Leviathan
Once upon a time, there was an angel.
He was beautiful, as all the stories say, and beloved of God. His form was perfectly created, as noble as a cedar, and when he rose in the morning, all other angels were stricken by the brightness of his glory, and so they called him Lucifer, the Morningstar.
Even down in the bitter smoke of Hell, the story was well known—that Lucifer wanted his voice to count, to matter like God’s; that this started a war in Heaven; and, in the end, that this was why they threw him away, why the victors of the war tore him out of Heaven and cast him down, for they said his desire was blasphemous. The other angels who defended him and fought by his side were either annihilated or thrown down to earth, but Lucifer was sent directly and immediately to Hell, because he was the one who seeded the blasphemy in their hearts and turned their faces from God. And so, this bright angel Fell, landed in a pit of devils and demons, and was ruined forever. He could never go back home. He became the symbol of evil, the Great Deceiver, the snake in the garden, but most relevantly to Leviathan, he became the King of Hell.
Leviathan was there when the angel crashed down, when his formtore a gash into Hell with the force of its arrival, a crushed comet hurtling into the everlasting dark. The other princes witnessed it—everyonewitnessed it, from the Heavenly host to the denizens of the pit—but it was different for Leviathan because he was the only one who loved Lucifer from the very first moment he laid eyes on the Morningstar. It amazed him that everyone else didn’t feel the same way—how was it possible to resist that kind of beauty? It was a perfection that couldn’t be stripped away, not even in the devastation of the Fall, not even as the ruined angel cast his wild face up to Heaven and screamed for his Father, screamed until his voice became a dead black thing with strings of rot swinging from it. Leviathan was there from the beginning, when the fresh Devil whispered the name of another angel he had loved in his sleep; there to witness all the parts the stories don’t tell because the King of Hell is only supposed to be malicious and cruel and wicked. And yes, Lucifer became all that too, in time, but when the Fall happened, he was simply... broken.
He was broken, and Leviathan loved him. The princes of Hell watched and worshipped as Lucifer ascended to the throne of Hell, as the banished angel became the Devil and did his job ruling over all the demons and sinners. Lucifer took scores and scores of entities into his bed, and Leviathan was pleasing to the eye, so it was an easy thing to find his way into his master’s bed. They became lovers with some regularity, because Lucifer had a soft spot for Leviathan, for how blatantly Leviathan cared for no one and nothing except Lucifer. That stark adoration was like water to Lucifer; he drank it with both hands and a greedy mouth, and Leviathan gave him more, always more and more and more. He didn’t care what Lucifer gave him in return. He didn’t care how broken the angel was.
Sometimes Leviathan mourned that he’d never truly know who Lucifer had been in Heaven, but a prince of Hell knows their place. The Lucifer who was down here might have been destroyed, but that destruction was the only reason he washere, the only reason Leviathan couldsee him and touch him and love him, and so privately Leviathan gave thanks for the war and the Fall, for otherwise the Morningstar would have never entered his world. This version of Lucifer was cold and cruel, and maybe that was as close to an angel as Lucifer could ever be again. Leviathan did notcare. He did anything Lucifer asked, he let anything be done to him under Lucifer’s hands, and his voice was laden with devotion each time he gasped “My lord, my lord!” as all the unseemly pleasures washed over them both.
But time does strange and unkind things, as does Hell. Lucifer grew more and more cruel, and it wasn’t that Leviathan loved him any less—never that—but there was only so far one could push even a prince of Hell.
They had been in one of the dungeons, Lucifer whipping a kneeling Leviathan and the prince locked in restraints with his arms extended above his head. This would usually be a prelude to more pleasurable things, but when Leviathan gave the agreed word to cease, the Devil had simplycontinued. Leviathan had begged, then Leviathan had screamed, and then Leviathan had briefly changed form and the restraints had broken off before he changed back. They stood facing each other while shocked betrayal burned in Leviathan’s face, strips of his flayed skin curling on the ground. Lucifer merely looked bored as he dropped the whip and made to turn away.
“Why?”Leviathan had asked, pain churning in his chest. “Why did you not stop?”
The Devil paused and looked at him with empty eyes. “You arenothing,” Lucifer had said. “I simply did not hear your voice.”
He’d walked away then, as if he hadn’t wounded Leviathan beyond all form and flesh. The Devil’s words echoed within Leviathan, shattering the love he’d held for the Fallen angel, leaving it in failing shards. That wound never mended. It was a death, and in its wake, Leviathan grew a coldness that began to mirror Lucifer’s. The prince never lay with theDevil again, not that Lucifer cared. It brought into painful clarity that Lucifer hadnevercared, and Leviathan’s wound deepened.
Thousands of years passed, and then during a visit topside, the King of Hell ran into his brother and most hated enemy, the Archangel Michael, the very one who had cast Lucifer down in the first place, foot on the Devil’s neck and sword at his throat. It was then that Lucifer made a terrible discovery: every inch of the cruel face he wore was wholly unoriginal. After everything—the costs he’d paid, the war he’d fought—all he’d done was become his brother, the one he despised most in all of existence, and the shock of that jarred him off the path he’d been on. Michael had laughed and laughed and called him “little brother” with a knowing look, and Lucifer had fled back to Hell, distraught. He called his princes together, demanded they tell him what they thought of him truly, but none of them would dare. They all flinched and groveled, and from his exiled throne, Lucifer’s eyes were opened. He stared down at them, horrified at how thoroughly he had crushed them all beneath his feet. When he looked over at Leviathan, the prince met his gaze coolly, then walked away. He had nothing to offer the Devil.
That was the day Lucifer began to change. Eventually, he came to plead for Leviathan’s forgiveness. “I was cruel,” this new Lucifer said, his eyes brighter than they’d been since his Fall, his beauty as blinding as ever. “I had no right. It will never happen again.” Shame looked foreign on the Morningstar, yet there it was nonetheless. “Forgive me,” he said.
Leviathan bowed, lowering his gaze even as his mouth twisted. “There is nothing to forgive. You are the King of Hell. We serve at your pleasure.”
“Look at me,” the new Lucifer replied softly, and Leviathan raised his yellow eyes to the lost angel. He knew Lucifer would find nothing there, and sure enough, the Devil stared for long minutes before sighing and shaking his head. “We have an eternity together,” he warned Leviathan. “Iwillmake atonement, my prince.”
Leviathan had merely bowed again. Lucifer was a liar; he had learned that the hard way and it was a lesson that stuck. And yet, Lucifer kept changing, just as he changed Hell around them, shifting it away from the screams and the burning to a smoky silence that comforted those who worked there and crushed those who were sent there. Eternities suddenly became far more torturous when the sinners were trapped inside their heads, hearing and seeing horrors that had no outward sound or image, feeling pain that left no mark even as it boiled and sizzled their skin. Leviathan witnessed these illusions implemented alongside the quiet, all with a reformed Devil on a timeless throne. Around him, the other princes changed at a glacial pace, and Leviathan watched as Lucifer worked to earn their trust, giving them more power, louder voices that he actually encouraged and listened to. Many, many years passed again. Leviathan’s wound did not heal.
Sometimes he thought of that crashed comet, the ruined angel screaming up at a lost God. The other princes began to call the Devil Luci, started to call him family, and Leviathan couldn’t help but to fall in line because he was still a prince and he was loyal, and despite the breadth of his wound, he still loved Lucifer with all the small, failed fragments within him. Leviathan didn’t trust him, though, because he never forgot the dungeon, how his back had been flayed beyond consent, or his lover’s empty eyes. If Lucifer could be that once, for so long, he could become that again.
One day, Lucifer looked over at Leviathan with grieving eyes. “You’ll never forgive me, will you?” he said.
Leviathan tensed up and didn’t return the look. They had settled into a new rhythm, and for Leviathan, it was enough. It was safe.
“Do you need me to?”
Lucifer sighed. “If I say yes, you’ll do it and it won’t ring true. You don’tneedto forgive me, Levi.”
Leviathan almost said,Youhad every right. It would have been true—the King of Hell could do whatever he wanted to his subjects, but thisnew Lucifer apparently didn’t agree and wouldn’t like hearing that. “You were broken,” he said instead, offering a bastardized absolution if that’s what it would take for Lucifer to stop looking at his fucking wound, waiting for it to stitch itself closed.
The Devil’s mouth tightened. “Youwere never the same afterward, and I didn’t care then, did I? If I broke you. If you’re brokennow. It might be too late, but I care, Levi. I need you to know I care.”
Why was he bringing this up again? “It has beenmillennia,” Leviathan snapped. “We’refine, Luci. Do you want a penance?”
Lucifer scoffed. “As if you’d be kind enough to actually give me one.”
A corner of Leviathan’s mouth tilted up despite himself. It was mildly satisfying to see the King of Hell spend thousands of years attempting to get back into his good graces and failing most of the way. “You deserve it,” he said.
“I know.” The ruined angel leaned over and kissed Leviathan’s cheek gently. “Just so you know, I’ll never forgive myself, Levi. Not even if you do.”
The Devil had walked away then, and it was the last time Leviathan had felt Lucifer’s mouth against his skin.
11.
