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“I'm here to make a bargain.” The man is seated at one of the VIP tables closest to the stage. He has his elbows resting on the white tablecloth, holding a glass of amber liquid. Whiskey. Neat. Black hair slicked back. Tailored tux in exquisitely finespun wool that easily costs well into the five figures.
Lucifer Morningstar, former Lord of Hell and fallen angel, is not impressed.
He's stepping down from the center platform of the Lux's stage, where he's finished extemporizing on a cascade of chords on the grand piano. The tonic. The subtonic. Back to the tonic. The dominant. Add the seventh. And then a ninth. Repeat and repeat again, but he ends not on the tonic, but on a substitution. Diminished minor seventh. The tritone. The Devil's chord.
He leaves it there, hanging in the air in his wake.
“The Bell. An ancient artifact crafted by the goddess Kuanyin,” the man at the table says. He isn't giving up, apparently, dangling what paltry carrot he has to garner himself the damning gaze of the Devil's eye. Most mortals wouldn't dare, knowing who Lucifer is, but this one does.
Lucifer turns. The affairs of mortals rarely rate high enough to pique his interest, but mention of The Bell draws out his curiosity.
He sits at the table and looks at the man. “Bruce Wayne,” he reads the name written plainly on the fabric of existence, “billionaire CEO and heir to the Wayne fortune. Most people would say that you're already in the devil's pocket, given your wealth. But you don't see yourself that way, do you, Batman?”
Bruce doesn't flinch. His gaze is like flat sheets of glacial ice. Anyone less than the Devil himself might be intimidated, but Lucifer has faced the wrath of God Himself. This mere mortal's conceit is at most an irritating display of hubris.
“I'll skip the introductions then,” Bruce states. “Let's talk about the Bell.”
A waiter appears and hands Lucifer a glass of wine. He takes a sip. It's smooth and dark. He lets it sit on his tongue until he tastes the bitterness of tannins.
“Yes, the Bell.” He eases back in his chair. “What of it?”
“I understand it was used at one point to threaten you.” There is no guile in Bruce’s expression. No connivance nor contrivance. He speaks like he's reading off a report. Statements of fact. That is, until his next sentence, and it's barely perceptible, but there is some subtle suggestion of human emotion that makes Lucifer think this is personal. “I know where the Bell is, and I'd like you to retrieve it, without harming its… vessel.”
Lucifer takes another sip of wine as he considers the proposition Bruce has presented. At one point, an unkillable entity known as the Silk Man had tried to catch him in the wave of destruction that is emitted when the Bell is rung. In response, Lucifer had slaughtered thousands to snuff out the destruction of the Bell. He'd done it to save the integrity of his incarnation.
In the process, he'd also saved millions, though it was only a byproduct. A happenstance.
Lucifer is not in the business of saving lives.
Regardless, the Bell is a dangerous artifact, plain and simple. It's powerful enough to wipe the soul of an angel from Creation. He'd thought the Bell cast out when he'd banished the Silk Man out into the edges of the cosmos, but if it's back wandering earth encased in a living vessel, then he's curious to know what mechanism was used to retrieve it.
And if Lucifer is interested, then the Host and Heaven will be as well. It would be best to get ahead of it if he doesn't want them sticking their noses where they don't belong.
He looks at the mortal sitting across from him. Lucifer does not like his arrogance, but the man has been careful—too careful—not to offend. “What makes you think I care anything about the Bell and its vessel?”
“I'm told that the fact that it's here, back on Earth, would offend you. I'm told that you would want to get to it first.” Again, words chosen tactfully, voiced with no expression.
“And who told you that?”
“A blind man named Mr. Weiss.”
“Ah,” Lucifer nods. He means Meleos, another angel who now walks the earth instead of soaring in Heaven. “That old bastard,” Lucifer mutters, “I burnt out the meddling fool's eyes. Perhaps I should have burnt out his tongue too.”
Bruce makes no response. He just watches and waits. The man knows he's at a disadvantage. He waits for Lucifer to play a hand.
But Lucifer is in no hurry. “I presume you know what the Bell does?” he asks.
“It destroys souls.” There is another subtle flicker of emotion, some silent pain in Bruce's mien.
“It does, in a way,” Lucifer confirms. More specifically, it disrupts the cycle of souls between heaven and hell through annulment. A sort of bastardized Nirvana in which the soul is scraped away from existence, despite the fact that Heaven's dogma declares all souls to be eternal, and the Host dislikes it when they simply cease. After all, the constant churning of souls is the fuel that keeps all of Creation running. Losing the trickle of souls that reach true Nirvana is inconsequential for the most part, but if the Bell's wave compounds by consuming an increasing number of souls, the fallout could be massive. Heaven most certainly won't take the loss kindly when it was Lucifer who had cast off the Bell in the first place.
He might as well preempt another unpleasant visit from an angel. Lucifer stands, “Alright then. Let's go.”
“I have a car waiting,” Bruce says. He guides them out to a waiting limousine outside.
Some time later, they're aboard a lavish jet plane. It's completely private, the cockpit running on an advanced autopilot instead of live humans, and the interior cabin is both luxurious and austere, decorated in stark black and cream with plush leather padded seats. Lucifer is offered a glass of vintage Armagnac that is almost as nice as the bottle he has back home. The amenities are more than adequate. Bruce, in his capacity as host, has the wherewithal and the foresight to see to it that Lucifer is given his due respect without any aggravating sycophancy. At the very least, it saves Lucifer the trouble of having to burn the man to a crisp for being disrespectful.
They're sitting in opposite seats in the cabin when Lucifer turns to Bruce and says, “It's not really about the Bell, is it?”
He shakes his head. “No, it isn't.” Bruce’s face might as well be made of stone.
At the same time, Lucifer has been around since the beginning of Creation. The illusion of apathy is no match for the Prince of Lies himself. He asks, “So who is it, this vessel?”
“My son.” Underneath the small table where he sets his glass, Bruce subtly clenches his fist. “I need you to save him.”
“And why do you suppose I'd be inclined to do such a thing? In case you haven't heard, I'm no longer the Lord of Hell. I have no interest in peddling in mortal souls. They are of no use to me. As for you, he's not even really your son.” Lucifer sees it—the lack of blood that binds—but there is a sort of paternal authority. A want for control. A desire to exact a will onto another, which in turn has sparked a flare of rebellion. Of the latter, Lucifer is more than familiar. His fall from Heaven, from God—his Creator and Father—is the story that continues to shape humanity to this day.
Bruce isn't swayed by Lucifer's construals. “As I said earlier,” he says, “I want to make a bargain.” He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a flask. There's an unassuming clear liquid inside. Bruce uncorks it and offers it to Lucifer for inspection. “If you agree to save my son, this is yours.”
Lucifer takes the bottle in hand, but he can already tell what it is. He has another bottle of it safely stowed back at the Lux—one of his special bottles. It's Lethe water, a rather useful bargaining chip, especially with the Lilim, and supremely scarce. Mystical antiquities from ruined pantheons often are.
“Hard to come by, even for me.” Lucifer sets the bottle down. “How does a mortal come to have something like this in their possession?”
The severity of Bruce’s composure thickens as he responds, “I'm resourceful.”
“That you are,” Lucifer concurs. Whatever it was that Bruce had paid, it must have cost him dearly. “Back to the vessel–”
“Jason,” Bruce supplies.
“Yes. The vessel,” Lucifer continues. “Do you wish to save his life, or his soul? There's a difference.”
“Both,” Bruce frowns.
To which Lucifer states, “That's not always possible.”
At which point Bruce counters, “You're a being of indescribable power. What is impossible for someone like you?”
Lucifer sips his glass of Armagnac. Insolence veiled in flattery. This mortal has the audacity to think he can goad him into the vulgar use of his power. Still, the flavor of the aged spirit in his glass is good, and Lucifer would rather not be bothered to have to summon his wings because he smote the jet he's currently sitting in out of the sky.
“Watch your tone,” he settles on a warning. “I'll take the bottle of Lethe. In exchange, I will save your son, one way or another. That is all.”
*******************
They land on the barren landscape of an unpopulated island somewhere between the edges of the Canadian Arctic and the western edge of Greenland. The landscape is rocky and barren. And frigid.
It almost makes Lucifer miss the warmth of hellfire.
Almost.
After the plane lands, Lucifer stands and stretches. He reaches out his arms and flexes his senses. The Bell is close. He's encountered it before, and it's familiar. It feels like a void—a point of emptiness that draws in souls like a black hole—the pull of it an invitation to venture past the event horizon.
It makes a sort of sense. Despite its unintended effects, the Bell was created to guide a soul inward and beyond the depths of self. Like a star that collapses into itself from the forces of its own immeasurable mass, all matter of the soul is drawn into a singularity of non-existence in which the universal laws of Creation no longer apply—a deathless state, if that's even possible.
That unfathomable point is a mystery even to Lucifer, and venturing into the radius of the Bell remains dangerous.
Hence, Lucifer takes precautions. The pulse of his power can only be perceived through the barely perceptible sound of fluttering wings. Most people wouldn't notice, but Bruce does. He turns, a question in the tilt of his head; however, when he looks, he sees nothing, because Lucifer makes it so.
When they exit the plane, Lucifer is wearing his coat and Bruce is dressed in full Batman regalia. They walk toward their destination, first following the trail using Lucifer's senses, but the path becomes obvious rather quickly. The landscape begins as a barren rockscape, gray and brown and jagged with tufts of plantlife barely clinging to dust-dry soil.
Then, as they plod through endless flat planes, images appear, hung like canvas tapestries along an invisible hall. They depict a dark-haired boy, presumably Jason, in various scenes. Running through gritty urban streets. Walking across a large, neoclassical brick-facade estate set in a picturesque garden. Flitting across towering rooftops and squirreling between gothic gargoyles. The boy laughs, dressed in garish red, yellow, and green.
The scenes gradually change. The tapestries grow crumpled, like discarded paper. They look like torn pages from a book. Shorn edges from deliberate cuts. Some of the pages are ripped and bloody. The images grow increasingly dark. Fights with bloody fists and broken noses. The laughter withers into sobs.
A pile of shredded canvas gets tangled underfoot. Lucifer tramples through it, but Bruce kneels and unwraps it from around his boot, unfolding the twisted fabric as he does so. The image reveals itself in Bruce's trembling hands. There he sees himself, holding the battered body of the garishly dressed boy. He looks up from the brutal depiction and back at Lucifer, mouth twisted from suppressed emotion.
“What is this?” he says.
Lucifer has no patience for the tedium of human sentiments, but he recognizes the display all the same. Grief. Anguish. Regret. He ruled Hell for countless millennia, where death comes and goes and souls cycle through every conceivable emotion in their damnation. So it matters not to him when one lone man is afflicted by sorrow.
“Memories dropped,” Lucifer explains. “The Bell's intended purpose is to aid in the spiritual journey toward enlightenment. The elimination of suffering by shedding attachment is part of it. Jason is letting go of everything cluttering up his soul. Memories, especially bad ones, are far too heavy to carry.”
Bruce clenches his jaw. “What about the good memories?”
“Likely rooted in desire,” Lucifer shifts his shoulder in a gesture mildly reminiscent of a shrug, “the cause of all suffering. It's what they'll have you believe, anyway.”
“And what do you believe?” Bruce still has the tattered memory grasped in hand. It's rolled up like a scroll. He has another one tucked under his arm. He clings to hope, oblivious or in flat out denial of the fact that he's already too late. Much like a snake cannot crawl back into molted skin, it serves no purpose for a purified soul to restrain itself with shed memories.
As Lucifer has no obligation to further elucidate the intricacies of this aspect of spiritual liberation, he opts to simply answer Bruce's question: “I believe in nothing but the power of my own will.”
If Bruce’s posturing is any indication, his beliefs are not so different from Lucifer's, yet he responds, “Not everyone has that sort of power.”
“I couldn't agree more.”
It's one of the greatest fallacies Lucifer has observed in Creation. Free will is perhaps the ultimate privilege bestowed by the Creator, which is why he never understood why He also bound humanity in the trappings of destiny, in which the will to choose may not really be a choice at all.
Lucifer still feels the sting of betrayal from when he was cast into Hell, the cut of it grown deeper with time, when he ultimately realized that his rebellion was no rebellion at all, but divine destiny by His design. And since then, no matter what he's tried, he hasn't fully escaped the influence of the Creator's will upon his own.
True freedom is thus impossible. At the end of Creation, Lucifer must ultimately always bow and bend to the imposition of his Father's will.
Which is why it's infuriating when, as they tread further along, Lucifer finds in the strips of Jason's memory the very thing that he abhors. The imposition of dogma and rigid principles under the guise of righteous morality by a father who aims to control. Who would, given the opportunity, override free will and repave a mind with neatly lined moral parameters to his taste. A father who would rather aim a batarang at his son's artery than aim to take the life of a single madman. Lucifer is no savior, but he didn’t bat an eye when he slaughtered thousands to save a thousand million. What's one man in the grand scheme of things, especially a life as destructive as this particular madman—the Joker's? The loss of one life is so small and infinitesimally trivial in comparison to lives saved.
Lucifer thinks of how the Host and Creator, Lucifer's Father, cast him to Hell for challenging His dogma. He thinks of being shunned from the Host and Heaven, of being denied the warmth and love brought by the very light Lucifer wrought, of how much he's tried to deny the pain of forever losing the possibility of gaining his Father's approval.
He thinks about how this all sparks his ire and turns to Bruce to express his displeasure, but Bruce has already run ahead. Scrolls of crumpled memory are tucked under each arm. Wads of discarded recollections are bundled in his hands.
The memories bleed red blood.
It stains Bruce's gloves. It soaks the rocky groundscape. It covers the latest memories draped over invisible pillars of regret.
When Lucifer catches up to Bruce, he finds him warily approaching the shredded semblance of a man—Jason's visage is only partially tangible. The memories flap about him in an invisible wind like flayed skin, with bloody slivers attached at the ends to his body in thin strips. Beneath where the memories have peeled away, Jason's soul shimmers insubstantial, like a ghost.
Unsurprisingly, Jason also isn't alone. He's dragged another soul toward annihilation with him. At his feet is another figure hogtied in the dirt, decidedly more solid with none of the markings of embarking onto the Bell's spiritual path. He has green hair and white skin, dressed in an obnoxious purple suit. His mouth is taped shut, and if his appearance didn't give away who he is, then the cackling laughter that leaks through the gag would.
“Jason, let me help you,” Bruce implores as he steps over the Joker. His hands are held before him, beseeching. “We can fix this. We can remove the Bell.”
The burst of laughter that follows is shrill despite the gag. The sound is irritatingly piercing. Lucifer watches dispassionately as the Joker writhes on the floor, his eyes gleaming wildly.
“It's too late, B,” Jason shakes his head. “I can't.” The skin over the lower half of his face is gone so that his mouth is just an outline of ghostly wisp. The sound of his voice is thin and tinny, like he's speaking through a distant microphone.
“You can,” Bruce insists. “I made a bargain to save you. Lucifer can remove the Bell. He can put you back together.”
The Joker rolls between them, chortling. Lucifer has to step aside to avoid the madman bumping up against his toes.
Jason completely ignores him to address Bruce. “That's not a bargain you should have made. He can't save me. Not anymore.”
“No,” Bruce argues. He shakes his fists, still clutching the wadded strips of memory. “You can take these back! You can take everything back! We'll start over!” He steps forward as if to shove the memories at Jason. As if swaddling him in the bloody strips will somehow make him whole again, but Jason steps out of reach.
“You're not listening. That's the problem. You never listen!”
There's more muffled hysterics from the Joker. He's squirming under Jason's feet, tangling himself in the bloody strips of memory-skin and shrieking in laughter.
The sound is so grating. It rankles Lucifer's senses. “That's enough of you.” He flicks his wrist and the Joker goes silent and unmoving. “Good, now we can proceed without distractions.”
Bruce whirls on him. “What did you do? Did you kill him?”
Lucifer arches a brow. “I cut his vocal chords and severed part of his brain stem. But that really shouldn't be any of your concern when your son's soul is about to disperse into the ether of pure Creation.” He spares a moment to utter an irritated tut, and then, “I have better things to do than entertain your misplaced righteous indignation. Now away with you, too.”
He makes a swatting motion as Bruce protests, “No! Wait–”
–and then he's gone from sight.
Jason snaps his attention to Lucifer. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” Lucifer nudges the Joker's unmoving body with his foot. He doesn't budge. Good. “Your father is back on the jet. Correction, he, in fact, never even left. The journey inside the Bell is not a physical one. The soul travels, and the body does not, but you know this. You and your fellow sojouner, however,” he toes his foot at the Joker again, “are here, both body and soul. When the Bell rings, it'll kill you both and send a ripple of annulment upon your souls.”
Jason's shimmer-shifting soul flickers. The scraps of memory still attached seem to shudder, but then everything is calm again. Jason speaks, “I'm ready to ring the Bell.”
And the Bell is most certainly ready to be rung. The release of Jason's memories—the realization of life's suffering and desires—is an energy within the Bell that has nowhere to go but out. Lucifer can feel it, like a dense atmospheric pressure, building into something about ready to burst.
“The thing is,” Lucifer reflects, “your father made a bargain to save your life or your soul. Or both, depending on how things fall. So just hold still for a moment while I pull it out.”
He takes a step forward, but Jason takes a step back. His brows knot together on the top half of his face that isn't ripped away. The bottom half of exposed soul-sheer ripples like water. “It's not possible,” Jason insists. “It's too late.”
“Not quite. I can do both if we stop haggling about it,” Lucifer assures him. “It won't be pleasant shoveling what's left of your stripped-down soul back into your body, but it can be done once I remove the Bell.”
Lucifer gestures him forward, but Jason doesn't move. “I think you already know I've walked too far down this path for that. I stayed this long for Bruce. To say goodbye.”
“I figured,” Lucifer agrees. There isn't much life-memory left to substantiate an embodied soul, especially not when the Bell had cleansed it of so much burden already. Cramming Jason back into a hovel of a body now, only to live a life of constant suffering, is akin to walking backwards into torture. “It was mostly a procedural check on my part,” Lucifer continues, “so the other option is saving your soul.”
“But the Bell–,” Jason starts, but Lucifer cuts him off.
“–is primed to ring. I know. And when it rings, the soul is annulled. However, I only need to transfer it to the madman at your feet. It will kill him. The soul will be annulled. Annihilated. Congratulations on saving hundreds, if not thousands, of people from being murdered at his hands.”
There's more rippling in the fluidity of Jason's bared soul. “So what happens to me?”
“You could keep walking. After I take the Bell from you, and before it rings, you could leave in spirit only. Kuanyin was a deity of mercy. She originally intended the Bell to guide a soul on a journey of enlightenment. It's already opened that door for you. You need not stay within the Bell once I remove it, but it's your choice. The other options are the more traditional realms you're familiar with. Heaven. Hell, if there still is one. Both equally unpleasant, if you ask me.”
Jason considers a moment, then gestures at the Joker. “You're sure he'll never hurt anyone again?”
“I'm sure.”
“And Bruce?”
“Is on the jet as I said, taking a nap far away from the radius of the Bell. As am I, in fact.”
“Okay then,” Jason nods. “Do it.”
Lucifer proceeds.
Never let it he said that the devil doesn't fulfill his end of the bargain.
*******************
Lucifer snaps his eyes open to the sight of the interior cabin of the jet, just as the rumble of the Bell's shockwave subsides.
Across from him, Bruce jumps out of his seat and immediately bolts out the door. He sprints away into the distance, following the wake of where the power of the Bell has scorched and upturned the earth.
By the time Lucifer arrives at the scene, having trailed behind at a more leisurely pace, Bruce is clutching Jason's battered body to his chest. The force of the Bell's ring has torn through his flesh. There is little of him that is recognizable.
Beside them is the charred husk that once was the Joker. Lucifer plucks the Bell out of the smoldering ashes. The metal is a greenish bulb at the top. It shines pristine. He brushes off the remnants of ashes from the tassel and tucks it into his coat.
“You said you’d save him!” Bruce snarls, teeth bared. Now that they're fully in the physical realm, he's just a man huddled on the ground in a rumpled suit. No Batman. No menacing cowl or cape. Just a grieving father.
“I did save him,” Lucifer responds. “I saved his soul from a lifetime of suffering, and from an eternity of pain and punishment in hell.”
“You lying bastard! That wasn't the bargain!” Bruce wants to lunge at him. Lucifer can tell. But he's still hugging the husk of Jason's body in his arms, unwilling to let go.
“I said I would save him ‘one way or another,” Lucifer explains. “I never guaranteed I'd save both his life and soul. Besides, this was Jason's final request. I think I've been more than generous by taking his preferences into account. The imposition of your own desires would have been inappropriate and disrespectful.”
“You'll pay for this,” Bruce sobs.
“No, actually, you paid for this. I have the bottle of Lethe in my pocket. Now that our business is concluded, I'll be taking my leave.” Lucifer turns and looks out over the bleak horizon. The sun shines despite the cold. The shockwave of the Bell has forced all the clouds away, and the sky is an endless swathe of cerulean blue.
“It's a beautiful day,” Lucifer says. “I think I'll walk home.”