Stating the Obvious: The following fanfic is a sequel to "Final Prophecy" (because, apparently, I can't quit these two).

Disclaimer: I have no right over the Prophecy franchise, the movies, the characters and whatnot. Nor am I versed in the mythology of the movies as a whole.

Author's Note: After the previous chapter, you might be asking yourselves if I'm sane. Evidently, you haven't been reading these long enough, because I am anything but sane. With that in mind, I do hope you enjoy this chapter...I do kind of tug at theories and details about the Apocalypse which may, or may not, be accurate, but as I said (and repeat just for the sake of clarification), I am taking a few liberties, because of my theories on the concept of "destiny". Well, on one hand, if life is meant to unfold one way, as written, then why do we have free will? Is it really free will if every action taken has been predetermined? Food for thought, and something as complex as trying to figure out which came first, the chicken or the egg (which reminds me of a fun quote I read once, "I dream of a better world where chickens can cross roads without having their motives questioned." Giggle.)


Chapter 7. I Let Myself Fall


Every time I close my eyes
It's like a dark paradise
No one compares to you
I'm scared that you
Won't be waiting on the other side

All my friends ask me why I stay strong
Tell 'em when you find true love it lives on
Ahhh, that's why I stay here

"Dark Paradise" Lana Del Rey


Lucifer waits until they're at a distance, the church still in his view, and he stops to stare behind him. His eyes darken. He knows this is just another game - one of His games - and he doesn't enjoy not knowing, being a pawn by extension; Allison is His pawn and He must've known he wouldn't just leave her alone, especially not now.

He can't sense her but he knows she's there - saw her, felt her and smelled her - and that's what he hadn't told Allison.

"Beelzebub," he calls the name of his now right hand, who is not quite himself at the moment. Normally, when you hear someone fathered a child, words of congratulations follow or, in their case, they would be making fun of him just for giggles and Lucifer would join them with the usual sarcasm, but they know better. This is not a gift or even a joke. This is a weakness. This is another way to bring him down - how further down could he go? Lucifer knows he owes everything - everything - to Beelzebub, to Azazel, to every fallen that risks Lilith's wrath by following him, by helping him, even if his needs - his concerns - revolve around who means very little to them. They're loyalty to him...it will not be overlooked. He will reward them someday...somehow. He will pay them back, even if it's with his own life.

"We're not going to find a nephalim, are we?" Beelzebub stands beside him, finally, looking at the church, with his hands in his pockets.

Lucifer's eyes remain locked on the church, "We are, but not for the reasons she wants them. Beelzebub, I need you to swear an oath to me."

"Anything," Beelzebub is solemn, which is saying a lot, all things considered.

"You will protect her at all costs, even if the cost of that is my life."

"Lucifer," he sighs, threading his words carefully, "you're asking me to forsake my general for the sake of a nephalim who wouldn't pull me out of a burning building even if she was invulnerable to fire."

That makes Lucifer chuckle, "Truth is, she probably would, unless she thought you my enemy, or hers. She's very forgiving, that one," she forgave him...for things his Father never would. "And foolish. This is why I, as your general, ask this of you, to save the one creature on this earth who can see the monsters and still find a redeemable quality in them."

"In you," Beelzebub corrects, and he clears his throat when Lucifer gives him a glaring look. "Look, fine, I get it, she's...different. Hell, the fact Lilith wants to skin her alive with her teeth tells me she's someone I probably want to share my Cheetos with, but kill you, for her? That's asking for a lot and I'll be damned, pun intended, if I lie, 'cause then you'd probably kill me back."

Lucifer smiles, "That is why I have chosen you, Beelzebub," and Beelzebub rolls his eyes, but he continues, "You are one of the few that understand, and often does not contest, the concept of fall back. You've complained, whined and questioned me many times, but you've never done anything that I did not ask of you. I ask you again, brother, even if protecting her means killing me, swear to me that you will do whatever it takes to protect her and that child, for if she dies, and I live to discover that you could've prevented it...I will take no pleasure in destroying you, and everything in my path."

Beelzebub holds Lucifer's stare for what seems like too long until he sighs, his eyes closed, accepting the inevitable - Lucifer would not let him walk away from this, not this. "What if I have to choose between the woman and the baby?"

He had been expecting that question - dreading it, really. Allison would never forgive Lucifer if he has any hand on the death of their child, if he has any hand on doing anything but protecting it. He has never understood why any person would be so protective over someone they had never met, someone they had only been responsible for creating - though he, himself, has experienced something similar with Allison, if he's honest. If it comes down to choosing...between Allison and their unborn child, would he choose? Could he?

People create many things, but for a child, a mother is capable of destroying an entire universe in return for the life of her child. He, himself, had never been the creating type, simply the corrupting kind. This...this is unfamiliar territory, in spite of many who believed otherwise, and his urge to protect Allison...and the urge to protect something they both created...

Would he let her live and condemn the child, or condemn himself, and Allison, by letting her go, and letting the unborn live?

"For both of our sakes," he decides finally, "make sure you don't have to make that choice."

"And if I do?" Beelzebub is not going to let him walk from it and, in truth, he can't blame him. In war, anything can be lost, as much as gained, and you have to know what lines you're willing to cross...all of them. But, for all he knows, this child is a tool, to be used against them both, to decide the fate of either heaven or hell, or both; should he forsake the one thing that made his existence something more than his damnation for something that could decide the outcome of a war - a war that is no longer his to run?

He turns, ready to walk away from the church, and he answers, "Let her make the choice...and if she can't, save her."


Allison didn't think they'd want her help after what just happened - in truth, after what just happened, even she didn't want to be with herself - but, to her surprise, they didn't judge her.

They are too busy happy to be alive, to be on her side of things.

Even Laura looks at her differently now, with some shred of respect and curiosity, although Allison doesn't think she's had a chance to earn the former.

Pete, Brian and Hannah have asked their fill of questions and now keep at a distance, praying, and she wonders if they pray for her soul or just theirs.

She hopes for both.

Allison told them everything - everything - and she knows, in their eyes, she's probably now earned the role of the most damned of them all.

She notices Laura getting up from her pew - Kyle's probably asleep, she thinks, as she doesn't see him, he could just as easily have laid down on the pew - and she's walking towards her. Allison feels for the knife Pete gave her - she stuck it in her bra - reminding herself she's not defenseless. She never has been.

Laura is a beauty, without a doubt, but she's a street beauty, short, dressed like she's fearless, with stylish short jeans and a shirt with only one sleeve. She looks like she just got out of a nightclub - she might've been, for all Allison knows - and she's barefoot as the moment Allison first saw her. Maybe heels during the Apocalypse isn't the most comfortable of footwear.

When Laura stops next to the pew Allison is sitting on, Allison turns her head, meeting her eyes, "Are you okay?"

Laura nods, arms crossed, hugging herself almost, and she sits down on the opposite end of the pew. She's looking ahead, looking at the cross, at the art depicting heaven in such a way that, well, depresses many in their circumstances because they didn't make it.

"I used to think I was so badass," Laura mutters, her eyes still focused ahead. "I've done things. Bad things. Just to get people to like me. I've fucked with people. I've fucked people. I stopped going to church when I was a kid, rebelled against my parents so to speak, been fucked up ever since. Kyle's the only thing that kept me from going too far, sometimes. And now..."

"Now you wish it would've been different, because now you're scared He'll never forgive you," Allison finishes the thought for her.

"Actually, I was going to say, now I've met someone who's done worse than me. You fucked the devil."

Allison turns her head so sharply, it almost snaps, and Laura's chuckle is the only thing telling her that was her idea of a poor joke. Allison doesn't smile, she just reigns in her temper. She doesn't want to tempt fate and give the girl a cause to lose her head.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that," Laura apologizes, sensing her mistake, "I...I guess what I really want to ask, how...how did you fall in love with him?"

Allison swallows, feeling her throat dry up immediately. That is a really good question. She rests one hand on her stomach as her heart beats, reminding her of all the reasons why.

"You went to church, right?"

The girl nods, "Until I was sixteen. After that, my mom couldn't keep forcing me," Laura admits.

Allison smiles at that, "J-" She almost says his name, the wrong name - the name she wishes was his only name, but she has to face the truth...there never was a John, only in her mind. She corrects herself, "Lucifer has always been said to have been the most beautiful angel in heaven. I'll never tell him...oh, he probably knows," she sighs. "It was one of my favorite stories as a kid because even the most beautiful of angels, the most perfect of creations, can fall...it makes him human, to me." She realizes, then, this is the first time she's been able to speak of Lucifer with anyone, in all it's absurd truth, without judgment. Laura isn't Gabriel or Michael or Simon. She's just another person, another human being, kind of like what she used to be before she found out...the lie. "I don't think there's any rational way to explain how I fell in love with him. I can tell you how we met, how he just watched me as I became a tool for angels, fighting the battles heaven won't dirty their hands with, how I dreamt about him night after night and how, somehow, he became the only one I trusted, the only one that told me the truth, who used me and had no issues telling me what his intentions were, no scruples...in the end, what he wanted from me was just me, and what he wanted from me, I gave. I think I have always loved him, in spite of the horrible truths he showed me, because he showed me truths in a lifetime of lies. I just...fell."

"Do you think...I mean, is there forgiveness for loving the devil?"

Allison turns to look at her, and Laura is looking at her now, curious, and she wonders how many devils she's had in her life that makes her ask that. You don't have to be Satan to be a devil of a man, she knows.

Allison sighs, "If God didn't want us to love men like that, he would've made us wiser but that's a title we have to earn, we're not just born with it. God makes no mistakes," she repeats the words she heard from him. "He knows us, better than we know ourselves, and as long as the love is true...I think...I hope...He understands. After all," she smiles, a bitter smile, but one she means all the same, "He's the omnipotent one, He should've known from the start what we ourselves didn't, right?"

There's a silence between them and Allison edges closer, notices the sniffling and tear drops. She doesn't get too close - she knows better after the knife incident.

"What's going to happen to us?" Laura wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, adopting her tough, indifferent, face.

Allison sighs, "Many scholars have tried to decipher the Bible, to see how long this will last, a period of infinite darkness, though mostly metaphorical," Allison looks outside the window. She knows the sun is about to rise soon enough. "The truth is, no one really knows...no one is supposed to know. That's why the Rapture had been meant to be sudden, unexpected, without warning. What will happen next?" She shrugs, "A false prophet will rise up, people will follow him, demons amongst us, demons that look like us," she thinks of Belial, "and then the Second Coming. When Jesus Christ comes down from the heavens to cleanse the world from the non-believers. Who knows how long that will take..." She, unlike Laura, had gone to Bible school many times, in most of her lifetimes.

"And do you believe that's what's going to happen?" Her voice sounds so small, so scared, that Allison doesn't know how to tell her - she's just as scared. They all are. That won't help her, she thinks.

She sighs, "I have stopped the Apocalypse a couple of times, after being told it was inevitable. I didn't stop it now. Do I think that means it'll happen exactly as it's been written?" Allison smiles, for once, remembering a day when she had a book in her hand, a book that wrote itself. It would really prove handy right about now. "I think nothing is set in stone, life unfolds as we live it, and every choice leads us some place new. We can wait for fate, or we can do what we can to survive."

"Okay...one more question...would you mind going with me to the bathroom?" Off Allison's quirked brow, she half-smiles, "Kyle just fell asleep again and the others, too. You're the only one who doesn't sleep."

Allison nods, "Fine, lets go, but I'll have to wake up someone to keep watch while we're away."

The bathroom isn't far away, but Allison has created a system, one she hopes works and that it reassures the group in some small way. No one goes anywhere alone and someone has to stay awake at all times while others sleep. If anyone hears anything, don't check it out alone - that last rule was inspired by Allison's earlier actions.

She picks Pete to stay awake, letting the others sleep, and the walk to the bathroom is a quiet one - Laura no longer being the inquisitive one.

The bathroom is beautiful, a little messy ever since the quakes, but still functioning, with cathedral ceilings, wood-framed mirrors, stained-glass windows and pedestal sinks.

Allison watches as Laura disappears into the stalls and she uses the sink, surprised there's still running water, and she washes her face, using a paper towel to clean off the rest of the grime she's collected over the past few hours.

"You know," Laura says from inside the stall. "If we die, I just want to say-"

"-don't think that way-"

"-I just wanted to say thank you, for letting us come inside, for doing the hard thing and choosing to help us instead of just going with them. I know what it's like, always doing the easy thing, usually not a good idea."

Allison smiles, "Someone I know would probably call what I do being stupid."

Laura comes out of the bathroom stall, her cheeks still puffed but she's stopped crying, at least. She heads to the sink next to Allison's, "Maybe that's why people say you think with your head, you feel with your heart."

Allison smirks, "Yeah, except we don't, not really," but before she can go into the scientific facts that disprove that statement, Laura starts to scream, to back away from the sink and trying to clean her hands off the paper towels, pulling each one down frantically. Allison looks at the sink and sees...nothing. Just running water. She turns the water off, "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Blood," she shudders, still trying to clean it off her. Allison only sees water in the sink, remnants of it, and some on the floor after Laura had drops splatter on the floor from her reaction and even on the paper towels.

"Calm down, there isn't any blood, just calm down," Allison gets close to her, putting her hand on her shoulder until Laura closes her eyes, forcing herself to calm down.

"You can't see it!?" She hisses, her hands on her hair, and Allison tugs at her hands, trying to make sure she doesn't rip her own hair out.

"No, I can't. Look, this-"

"What's going on!?" It's Kyle, Pete follows in after him, looking around the bathroom. They must've heard her scream.

"I saw b-blood, coming out of the faucet," Laura moves away from Allison, burying herself in Kyle's chest, and the crying resumes.

Pete's eyes fall on the faucet, then on Allison, before trying the water. Allison doesn't see anything and, from the look on Pete's face, he doesn't see anything, either.

"What happened?" Kyle's eyes land on Allison.

"Someone must know we're here..." It is the only thing that makes sense. Like Lucifer had said, demons even when locked out have ways of doing damage from the outside, by penetrating someone's mind, by targeting someone whose mind would create the necessary hallucinations to create...provoke...trouble.

Allison looks at Laura, pity in her eyes, and Laura turns her head, looking at them and the running water Pete didn't turn off. She furrows her eyes, confused - the hallucination is gone.

"But I saw it, it was blood! I know what blood looks like!" She looks up at Kyle, desperate.

"Maybe that's the problem," Pete turns off the water, finally.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kyle's tone drops.

"He means," Allison sighs, trying to avoid a fight, "what Lucifer said. There's a reason we're all here. I may be keeping you safe inside the church doors, but I cannot keep you safe from what's inside your mind. They," and Allison looks around the bathroom, her eyes falling on the stained-glass window, seeing an angelic design on one. "They can get inside your head, they know your deepest secrets and your most horrible regrets."

"Why me?" Laura's voice is angry, but so small, shaky, Allison almost doesn't want to answer.

"They like to target those with the most faith."

"But I haven't gone to church since I was sixteen! I don't believe anymore! I've broken almost every commandment! I've sinned! I've fucked," Kyle is trying to hold her back as she yells, getting even more agitated, and it's only a matter of time until she's face to face with Allison, but Pete stands right next to her, ready to pull Laura off her if he has to. Allison doesn't say thank you right then, but she appreciates it all the same.

"If you don't believe...why do you feel so much shame over breaking them? They know, Laura," she hates how much she sounds like him right now...like Lucifer. "If you didn't care, if you didn't believe, you wouldn't be so scared. Trust me, the faster you forgive yourself for your sins, the less power they have over you."

She walks toward the door, leaving them behind, though she hears footsteps behind her - Pete, probably - she doesn't turn back. She heads toward the church doors.

"You leaving?"

She presses her hand over the door, holding the tears back, "No. I just hope he can get here in time before things get worse."

And Allison has a feeling, they were about to get much worse.


Angels, even the Fallen, do not have to travel like most mortals would. Angels have their wings, but Fallen lost those long ago and were thus damned to crawl the earth, very much like a snake would, unable to even touch the clouds the way they used to.

However, that never prevented Lucifer from traveling in his own way. He can travel through shadows and he can change forms, be it human or animal.

The others have certain gifts, some of which include the ease of travel, and those are the ones selected, Lucifer included, to scout for a nephalim.

However, Lucifer has an agenda not even he dares reveal to his followers; no, his actions can have no witness, as he has reached a new low not even Lilith would have imagined him to reach.

He looks down at the rivers, flowing into four heads, the sound of rapid, flowing water calming him somehow, even though he would think it impossible. His mind is clouded, he has no real way out of this and if he's come to this point, he truly is desperate.

It's the only place not even they can sully, the one place that, while gone, is still present, still untouched and ignored by many.

He comes out of the shadows finally, after seeing the shimmer of light he had been looking for.

Angels may be occupied, outside his reach, but there is a place in which one angel may still be able to answer his questions...if He wills it.

As he approaches the area where he last saw the shimmer, he remains alert, counting his steps carefully. Any wrong step will have him becoming barbecue at the hands of a very old friend, and he's not having that.

The shimmer becomes a mirage and, before he can come any closer, he sees the sword. He doesn't wait for it to meet his face as he immediately takes a step to the side, letting the sword, covered in fire, meet the ground with a thundering sound next to him. The sound blows him aside, the wind knocking into his skin, and he falls on his back, sitting up immediately as to not lose sight of his situation.

Lucifer quirks a brow, pretending to be hurt - offended, even, as he moves to stand, looking at the dirt on his clothes, "Is that how you greet an old friend, Jophiel?"

Jophiel, very much an angel, the guardian of the garden, a cherubim, with an appearance that would be the envy of many women, even though gender is a non-existent issue in heaven as most are determined as male; Lucifer's fallen are one of the lucky few to be granted certain gender-like attributes for the sake of mischievous escapades. Jophie's hair cascades in blond curls, pale skin, his body slender, delicate, but his strength lies in his faith. It always has.

It's that faith that Lucifer is counting on to help him...it's the only way.


Author's Afterword: This chapter was meant to be one of the longest yet, but I had to cut some things and put it in the next chapter. With good reason, I hope. I honestly loved writing it (especially the fragment that's in the next chapter!) I'm sitting right there next to you guys as you read this one. I remember staying up way past my bedtime for this one, totally worth it. So happy. And yes, I know in the 2nd film of the Prophecy (one of my favorites, by the way) references the Garden of Eden, with the gate, and the tree just outside of it, but there's no real confirmation if that is the official Garden of Eden. And my muse is willing to accept that maybe one of the angels (or fallen) decided to plant a tree and, well, now they hang around it for creepy-like purposes. Anything can happen (especially in my head). To me, the Garden of Eden is as fascinating as the story of Atlantis and Avalon/Camelot. If I had unlimited funds, I would travel the world and try to find these places (I should've been an archeologist...) to explore the myths behind them...