Fan Fiction ❯ Snow and Starlight - A Devil's In The Details Side Story ❯ Snow and Starlight - A Devil's In The Details Side Story ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: I don’t own Demon: the Fallen, although Yuki and Maharet are mine all mine.

Warnings: This ficlet is rated for language and occult references (just to be on the safe side). Now, on with the show!

Yuki could feel it the moment that she was released from that horrid captivity, weeks or months or days as a being of sense and reason stuck within a motionless figure of lead. She hated it there. Hate…even that wasn’t a strong enough word. So when the power that had sealed her there was defeated, her soul rejoiced even as it rushed towards its rightful home. Soon she would be flesh and bone and mind and soul fully bound together again, and she couldn’t wait.

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When the talisman had been broken over the sleeping girl’s chest, Maharet had immediately vacated the wooden pentagram in fear that she would be sucked back down from whence she had come prior to the binding. She still didn’t know who or what had bound her, neither who had released her into this body. So young, yet completely soulless for all intents and purposes…it seemed a waste to her to preserve a soulless shell, but these were human ways. Not her own. She knew the paths of stars, had read the fates of man and beast and had reveled in the quiet hum of the celestial bodies in their cycles. There were others who understood the human spirit and form, the Lammasu and the Asharu and Namaru. Not her kind.

However the mind and memories of one’s host body may have appeared to others of her ilk, Maharet saw them as shelves upon shelves of books. Childish picture books next to journals filled with graceful script, clothbound notebooks nestled among thick hide- and leather-bound volumes. It was with an almost loving expression that she reached up and gently skimmed a long, deceptively delicate finger over the spines of the books and the soft toys or slightly more roughly textured balls and equipment for something that she couldn’t place that served as bookends. She had to pause for a moment when the gentle smile crossed her face, lifting her other hand to her lips and cheeks to actually feel the expression that had been seemingly lost to her for…how long had it been between her incarceration for her deeds and the present time? Decades? Centuries? Perhaps even millennia?

It didn’t matter now. What mattered was that she had her freedom, even if she wasn’t free to take her true form of light-made-flesh that had probably ceased to be when… Best not to think of that time. It would only serve to stoke the fire of her anger, and anger would solve nothing. Better to keep this body in slumber while she perused memory and knowledge than to flounder helplessly in a world of which she knew nothing.

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There was something barring the entrance of Yuki’s soul into her near-lifeless form, a wall that seemed hard as stone and almost as impenetrable.Almost. The closest thing that Yuki could equate it to was the old Scooby-Doo cartoons or bad horror movies, the ones where the frightened teenager and talking Great Dane or the hero/heroine ran into a room with a single door, slammed it shut, and proceeded to pile everything that wasn’t bolted down in front of it.

While this wasn’t quite the same thing, it was just as hastily erected and started to give slightly with just a few dozen slams of her metaphysical shoulder. Another moment or two later and Yuki’s soul was able to bully a gap open in the defenses, one just barely large enough to manipulate her way through to get in.

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When the soul that truly belonged to Maharet’s host body squeezed through the hastily erected barrier, the fallen angel was shocked almost beyond comprehension. She was still weakened from her imprisonment and her initial lashing out at the one who had forced her to take refuge, but she was not going without a fight. She flung illusion after metaphysically corporeal illusion, exerted almost all of her remaining strength to hold tight to this body even as she attacked the “intruder”.

It was over after about an hour, if Maharet’s estimation was correct. Almost all of her power was spent. God above, it was bad enough that she had to retreat even farther into the pseudo-library of her host’s mind. But when a fragment of her host’s soul sat in wait with a look of pure sorrow in its hazel eyes…

“Why?”

“Because I had no choice.”

“But this is my home.”

“It was at one time. This form was vacant when I was forced to retreat into it to avoid the winds of Hell.”

“You’re a demon?”

“I prefer ‘fallen angel’, thank you.”

“Oh…you don’t look like I thought a demon would.”

“Were you thinking of red skin, horns, and a pitchfork or the large horned monsters?”

The fragment shrugged slightly. “Doesn’t matter. Where…?”

“Where does this leave you.” Maharet sighed and looked away when the fragment nodded, some small portion of guilt rushing through her mind. “For all intents and purposes, you should have passed when your soul left this body. Why you did not, why your soul was removed in the first place…I am unsure of the answers. Perhaps you know?”

The fragment snorted in derision. “Yeah, right. Last I remember, I was playing Monster World with Ryo when he got…weird.”

“Monster World? What is that?”

“It’s a game. You take the role of adventurers trying to accomplish a certain goal.”

“You act as these adventurers?” Maharet’s brow furrowed slightly in confusion as she tried to comprehend the concept of the game, turning abruptly to let her eyes skim over the spines of hundreds of the memory-books in search of one that would yield answers.

“Sort of. We play on a game board and use lead figurines to represent us in the adventure.” The fragment seemed to flounder for words from what the fallen Fate could tell. It was silent, and Maharet could just see its hands moving as though to coax the words from thin air. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Then show me, fragment.”

That drew a scowl. “My name is Yuki. Not ‘you’, not ‘fragment’. Yu-ki.”*

“Hm. Very well, my apologies. Now, would you please be so kind as to show me what you mean?”

“How?”

Maharet reached out and grabbed Yuki’s wrist, absently watching the patterns of shifting shadow and starlight that adorned her frame swirling up around Yuki’s arm. “Like this.”

There was silence for a moment as shadow and starlight played around both souls. Then Yuki opened her eyes and her mouth. “Fuck…”

Maharet made a face. “Must you use such vulgarity?”

“Only in surprising or extremely stressful situations. And you never actually answered my question, ma’am.”

“Maharet.”

“Huh? 221;

“My name is Maharet.”

“Fine. You never answered my question, Maharet. What happens to me now?”

The former Fate shrugged, almost disinterestedly. “I might be forced to annihilate you, but I am still too weak to accomplish that without seriously endangering my hold on this form in the process.”

“You could let me have my body back.”

Maharet was sure that there was a look of pure evil in her eyes when she turned a scathing glare to Yuki. Judging by the way the fragment started backing away like she had just pulled on a sleeping tiger’s tail, at least. “That is not an option. I will not return to the Abyss. Besides, you are only a fragment of what you were. You couldn‘t support this body in your current state.”

“Okay, if that won’t work…can’t we share?”

“Share? This body?”

“Yeah! You said you’re still pretty weak, and it doesn’t sound like you know much about the world as it stands now…well, not what you’d need to not to draw attention to yourself at school if we…if I…if this body ever gets up out of the coma. God, that gives me a headache just thinking about that!”

“You’re proposing that you keep control of this while I regain my strength.”

“Um, I guess…would that work?”

Maharet couldn’t help quirking her lip in a small half-smile. “Human ingenuity never ceases to amaze me.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means, little Yuki, that I believe you have hit upon a solution. What happens afterward would most likely be either your complete vacation of the premises, as it were, or else I might be able to…would that be possible, I wonder?”

“What? I’m up for anything that doesn’t involve me leaving again!”

Maharet smiled fully this time, an expression that she had dearly missed. “As I recall, the other option is that you will assimilate with me once I am strong enough. Until then, you may have control of this form. I will manifest myself when I need to. Have we got a deal?” She extended a hand to shake upon, starlight-silver eyes examining Yuki’s face for any sign of acceptance or denial.

After a moment of chewing on her bottom lip, Yuki’s hand snaked out and pumped Maharet’s in a quick shake. “We’ve got a deal. Can we please wake up now?”

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* This was pretty well swiped from the first episode of Inuyasha (which I don’t own either) with a few revisions to make it applicable. It’s just such a great line, isn’t it?

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Author’s Notes:

I know I’m in the middle of The Devil’s In The Details, but this just wouldn’t leave me be! For those of you who are old-school White Wolf enthusiasts (who’ve played Demon: the Fallen), I know there are a few extra little things that aren’t quite canon for the game. But hey, WW always says that the WoD can be pushed, pulled, tweaked, or twisted up like a ball of yarn for the enjoyment of players and STs alike (I know, I used to be a Demon ST). Ooh, speaking of yarn, I think I need to go shave a certain troublesome llama-muse for a new sweater now.

Arigato gozaimasu, minna!
Holyllama