Work Text:
What is life, if not pain?
Said the Daughter to the Devil.
Life, said her devil, is beautiful Pain.
Then if life is pain yet beauty,
Continued the daughter:
What is love?
And love, said her Devil,
Love is loss,
And love is pain,
And love is taking;
But love is eternity.
Love is an eternal loss and suffering
For one will give up their flesh and their peace
Because of love, the Mortal’s synthesis,
Never dies.
And that program it is a curse and nothing else,
Just as immortality.
And the Daughter looked up in anguish
And what.
And what, Annabel?
What of the scholars of the third,
And their preaching of Love and Glory?
What of the poets of the Seventh,
Who write of Love eternal and perfect?
What of the Kindly Prince,
Who resurrected us that we may find love?
The Lord, Alecto scorned.
The Lord, his only love is taking,
His only love is Death,
The death which consumes all
So do not invoke the Emperor Undying,
For he is only undying because of his betrayal
To the one he claimed to love,
Who he stuffed in a shell,
And locked in chains,
And buried deep for them thousand years.
Guarded by Anastasia and her daughters,
Who made me their Demon.
But what of Paul,
The Daughter demanded
What of the beautiful synthesis of the soul;
What of them?
And they are of one Flesh.
They were each other's End.
And it was the most beautiful Love and Life,
The dream of the Seventh;
To live and to love,
Forever, as one.
What of Paul, Alecto?