Disclaimer: The only owner of Angel Sanctuary is the wonderful Kaori Yuki.

Morning Star

By 24ko

Chapter 1

Juno lay quietly in her bed, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling of her new apartment. The new sights, smells and sounds keeping her awake until the ungodly hours of the morning. "Sleep, damn it…" She muttered quietly to herself. The red numbers of her alarm clock glowed a grave one fifty three am, and she couldn't feel sleep coming.

She rolled onto her stomach and plucked her cell phone off her rickety end table. A new text message was waiting in her inbox.

Why haven't you called me back? I want to talk - David

"Sure you do…" Juno opened the menu and her thumb hovered over 'reply', her mind running through all the possible words she could text back to him. She started to think about everything she would have wanted to say to him, if she didn't lack the courage. A sudden bitterness swelled in her chest, and she hit 'delete' instead.

Juno never thought of herself as the perfect girlfriend. She had opinions, she had a temper and a big mouth that spilled whatever she thought. But she knew that despite rough around the edges she may have been, she deserved better than a boyfriend who cheated. David was one of many reasons she turned her back on her small hometown and moved into the big city.

She jumped when her cell phone started ringing. "What the…?" The caller id read 'Dana'. Juno rolled onto her back again and stared at her phone as it continued to ring. Dana was a coworker of hers. She had started her new job waiting tables at a local Italian restaurant a few days prior, and Dana was quick to befriend her. But Juno wondered why Dana would be calling her in the middle of the night.

Before the call was transferred to her voicemail, she caved and answered. "Hello?"

"Juno!" Dana shouted over a loud, pumping bass. "What are you doing?" Her words were slurred, sluggish from alcohol.

"… Trying to sleep." Juno said, leaning over to flick on her bedside lamp.

"Well STOP trying to sleep and come hang out with us, new girl! I want you to meet everybody!"

The idea of going to a club in the middle of the night appealed to Juno. In her small hometown, her idea of a wild time was hanging out at her friend's house and watching movies all night. And now that she had just moved to the Big City, it was time to start her new, big city life. "Count me in. Where are you?" She said, throwing her covers off her legs and coming to a stand.

Dana gave her the necessary directions after she let out a whoop of drunken triumph. Juno scribbled them down on a piece of paper on her desk.

"Juno, you are SO going to enjoy yourself. This club is so flippin' AWESOME! Heyyy, don't take my ph-"

The line clicked dead, and again Juno found herself chuckling, picturing the obvious scenario of some drunken friend of Dana's stealing her phone in mid-sentence. She closed her phone and stuffed it into her bag, along with the scribbled directions. A moment later she flicked her bathroom light on and stood before her mirror.

Juno had always been an exceptionally pale girl, her skin smooth, perfect and healthy, despite her pallor. A childhood illness had left her with a thin, frail looking body. While age and better health had granted her moderate curves, she had never grown taller than five foot five, and never weighed over 115 pounds, despite all the junk food she had ever eaten.

Her hair was a thick, curly cascade of chestnut brown, falling at the small of her back. She quickly brushed it back into a sloppy, half-worked bun behind her head, a few straw pieces framing her delicate face. She quickly applied her makeup, ringing her green eyes with black liner.

Most of her clothes were still packed in their boxes, so she settled for throwing on the same red plaid pleated skirt she had worn the day before, black tights, boots, and a white button up shirt. The pseudo-schoolgirl look worked on her. So she ran with it.

Comfortable with her appearance, she grabbed her bag and stepped out into her hallway. The last thing she expected to see was anybody in the hallways of her buildings at two am, but the man living in the apartment directly across from her, opened his door at the same moment she did.

The movement from across the hall took Juno by surprise, and apparently, it had shocked him too. They stood there with their doors wide open, hands still on the knobs, staring at each other.

Although Juno wasn't sure why his gaze lingered on her, she certainly was struck dumb by how handsome this man was. He was tall, with glossy black hair that hung past his shoulders. His eyes were the most intense shade of grey, like clouds on a drizzly day. His gaze held her in place, held her there so all she could think to do was stare at that perfect face. So perfect, as though it were molded from clay. It held a sort of stoic calm, and even at her first glance she knew a smile rarely tugged his lips. There was a tattoo adorning his left eye, but it was far too dark for Juno to make out what it was. She had never seen a man like him before, she thought his kind of model-beauty didn't really exist outside of airbrushed magazine covers.

She quickly dropped her gaze to the floor, feeling her cheeks flush. "How's it goin'?" She asked as she closed her door and locked the dead bolt with her key. She was trying to be smooth, trying to act like he wasn't the most gorgeous thing she had ever seen.

He didn't answer her, and when she turned back around, he still hadn't moved. His eyes were still burning into hers, capturing her in his deep, icy stare. His face still frozen, his hand still on his doorknob. Juno's heart started to pound wildly in her chest, not because of his perfect appearance, but because there was just something… off about that stare. Like he was studying her face, committing it to memory. Or worse…

She felt the heat from the awkward situation burning in her cheeks. "Um… I'll see you around." Juno said, and quickly left down the hallway, shoving her keys into her bag.

She made two quick notes to herself: First, her new neighbor, despite how gorgeous he was, was clearly a few cans short of a six pack. Potential serial killer? God, she hoped not.

And second: buy a can of pepper spray.

oOo

The loud, pumping bass of the club was enough to give Lucifer a headache. His cold grey eyes surveyed the dark, neon lit room with growing displeasure.

The strange rituals of humans never ceased to disgust him. He tried not to think about how easy it would be to just kill them all. To end their short, meaningless, frail lives with a single whim. A single stroke of his hand.

But he knew they might ask him to leave, if that happened. And his only reason for coming to this noisy, crowded club would be in all for nothing.

"Of all the places I find you, Lord Lucifer. I find you in a human nightclub." A smooth voice floated over the bass.

Lucifer wasn't at all surprised over the sudden appearance of Mad Hatter in the empty booth seat across from him. He had felt her coming. He could feel the presence of any angel in the Material World.

He casually looked across the table at the Jester. Her face was painted up, as usual. Painted white with a single black tear spilling from her left eye. Her arms were crossed over her flat, androgynous chest, her pinstriped suit only wrinkling at the elbows. "Ah. Mad Hatter. What brings you here?"

"Why ask questions when you already know the answers, My Lord?" Mad Hatter lowered her head, the brim of her top hat slipping low enough to cover her eyes. "I've come to see if you will finally return home to Sheol."

"I suppose it's your turn to ask silly questions, isn't it Hatter?" Lucifer said, taking a sip of his drink. "The answer has been, and again will be 'no'."

Mad Hatter shrugged her square shoulders. "I suppose it doesn't hurt to ask. But might I ask a question I truly do not know the answer to?"

"You may."

"Why are you in a human nightclub?"

Lucifer should have known that question was coming, and he didn't believe he was entirely sure how to answer it. He leaned back in the booth seat and smoothed out the wrinkles of his black silk shirt. To give Mad Hatter an answer, he let his gaze wander to a certain girl on the dance floor, swaying to the hard, rhythmic beats of techno music.

Mad Hatter followed Lucifer's gaze until she saw that girl. Hatter's black rimmed eyes widened at the sight of her face. "It can't be…" Lucifer felt her suck in a deep breath, a breath meant to not just smell the room, but to taste the energy. She let the breath out just as quickly as she pulled it in, as though she were sighing with relief. "That is not Alexiel…"

"Of course it isn't." Lucifer said, a certain bitter sting in his voice.

"But that face. She looks just like her."

"You are stating the obvious, Hatter." Lucifer said, taking another sip of his drink. "Why else would I be here?"

"But sire… this woman is not Alexiel. She is only human. You'll abandon your throne in Sheol for a human?"

Lucifer cast a dangerous glare at his underling, silently warning her that she was starting to toe her boundaries. "The human has nothing to do with why I stay on Assiah. Not another word on the subject, Hatter."

"Of course not, Sire…" Mad Hatter said, shrinking slightly against the cushioned booth seat. "I will return to Sheol, now. I wish you the best in whatever you are pursuing, my Lord."

And then she was gone, taken quickly away by a rush of speed only an Angel could pull off. Lucifer sat in silence as he processed Mad Hatter's final words to him. She wished him luck in whatever he was pursuing…

He looked back onto the dance floor to see the face of Alexiel's doppelganger, and he wondered just what he was, in fact, pursuing.

Was it peace? Closure? The comfort of knowing that Alexiel wasn't really gone? He had lived so many centuries following her cursed spirit through the ages… but now Alexiel's curse was lifted. No thanks to that rotten Sara Mudo. And Alexiel's body was still an empty, lifeless shell, and her soul…? At peace. She had gone to place Lucifer could not follow. And he only had his memories to remember her by.

Except now, by a twisted turn of fate, a human woman with the face of the angel he had once loved had crash-landed into his life. For reasons he could not explain, he felt drawn to this lowly human with an Angel's face. A small, fragile looking, underdeveloped, clumsy girl named Juno Monahan.

To be continued…

Ohayo, everybody! I hope you like my random experiment. Please tell me what you think! ^^