And a little Lilith-Gabriel thing...


It was a high place. Such business is always in a high place. A mountain, wind-swept and barren, with a crescent moon floating above the horizon.

A tall, angular-featured woman stood there, and the air rippled around her as if from the heat of a bonfire. Her skin was amber, and her hair obsidian.

Another woman approached her, coming from nothingness. For the first step, she was gowned in stars. In the second, deep green leather pants and jacket. She was shorter than the other, though her
hair was as dark. Her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. "I have what you asked for."

The taller woman held out her hand. The shorter approached, laying a sword hilt in it and saying, "He is free from pain."

The first closed her fingers, and raised the hilt high, with its blade of flame bursting forth. The metal grew hot, glowing red, then white, and finally beginning to melt through her fingers before it vaporized.

The second woman tugged her sunglasses down a bit to eye the other. "Nice special effects."

"You have my thanks, Princess," the amber-skinned one muttered. "Your child shall be released."

A wry smile twisted the shorter one's lips, marring the perfect mask of her face. "How gracious."

The first woman turned her head to look at the second. Her eyes were lit from within, gold and liquid. "Why did you agree?" she asked, light and fey now.

The Princess arched her fine eyebrows, her expression back to lovely blankness. "He was held prisoner, and had no hope of release. His own fault, really, following that demon back to its Heart. But you asked, and it served my Word."

The eyes were pure gold now, without pupil or white. "And yet you serve Hell."

For a moment, the green-clad woman's own eyes glittered like oil at night. Then she pushed her sunglasses back up, hiding them. "I serve myself."

"But you can't leave."

Something feral washed over the smaller woman's face. She gritted out, "I. Serve. Myself."

"Why don't you leave, then?"

"I don't choose to." Her teeth were very sharp and white in the darkness. Though her voice was level, her fingernails cut into her palms.

"Because you can't. Prisoner. His prize." The tall woman reached out as if to touch the other's cheek.

The smaller stepped back, unconsciously. "I am not," she whispered.

"You deny it to yourself. How... human. Why do you deny it, when you know it is so? Why do you tolerate the glass within your soul, always twisting, always fracturing?"

"I am whole," the Princess breathed out.

"You have chosen to be broken. Why do you not choose again, and remake yourself? You are not whole."

"_I AM!_" the smaller woman shrieked, fury turning the air around her into sparkling, shimmering stuff of atoms and vacuum for a moment. Then she turned impatiently. Between one stride (soft green leather) and another (icy stars), she was gone.

The first woman watched where the other had been for a moment. Then she raised her head and laughed. There was no sanity to it at all.