And There Was Light - Prologue
Author's Notes:
Hello, all! I'm not too sure if the Lucifer fandom hangs on out ffnet, very much, but just in case it does, I figured I'd post this. For parity's sake.
This is a finished story. 20 chapters, approximately 145k words. I'll be posting a chapter every few days, except for today, when I'll post two, since the prologue is so short.
Since ffnet has no way to tag anything, I should add (before I forget) that this fic contains some explicit gore, sexual situations, mature themes, and quite a lot of angst in places. Lucifer is sort of a marriage of his show and comic persona. This fic is only canon-compliant through S2E18.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this.
TRIGGER WARNING: The first crime-to-solve in this story involves the aftermath of a sexual assault. I don't go into great detail, and nothing happens to the main characters we know and love, though some not-so-loose parallels are drawn.
He thinks he must be blind. Half the world is beige. The other half, cerulean. All of it is harsh, and hot, and bright, and he can't do much more than peer through his eyelashes at the beige. At the blue. He'd always assumed blindness would mean blackness, but .…
"Bloody priceless," he grumbles.
He licks his dry, cracked lips. His whole body hurts. He's thirsty. His stomach's churning, he's out of breath, his head is pounding, and his back ….
His back feels like it's been slashed by knives, and the skin's been left in bloody ribbons.
It's so bad, he can't lift his arms anymore, let alone … Them.
The wings.
He won't think of them as his wings, because they're not. He refuses.
The wings drag behind him like a spent parachute he can't disentangle himself from.
"You don't like my gift?"
The words flicker past his ears, and Lucifer stiffens.
"No, I don't bloody like it, Dad," he rasps, the words a bare croak between wheezing breaths. He's been re-gifted with two limbs he didn't want, and each is attached to muscles and tendons he hasn't used in years. Worse, in the world's cruelest of ironies, he's caught in one of the few scenarios he can think of where he might regret cutting the damned things off. But his back is so ravaged by the sudden addition of bone, and flesh, and feathers, he can't take advantage of the potential lifesaving utility of them, anyway. So, why in the hell would he like it?
He stumbles, dropping to his knees onto the scalding sand.
He licks his dry lips again.
"You're dying, you know," the voice says.
"Shut up," Lucifer replies.
"I can't. Because you're also hallucinating."
Something tightens in his chest.
"I'm the hallucination," the voice adds.
As if there were ever any doubt. Dad would never show up for real.
Lucifer squints ahead, staring at the beige and the blue. His limbs are shaking. Everything's spinning like a top, now. He swallows as he drops onto his side on the hot ground, and the sand digs into his raw skin. The wings are a sweltering blanket of down that he can make invisible, and intangible, but he can't remove. Every exhalation makes him feel as though he were breathing fire. The wind is a blast of hot air like someone's opened an oven next to his face.
"I bet you'd like a glass of water. Or a flood. Forty days and forty nights, perhaps?"
He could pray, he supposes. Pray to his father for deliverance. He could.
"You could. Any time, now."
Frankly, though, he'd rather rot.
At least, that's a choice he can still make.
He wishes he had any clue why his father would do this.
He's too far gone to understand, though, when a very real answer arrives.
"You'll see."