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“The truth is, for all I hated running Hell, I was very good at what I did - torture. And who doesn’t like to do what they are good at? I may have resented the work, but I never questioned that it needed to be done - that they deserved to be punished. But what happened with Charlotte…and then Cain... Well, it made me wonder. When I was dropped into Hell it didn’t come with an instruction manual. When Hell traps a soul, it preserves them as the worst incarnation of themselves. I found myself surrounded by people acting out the very worst of humanity and in their guilt they begged to be punished for it. And so I granted them their desire. Do not misunderstand me. If you heard their list of crimes even you, Doctor, would be begging to take a turn at the whip. But… Charlotte Richards… If I had met her first in Hell I would not have given her a second glance. She certainly is no innocent. But she changed. In her second life here on earth she did what I would not have thought possible. She became a better person.”
Linda frowned, “So she made it out. I’m glad for her, but what does this have to do with Cain?”
Lucifer’s fist clenched reflexively. “It has everything to do with Cain because he did not go to Hell. I sent him there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Despite everything he did, every crime he committed, every life he and his apprentice took, he felt no guilt. He would have gone to Heaven. So I changed his mind. I made him feel the weight of Charlotte’s death and it carried him down to Hell.”
Linda swallowed. “Are you sure? I mean, you haven’t exactly had time to check.”
He bared his teeth, “I’m sure.”
“Riiiight,” she nodded slowly, her eyes wide in a way that said ‘I am consciously choosing to forget I saw that.’ “So Charlotte is in a better place and Cain got what he deserved. I still don’t see the problem.”
“The problem, Doctor,” he bit out her title, “Is that I put him there. That I had the power to put him there. I always knew that it was not the weight of the sins that dragged them down to Hell but the weight of their guilt, but I never doubted the two were connected.”
Linda looked confused for a moment longer and then her eyebrows rose. “Oh.”
Some of the tension left Lucifer’s body and he leaned back against the couch. “Oh, indeed.”
“And you…” she trailed off.
Lucifer gave a half-smile. “I punished the guilty. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it. How many people like Charlotte Richards end up in Hell. How many Cains there are singing with the choir up in Heaven.”
Linda looked mildly ill. “And God lets that happen? I mean, I guess I just always assumed that the system worked, you know? That good people went to Heaven and bad people went to Hell.”
Lucifer grimaced, “So did I. But once I started thinking about it I realized my father who art All Knowing and Never Sharing never once said anything about Good and Evil when he created Hell. Actually he never said much of anything at all.”
“So we, what? Made it all up?”
“Finest fiction ever written,” Lucifer agreed. “And you haven’t even noticed the best part.” His smile could have cut glass. “It means Amenadiel was right.”
“Right about what, exactly?”
Lucifer looked down, his voice suspiciously casual. “Well, my brother had a bit of a pet theory. He thought that all of this,” he gestured vaguely at himself, “my face and wings, his fall from grace, had nothing to do with our Father after all. Just as humans are in the end the sole judge of their own character, he believed that our forms also…reflect… in some way how we see ourselves. He was never up there judging our every action. He wasn’t even looking.” He paused, then added as if out of principle, “Bloody bastard.”
Linda suddenly had a horrible feeling that she knew where this was going, but she didn’t interrupt.
“My devil face didn’t appear until after I started torturing souls. I thought it was another sign from him, that the pain and terror were what he wanted from me, but I was wrong. My father sent me to Hell but he never made me a torturer. I chose it for myself. I could have done anything down there. I could have searched out the souls who had a chance, helped them ease their guilt, helped them move on.” He clenched his fists. “I could have sat on my bloody hands and done nothing, but I chose to inflict pain.” He looked up at her then. “Not a single soul ever escaped from their own personal Hell because I kept them there. What does that make me?”