The Colour Inside of My World Part 1

~ "Why do you keep on coming back up, brother?" Amenadiel sighs and looks out over the ocean. "You enjoy the sinning, you are good at exacting punishment, you have a whole damned domain to rule all by yourself. And yet, you keep coming up like you want me to beat you back into submission." Lucifer looks at his brother before lighting up another cigarette. The red light reflects in his dark eyes and Amenadiel swears he's looking at Hellfire rather than an innocent reflection.
"Because Hell is unjust, brother." Lucifer inhales deeply before letting the smoke escape through his nose. "All that desire, all that torture. It's stagnant. There is no growth to be had and frankly, I'm getting bored with it." Behind them on the boulevard, 'Stayin Alive' blasts from a car's speakers as it drives by. "Now humans… They change, they create and destroy, and they live!" He knows Amenadiel cannot comprehend it. The fleeting lives of humans. The way they enjoy what they have at breakneck speed. Angels are different, they are eternal. They were not made to enjoy life but to do their jobs. A job he is getting tired of. And, despite what Amenadiel may believe, nobody can keep the Devil down. A predatory grin graces his beautiful face. Hell can go to, well… hell, and Lucifer will go to town. ~

"Hey, I didn't really know how you liked your coffee, so…" Michael looks up at the steaming hot cup offered to him by Chloé Decker of all people. She plops down on the other side of the bench and offers Ella the other cup before taking a sip of her own preferred sickeningly sweet self-indulgence. He's thrown completely off-kilter by the sudden appearance of not one, but two of Samael's women. Did they poison it? He tries to discreetly sniff the coffee without either of them noticing, but of course, the detective does. She scowls in his direction and he ducks his head. Turns out she got him plain black coffee, which suits him fine. It's dark and bitter like himself. He huffs a self-deprecating laugh. The essence of Saint Michael finely-ground and poured into a Styrofoam cup.
"Thank you."
"So, you can be nice…" Chloé looks at him over the rim of her own cup. Blue eyes sharp as daggers.
"I can see why Sam keeps you around. He always had a thirst for danger."

"Ooh, oh, oh." Ella is practically bouncing beside him. It jostles his lame side, and he grimaces. "Sorry!" She takes his hand and starts to massage the muscles in his forearm, trying to make the eternal fist relax a bit. And damn him if that didn't feel nice. "It's just… we finally can get to know Lucifer's most embarrassing secrets." She giggles to herself. "Like, what pranks did you play on each other? Did you ever cut his hair when he was asleep? Oh, oh, oh what about…" Ella rattles on for a bit until his fingers slowly start to uncurl. He flexes his hand a bit before smirking deviously.
"You know, I did once dye his wings a bright yellow…" Completely untrue of course, but the excited glint in the human's eyes compel him to expand on his lie. It's always a matter of telling just enough truth to make people believe him, and enough untruth to string them along. An embellishment here, a sliver of truth there and let your victim colour their own version of reality. Truth is all in the eye of the beholder, isn't it? He allows himself to imagine Lucifer's face when they do finally ask him about it. A last hurrah from the angel of lies. Whomever says he doesn't have a sense of humour should have their eyes checked. Damn it, he should have told them he dyed them pink!

"How will you contain my powers?" Michael looked at Lucifer in question. The devil had been thinking about that, about what his brother had asked him to do. Lucifer just sighed and rolled his empty glass between his hands. He did have an idea, but he decided to refrain from telling his Twin how he got it. Damn Miss Lopez and her love for comic books. There apparently was a whole series on 'Lucifer' and his adventures on earth. He wondered how they got the idea in the first place.

Michael meets up with Ella later but not before being dragged kicking and screaming through Samael's ridiculously expensive walk-in closet. She's looking out over the water, the setting sun giving her skin a golden glow. The wispy hair that escaped from her ponytail looked almost burned orange and it reminds him of the brother he left lying bleeding on the training grounds. 'I hope you can ever forgive me, brother.' He straightens the untucked button-down shirt, forcing his bad shoulder down to look slightly more normal. He sidles up to her quietly, not wanting to interrupt her thoughts, but his stomach had a different plan. Ella laughs. "When was the last time you had something to eat? Despite popular belief, you can't survive on just coffee you know." He looks down, rubbing his stomach self-consciously.
"I… I don't know" He shrugs helplessly. What's normal for a human? When he lived with Brigid, they sometimes went with just a single meal a day or even skipped a full day. "Two, maybe three…" He stops there. It's not a full lie. Not a whole truth either. But she's having none of that.
"What…" she looks at him expectantly with a smirk on her face, "centuries, months, days, seconds?"
"Eh, weeks?"
"Weeks?!" Ella looks at him in horror and he immediately backpedals.
"I can't die of hunger anyway, so, so... I… Don't worry about it." His eyes are wide and slightly panicked. The one time he decides to just tell the truth, and this happens! And he just doesn't know what to say to set her at ease. He shrugs helplessly. "I, I'm used to it?" The look of horror doesn't dissipate in the slightest.

"I will cook for you." Ella looks at him like she dares him to decline. So fiery! He shouldn't really, there is no need for him to eat. He opens his mouth but snaps it shut with a click when he sees Ella's eyes widen in warning and her hand inch towards her shoe. "I'm sure I did just hear you agree, didn't I?" He quickly raises his hand in a disarming gesture.
"Fine, fine." Had his wings would have been out, they would have been ruffled, betraying his agitation. But since they aren't, he's hoping to save face by just talking. Luckily, he's spared the indignity of trying to get himself out of the hole he dug himself when she just smiles at him and wraps her arms around him in a big hug. It tickles his memory of a little sister who would do the same. Before it all went wrong. When they were still Sam and Mi and Rae-Rae going on whatever hare-brained adventure their sis had come up with. He swears he sees a flash of black and grey, but it's gone before he can turn his head.

Lucifer sighed. Most of what he'd read was obviously poppycock, but one thing had stood out to him. Michael Demiurgos and his ultimate end at Lucifer's hand. And strangely enough, that might actually work. He guessed it's just a matter of getting the sword from storage and running his brother through with it. Far away from Creation, forever lost to his Twin with no hope for salvation. No biggie… His brain just stopped after that. Black despair wrapped itself around his heart and he knew Michael must have felt it too. If only he had known sooner.

They make it back home to her apartment and she immediately kicks him out of her kitchen to make her Abuelita's super-secret family recipe. He sneaks back in anyway. It can't hurt to have a taste, would it? He decides to steal some of the strange green fruit lying on the chopping board when Ella isn't looking. He pops it into his mouth with a smirk before she can shout out a warning and, 'Oh, Dad!' it's burning his tongue and it's making his eyes water.
"¡Idiota! Here, quickly!" He gets a shot of something pushed into his hand and he drinks it without thinking. Oh, that makes it even worse! He's desperately looking for a place to spit out the vile concoction in his mouth but as time goes by, the burn lessens and eventually, he settles on just swallowing it.
"What are those hellish things?!" He looks at Ella with teary eyes and with some trepidation, he watches her face grow redder and redder. Just as he is about to open his mouth to apologize of all things, she bursts out laughing. Tears start streaming down her face and her knees just won't hold her up anymore. She slides down the counter and onto the kitchen floor, laughing hysterically all the way down.
"I'm guessing," she breaks off giggling breathlessly, "jalapeños are a no go, huh?" Michael's stares at her, wide-eyed and without words. Who had created these things? He knows they can't be Samael's work; he only eats those God-awful Cool Ranch Puffs! He coughs, trying to get rid of the feeling of sparks and stardust in his throat…

Without warning a chuckle escapes him, soon turning into full-blown laughter and he slides down next to her on her kitchen floor. He wipes the tears from his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt and tells her about their first star. How it glowed, how it burst apart in a cloud of superheated stardust and how they had been covered in it from head to toe. Glittering like those fancy mirrored balls Lucifer has stored away at LUX for disco parties. How Lucifer had complained for days after that it itched like crazy, not knowing that it was actually Gabriel who had put itching powder all over his wings when he wasn't looking. It's still funny enough to make him giggle at Samael's expense. It was his fault in the first place that the star exploded so spectacularly. Payback really is a bitch. Ella looks at him in awe, but he's too caught up in the memory to notice. He smiles and leans back to sit against the kitchen cabinets. He leans his right arm on his raised knee, the left gesturing wildly to accentuate the story. Ella scoots over to sit closer to him and she laughs at his retelling of their youthful shenanigans. Seems like angels weren't all that different from human brothers after all. Michael looks softer, more relaxed than she had ever seen him. The scar a bit less sharp, his eyes just a bit warmer.

He heard Michael's soft sigh and the way he stumbled to his feet. Cold shaky fingers ran through his hair, scratched his neck, and reached inside his jacket. Lucifer stifled a wet sob, and he helped his brother with the buttons of his vest and shirt. Wanting to feel Michael's skin against his own, like they had when the universe was still young. Fear abolished by Desire. Black feathers and white. Divine and Infernal. Intertwined in the sacred song they had danced to since the beginning of time. At that moment Lucifer grieved for his brother, for the daughter he would never get to know, for himself and for the world.

They go up to the roof to stargaze after dinner. He tells her about their stars, the worlds they built. She asks him question after question and tries to answer them all to the best of his abilities. Yeah, he made them all together with Sam, but how that worked is still a mystery to him. So instead of telling her the scientific details he doesn't know anyway, he resorts to telling her how it felt. How their stars seemed alive. Sam and Mi joined at the hip. Creation and Will, gold and silver. One always bright, the other in his shadow. He falls silent with a frown. He seems closed off, so far away that she just doesn't know what to do.

So, she starts running her mouth. She tells him of the car accident she'd been in when she was eight. She shows him her scars, tells him the stories of her childhood. About growing up in a bad neighbourhood with just her mom and four brothers. Getting taught how to pick locks by her grandmother and stealing cars. How Mr Uri at the youth centre taught her to think outside the box. And count cards, she adds in a quiet mumble. She smiles sheepishly at the angel beside her, suddenly remembering she's actually in the company of Divinity. Michael just smiles benignly and looks at her from the corner of his eye. He just has to remember never to play cards with her. He's a sore loser anyway. He likes how her eyes are a warm brown. So very similar to Raphael, to Uriel. They light up with an inner light and his biggest insecurity spills from his lips like water. "Creation without Will is worthless." Even in these last few weeks, months maybe years of his existence he's dependent on his Twin. And for the first time, it doesn't hurt like it used to.

Lucifer walks into the storage facility that holds the key to their problem. Resting his hands on the top of the long wooden box, he hangs his head for a moment. Once the box is opened the wards will be broken, and a celestial blade could potentially be once again unleashed upon the world. He gently rubs the ancient wood, regarding the onyx ring on his right hand. He had known what it held inside the moment Lilith gave it to him for safekeeping. He knows what Maze wants, but he can't give it to her. Demons can't have souls. He is never going back to Hell, and nobody is going to make him. He takes a deep breath and slowly lifts the lid. Where a brilliant sword of steel and gold should have been are just the broken dead feathers it used to rest on.
"Bloody Hell."