Natan + shattered then whole for Eien.
This actually took a little while for me to figure out. I was going to go angst, like high-key angst, but then I had this idea and I just… loved it so much more?
Natalie has a little problem with her apartment. But the not so friendly ghost isn't as bad once she gets to know him.
…
Her new apartment was haunted, no ifs ands or buts about it. There was no other explanation for the falling books, the creaks and moans in a middling younger than her, or the haphazardly misplaced items. Truthfully, she had excused each mishap as a strange but not entirely impossible coincidence until the day she found her pet fish, Libby, in the bathtub, swimming like a predator among the plastic boat toys she bought for her nephew a few months prior.
Her parents didn't raise a fool. The biggest question was who or what – and that was only slightly less hard than trying to convince her family that there was more at work here than mischievous neighbors. Her father outright didn't believe, an unsurprising but still painful outcome. Her brother accepted it with reluctance, but his overnight visits had resulted in a zero on the ghost activity scale and his departure had led to her very first interaction with the ghost.
Nice try, girl.
She didn't jump or scream when the slanted, narrow script had appeared on her bathroom mirror the night her brother left. It was quiet, too quiet, and she hadn't noticed it appeared as she brushed her teeth, staring mindlessly into her own reflection. She rinsed her mouth with water and then choked as she finally noticed the writing, spluttering to clear her airway as a strange, warm laugh filled the room.
She had fled that evening, swearing off her only bathroom for the rest of her life, but by the next morning, Natalie was back again. The writing was gone and faded; she hesitantly prodded the glass, testing its strength and trying to convince herself that it was nothing, when she felt the strange sensation of a hand brushing her arm as though to nudge her aside. She had shivered and left without doing or saying more.
When she returned from work, the books on her shelf had been reorganized and she stubbornly kept trying to return it to normal until, at last, she had asked the ghost how he wanted them arranged then. She had seen a flash from the corner of her eyes and upon the mirror decorating her living room wall, she saw the handwriting appear once more, lecturing her on the disorganization of her home.
"Does it matter?" Natalie had asked in her very first conversation with the ghost.
I have to live here, too.
"Then stop putting Libby in the bathtub, please, and tell me what you want."
The ghost hadn't responded for a long moment. So long, in fact, that the writing had sunk back into the mirror like some bizarre mist. Then, after she began stacking the books by author, it appeared, the writing perfect from beginning to end, as though the hand holding it had spent a while agonizing over it.
Fine.
…
They settled into an uneasy routine. Stan – as she had come to call him when he tried to write a name on the mirror only for her friend Michael to burst in the room, leaving her with only a vague impression of four letters – didn't seem to meet the qualifications for either a friendly ghost or a malevolent one. She took it to mean that he was a mixture of both.
He did an odd mood change every few days. Sometimes, he would knock all the books off her shelf on every second hour and scare off her boyfriend when he arrived for a late dinner. Then a day later, he would – somehow – convince her neighbor to stop his blaring music as she struggled to focus on a paper due in a few days. It was perplexing to her, but as days passed, one after another, she found the day wasn't quite complete without him playing with the pages of a book or tugging on her hair while she cooked dinner.
"Do you talk? I mean, can you?" Natalie mused aloud, her back resting against the armrest of her couch and a large, reddish book supported on her knees. Her exam on the paranormal was in a few days, but she found it a struggle to concentrate; the only thing she could really remember was the line about Bloody Mary's real name being Margaret. Probably the least likely thing to appear on said exam.
Her eyes were heavy. Her jaw cracked from another yawn and she tossed the book aside, deciding to switch to another subject. Namely her favorite one: Stan.
Of all her friends, she thought Stan was her favorite and yet she had never heard his voice or seen his face. Not once in the six months that they had been living together, for lack of a better word to describe their strange roommate situation. Oh, she knew what he would say if he did ever speak to her. The way he wrote was telling enough, but Natalie sometimes dreamed of what he would sound like, wondering if it would be gruff to go along with his brusque words, or smooth to go along with his witty retorts, or soft like when things became emotional.
She tilted her head, listening, almost as if he would somehow say something just to prove a point. He didn't and she shifted on the couch to face a mirror on the wall. Though he wasn't fussy about which surface he wrote on, Natalie noticed he preferred this one. She couldn't figure out why though. The glass was clouded from age with a cracking, aged gold frame. It would have been much easier to use the glass table, where he had more room to write and required less scrutiny from her.
The mirror won again.
Yes.
"But not to me?"
He thought for a while before replying. I haven't tried.
"When was the last time you spoke to someone?" She asked carefully, wary of sending him off into a fitful silence. He never liked talking about why he was a ghost or how long he had been one. Sometimes, when the subject drifted that direction, he would fall into a heavy silence that seemed to weigh on the whole apartment. She thought this might be one of those times, but he proved her wrong within seconds.
A long time. Not since Michael sent me here.
"I'm sorry." It must have been a lonely existence. "Who is Michael?"
Don't apologize, kid, I've been dealing with this a long time and my brother is going to rue the day I see him again.
She didn't comment on his use of the word rue, which she had never heard in casual conversation and also not on the subject of his brother who was apparently the Michael he so disliked. "How long?" He couldn't be that old, nobody had said her apartment came with a ghost when she talked to the previous tenants about her new friend.
Very.
Natalie frowned, but though she seemed to be on the edge of an epiphany, she couldn't figure out what. For her homework? For Stan? "How… old are you?" She hadn't ever asked; she had always assumed from his mannerisms and words that he wasn't much older than she was, but perhaps more experienced than herself. She didn't know why something about that assumption seemed off now.
I stopped counting a few millenniums ago.
"Are you a ghost?" She asked bluntly. Then she amended, because a ghost seemed too generic of an answer to get anything concrete. "What are you, I mean?"
He didn't respond, but Natalie figured that was answer enough.
…
Someone was knocking on her door and she moaned, rolling over to squish her face into a pillow. It was too early to entertain; she hadn't looked a clock, but some things were instinctive. She dozed off for another second when the knock returned again with more force.
"Stan, who is at the door?" she asked, shuffling over in her bed and squinting at her alarm clock. She gasped, jolting out of bed and tumbling to the ground as her clock read after eleven in the afternoon. Scrambling into clean clothes and socks, Natalie shot out of her bedroom, pulling a hand through her hair as she headed for the door.
Though she had slept for over twelve hours, she stifled a yawn as she pulled open the door. Jericho frowned at her appearance, studying her socks with intensity. "You do realize you're wearing mismatched socks, right?" he said bluntly. She looked down, but then shrugged, smiling brightly at him and tugging him inside by his wrist.
"I forgot you were coming over for lunch today and overslept," she explained sheepishly, closing the door behind him. He settled on her couch and despite the sharpness of his words, his gaze was gentle as he watched her enter the kitchen. "So we'll have to make-do with any leftovers I have in the fridge. How old is this spaghetti? Two days ago? Yeah, I think that's all right. I have some bread, too, if you want some of that. Not garlic, but just regular bread. It's just as good, especially with butter. Do you want one, two, or three slices?"
He replied in the affirmative, but didn't answer her question so she gave him two. Worse case, she would have a third one.
It didn't take long to heat up the spaghetti, but after her babbling about the food ended, the two lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Jericho was her first boyfriend and though they had been together for three months now, she found it a little difficult to interact with him still. Often, he agreed with anything she said, content to list to her talk and contributing a question or two. They had only been out and about a few times – one of those times was when she met him, trying to dig up answers about the guest staying in her home.
He had found her description of Stan to be funny and he had been the only one to respond to her question on Facebook. Only a few days later, he was asking her on a date. They had spent a while at a restaurant and, the week after, he had asked to make her dinner at her place. She had agreed, but only after verifying that Michael and his date would be able to attend as well. It had been fun, though it hadn't felt much like a date. He had spent more time staring off at her decorations than talking; later, he explained it as shyness around her friend.
"Hey, do you want to go to the arcade on Saturday? I almost have enough tickets to get the prize." She had her eyes on an ugly painting worth 10,000 tickets, but she was almost tempted to give her tickets away, just as an excuse to keep playing at the arcade when Jericho frowned upon it.
No. Sorry, I just don't think…" He ran a hand over his head, ruffling his blonde hair. The lights flickered and both their gazes lifted to the standing lamp in the corner. Like most of her apartment decor, it was second-hand and old. "Huh, is it storming or is that your friend, Stan?" She couldn't tell if he was playing with her when he talked about Stan; maybe he was just humoring her. She couldn't read the brightness of his eyes as amusement or intrigue.
"I don't know. Stan, is that you?" She called, eyes landing on the mirror. Jericho followed her gaze, eyes widening.
"When did you get that?" He whispered.
"A while ago. Not long after I moved in," she said, confused. "It's always been there."
Jericho blinked rapidly. "Does Stan talk through it?"
"Not really talk, more like write. He's being quiet though, I wonder why." Natalie stood up, approaching the mirror. Her fingers touched the glass and it was cold beneath her touch. She squinted at it, but all she could see was her own foggy reflection staring back. No sign of Stan; not his writing or the foggy, indistinct shape that could have been him. "Stan?"
How long does it take you to realize my name isn't Stan? I've told you eight times. Can you even read?
It was his usual question and she smiled. "I think my neighbors would lose it if I called you Satan… or Lucifer, if you prefer that," she murmured, trying not to let Jericho overhear her words. The glass warmed abruptly, so hot that she jerked her fingers away. "What was that?"
"What was what?" Jericho asked, hand on her shoulder. "Who are you talking to?"
"Stan. See?" Natalie gestured to the writing. It hadn't faded yet, though she could see it growing opaque.
Jericho squeezed her shoulder, but without any of the gentleness that she expected, fingers digging into her skin tightly. She winced and the lights flickered sharply in protest. "I don't see anything," he said stiffly. "Are you sure there's something there?"
"Yes. Look, he asked if I could read," she pointed out the letters, tracing over them with the tip of her finger. The mirror was still unusually warm, but not so hot that her fingers burned. She swallowed back her question because Jericho was scowling, a look quite unusual on his usually smiling face. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"
He jerked his hand away from her. She frowned at him, stepping away as he paced, muttering angrily to himself.
"Tell Stan to talk to me. Give me a sign that he's really here," he ordered, coming to a stop directly in front of the mirror.
Natalie swallowed, looking from him to the mirror, expecting something to appear on the surface in response. But Stan was silent, not even the flickering lights an announcement of his presence. It frightened her, to be left alone with this stranger wearing Jericho's face, and she straightened her spine, locking eyes with him. Something dark flickered in his eyes and she blanched at the anger pushing past the usual softness.
"Why does it matter if Stan is here or not?" She asked stiffly.
"I didn't waste weeks trying to find him, listening to you, only for this entire thing to be a figment of a little girls imagination," he spat, fists clenching by his side.
Her eyes flickered over his face. The last shreds of his old personality - a facade for all she knew - sinking beneath the waves of his true face. She didn't like it. "All for Stan? What are you, a ghost hunter or something?"
"You don't even know who you've got your hands on, do you?"
Oh, she did. He relished telling her every other day, most often after she referred to him as Stan to some degree. Whenever her brother was over, he took great pleasure in drawing on her mirrors, mimicking her handwriting despite never seeing it. She wouldn't tell him that though. "Stan is just a ghost, he's got the mentality of an eighteen year old and I guess that's how old he is," she lied, crossing her arms. "It's the only way to explain his pranks or the way he writes. I don't know what else I can tell you."
Jericho stared at her and she knew without being told that he didn't believe her. "You have Satan himself as a roommate and you think it's some random ghost?" He asked in disbelief. He had believed her, he thought she was an actual idiot, she realized, relieved beyond measure. If he thought she was an idiot, maybe he would just leave. If he thought she made it up, maybe he would just... Give up.
She didn't know what he wanted with Stan, but it wasn't anything that Natalie would allow him to explore. Not without Stan's expressed approval and if his strange, out-of-character silence meant anything then he didn't agree in the slightest to Jericho. Wildly, she remembered his reaction whenever Jericho was nearby. His nearing cruel antics and his impatience made more sense now that she could see Jericho as he really was.
"Satan?" She whispered, feigning disbelief. "I don't have Lucifer as a roommate, that's kind of ridiculous. Are you alright? Do you need me to get you some water?"
"No. Just... call Stan would you?" His voice softened, returning once more to the face she knew, but the mask had slipped for too long for Natalie to be fooled again. "I mean, I heard he might be dangerous, I want to make sure you're safe."
She studied him, but then forced an optimistic smile on her face. "Silly. Stan hasn't hurt me at all in the past six months, why would he begin to do it now? But if you'll settle your nerves, I'll ask him something. Umm, just give me a second, he's particular about questions, if I ask him something boring like the weather or the time, he gets mad. He's self-centered too, likes to talk, so it has to be about him."
He didn't say anything and Natalie trailed off, her time for stalling done.
"Stan, who put you here?"
He didn't respond with words, but she could see the faintest trace of a star along the mirror. Like he was showing her that he was there, even if he didn't share that with Jericho. She smiled softly, a little huffing laughter escaping her that was only partially a lie. "See?" Natalie said, waiting for Jericho to respond.
A slamming door was her only reply.
"That… was a close one," she said quietly. Then -
"As much as I loathe saying I told you so, it's quite appropriate now. I told you so."
Her heart thrummed to life, beating futilely against her skin as a voice washed over her. Without seeing, without ever hearing it before, without a single delay, she knew who it was. His voice was neither brusque nor soft, but something deep and almost melodious; the type of voice that narrated audio books or rallied a crowd.
"Lucifer," she said breathlessly, a bright smile on her face.
…
If she expected their routine to change at all with the arrival of his voice, she was dead wrong. If anything, Lucifer was at optimal levels of petty antics: Libby ended up in the sink, her pictures had childish doodles over the glass that made her brother leave behind a number for the local pastor, and her bookshelves had all turned so the spines faced the back of the shelf. It didn't annoy her, which she assumed was his goal, because she got back at him by creating a playlist of songs dedicated specifically to pissing him off.
He was funny when he raged and she learned that he didn't disappear nearly as often as she used to think. Sometimes, while doing her homework, she would hear him mutter to himself and the ruffle of pages as he read a magazine she had left on the couch. When she forgot about dinner cooking, he would tug her hair and urge her to rescue the stew before she killed them both.
And it was hints like those that made her remember that he wasn't a ghost at all. He was Lucifer. He wasn't meant to be hanging around like a permanent guest, there must have been something that kept him here. Something… But what? She chewed on her pen, the paper in front of her blurring with each blink as a heavy weight settled on her back. "Lucifer?" She asked tentatively, yawning. "When are you going to tell me why you're here?"
"I live here."
"Don't be stupid, you know what I meant."
"I…" His words trailed off and she lowered her pen, anticipating welling up inside her. This was it, he was finally going to tell her, finally going to explain. "I live here," he repeated, voice tight as if something squeezed as his throat and kept the words from escaping him lips.
"You can't tell me?" She asked, tapping her fingers.
"Something like that."
"Then I'll just figure it out myself," she said with a shrug, closing her notebook with a snap.
"You do that and let me know how it goes." She stood up. "Wait, right now?"
"Well, it's better late than never, don't you think? You should have told me a while ago that you were stuck, I thought you were just messing around and hanging out whenever things got boring."
"Because I would spend my free time in your company," he drawled.
She beamed. "I know you would, buddy." He could say whatever he wanted, but she knew the truth that he cared. Why else would he bring water to her room when she was sick? Or throwing a scarf at her face before she left just in case it was cold? Or remind her to eat after a homework binge? It should have been frightening, to have someone so infamous to have such a focus on her, but Natalie didn't care.
Natalie loved him.
The thought was so shocking, so sudden, that she stopped in her thoughtful pacing, unable to pinpoint the moment her feelings had become concrete enough for her to think it without hesitation. She should have felt different. Lighter, stronger, or happier like the characters in any romance ever, but she couldn't feel anything except a strange sense of contentment and a voice – her voice – whispering yes, finally like it had known her feelings all along.
"Natalie?"
"Sorry, sorry," she mumbled, scrubbing the blush from her warm cheeks. "I'm going to figure it out. What can you tell me?"
He choked and then fell silent when the words didn't come out.
"Seriously? Nothing at all? Not even a little hint?" She asked in disbelief. He laughed with little amusement and she pouted at the ceiling because she didn't know where else to look, his voice seeming to bounce off the very walls. She scanned them for an answer, but there was only her bookshelf and a mirror. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that made sense. "How do my neighbors not hear you? For that matter, why didn't Jericho see you?"
His laughter halted all at once, leaving a disconcerting silence, but in the time it took for her to turn into a confused circle, he was back again. "You've been exposed to my presence long enough for the normal… protection," here his voice croaked like a frog and if she didn't know what it was from, she would have laughed, "to wear off. There's more to it than that, but my hands are tied." He didn't say literally, but Natalie heard it nonetheless and her resolve to find him shot up a notch.
"Natalie?"
"Sorry."
"Stop apologizing, I don't expect you to do this, kid. It could be dangerous." There was raw honesty in his voice, an uncharacteristic seriousness that frightened her.
"Danger is my middle name," she joked, eyes trailing over the room, forcing back the fear. She would do this. It was long overdue. Now all she had to do was figure it out. She knew there was something here; the knowledge of something without words hummed in the back of her head and the longer she thought of it, the more tired she became.
If she could see him, she knew he would be smirking. "Thought your middle name was Anabella?"
"At least my middle name isn't The," she snarked back. He huffed, but the noise was far from annoyed. Perhaps fondly exasperated was a closer description. She blinked rapidly, her eyelids feeling heavy and she pressed her palms into her eyes, trying to force the feeling away. "Man, what time is it?"
"It's eleven in the afternoon," he said quietly, another hint in his voice.
"Oh." She paused, hands still over her eyes and an answer behind her eyelids. "You're making me tired. Is it making you stronger or something? Is that how you can talk to me now?" She hadn't ever considered why; there was a lot about Lucifer that she just accepted as part of the package deal.
"Or something."
She sighed quietly. "Is that something the thing won't let you say or something you don't want to say?"
"…Both."
She nodded, chewing on her lips. "Do you want me to help you? I mean, I don't even know what you want. Maybe you like haunting this place, maybe you like staying here with me and all the other people you haunt. Maybe you like the break from Hell. Or do you want to be free? How does this even work?" Her words came out in one breath, words running over each other. She ran a hand over her face, still tired. "You have to be honest with me. I mean, I don't want to do something you don't want me to do, dude."
He thought before he spoke; she didn't know how she knew that, but she did. "I want you to help me."
"Okay." The world seemed to tilt on its axis and a loud noise blared in her ears like thunder. Her heart hurt and she closed her eyes until the feeling passed a second later. A ringing silence met her ears, but only for a moment before she heard breathing. His breathing. Then his thoughtful hum and he called her name. It was as if cotton was removed from her ears, the sound so clear that she could pinpoint its exact location.
It was coming from behind her.
She whirled around; her reflection gapped back at her, equally confused. "You live in the mirror?" Natalie whispered, stepping closer. She remembered the glass warming beneath her touch, right after she said his name and only a little bit later, he had said his first words to her. How was she blind enough to miss it?
"I do," he said, relieved. "But not quite. Whatever it reflects, that's where I live freely. I can… move around, so to speak, with some effort."
Natalie put her back to the mirror and cupped her hands around her eyes, trying to see the room as he did. Her couch stood in the center and the side of the coffee table; right behind the couch was her bookshelf, the one he so often rearranged and Libby's bowl rested on top, the fish swimming in merry circles. It was plain, most of her décor out of his view, and she sighed. "No wonder you kept messing with my books. If you wanted something more, I would have given it to you. Maybe a nicer pillow?" The ones on her couch were flat like cardboard and nearly as rough; it wasn't something she would give someone to rest on.
"It's fine."
"Fine, but we'll get you a bed of some sort once you're out of there." She hesitated. "Umm… how do I actually get you out?"
"Good question. Let me know when you have an answer."
…
Her want to free him didn't decrease over the next week, but though she had brought home nearly every book in the sections of mythology and religion at the library, they were no closer to answers. Lucifer helped, the flicking of pages as he read their only conversation long into the night, and their books dwindled little by little. A full two weeks after her revelation, they were done with any relevant books and she fell to plucking random ones off the shelf as she walked, hoping one of them would could contain something of substance.
Lucifer thought this was funny. "There's hardly going to be an answer in a cook book or a book about someone named Harry Potter," he pointed out when she came home after work. Her arms ached from the books and she shot a look at the mirror that made him laugh again. It was a delight sound and she softened against her will. She deposited the books on her coffee table, spreading them out with a thoughtful frown.
"Probably not going to be in cooking, but a lot of fantasy stuff might have a kernel of truth, you know." Natalie dropped the cooking book into a pile to be returned tomorrow and the Harry Potter book into the maybe's. She had read the entire series and nothing about it stuck out as particularly helpful, but she would leave no stone unturned. "Maybe I should ask Jericho. I mean, it sounds like he knew something about you and if anyone knows how to set you free, it'd probably be him," she mused.
"What makes you think he'd tell you that? No, it's better off to avoid him," Lucifer disagreed. She wished she could see him, she imagined his lips would be curled with disgust right about now. His voice always took on that tone whenever Jericho was brought up – and since his disappearance a few weeks ago, she hadn't spoken to or about him.
Natalie blew out a breath. "You can't think of anybody who will help?" He was Lucifer; he must have known somebody that would know. She grabbed a book at random, skimming through the table of contents for anything that might be relevant. Nothing. She tossed it aside to the pile of returns, hefting up another one that talked about a cursed mirror in one of its sections. Seemed promising, if you asked her, but then she found it was another story about Bloody Mary. Not useful – except… Hadn't she read recently-
Her musings were interrupted by his response.
"Nobody who wouldn't extract a price."
"There's no price I wouldn't pay," she said honestly. Then, because he was quiet and she might have said more than she was willing to admit, she babbled, closing the book on her fingers. "Maybe they'll just want a lot of money. I'm sure I could take out a loan or something. Pretend it's for school. Then you'll just have to get a job and help me pay it back before they try to repossess my car for missing payments."
"Not a possibility, Natalie."
"Fine, fine." Relieved, she stood up, dropping the book onto the table and pushing aside her own feelings for the embers of an idea.
Bloody Mary had reminded her of something else, another book she had read months back about folklore. For school, she remembered slowly. A book from her school library that she had never returned and forgotten about until just this moment. Like it was just waiting for her, but that was silly. She disappeared into her bedroom and returned with a large, reddish book. "Hey, do you know about Bloody Mary?"
"Nasty woman," he said, more admirable than she thought someone should be. "Her name was Margaret though, not Mary, but she did have a high death count before she arrived in my domain. Why?"
She decided not to ask. "This book talks about her and her connection to mirrors. It sounds like she was an evil spirit who they trapped inside one, but it didn't work the way they intended because she could use that mirror to travel to any other one in an instant. Sounds like her death count got really high before these two realized that breaking the original would kill."
Lucifer made a noise like a grunt. "I never heard how she died, but if she was trapped in the mirror by somebody, it goes without saying that breaking it wouldn't do anything except set her free—oh, hmm."
"I didn't tell you that so we could break the mirror," she sighed, exasperated by his thoughtful hum. "If we break that mirror, you could die."
"It takes a lot to kill me," he pointed out.
"That's when you weren't in a mirror, stupid, who knows how much strength you have after centuries of being trapped? We could just talk to the author!" She held up the book, flipping open the back tab to show a picture of a tanned man with sandy-blonde hair. "I mean, wouldn't he be the one to talk to about this? If he actually names her by Margaret then he must know something."
She could hear the frown in his voice, but it wasn't about confronting the author as she expected. "Where did you get that?"
"The library, obviously. Same place I got all the rest of them."
"That book has certainly never been in a library before, not if he was the author," Lucifer grumbled.
"Who is he?" She glanced down at the book. The man had a goofy face and almond-shaped blue eyes; something about his smile was unsettling to her, but she thought it was just the type of picture. "It says his name is Michael, I don't know—oh. It's… Your Michael? Your brother, that Michael? How? You said you've been trapped for ages and this was published ten years ago."
"My brother doesn't age anymore than I do. It's not surprising that he's still alive and kicking all these years later, especially among you humans, but I don't know why he would publish a book. Not much of a writer, my brother."
"People change." Like him. Like her. She didn't say it aloud, letting them hang in the air between them, but if Lucifer noticed them, he didn't say anything about it.
Bitterness clouded his words, heavier than even the unspoken words between them. There were centuries of bad feelings and anger between him and Michael and she feared how a confrontation between them would end. Not well, but hopefully Michael was long gone, a threat that Lucifer would never have to face. "Not him – but this is good."
"How? We can't trust what he says," she said, shaking her head.
"He's not prone to lying, not about something with this type of magic on it. Anything in that book is going to be true otherwise he wouldn't waste time hiding it. When was the last time anybody opened that book aside from you?" It was a question to prove a point, she could tell from the sudden smugness.
She flipped to the front of the book and there, in a shiny stamp, was only her name. In the library, Natalie hadn't even noticed it. "I'm the only one. But how? Every other book has been checked out eight times each." Hiding it, he had said. She hadn't seen anyone like Michael at the library to do so and it had been tucked, quite plainly, on a shelf about philosophy and religion. There was nothing hidden about this book. It was almost like magic. Natalie managed a wary smile, a sense of dread building in her. "Since when have you become the optimistic one?"
"More like experienced, kid. Same reason you don't have issues reading my writing or hearing me anymore, you're immune to a lot of that magic now, that's probably why you saw it," he said, growing more excited at the prospect of freedom by the second. It was the excitement and the reminder of his wistful voice whenever he spoke about outside that reminded her of her goal. She would free him.
"What…" Her throat dried up, brain trying to protest the incredible risk they were about to take. "What do I have to do?"
He quieted, thinking, and her heart raced in her chest, nearly overshadowing the sound of his breathing and the way he muttered to himself. She wished it wouldn't because she was trying to memorize him and the sound of his voice, afraid that this would be the last time she ever heard him.
"Right. Just break the mirror." Natalie stood up slowly, licking her lips. "Throw something from far away. You don't want to get any of that glass on you, I don't know what's going to happen," he warned her. Maybe it was the mirror knowing what was coming, but she thought the fog was swirling like a storm.
She picked up a book and she figured it was ironic that Harry Potter's contribution was as a weapon rather than any real help. Nevertheless, it was the thickest of her books, easily heavy enough to break a mirror if she threw it hard enough. If she could even throw it. Her fingers trembled from the weight of it, nearly letting it slip, but she held tight. "If you die, I'm going to bring you back and kill you myself." She had heard that in a movie a thousand times before, but Natalie had never understood that dread until now.
"Good," he said, a smile in his voice.
She threw the book with all her might. It cracked against the reflection of the mirror, which darkened with turmoil as the book thumped to the ground. The mirror hadn't broken and she stared at the small crack left behind like a taunting smile. In the mirror, the fog had darkened until it was black, oozing out from the crack like hissing smoke. Her lights flickered on and off, dimming.
"Lucifer?" She whispered, but the apartment was abuzz with noise and she couldn't hear him over the static, so loud that it hurt her ears. "Lucifer!" Nothing. She couldn't hear his breathing or his words; she couldn't feel the slightest hint of his presence. The apartment was altogether too empty and stale. She held her breath. Tried to yawn. Anything to make the feeling dissipate and bring him back. She heaved another book at it and the crack grew the tiniest fraction. Even if she threw all the books around her, it seemed to make little difference.
What was the most cliché thing movies had taught her?
Natalie wrapped her courage around her like a cloak and sprang at the mirror with her balled fist. The mirror shuddered, cracking more and she pulled her fist back, hitting it again, the glass cutting into her knuckles and leaving a print of blood on the mirror. She trembled as the tiredness returned with a vengeance. Something swelled behind the mirror, something she could only feel and not see, and with a wailing moan that wasn't her own or even Lucifer's, the mirror shattered, showering her in tiny shards of glass that pricked against her hands and face.
She stumbled back from the mirror as though burned, her knees trembling and her breath coming in ragged pants. Her lights had shut off entirely, leaving her in darkness and she fumbled her way towards the couch, her hands protesting the slightest twitching. "Lucifer?" She whispered, her ears buzzing too loudly. The static had stopped, but the pulse from the mirror made her head spin. Natalie sucked in a breath, holding it in and letting it out again when her head seemed a fraction clearer.
"Lucifer? Are you here? Say something. I know you're tired. Just say anything, even swear, I won't make you put a quarter in the jar." Still nothing and she felt her lips tremble. The pain in her hand rose, but she ignored it.
There's no price I wouldn't pay.
Apparently they had taken her words to heart.
…
The first day was spent in a day of shock and pain. She called his name and received silence in return.
The second, her brother had come over to help fix whatever kept her electricity from working and promptly escorted her to the doctors to have the glass from her hand removed. She broke something in one of her fingers, too, which wasn't as much a surprise to her as it was to her brother when he found out how she got it.
The third, she shooed her brother off and covered her face to hide from her nephew's puppy eyes. It was easier when they were gone though because she could drop her back on the couch for an hour, crying at the ceiling and feeling more lost than ever. She didn't do much of anything the next few days.
The seventh day was easier, but also not. Her movements were robotic as she packed up the books and a slow, agonizing walk to the library to return them. The only one she kept was the one by his brother and she fought the urge to toss it into the fire every day after that; it hadn't worked, after all, because Lucifer was gone and the book was wrong, wrong, wrong.
She read it instead. It was easier to scour through it, scanning paragraph after paragraph, chapter after chapter, for some sign of what went wrong than to wallow around. It didn't help much, but the words were fascinating and if she were in the right mind, she would have enjoyed studying it more. Halfway through, there was a footnote about Lucifer and she had to pause, tracing the name, wondering how so much could change in little over a year.
She hadn't lost a best friend before. She hadn't ever had one either and somehow that made it worse.
The footnote's exasperation as it explained Lucifer and his involvement with a random tree – she hadn't paid attention to the name, though if she came across it again, she thought it might stick out – had her laughing. Then frowning because how could Michael talk so fondly of his brother only to trap him away? She wanted to ask, but there was an equal chance of contacting Michael as there was Lucifer.
Blowing out a breath, Natalie sped through the last of the book, eager to be done with it. There was nothing in there to explain where Lucifer was or if he would be back. She bit hard into her lip at the intrusive thought, shoving it in a box labeled never and continuing to read. So lost in her own thoughts, she nearly skimmed past a whole footnote, the longest of any and its entirety dedicated to Lucifer.
It read like a confession and after the second line, Natalie felt too guilty to continue and skipped straight to the end. A single line, handwritten unlike all the rest, in loopy writing so like Lucifer's, stared at her from the end.
To my brother, with my eternal apologies.
She put the book away, a tidy little hiding place for something that seemed sacred, and then crawled into bed. When she cried next, it wasn't for only her and Lucifer; it was for everyone involved in this mess and the answers they would never get from it now.
…
The next day, she woke to someone knocking on her door. Groggily, she swept her hair off her forehead, moaning because everything in her body ached. No more skipping out on dinner in favor of reading, it never ended well for her. Her stomach grumbled in protest as she climbed out of bed, the knock persisting.
"Imma coming," she called, rubbing her eyes. She jumped in place a few times before opening the door, trying to wake up her sleepy bones for her brother. "I told you not to…" Her words trailed off, a strangled gasp escaping her instead.
She had never seen his face before, but somehow she knew. He was much taller than her with wavy, well-kept black hair streaked white, broad shoulders, and small, narrow eyes. She studied the sharpness of his cheeks, the point of his chin, and his soft-looking lips. They curved into a smirk under her studying and she shot back up to his eyes, mouth-hanging open in a fair imitation of Libby that made him laugh.
If she had any doubts, the laugh ended them. "Lucifer!" She sprang at him, their height difference causing little problem when she wrapped her arms around his neck and tucked herself into his chest. He stumbled back, one hand falling onto her back to hold her steady and the other gripping onto the threshold.
"Natalie."
If she thought it was strange how much could change in a year, it was nothing compared to how things could change in a second. Just saying her name made her heart race. Tears welled in her eyes and she thumped him once on the chest. "You idiot, where have you been? I thought you were a goner and the book didn't say anything helpful, it was awful. No, not awful, I need to read it again, but it didn't tell me anything. I can't believe you talked me into that!"
"You can still talk up a storm, I almost forgot," he said fondly, extracting her face from his shirt. "You're also getting snot on my shirt."
"Gonna dump Libby's bowl on you, how's that for snot?" She muttered, still crying, a shaky laugh escaping her. "You're alive! You're… you're alive right? I'm not talking to a ghost?"
"As alive as I can be. I don't think you could touch ghosts and I don't think ghosts could touch you." His fingers touched her cheek; she thought it might have been to prove a point, but his brows were furrowed and it lingered. "You're very warm," he commented, seemingly surprised to know that she wasn't cold as ice.
"That's just…" Her blush, probably. "Don't put off my original question either, I noticed."
"I didn't just pop back into place as a human being. I wasn't one to begin with and it's been a long time since I've had flesh and bones to walk on," he explained, quite content with their position. Both his hands moved to her waist, toying with the hem of her shirt absently. Her own were settled on his chest, chin tipped up to watch him speak, focused intently on the way his lips moved with each word. He spoke exactly as she expected him to, but to actually see it…
She missed some of the specifics of his explanation and when he finished, staring at her expectedly for a response, she straightened, standing on her toes. Her hands reached around his head, smoothing over and then through his dark, soft hair. He blinked once and then he was grinning. Such a beautiful grin. She hadn't thought she would even see it and here it was.
She tugged his face down to hers, pressing her lips hard against his and it was a messy kiss for a first one, but she didn't care. Didn't care that her face was tear-stained and her lips were inexperienced. His lips were soft and warm, slightly chapped, but they didn't hesitate or pause. He allowed her control for a moment before surging forward, tilting his head and his hands rising to her cheeks, thumb stroking over her cheek like she was something precious. She smiled against his lips and parted from him enough to speak a whispered "Welcome home" before kissing him again.
His hand fell from her face. He stepped forward and she stepped back until they were crossing over the threshold of her apartment. With his freehand, he reached behind them and closed the door, only breaking from her lips when it closed and dropping his forehead against hers. "We're not staying here long," he told her and Natalie giggled, knowing where he was going. "I've had quite enough of all these walls."
…
the end