A/N: I liked the vibe that Lucifer, the Fox show that was adapted from Neil Gaiman's comic story, gave but eventually wound up dropping it in the end because crime shows kind of feel the same to me. Some angst-y moments reminded me of Levi though and I can really see him as a devil at times~ That would be pretty cool!

He's seen the way people look at him. Lust in their eyes. Wrath. Greed. Fear. Hatred. Those last two especially. He hated it at first, but he's grown accustomed to it. Now he doesn't mind the heated glares, the mournful tears, or the lecherous gazes. But it's been a while since anyone has ever looked at him in awe and wonder. He can feel her gaze on his back; he wishes he could turn back and see that look in her amber eyes, but he doesn't want to turn back to find that he's wrong. That her wide-eyed gaze is shock and horror that will quickly turn to disgust and revulsion. Somehow he can't bear the thought of her running away from him.

He sits there instead, his back turned to her because he can't bear to look at her face, and stares ahead at the blank wall. He concentrates instead on the spiraling smoke from his lit cigarette that sits untouched between his fingers.

It's as if a million years have passed when she finally speaks.

"Levi." It's only a whisper, but it's enough for him to read the tone of her voice. Shock. Fear. Awe. "What happened?"

He could dance around the question, pretend he doesn't know she's asking about the scars on his back, but he's never been good at conversation. Thinking up of clever words and ways to distract her, that's too much work. So he says it outright even though he's sure she won't believe him.

"There's a story from a long time ago. When a devil rises from hell, it's after they fell from heaven," he tells her. He raises the cigarette to his lips but doesn't bother to take a drag. He just watches as the end of it burns and crumbles away, the ash spilling onto the bedroom floor. "You'd think hell is the worst part, but it's not. It's right before that. The fall. It's when they rip out your wings and shove you out of paradise because of one thing – just one fucking thing, Petra – and they shut the doors on you."

Ah. Temper, he thinks, as he looks down at the crumbled cigarette that he had crushed in his fist. There's hardly a mark from where it had burned him, but he's used to it. He's untouchable, and it's only know that he's thinking how lonely it is to live in such a way for so long.

She's quiet for so long that he would have though she left, but there are no footsteps and the door doesn't make a sound. When her fingers trace the scars on his skin, it's then that he knows that she's there and there's a brief feeling of relief that she hasn't run away.

"Does that mean…?" Her voice quivers, but it's not out of fear. It's something else that he can't quite put his finger on.

"I'm one of those devils," he finishes for her. "Yes."

"…you were an angel?" she says instead, surprising him. Her finger stops before she covers the scar with her hand as if to hide it away from the world, make it disappear. A moment later, he feels her resting her forehead right between the scars on his back.

"Are you scared of me?"

She doesn't respond and instead asks a question of her own. "Hey, Levi," she asks, her voice still trembling. She rubs the scar with a slow, gentle thumb. "Did it hurt?"

He almost scoffs at the question, something turned into one of those stupid pickup lines, but he remembers the wings being ripped from his back. No time to heal, and he was already locked out and dropped into the underworld. The searing pain sometimes comes back to him even though it's been years and years. And her touch – cool, gentle, soothing, tender – is so different from it.

"Yes," he hisses. Can a voice really shake so much in one word? But maybe he's just imagining it in this dark, quiet room. "It hurt. Of course, it hurt. It hurt so much."

Something drips onto his back – tears, he realizes – and they burn into his back, but it's a different sort of sensation than the phantom pain he feels every night or so.

Ah, he could make a joke about this, these tears for the devil, if only he weren't shedding some of his own.

Prompt: Fantasy (Rivetra Week - Day 4)

Word Count: 719

A/N: I'm still working on two more Rivetra week pieces that I'll hopefully finish before the end of next week :) Cheers to everyone~