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The first taste of freedom makes Sandalphon stumble to his knees. He can’t stop coughing. Air is thin and raw and bitter after so long and his lungs, used to the foggy miasma of Pandemonium, try to reject it.
This can’t be it. That one thought rings clearly above the confused cacophony of Sandalphon’s mind. No, this can’t be it. There has to be more. He needs to go. He needs to stand up, he can’t be felled here by the unfriendly air of the sky. It’s been two thousand years. He needs to find. He needs to find—
Sunlight glitters thin and clean through the trees at this time of the day. Lucio takes his time to walk through the trees, taking in the crispness of the forest floor and the clarity of the birdsong. But that is not what he is here for.
He takes a few steps through the trees, and a clearing comes into view. Lucio had planned this walk to allow himself enough time to act, and sure enough, the figure on the ground is completely still.
It wouldn’t do to allow it to awaken, so Lucio lifts the sound of his footsteps before they hit the earth. He kneels beside it, allowing tendrils of healing to gather in his aura.
Once, before Lucio had become an actor himself, he had worked as a stagehand. An understudy had made a grave error on their first day. Mistaking a key prop for arbitrary trash, they had thrown it away, and the first act had commenced with a key plot device missing from the stage. The crew hadn’t been able to do anything.
The helplessness backstage at that time reminds Lucio of the shallowly breathing figure in front of him right now. It had hurt Lucio to see people worry so frantically. As a stagehand, he could only work from offstage to keep everything running. He did what he could, though. That time, he had lead the search for a replacement prop, only to realise—
Before Lucio can finish his musings, the figure stirs. Faster than he can react, it sits up and grabs onto his robe.
“Lucifer-sama!” Wide brown eyes stare unfocusedly towards somewhere just beyond him.
This was definitely not supposed to happen.
Latching onto the first thing which comes to mind, Sahar lets his guise fall away.
Sandalphon’s throat is dry and his head hurts and it takes longer than usual to pull himself out of the haze of dream-fog. But then he registers the grey sky, looming trees, figure bending over as if direct from his dream—the figure—
“Lucifer-sama!” Sandalphon sits bolt upright. The motion causes the pain in his head to lurch, and by the time his field of vision has stopped spinning, Sandalphon realises that the figure kneeling across from him is not Lucifer at all. The hair is too long. Eyes the wrong shade of blue. He ignores the settle of disappointment in his stomach.
“Sorry,” Sandalphon mutters. He lets go of the person’s robe. His own voice sounds strange to him, raspy and thick. How long has it been since he last had a normal conversation. He wants to laugh. “You. Reminded me of someone I know.”
Someone. Hah. A deep bitterness fills Sandalphon’s chest, and he’s filled with the urge to get going already, to start scanning this unfamiliar land already.
“No problem at all,” the other person says.
Right, the other person. Sandalphon wonders if he can just knock them out and leave them there.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.” Sandalphon barely registers the words. There’s some part of him which remembers that that’s the sort of phrase one is supposed to reply with. But the sway of the trees surrounds him, feels like it’s trapping him in. The dirt could swallow him whole any moment if he doesn’t leave now.
“Oh, that’s good to hear.”
But where would he go? He knew what he wanted to do—to get Lucifer to notice him again. But how? The dirt and the trees and the ground lean closer in, drawing him downwards. He hates it. He wishes the earth would break and fall away to launch him right back to Canaan.
The earth. Hm. A name and face comes to mind: Uriel, was it? The youngest of the four primarchs. Yes, maybe that would be somewhere to start. Uriel shouldn’t pose much of a problem.
“Well, I’ll be taking my leave now.”
The more present part of Sandalphon notes that the other person is starting to back away. Ah. It would be bad for this person to remember him, wouldn’t it? Something about the nuisance of getting found out. Gathering his sapped strength, he lunges upwards.
Tree branches at the edges of Sahar’s vision sway sharply as he allows his body to dip away from Sandalphon’s punch. It’s a close one. He does not need to dodge such an attack corporeally, and usually doesn’t, but it wouldn’t do to reveal his true capabilities right now.
“...How did you dodge that?”
Returning his attention to the present, Sahar realises that Sandalphon stands in a defensive position across from him. His words are less slurred than before—ah. Sahar’s healing magic is already taking effect.
“Haha,” Sahar says. A stagehand shouldn’t be noticed by the main actors like this. He’d better fix this as elegantly as he can. “Well. They say that the unobstructed gaze of heaven fosters serendipity.”
Sandalphon frowns. “What?”
“A clear day opens before us,” Sahar says. “A beautiful sky under which meetings are made and journeys part again.”
He starts to back away, but a hand reaches out and grips firmly onto Sahar’s wrist before he can get very far. It’s surprisingly strong, considering Sandalphon’s current physical state, but no better than a spider thread to Sahar. Still, Sahar is hesitant at the thought of simply knocking him out right here.
“Who are you?” Sandalphon says. His gaze is clear and narrow now, with a firm glint of suspicion.
Well. It’s becoming a bit late to leave, and at any rate, Sahar’s strength will always allow him the upper hand. He may as well use this opportunity to satisfy his own curiosity. Slowly, he begins to sit again.
Sandalphon squints through the light at the person in his grasp. It’s been a while since he last had even a glimpse of a being of the sky, but the speed with which this one had dodged his punch seemed... unusual.
“How about,” the person says. “You answer my question, and I’ll answer yours?”
“Whatever.” Sandalphon doubts there’s anything he knows which might still be relevant to this time period, and maybe it’ll get the other person to let their guard down.
“Thank you. What is your vision of this world’s eventual perfection?”
...What? Sandalphon peers at the other person. Their serene smile hasn’t changed this entire time. What is this nonsense? No matter—there is no serious answer Sandalphon could give them anyways.
“A world which is… just and fair,” he says.
“Hm,” the other person says. For some reason, Sandalphon can’t quite focus on their face. “Interesting. And how would you say that justice should be cut out ?”
Sandalphon frowns. “Why should I know?”
“You’re right,” Sahar says. “That’s fine. Thank you for humoring me.”
Interesting. It appears that this primal beast is yet to come into his potential, though Sahar expects that he will grow into something great. It should be worth it to continue observing him.
Sandalphon scowls. “Sure, whatever. You still haven’t answered—”
“Just one more question.” Sahar stands, shedding dirt and twigs from the folds of his robes. “Do you think the moon is fake?”
Sandalphon’s face goes blank for a moment. “What?”
“Well… there exists a certain white object which floats in the night sky, which—”
“What? What sort of nonsense are you spouting?”
Now that Sahar is standing, he notes how tired Sandalphon looks, especially without the fury in his eyes. There’s much which Sahar expects to watch him do. It’s an old story: the underdog always has some trick or the other with which he restores the balance to an unrestful universe again. But first, he needs to erase from the world’s memory that this ever happened.
Sandalphon is looking at Sahar, and irritation is flitting across his brows again. “Hey,” he says. “Why are you leaving? What about my questions?”
Shifting the threads of this world around him slightly, Sahar prepares to smooth over this blemish in history.
“I’m sorry. This won’t hurt.”
The mysterious man starts to glow, and Sandalphon gets a good idea of what’s about to happen. He can feel the tendrils of magic – of something almost familiarly divine – starting to encroach on the edges of his memory.
Bitch, is all he has time to think.
For a moment he doesn’t want to forget—he doesn’t know why—but he wants to remember something, to keep a record of some encounter or the other. That emotion bursts strongly through his head.
But then white fills the world. Everything is encompassed in that warm glow which comes before blankness.
Sandalphon’s head hurts. It feels like the dregs of a nightmare draining away as he takes a gulp of raw air, sitting up to blinding sunlight and dust clinging uncomfortably to his skin. Everything hurts, inside and out, but nothing more than the peace which lingers from his dream. It is a habit by now to let it fade. The world dulls again to the ache in his muscles.
Looking around, he registers that he’s sitting on the forest floor. How had he gotten here? Last he remembered, Pandemonium had shaken around him, and he’d burst upwards and out, towards the freedom of the sky once more.
Out... that’s right. Towards revenge.
First things first. He should see how things have changed these past two thousand years. Spreading his wings, he takes to the sky.