Work Text:
Having awoken alone on the floor with a pounding headache, Lute was not exactly eager to find out what had gone wrong with her assasination, nor was she willing to risk giving hell time to regroup. No, instead she had managed to find the chute that led to Adam’s workshop, climbing until a searing pain lit up her hand the second she’d finally reached for her escape.
She had clawed her way up to heaven only to be burned and come tumbling right back down.
Maybe it was fitting that an angel would need to fall to end up here, but it hadn’t made Lute any less furious, even as she’d lost consciousness from the pain.
When she’d come to the second time, Lute was alone again. Too tired to fight with the way her arm felt like it had been set alight from the inside, she’d waited until a small fish man showed up at her bedside to give her any sort of explanation. Baxter, as she’d come to know him, was the one who’d amputated her arm before the touch of heaven’s light could tear through her entire body.
Whatever fucking poison Vaggi had given her had left her anchored to hell, and until it’d run its course entering heaven seemed too much for Lute’s body too handle.
Baxter had come often during the early days, checking her wound and changing the bandages, but he seldom spoke more than a few words to her.
All Lute knew was that she was stuck here until god knows when.
After a few months, Charlie had visited her under some fucked up pretense of kindness, explaining what exactly she’d missed while healing. Sera had apparently taken over heaven's leadership in Adam’s death, signing onto Lute’s extended stay in hell since it meant she could act as heaven’s representative in future negotiations.
After everything Lute had done, to the sinners, to Vaggi, it was perfectly laughable that Charlie would agree to work with her indefinitely. If it were her she’d want to eviscerate, to tear, to claw, to destroy. Bring down the hammer of justice in one righteous blow.
At the very least there was no way she’d be civil.
It wasn’t like Charlie didn’t have the capacity for rage when she let herself feel it. Lute could always see hints of it simmering beneath the surface whenever she looked her in the eyes. No doubt it had something to do with Vaggi, but it confused Lute beyond measure why Charlie wouldn’t just kill her and let this all be over with.
Charlie was an exercise in futility, truly. She was the devil, after all. She had power, so much of it kept at bay that the thought of it being unleashed on her made Lute’s head spin.
Her forced positivity and gentle words choked out the room. Lute wanted to do something, to cut back, to show Charlie that she wasn’t some wounded bird that needed a delicate touch-she was a wild creature of holy light, and in all her failings she had never once faltered.
Even if Lute wasn’t quite sure she believed that anymore-it didn’t matter.
When Vaggi showed up at her door, Lute could have cried from the relief in the promise of the familiar.
She had expected pain. She had welcomed pain. Something other than the cotton that filled her chest at Charlie’s pity, undeserved and overwhelming, that feeling of floating away from herself and who she’d been.
Lute knew who she was with Vaggi, no matter the terrible, beautiful, sharp sting of a blade that thought left in her heart. Pain was solid, grounding-something to draw her into herself, something that was known. A manifestation of her own strength to endure it with little effort. A gift exchanged between would-be-lovers. A thought that plagued her mind in an endless loop whenever she pictured Vaggi’s face.
To Lute’s horror, it seemed that in her fall from grace she would not be granted even that one small solace.
And so it left her instead with a burning ember in her gut at the notion that Vaggi would come to her so freely, no fear of retaliation nor any notion of their silent vows of destruction.
Lute was a caged animal, and Vaggi should have been afraid. She should have known that Lute would claw and bite and maim in the face of a captor. It didn’t matter if that was truly what Vaggi was in this moment, not really. They would always hold some undertone of violence now, some anchor of pain, and the thought that Vaggi would simply forgo their song and dance felt like a slap in the face to everything they were.
A rejection. Of them, of her.
Vaggi was the very embodiment of failure, even more so under this silly pageantry of kindness. It made Lute sick to watch, to know how forced it was. To have felt the touch of every burning ember that Vaggi was made of only to find she had grown cold.
She was only ever fooling herself that she could be a creature of love and forgiveness: heaven’s ruthlessness never lost on her, not truly, always rushing forward in the toils of blood and metal, unyielding as any other force of nature.
And Lute just had to hope she could bring it out once again.
“Why the fuck are you even here?” Lute had spat, gaze locked on Vaggi from where she stood. Vaggi could have moved in an instant and had Lute pinned to the wall behind her.
She wanted it, god did she want it-for Vaggi to try, for Lute to be exalted.
But it never came.
Instead Vaggi turned, face unreadable. “I thought that maybe we could talk.”
“Why the fuck would you want to?”
“Well it's not like you're leaving anytime soon, we’re gonna have to talk eventually. Might as well rip off the band-aid now.”
When Lute didn’t reply Vaggi seemed to take that as an invitation, moving to sit on her bed.
The sight made Lute feel…something. Something softer she didn’t want to think about, something that fought against the anger she wanted so desperately to leverage at Vaggi for bringing her here without bothering to finish her off. Something so filled with longing it was painful.
Lute mentally kicked herself at the thought.
The second that she slipped, the second she let up on that blade digging hard into her heart was the second she would lose control of all of those things inside her that Vaggi seemed to pull forth. No matter how worn out she was, how far she’d fallen from glory, that instinct of self preservation had to last.
Eventually, Vaggi spoke first,“How’s your arm?”
“Missing.”
“No shit. I meant the new one.”
“It’s fine.” Lute thought for a moment, sparing a glance down at the gold appendage,”Reminds me of a bird’s claw.”
“That suits you.”
“Maybe. It’s pretty sharp.”
The pause in their conversation sat heavy in the air.
“Fuck, its so weird just being in the same room as you again.” Vaggie laughed,"It's almost nice.“
“Oh yeah, because the last few times ended so well for the both of us.” Lute sighed,“Why not just kill me now and get it over with?”
“I think Sera would be pretty pissed if her new ambassador dropped dead when it hasn't even been a month.” Vaggi looked at her with what Lute could almost describe as exasperation if there wasn’t something raw behind it, ”Besides, I'm not you, Lute. I don't need to hurt you, and I don’t want to just so I can pretend that you don’t mean anything to me.”
Lute bites her tongue because truly what could she say? It wasn’t wrong. Hell, looking at her track record, inflicting pain was the one thing they could count on.
A need to hurt, to maim, to kill. It’s what she was built for, and in the end it was all she ever would be. No redemption for a weapon, a tool of heaven’s ire-maybe if Lute were a person, if she were anything more than an arm and a sword, then maybe things would be different.
But Lute was a blade, and all she had now was her ability to cut.
“Well I don’t, do I? You’re only doing this because your new bitch wants us both to play nice.”
“Yeah, sure.” Vaggi rolled her eyes, “Sparing you was my call, actually.”
“Why, because you knew it would hurt more?”
“Come on Lute, could you for one second try to understand-”
“Why should I?” Lute scoffed,“You mean nothing to me, traitor.”
Lute had hoped that would be what broke Vaggi. What brought her back to what heaven had forged her to be, something that Lute could handle without breaking. For a second she braced herself, the way Vaggi’s gaze bore straight through her surely a sign of something.
“You know, I loved you once.”
The words stung with every bit of the fire that Vaggi stoked in Lute. They bit at her skin, they sucked all the air out of the room, they burned.
Perhaps for the first time a hint of something far more devastating crossed Vaggi’s face, that self assured look melting into something more vulnerable, more scared,”I hated myself for it but I did love you. Sometimes I still do.”
The lump in Lute’s throat could have suffocated her, sitting sharp and heavy with the weight of that confession.
“It was just…a mess. It always was, everything between us. I just felt like I couldn’t be with you-I couldn’t trust you–but I wanted you, so fucking badly it hurt.”
Even after all these years the feeling seemed so fresh in her mind. The dancing, the kiss, the thrill of pretending they were anything more than a test of Lute’s loyalty to Adam-those stolen moments feeling far too honest a performance than Lute could ever have intended.
“Did you ever feel like that?”
Had Lute loved her once too? To say so would imply that some part of her didn't love her still, that the very sight of Vaggi before her didn’t stir some desperate fire in her veins. Through everything-the pain, the blood, the self constructed hatred-something else sat heavy in Lute’s heart, burning for Vaggi and her alone. No matter how much Lute had wanted it to be Adam, hell, to be any other man, it was always her.
Yeah, Lute had loved her. It hurt, it scarred, and she had wanted Vaggi to feel every bit of that pain.
“I don’t know.” Lute replied, voice sounding far more ragged than it should.
She wasn’t ready to face it. Not yet. Not here. Not when she’d spit upon the chance to love Vaggi properly. Not when the bridges she’d burned had led them both to hell.
It hit her with a force beyond what Lute could ever have imagined. A death of something she had been too afraid to let herself want, something that she’d been too proud to let herself mourn.
The silence settled over them again, heavier than before.