...No more going backwards...

Heat was the first sensation he became aware of. A warmth baking through his flesh, bone deep and endless. Crumpled over onto his side Lucifer lay quite still, his body drained, bruised and bloodied. Breathing came only in shallow gasps as he tried to muster enough strength to move.

The remorseless blaze was a comforting blanket smothering his battered senses. It dominated everything with its gravity, like a weight dragging him down through the earth. Consciousness was already fading out even as he tried to open his eyes. Exhaustion sweet as a siren song, unravelling his reserves of energy and pulling him easily back under, into sweet oblivion.

...No more...


...His heart was beating fast, phone cradled close to his ear as he strolled from St. Claire's hospital. Linda's frail smile fresh in his mind and a new resolve burning in his gut. This epiphany was both thrilling and terrifying, and when had he last felt such a flutter in his chest? Had he ever?

Linda had seen who he really was, really seen, and she had remained. Whatever happened now she was going into it as her choice, with her eyes wide open.

But Chloe had done no such thing. The difference was stark. It was time to tell her everything. Time to end the dance and let the good detective understand once and for all. Come disaster or triumph, this was it. Her choice. Her revelation. The future, their future if there was ever to be one, it had to be her choice...

He almost stumbled over the words, unfamiliar hope choking his throat "I want to tell you everything"...


The heat returned with a vengeance, an oven cranked back up to burn.

Lucifer winced, the blazing light made his closed lids glow a deep red, the temperature now even more intense than before. Cricket song rasped all around, fading in and out with his muffled hearing, a whispering buzz that cut through the stillness of the heavy oppressive air.

He opened his eyes slowly to behold a world on it's axis, tilted ninety degrees. Wrong, fallen, a joke of a horizon. The abstract view made no sense at all, his thoughts too sluggish to catch up and process the situation. His eyes drifted shut against a swell of confusion.

...no...

He had been walking into the cool of the night, away from the bright artificial lights of the hospital... he had been leaving a message, rambling on a bit perhaps, but...

But then?...

Lucifer frowned, shaking his head, unable to bridge the gap in his memory. Increasingly aware instead of how everything ached. He slowly shifted, trying to lever himself upright into a position that didn't hurt quite so much.

Hanging his head a moment, he let the world pirouette around. Unable to do anything more than just sit in the dirt and wait the feeling out.

Blinking dully, he looked down at himself. Somehow he had been stripped of all but his trousers. Whatever skin he could see on display had been shredded, flaking and blistered with the worst damage spread across his chest and shoulders.

He stilled again, exhaling through a wave of pain. He had not felt like this since... Well, not in a long, long time.

With a sharp intake of breath he pushed himself up to stand unsteadily. Blinking gritty eyes up at the noon-day sun, he lifted one hand tentatively to shield his gaze. As far as he could see in every direction the desert stretched out for an eternity on all sides, shimmers of heat haze dancing fluidly upon the horizon.

There was nothing, nothing at all for miles...

His back screamed out in protest as he stood still. With gritted teeth he grunted at the effort it took to steady himself. The old familiar weight of his wings pulled him backwards slightly, his balance shot to hell.

His wings...

Gasping, he pitched forward, knees jarring against the ground as his lungs tightened suddenly, making it so very difficult to breathe. The wings were unbearably bright under the sun, a blinding white. He had to shield his eyes from the glow as they crowded around him, an unwieldy mess of feathers, draping either side of his body as he fell.

Beautiful as ever, restored in their very real glory, the mantle of the Lightbringer. Subtle greys, pinks and the lightest of blues shone through like the rainbow film of an oil spill across the quills. If you looked close to really study them, a pale iridescent sheen of colour was just visible against the blinding white.

Once upon a time they had been the glorious envy of heaven, then they had become an ominous bright beacon in hell.

Lucifer pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes as he knelt on the dusty baked earth. His mind reeling in confusion. Unsure of where he was, of when, how was this even possible?

Muscles protested and cramped as he leant forward, curling in on himself to rest a shaking hand against the cracked earth. Fingers pressed hard into the hot dust, needing something real to hold onto.

A glint of silver on his hand caught the eye, the ring, whatever was happening he still somehow wore the old ring. The pitch black stone was completely incongruous against the bright sun and the dazzling wings. It seemed to swallow the light, a small vivid patch of darkness that he could focus on as the world swaggered and spun sickeningly around him.

With a hiss through gritted teeth he stretched the wings out. They responded clumsily, feeling heavier than they should. But they were real. The bone, the flesh, the feathers all reattached and a part of him once more.

His arms shook, his body trembling with the onset of shock, and it became so much easier to just tilt over to one side than to remain knelt upright.

Just rest...

Exhaustion was clawing at him still. A relentless rake through any coherent thought. Curling down onto his side, Lucifer tried to focus on the black stone, tried to remain awake, but it was impossible to fight against this.

Dragging one wing up over himself to shade from the blazing sun, the other crushed against his side, the devil passed back out into unconsciousness.


No... no please...

No more...

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.

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A/N: A short intro to my take on the end of season 2. More to follow soon, thank you for reading ;) Based on the Fox TV show and I own nothing but my take on any OC's that may appear.