9519/Knightfall: The Pale Moonlight

Knightfall: The Pale Moonlight
Date of Scene:	10 October 2019
Location:	Hell
Synopsis:	Have you ever danced with the Devil in the pale moonlight?
Cast of Characters:	Lucifer, Batman
Tinyplot:	Knightfall

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Lucifer has posed:
There wasn't so much pain as there was a sense of drowning loss. Of voices raised in panic and worry being muffled. Vision darkening: there's no lighted tunnel. A sharp scent fading. Of the sense of pain going into numbness.

And for many, terror is there underneath. Because when there is nothing left, what remains?

Is there anything left?

There's a surface, but it isn't real. There's no feeling to it. And there's vision, but the place has no set of rules of sightline. Seeing forever, but there's nothing that eyes can see. It's not flames: not yet. But it is a waste.

But the newest arrival isn't alone. There's a pure black shape, human, like a shadow between things. It is very long, very slim, and relaxed on a high-backed, straight chair, the same black as the figure. It observes only, at first, shadowy fingers curling and uncurling over one raised knee.

Batman has posed:
"Damian!"

The Batman's voice is raised, a vague note of fear wavering it - perhaps one of the few things that could truly cause his heart to dread. The loss of a child. He had felt it before, albeit it from the other side. But now it was him, slipping further and further away - knowing he was leaving behind so much. So much yet unfinished.

As he finds himself in this nothing-place, he reaches down to place a hand over his chest. The broken breastplate, the shattered bones - all are gone now. Everything is once more intact. He wears the batsuit, gloves, and boots yet the cowl is gone. He reaches up to his face, feeling no swelling, no shattered jaw. He is whole.

His eyes turn to the watching shadow now, and if he feels that terror it does not show it. He does not speak to it, perhaps he cannot quite tell if it would be capable of understanding. Instead, he watches. Waits. Eyes fixated on the only thing to see here in the abyss.

Lucifer has posed:
"Not Damian, actually, but I'm patient if you want to yell a while. In Hell, //everyone// can hear you scream, though." There's a pause. "You've interested me, Bruce," says the figure from the chair. The voice is innately part of the figure, but isn't. "For a while. Seeing which way you'd land. Not quite a coin, though, as we both know you're weighted rather on one side," chuckles the man. Or whatever he is.

"But it isn't about what /I/ think. It's about what you think, right now. What is it you //deserve//?" wonders the figure in the chair. The tone is relaxed, so friendly and companionable. But Bruce may feel he is the entertainment, to this entity. Or something else? It's hard to get a read on an inhuman shadow.

Batman has posed:
"I don't play games," says the Batman, still unmoving - though his real name is used, though the game may be up, he doesn't deviate from that careful persona created over the course of a decade, "Especially not with hallucinations brought on by cerebral hypoxia."

He begins to move, wandering but never going far. Exploring the emptiness around him, reaching out as though there may be some hidden latch or lever. Some ingenious escape mechanism built in around him. Like this were some deathtrap constructed by one of his enemies and not a deathtrap of a decidedly more permanent variety.

"Where am I?"

Lucifer has posed:
The figure claps, though, three sloooow, giant claps. "Love it. The Batman. I'm not making fun, I am really not," the figure says, candid. Some clarity comes through from the shadow, as the figure wills it. It's an adult male, sleek, in a suit. There's no supernatural quality to him: at least not at the moment.

"You're on the doorstep of Hell. I pulled you aside for a chat, entirely against your will, perhaps, but you have all of eternity to suffer, so what's a few minutes?" wonders the figure. "I'll end the games, though. I understand you're a direct sort."

There's a pause.

"You died, Bruce. You are heading into your personal hell."

Batman has posed:
"Hell."

Bruce repeats the word to himself. He had never believed in those sorts of things - there was enough going on in the world as there was without applying a coat of mysticism to the whole affair. But the moment gives him pause. If he didn't believe, why would he imagine it?

He had plans for everything. Plans upon plans. Wheels within wheels. All turning, all grinding towards certain inexorable goals he had set out weeks, months, years in advance. Where was his plan for going to Hell?

All of that may run through his head, but if nothing else he had the world's greatest poker face.

"And you stopped me for what reason? Can't be to gloat. Can't be to learn more about me - you already know more than most. So why am I here? Do you stop everyone for a roadside chat?"

Lucifer has posed:
"Yes, Hell. You'll have all the time you possibly could want to analyze every failure, every time something did not go to plan. And those that are left behind, struggling to carry the load pressing them downwards. Or whatever else it is that is putting the vice I can sense on your soul."

Lucifer-- for that is who it is-- folds his hands in his lap again, and observes Bruce, and his poker face. It doesn't bother the man of the shadow at all. "Perceptive of you. No, I don't. I came to ask if you deserve hell. It isn't any more of a game than //you// want to make this last chance."

Batman has posed:
"Quisque suos patimur manis," Bruce says quietly, quoting the Aeneid either to himself or to the Devil himself - it isn't quite clear. He remains silent for a moment, considering the question. If nothing else, Bruce is a measured man. He does not speak for the sake of speaking.

"I'm not done," he offers finally, mouth set in a grim line, "If this is what you say it is, then it isn't time. Maybe one day. I remember everything, you don't have to remind me of that long stretch of deeds I've done to earn my place here. Not the least of which is condemning a good man to die."

He closes his eyes, seeing in his mind's eye the vision of Superman suffering within the cloud of aerosolized kryptonite gas.

Lucifer has posed:
"I thought you might remember. Memory will improve while you are here," answers the Devil quietly. A smile is present, but it isn't mocking. It just is. There's a lot of pleasantness to Bruce's current companion, though all of it comes with a very low key menace. This is not the front door of the Good Place, after all.

"That's rather slippery of you. You are not done sinning, I take it," wonders Lucifer, tilting his head.

Batman has posed:
"I won't ever be done," Bruce tells the Devil plainly, no shame nor ire in his voice, "If I leave this place the way I came? I'll continue what I set out to do. If this is my final destination? So be it. This doesn't deter me. This doesn't change. If one man needs to die and suffer eternally for the sake of a thousand? A hundred? A dozen. I will do it."

He holds out his hands, palms extended upwards, the faintest quirk at the corner of his mouth.

"I don't know what Hell awaits me, I only know the Hell I carry with me. That I've carried with me for twenty-six years. That never goes away. I see it every time I close my eyes."

Lucifer has posed:
"Yes, and here, we remove eyelids, and prevent sleep," answers Lucifer immediately. Again, a fact: brutal honesty. Because why not? "Once you go in, you do not come back out. Eternal damnation only goes one way." There is, still, no sound of real threat there. Lucifer isn't even saying it to entertain himself, perhaps. A tired quality has come with it.

"But I can /appreciate/ your need for justice and punishment," Lucifer says, coming round, it seems, to the point. "You /have/ sent a few my way down here. That, Bruce, is why we're talking now."

Batman has posed:
"Hnh."

Bruce merely grunts in response to the graphic description of the tortures that await in Hell. He still keeps that fear from his face, still maintains the stoic line that was as ever-present in life as in death.

"Then send me back," he intones, voice not unlike that he'd use when interrogating some street tough as Batman, "If you stopped me here, you have the power to do it. If I'm bound here anyway, what's a human lifespan in the face of eternity?"

Lucifer has posed:
"I expect if I had the ability, I'd have chills. You're something," smiles Lucifer, still pleasant. "I know you expect me to offer to make a deal with you." The well-dressed man finally eases to stand up from his chair. The chair disintegrates with a soft labored 'sigh' sound, as if it were a deflating soul. It might be.

"But I truly don't see a need for it. You're going to do it all on your own, I think. Free will is a wonderful thing. Yes, I do have the power to decide. I suspect you'll add to the library that you'll bring with you when I see you again down here." Lucifer settles his hands into his pockets, looking away over the lack of landscape. Maybe the devil's eye see something different. In fact, they do. A realm of pain.

"I will grant you the time to make of that... whatever you will." Lucifer turns his eyes back to Bruce, a flutter of red passing through them.

It isn't just 'red'. It is a deeper, soul-eating thing, that looks out of Lucifer for that moment. It is something that turns many nonbelievers inside out, scorches a psyche.

But the realm of Hell will fade, as the Devil holds true to his word.

Batman has posed:
Perhaps he will. Faced with Hell - or the possibility of it - Bruce didn't blink. He didn't repent. He came to understand what was waiting for him and thought perhaps, somewhere, he was doing the right thing. If you're shaking the very foundations upon which the pillars of all reality sit, then maybe you're asking the right questions.

As Hell fades, the physical world - Bruce's world - comes back into focus. He cannot see it. Not really. It is as though viewing it through light cloth. The sounds are muffled, as though he has gun cotton jammed into his ears. His body is oddly numb, a present weight but something he isn't attached to. Slowly it all returns, whatever it was - his essence, his soul - finds purchase within his body once more.

Somewhere, a sustained electronic beep becomes something more akin to a heartbeat.

Somewhere, a muffled voice cries: "I've got him!"

And the Batman lives.