When Lucifer slammed into her and something tore through her arm, Chloe fell to the ground, her mind swimming in shock.

She'd seen him standing in front of the two men as she pushed through the trees, and couldn't help but cry out his name, even as her brain registered that the men had their weapons up.

They shouted, he turned.

Their eyes met.

She had one moment to register the wound caked in dirt across his temple, the exhaustion and surprise in his eyes, before the men opened fire.

And then he was right in front of her and they were falling, and something was so terribly wrong.

Not just with her own arm. He wasn't getting up right, and the blood on her shirt wasn't all hers, and...

Oh God

Blood was pulsing from a hole in his chest, just to the left of his sternum, clean through the ribs.

Straight through his heart.

She watched for one dumbstruck second as he coughed in front of her, his skin growing ashen.

And then it really hit her.

"What... no... How did this happen?!" She scrabbled to his side, her own wound forgotten. "LUCIFER?!"

Amenadiel shouted something beside her, but the words slid from her mind as she tried to pull Lucifer into her arms.

He was leaden - she managed to cradle his head in her lap, and quickly thrust her hand against the wound in his chest as the blood poured freely from her arm.

Arterial

But it didn't matter, because Lucifer was trying to smile at her and he was dying and nothing she could do could save him and...

His hand shifted towards her own slightly...

...and the light that was Lucifer deep within those dark eyes grew dim.

And she screamed as the light went out completely.

"I have him."

Hands enveloped her as Azrael stepped near.

"I'll have her too if you don't stop that bleeding."

"Nnnno," Chloe moaned, trying to shake the life back into Lucifer with such little strength it did barely anything at all. His gaze remained fixed to the sky above. His broken and bloodied jaw hung open.

He did not breathe again.

Crying, she looked up at Azrael, whose eyes were fixed on her own intently.

The hands were busy wrapping something around her arm - she tried to pull away, slumping as everything began to spin.

"Hurry."

Azrael's voice drew around her like a comforting blanket, and she let herself go, falling back against Amenadiel as he tightened the bandage on her arm.

"Give him back," she whispered, caught in the angel's gaze.

Azrael shook her head and stepped closer.

"Then... take me too..."

Everything narrowed to Azrael's dark gaze, expansive and shifting with the light of uncountable stars.

"Not today," someone said firmly behind her.

And time froze once more.


One more small chapter after this one then back to my usual long ones.