Lucifer, the Morningstar (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wentdowntogeorgia) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
bigapplesauce2015-01-06 11:28 pm
wentdowntogeorgia) wrote in bigapplesauce2015-01-06 11:28 pm
Entry tags:
What was our math homework? [closed]
When Lucifer appears in Iman's flat with a burst of heavy wing beats, it is dark inside; all the lights are out and it is silent, or as silent as it can be in New York City. Considering that it's literally four in the morning, this isn't exactly a surprise, but Lucifer doesn't care much about sleep schedules or socially acceptable visiting hours.
What is important is the fact that Lucifer has an update for Iman on the Rift, particularly about the Rift's responses to external stimuli, and he had told her that he would inform her of anything relevant that he discovered. Lucifer is many things, most of them not good, but he is a being of his word-- he delivers on his promises. He just doesn't always deliver on them when it's convenient.
Lucifer makes his way through Iman's apartment, fairly familiar with the layout from his previous visits, and enters her bedroom. She is asleep, a fact that he was aware of when he arrived, and is somewhere fairly deep into her REM cycle. It wouldn't have been difficult for him to have entered her dreams and spoken to her there, but he has had quite enough of dreams after all the times the Rift has sent him unwillingly into them.
He wants to speak with her in the waking world, so the course of action is simple-- he will wait until she awakens.
Satan stands at Iman's bedside, looking down at her; she is disarrayed in slumber, all splayed limbs and frightful hair. It is messy and undignified and very human, made all the more so by the fact that, sometimes, she snores. The snore, Lucifer decides after a short while of this, is one of the most obnoxious noises in the human vocal range, and that's fairly noteworthy considering his previous exposure to Dean Winchester-level obnoxiousness.
What is important is the fact that Lucifer has an update for Iman on the Rift, particularly about the Rift's responses to external stimuli, and he had told her that he would inform her of anything relevant that he discovered. Lucifer is many things, most of them not good, but he is a being of his word-- he delivers on his promises. He just doesn't always deliver on them when it's convenient.
Lucifer makes his way through Iman's apartment, fairly familiar with the layout from his previous visits, and enters her bedroom. She is asleep, a fact that he was aware of when he arrived, and is somewhere fairly deep into her REM cycle. It wouldn't have been difficult for him to have entered her dreams and spoken to her there, but he has had quite enough of dreams after all the times the Rift has sent him unwillingly into them.
He wants to speak with her in the waking world, so the course of action is simple-- he will wait until she awakens.
Satan stands at Iman's bedside, looking down at her; she is disarrayed in slumber, all splayed limbs and frightful hair. It is messy and undignified and very human, made all the more so by the fact that, sometimes, she snores. The snore, Lucifer decides after a short while of this, is one of the most obnoxious noises in the human vocal range, and that's fairly noteworthy considering his previous exposure to Dean Winchester-level obnoxiousness.
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She wakes suddenly, at a shitty fucking hour given the dark, only barely giving way to creep of early summer dawn. She grunts, coughs, her throat dry, immediately halfway up and shifting her left arm around, flexing, opening and closing her hand, her heart still pounding with the adrenaline-fueled sense memory of fear and pain, still fired up with anger. She takes a few slow breaths, passes a hand over her face. Get a grip. You're fine, Rush was in a bad way and he couldn't have helped you anyway and-
"HOLY FUCKING SHIT," she shrieks, her voice completely raw, scrambling up onto her knees and immediately thrusting her arm at the intruder who is standing right next to the bed. Her heart is right back up in her throat, her adrenaline spiking back up so fast she feels like she's gonna be sick. Her hand opens, the tools swirling out into a sharp point, something that could cut a man's throat, not usually a tactic she'd jump to but it was the first thing that came to mind.
Of course, it's fucking Satan. She drops her arm, letting it resettle, gasping and staring up at him through the hair sweat-plastered to her face. She grips her other hand over her heart, clutching the fabric of the ratty t-shirt she wears to bed. Satan is here, to see her in her full t-shirt-and-boxer wearing 5am glory.
"Fuck you," she says hoarsely. "Fuuuuck you. God. What the fucking hell is your problem."
She doesn't wait for an answer, rolling out the other side of the bed and staggering unsteadily toward the bathroom.
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He watches her beat a hasty retreat into the bathroom. She is a terrible mess, her hair askew and her eyes puffy from sleep, and no doubt she will want to fix herself a little before she actually attempts to interact with him. He has arrived before she is ready to entertain him, after all, so it's really only polite for him to allow her a moment to compose herself.
"I have information for you," he says, while she does whatever it is that women do in bathrooms. "I thought you might be interested in hearing about it."
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"Not," she yells after a moment, "at five in the fucking morning!" Business accomplished, she washes her hands aggressively, then her face, then, annoyed at the lack of continued preoccupation, steps back out. He's still just standing there, impassive and awful. What did she do to deserve this. Is this because she was raised Muslim. Is this some sort of punishment passed over from a theistic Judeo-Christian-centric universe?
She stalks past him to her closet, but fuck that, she doesn't have a bathrobe and she is NOT getting dressed for this. She forgoes the hijab, because what is even the point, and storms over instead to the kitchenette, where she starts messily preparing instant coffee. She slams the kettle onto the stove, flicks on the burner, braces her hands on the counter and sighs raggedly.
"Okay," she says, back still turned. "What."
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He follows her in to the kitchenette, the very picture of calm and placid in stark contrast to her annoyance, and watches her bang around for a bit. He doesn't think that instant coffee is really at all the same as normal coffee, nor why the process of coffee-making needs shortening, but her choice in morning libations is not of his concern. Though they are, undoubtedly, inferior.
Though she isn't at an angle to see it, he pokes around her kitchen a little, looking at the appliances and the cutlery and the little inventions humans came up with to make their lives a little easier. The rubber spatula, in particular, is a strange and mysterious device.
"Do you remember when I told you about the Rift's active and passive blockades?" he asks and presses down on the blade of the spatula with one finger; it bends. "Blockades can be overwhelmed. I streamlined my, shall we say, calling process to see if I could get through."
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She sighs and pushes a hand through her hair so it falls more to one side than in her face. "Just hold on," she mutters. She stares at the kettle for a moment, then - fuck it - lets her left hand hover lightly over it, as though warming herself, but instead heats it up just a little faster. It's not impatience so much as it is self-reassurance. She's okay, her actions in the dream did not affect her here. Her arm works, she can do everything she normally can. She lets out a small breath as the kettle starts to whistle, then lifts it off with a cloth and pours it over the coffee grounds.
"And could you?" she asks finally, turning to face him, blowing gently over the top of her bitter, bitter morning nectar.
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If he had actually been able to contact someone from his universe, he would've arranged for transportation the hell out of here before you could say 'Sam Winchester'. Whom he would've then found again and worn like a well-tailored suit made of moose and Cro-Magnon forehead.
Instead, he's here, in Iman's kitchen at 5am. Lucky you.
"It's likely that I simply can't perform the spell at a high enough volume to overcome the blockade. That's not what's interesting, though. What's interesting is the way the Rift reacted-- it didn't just stop my calls from going through."
Insert pause for effect here, because Lucifer is nothing if not a drama queen.
"I wouldn't want to use the word retaliated for the implications, but I hit it and it hit back. It's possible that I've managed to reach another threshold, though the delay in response makes me think otherwise. A simple Newtonian equal and opposite reaction would be more instantaneous."
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"Unless there's some kind of lag we don't know how to factor in yet," she mutters, half to herself. With so much time and space getting bent it's hard to assume Newtonian laws operate as they ordinarily do, irritating as that is. She jots down half an equation, grunting to herself. This is more Rush's department, and it is way too fucking early for math, but it's her job right now. Just as she hasn't yet told the Scots about Satan, she has no intention of telling him about them. "What was the differential?"
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He walks around her to look at the mathematics she's writing down; mathematics is the universal language, the only way to describe the universe as he can see it. He snaps himself up a pen and, when she stops writing, starts finishing the equation. It's like leaving a sentence only half written-- annoying, even when you know how it's supposed to end.
"The delay was only a few seconds. Not overly long, but significant."
And then he got essentially bitchslapped by an oversized spatial-temporal distortion.
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"What did it do, exactly?" she asks once this task is done, looking back up at him.
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There is really only one way to put it.
"It hit me."
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Obviously the math is important, and that's all Rush or the Doctor will be interested in (especially Rush, ugh, ugh, don't think about it), but she wants more. This is the part of her they call 'Starfucker' back home. She doesn't just want to know everything, she wants to get it. The most overpowering of desires, so much that she is capable of standing in her pajamas with her hair hanging out at 5am talking to Satan and displaying almost childlike excitement instead of fear, anger, or caution.
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What ends up on the paper is a whole bunch of mathematics that describes the quantum channels opened via his spell, a resulting input that ran back along that channel and utterly screwed the quantum state transfer, and the resulting tail-spin that sent the whole system into. The end result is a large group of runaway spells that, had they not been under the oversight of something like Lucifer, could have spat out enough power to take down a building.
Lucifer likes his building. He did not appreciate the sabotage.
"Do you understand this?" he asks and pushes the notebook back over.
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"More or less," she says. "I'll have to study it for a while. After I've been up for more than a few minutes." She arches an eyebrow at him, sipping her coffee. "Is that all you wanted to show me?"
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"I can't entertain you all day. I'm just dropping in to give you your promised update."
And now she can have something new to bring for Science Show and Tell. Isn't it lovely?
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She gives him a small wave of the hand. "Now if you don't mind, I'd like to shower, and sleep more, and contemplate what a terrible mood I'm in. And probably call in sick. Not necessarily in that order."
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Because Satan is ever so thoughtful like that.
He cocks his head slightly, though, at the last comment.
"Are you ill?"
She doesn't appear ill-- not in any physical way, at least, that he can see. He also isn't looking closely enough to see anything particularly insidious within her, and, one day, she would perhaps realize that his searching looks meant that he is literally looking at her squishy biological bits. You're welcome, Iman.
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She looks askance at him, with his shark-eyed stare, and then turns away, heading back for the bathroom.
"See you around, Satan," she sighs with the immense resignation of someone who will, in fact, be seeing Satan around.
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He disappears again, accompanied by the sound of wing beats. Should she care to look around her cupboards a bit, she'll also find that Satan didn't come here bearing only information; he also left her a little gift in the form of a lovely bottle of Italian sangiovese.
Not that it's an appropriate time yet to be drinking, but it's five o'clock somewhere.