse to the Sacraments, run a great risk of receiving them unworthily. Human respect may drive them to the confessional and the holy table:, but the chances are that they return from them more wicked, more laden with guilt than before.

Were the children of the Church to receive the Sacraments frequently and worthily, the consoling words of Christ would be fulfilled in them: “He that eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood, hath everlasting life;” he “abideth in Me and I in him.” Yet how many men neglect to receive the blessed Sacrament, or else receive it without preparation or unworthily. This is the cause of the loss of many souls among Christians. Therefore, let us live, not only during Lent, but all our days, in the spirit in which the Church observes Lent, and let us practise those pious exercises which she recommends in order that after the Good-Friday of our life here below, we may celebrate Easter in the joys of life everlasting! Amen!

#first sunday of lent

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FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT

Today is the First Sunday in Lent.

By Abbot Gueranger:

O God, Who dost purify Thy Church by the yearly observance of Lent: grant to Thy family that what we try to obtain of Thee by abstinence, we may secure by good works. Through Our Lord Jesus Christ…

There follows a Lesson from the sixth chapter of the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians:

The Holy Gospel is taken from the fourth chapter of St. Matthew:

by Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger, 1876

Then Jesus said to him: Be gone, Satan!”–Matt. 4 : 10.

To this class belong also those who, in the selection of their place of business or their home, pay no attention to facilities for hearing Mass and receiving the Sacraments.

“And the tempter coming, said to Him.”–Matt. 4 : 3.

Mary, Mother of the elect, pray for us that we may be of the number of those who stand victoriously the test of temptation! I speak in the most holy name of Jesus, to the greater glory of God!

From: www.pamphletstoinspire.com

#first sunday of lent

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