"Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them." Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince.

...

When Luce closed his hand around the edge of the door it shocked him. He pulled in a sharp breath through his nose, tugging his hand away. Used the bottom of his foot to shut the passenger door, tentatively, wary of being hit with a second snap of electricity. Elikai watched him with an amused expression on his face. Embarrassed, Luce pursed his lips. He looked away, up at the sky. It bulged with wet clouds, purple-gray. Yet yellow sunlight peeped through holes here and there. The entire setup lent a strange, warm glow to the buildings and trees around them, and made the colors seem more saturated than usual.

He crossed his arms in front of his chest and followed Elikai down the sidewalk.

"I've decided I would rather not find out who I am." His feet dragged on the concrete.

Elikai looked at him over his shoulder with a small, sympathetic smile. He slowed and gestured Luce closer to him. "Are you afraid I'll leave you in the hospital?" He straightened his suit jacket with one raised eyebrow, reaching out to grasp Luce's arm in his hand, pulling them level as they walked together.

Luce gave one of those liquid shrugs of his. "Perhaps." He watched their feet tap against the concrete. "For some reason I have a bad taste in my mouth, when I think of going to a hospital. Like I should be avoiding it at all costs." He slid his eyes back up to stare at the clouds. He almost tripped over a crack in the sidewalk, but Elikai tugged at him with a bruising grip and kept him upright.

He nodded toward a nearby building. It was squat and made of large gray blocks. A sign on the front read "Free Clinic." So, maybe not as intimidating as a real hospital. Luce took a deep breath and let himself be maneuvered inside.

The first thing he noticed had to have been the smell. He didn't know what it was but it made his nose crinkle with its abrasive stench. Another thing was the simultaneous over-crowded feeling and emptiness. Like the building had been abandoned to a skeleton crew, but teemed with people nonetheless. The blinding white barren walls terrified him. So did the strangers bustling all around him. He clung to Elikai's side, fingers clenched into tight fists.

Carefully, Elikai led him to the front desk.

Luce reached out to fasten his fingers on the edge of his suit jacket. As if, by physically attaching himself to his benefactor, he could prevent himself from drifting off into the depths of the little clinic. He caught less than half of the words Elikai exchanged with the secretary, so absorbed was he in not floating away, so that when Eli gently steered him toward an empty chair in the center of the waiting area he was taken by surprise. He flinched. But let himself be set down in the stiff, ugly piece of furniture. Elikai sat directly beside him.

He laid a reassuring hand along Luce's arm. Luce turned his head to stare at him, forehead wrinkled with worry or apprehension or some strange emotion he couldn't place. Elikai squeezed his arm.

"You'll be fine." He lifted his hand to the curve of Luce's shoulder.

Luce licked his lips nervously, glancing down at Elikai's elegant, dark fingers against the worn fabric of his grayish shirt. He closed his eyes and lifted his own hand to cover Elikai's. The warmth in the other man's skin soothed him—a balm for the aching cold ever-present in his fingertips. He focused on breathing even and slow at Elikai's insistence. In and out in a steady hiss through his nose.

He could feel Elikai's approval in the firmness of the palm upon his shoulder.

...

After a long, boring, rather nerve-wracking wait, a woman opened the wooden door near the front desk and called out, "Luce Nichols?" She held a clipboard.

Luce pushed himself out of the chair, and realized his hands were trembling just the slightest. He frowned down at them. Elikai trailed just behind him as he made his way over to the woman, and he patted his back and stopped a few feet from the door. Luce turned to face him.

"Aren't you coming?"

Elikai shook his head. "I'm not your parent, Lu. And you're not my child."

Luce's jaw tightened, and his eyes widened just barely, as he stared at Eli. "You said you wouldn't leave me here." His expression held accusation and uncertainty and perhaps betrayal. Elikai rolled his eyes with a soft smile.

"I'm not leaving you here." He clasped Luce's shoulder. "But I don't think I can go back there with you."

After a few seconds of distraught silence, the nurse spoke up. "Sir, is there something... wrong?"

It was unclear to whom she addressed her question.

Luce's begging eyes did not waver. Elikai sighed and shot her an apologetic glance. "He has no idea who he is and I think he's afraid of being alone." He shrugged, running a hand over his head.

The woman watched the both of them for several seconds before rolling her eyes and gesturing them both through the door. Elikai kept a hand at Luce's back and he felt a bit like a handler trying to keep a spooked horse from bolting. His palm against the fabric of Luce's shirt did seem to have a calming effect though.

The nurse weighed him, and measured how tall he was. Normal stuff. When she took his blood pressure she frowned a little, though. Cast a discerning eye over him. "Do you get dizzy when you stand?"

"Yes." Luce toed back into his shoes. He wouldn't meet her eyes.

Elikai clarified. "He almost fell over this morning when he woke up."

She nodded. "Not surprising. Mr. Nichols, you have very low blood pressure. Not unhealthy, but I would keep an eye on it."

She then had him stand with his toes against a line of tape, and told him to read out the string of letters from an eye chart. He did fairly well, until about the third line down when his eyebrows pulled together, and he began to squint and lean forward. He kept his hand firmly clamped over his eye but frowned deeply. The same happened to a lesser extent with his other eye.

Bad eyes, then. Of course. Elikai let out a soft sigh.

...

Finally, they sat alone in a little office with an examination table, waiting for the doctor.

Posters on the wall declared various bits of advice and warnings, and information on certain vaccinations and diseases. Luce sat on the examination table where the nurse had place him, with his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around his shins, staring at the little jar of cotton balls. He picked absentmindedly at the hem of his jeans—a little thread hung loose just above his shoe.

Elikai watched him for signs of anything negative, but despite being nervous Luce seemed fine.

The door swung open and a tiny woman with short black hair walked in, reading from a clipboard. She glanced up. "Luce?" Luce looked at her, and she grinned. "I'm Doctor Xu." She held out her hand for Luce to take.

Luce eyed her hand before shaking it. She shut the door behind her and settled in her desk chair. Set the clipboard and its papers on the table. She whirled around in her chair, settling her gaze on Luce, and clasped her fingers in her lap, crossing her legs. Her slacks rode up a little to show a peek of candy-cane striped socks.

"So, Luce." She tilted her head. "You don't remember anything other than your name?"

Luce shifted with one of his feline shrugs. "Actually, not even that." He ducked his head—and if Elikai didn't know better he would have thought Luce was being bashful but he had a sneaking suspicion he was just feeling overwhelmed. "I'm not really sure that Luce is my name. But it feels almost right." He shrugged again.

Doctor Xu scribbled something down on one of the pieces of paper. "Could you elaborate?"

Clearing his throat, Elikai said, "If I may interrupt..." He waited for her cheerful nod before continuing. "I found him on the side of the road about 200 miles away from here, in the middle of nowhere. He said all he remembered was a list of five names, and he chose Luce Nichols from that." He paused. "Luce is short for... Lucifer."

Luce nodded. "It is." He let his knees straighten a little, sliding his feet along the crinkly paper on the examination table. "I feel as though my name is actually Lucifer, but there's this feeling in the back of my head that says I shouldn't call myself that."

"And why is that?" Doctor Xu wore a mixture of amusement and curiosity.

Luce shook his head. "I don't know. What does it mean?"

Elikai and Xu stared at him, both searching for the right words. Doctor Xu hummed. "Well," She leaned back in her chair. "It's understandable that you wouldn't want to use that name. It belonged to a rather cruel angel, who reportedly fell from Heaven for doing a lot of bad shit. Tempted Eve, killed a bunch of people. A real snake in the grass type of person. Kinda like Hitler." She paused with a frown. "You probably don't know who that is, either. I don't know why I said that."

"A... fallen angel?" Luce half-smiled, and fully straightened out his legs. "I see. I suppose that makes sense, then."

Elikai laughed under his breath.

Doctor Xu's face sobered somewhat, as she tapped her pen against her mouth. "You know, you really ought to be at a real hospital. Talking to a psychiatrist or something. I'm not really a brain doctor." She glanced over her papers. "Also, you should probably see an optometrist."

"What's an optometrist?"

She laughed. "An eye doctor. So you can see better." She eyed him, re-crossing her legs. "You do want to see better, right?"

Luce gave her an enthusiastic nod. "The dizziness and the blurriness give me a headache."

"Well. Glasses might help with that. I had a boyfriend once who wore glasses to help with vertigo." She laughed.

Elikai tapped his foot thoughtfully, reaching up to stroke his jaw. "Is there any way we could find out his identity through medical records, or something?" He looked over to the doctor.

She nodded. "Possibly." She pulled her clipboard into her lap, writing something on it. "I'm assuming you didn't find any identification on him. As for the amnesia," She paused for a long time. "Well, this is one of the most extreme cases of amnesia I have ever heard of, to be honest. I don't think there's ever been more than one person to have lost his memories so entirely, and that was from a head injury. So you might want to make sure your brain isn't damaged."

Luce nodded—almost mimicking her. He slid off of the table, but she clicked her tongue and urged him back onto the table.

"We haven't done the examination."

He cocked his head, confused. "I thought... that was already done. With the scale, and the blood pressure...?"

"No, that's just preliminary stuff." She laid him back on the table. "Raise your hands over your head."

She proceeded to go about checking his heartbeat, eyes, ears, reflexes... Little things. He shivered at the touch of the stethoscope on his skin. Hunched his shoulders when she had him bend forward and pressed the little disc against his spine. He thought it strange that she asked him to breathe deeply.

Just before they left, Doctor Xu frowned. "Are you married?"

Luce's forehead wrinkled. "I don't know what you mean."

"There's a ring on your finger. Usually, that would mean you have a wife." She gestured to his left hand.

He held his hand up to the light and watched the ring catch at it. "I don't know." He pulled at it, and it was rather tight, but it slid off after a few seconds of wiggling. He held it in his palm. It was just a plain silver band with no distinguishing marks. No engravings, no stones, no nothing. Doctor Xu shook her head and escorted them out to the waiting room.