Hell is hot. Suffocatingly hot.
It's a cliche, but it's true. The air is dense and cloying, filmy with ash and pierced by the faint melody of eternal suffering. In simple terms, a nightmare for the everyday resident — though its two newest visitors are certainly anything but.
For all that's changed in Maze's life on earth, Hell remains remarkably unaltered. It seems surreal to plant her feet on the ashen ground: to finally return after years of plaintive begging. The feverish pull of home that these labyrinthian walls had held on her evaporates on her heels, rising up in the dust her footfalls incite. Right now, here, standing in the halls she'd longed to see again, the only thing that feels like home is everything she's left behind. The smell of Eve's hair pressed to her lips, the crackle of bubblewrap flapping from Linda's railings, the tug of a smile on Lucifer's face as he finally — finally — pours her a drink. This…emptiness, this darkness — holds all the familiarity of a handshake between strangers.
It's not difficult to find Lilith. Maze blazes the trail, dragging along a grumbling Michael as his wings fold in with a crunching rattle and he staggers to keep up with her dogged pace. The door to her cell seems to materialize before Maze, as if one — or both — of them had simply willed a meeting into existence.
She puts a hand to Michael's chest as they stand before the bleak entrance.
"I need to do this alone."
He doesn't attempt a defense. He's already looking peaky from the premature use of his wings, and the thought of entering a demonic Hell-loop is less than appealing under any circumstance. He simply shuffles aside, leaning heavily against a greying, jagged column. A low hiss escapes his lips as a single feather plummets from his shoulders and sinks to the ground, vanishing under the thick layer of ash that swallows it whole. Words seem too hard to find; too difficult to summon to life against the dull air. So he's only silent, sinking against a haze of fog and ash as Maze presses an unsteady hand to her mother's door.
—
When Maze pushes herself inside, she's back in Reno.
It's that apartment — that same door that had slammed in her face, those same framed photos she had hurled against the wall, that same couch she had sunk into and sobbed against when she had arrived too late.
But she's not too late. Not this time. Lilith is waiting beyond the threshold, staring with glassy eyes at a hanging portrait on her wall. She looks up when Maze barges in, eyebrows flicking in surprise at the sight of her panting daughter.
"Mazikeen," she murmurs.
"Just Maze," Maze blurts. It's all she can think to say now that they're face to face.
"You're just in time." Lilith's voice is faraway; she's looking past the daughter that stands wide-eyed before her and staring in vivid fixation at the door. As if on cue, a knock thunders through the small apartment and Lilith answers with a dutiful slouch.
Maze's eyes widen further when her mother draws the door open to admit…Maze. The real Maze shrinks back in surprise, unable to suppress the light gasp as fake, demonic, Hell-loop Maze greets Lilith at the door.
Quickly, unsteadily, all at once, she understands where she is. What this is.
She is her own mother's Hell loop. That day in Reno; the day Lilith had refused to let her in — repeating on an endless, infinite loop. It's all Maze can do to watch from a sunken corner as the scene replays and Lilith slams the door with a heated word.
What she's only seeing now, for the first time, are the tears that fall hot and unsteady down Lilith's cheeks as the rattle of the door echoes through the tiny apartment.
She doesn't know what to do. She's never been much for comforting, and she's certainly never been a daughter. But there's a heavy weight pressing on her heart at the sight of her mother, broken and sobbing against the very scene Maze had tried so hard to stifle in her own memory.
"I thought you didn't care," Maze says. The words are stilted and uncomfortable; scraping across the empty silence like steel on glass.
"Mazikeen," Lilith whispers, turning to face her daughter — her real daughter — with tear-stained cheeks. "Maze." She smiles at the correction, as if the shortened name is a private joke shared only between the two of them.
"Forgive me," she murmurs. Hell has not restored her former beauty; the beauty that lays sprawled in the portraits on her wall. She looks the same as when Maze had seen her for a few, fateful seconds on earth — old, and weary, and crimped with the wears of time.
Maze bats at the tears that have begun to leak from her own eyes, drawing in a frustrated sniffle. Chloe had made it look so simple: an act of grace that had tumbled from her lips and absolved the man who had stolen her life, her love, her…everything.
But it's not simple. The words won't come. She can't summon the same forgiveness; can't force the words to spill from her lips and soothe her mother's aching soul.
Damn you, Decker.
"I can't," Maze says, shoving thoughts of Chloe's mercy aside. "Or—I don't know. Maybe I can. But I won't."
Lilith doesn't look surprised. She doesn't look…anything. She just looks tired. Tired, and lost, and aching with the weight of the same rejection she'd dealt millennia ago.
Maze sucks in a breath. Living with a psychiatrist, incubating a soul — none of it had prepared her fully for the treacherous ground upon which she now walks. She can hear Linda's voice in the back of her head, egging her on with quiet encouragement, compelling her not to turn away, not now.
"I know what you're trying to do," Maze continues, shoving down the hurt that wells up in the space between the words. "Lucifer explained it." She scoffs. "I didn't get it. I thought you were trying to abandon us again."
She plows on before Lilith can respond — before the head of steam she's working up can dissipate in the wake of her mother's pleading tone.
"I know you think you're trying to help us. Trying to make it right. But there's nothing you can do to turn back the clock. There's nothing you can do to change the fact that you did abandon us. You abandoned me."
Lilith's eyes flutter shut. She looks utterly defeated, and Maze gets the distinct impression that any pseudo-demon Maze who could walk through that door would be preferable to facing the words that the real one now has to say.
"You don't know us anymore. You thought you knew what was best all those years ago, and look where it got us." Maze laughs hollowly, gesturing about herself. "But I made it out. I have a life. A…a family. I have a soul," she whispers, pointing with a firm index finger to her own heart. "And you're gonna take it from me. You're gonna take everything from me because you think you know what's right. Again."
Lilith's eyes reopen. She's staring at Maze with a peculiar look; a look so piercing that the tears have frozen in her eyes.
"You have a soul?" She asks, incredulous.
Maze chuckles, gritting her teeth in a pained smile. "I thought I wanted to come back here. I begged Lucifer to take me for years. And now that I'm here, all I want to do is go back. You sentenced me to a life down here. I got out, and I got a better one. Just like you did. You took off that ring so you could have a soul, too. So you could know what it's like — what it's really like — to live. So don't you dare—" Maze drags in an unsteady breath, wiping a brusque hand across her cheek as a stray tear leaps forth — "Don't you dare take it from me. Not when you know exactly what I have to lose."
Lilith smiles; a wan, faraway smile as she lifts a hand to Maze's face. "You always were just like me," she says. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."
For a moment there's only silence as the tears that had crystallized in Lilith's eyes melt in the heavy heat.
"Lil—" Maze clears her throat. "Mom."
The word hangs heavy like an axe before the slaughter, cutting through the distant wails and the acrid, suffocating heat that floods the apartment. Maze's throat goes dry with the newness of the sound, and Lilith's eyes widen and sink in a curious melding of hopeful despair.
"Mom," Maze whispers, again, and this time the word summons forth emotion that's been boiling just under the surface for millennia. "Don't do this. I'm…I'm asking you, please. You can't undo the past. But you can be a mother, now. For—for me. Please."
"That's all I wanted to do," Lilith says, sadly. Her hand reaches out, hanging in a tentative offering. "I just wanted a chance to make it right."
The knocking, again. Loud and persistent, threatening to rattle the door from its hinges. Lilith glances up as if in a trance, and her hand drops back to her side before Maze can accept it with her own. When she starts for the door with a reluctant shuffle, Maze sidesteps her and cuts into her path.
"I have to send her away," Lilith murmurs.
"No, you don't," Maze sobs. "I'm right here."
She does what she wished she could have done in Reno; what she wished she could have done for all the lost millennia between them, and she hugs her mother. It's not her usual MO — short and gruff and painfully tight. It's tentative, and warm, and when Lilith's hands rise to tuck Maze against her shoulder she's crying at the closeness of a mother she's never felt.
"I'm sorry," Lilith says, and this time Maze can feel the anguish flood from her mother and pour into her newly-minted soul. The last time she'd been down here, she had been a master of inflicting pain. Now, standing in the ruins of a place that no longer feels like home, all she seems to be doing is soaking it up.
"I thought I was doing right by you." The knocking has died down with Lilith's refusal to answer, and she seems to have shaken herself from her stupor. She looks at Maze with a familiar, steely glint. "I won't make the same mistake again. My children are the only thing that matter. I'll stand by you, Mazikeen."
The knocking is back. It jars Lilith and Maze from their closeness, sending them wheeling around as it adopts a distinctly different tone from Fake Maze's pounding fist.
This time, there's a furious insistence to the sound — and it doesn't seem to vanish with Lilith's newly affirmed resolve. When neither makes a move to answer it flies open on its hinges, banging against the wall of the apartment and allowing a monumentally pissed-off Roriel admittance into the room.
"What the hell is going on?"
She looks simultaneously older and younger than when Maze had seen her only a few days prior. The staff in her hands, which Maze now clocks with a nervous flick of her tongue — is tinged with a blackness that runs in tendrils up its golden base. The hand she holds it with is red and raw, coated in a half-healed scar that shoots from her palm like a spiderweb. She looks more disheveled — more unraveled — than when she had approached them at Lucifer's house in the hills, but the anger that plays on her face is that of a child's.
"Rory," Lilith greets, with a mild countenance. "I'm afraid the deal's off."
Maze's eyes dart behind Rory, where the open door is leading out into the hallway and bringing a disgruntled-looking Michael into full view. He's trailing Rory by a few feet — it's abundantly clear the two had exchanged words before she'd burst into the room, as he's looking particularly miffed and sporting a blossoming bruise beneath the eye unobstructed by his scar.
Rory sputters. "The deal's off?" She laughs, incredulous. "What, one visit from one demon child knocks you off your game? You're weaker than I thought. Forget her," she insists, pointing haphazardly to Maze with an emphatic twist of the staff, "She's one of, what? A thousand? Ten thousand?"
Lilith's mellow smile fades. The grim expression that twists her features is mirrored on the daughter beside her. "She's my child," she hisses, "I thought I was doing this — helping you — for them. For her. To make up for my failings as a mother. To face my guilt. I never even asked them what they wanted. It was purely selfish. And if Maze is telling me no—" She looks to Maze, whose own steely resolve falters slightly into the shadow of a smile — "Then I won't desert her again. The answer is no."
Rory's eyes flicker dangerously close to an all-consuming black. The inky tendrils that are winding their way up the base of the staff seem to respond to her vitriol, edging further up the honey-colored wood in a slow, poisonous vice.
She laughs, finally, whipping around to face Michael. "And lemme guess? You flew her down here? Saint Michael?" When his gaze only narrows in response, she slams the point of the staff against the ground and turns her nose up at the wordless group before her. "Fine," she spits, "I'll just do it myself."
Thousands of years as Hell's preeminent torturer have imbued Maze with an uncanny set of reflexes. Reflexes that, now — here — click into first gear within a split second of Rory's heated declaration. She lunges at God's youngest angel, sending her barreling back with a grunt of surprise as they both tumble from the apartment. She pulls at the door as she sends Rory rearing back, trapping Lilith inside the relatively safe confines of her Hell-loop as the entrance seals with a hiss.
Rory screeches in frustration, pounding a fruitless fist against the door as it ripples and recedes into tattered columns.
"You bitch," she seethes, "You're always in my way."
"Funny," Maze says, voice cool as her feet find their grounding on the searing, ashen terrain. "I was thinkin' the same thing."
There's a heavy sigh behind them as Michael peels himself from the wall and limps forward. He throws his palms up in the air in a last-ditch attempt to preserve the quickly crumbling peace. "Ladies…"
"Shut up," Comes the chorused response. In agreement on one thing, at least. Michael rolls his eyes, cracking his neck with a scowl as he shuffles reluctantly to Maze's side.
"Sorry about this," Rory says, not sounding particularly sorry at all. "You both could have stood by my side. Remember that I offered. Remember I gave you a choice."
Maze has heard enough. Her thoughts flit briefly to Linda — to the two of them curled in a blanket on the couch, wine in hand as the TV blares in the background — and to Eve, pressed against her chest and trailing along the curve of her lips. The memories propel her forward with a snarl, arcing her curved blade just as Rory raises her staff and Michael's limp wings flap halfheartedly to life.
Maze and Michael's departure has left Lux desperately empty. There's nothing to do but wait for news — good or bad — and the gaping expanse of sun-drenched nightclub had become too claustrophobic for both Amenadiel and Eve. They had taken their nervous leave, leaving Chloe and Lucifer — and Patrick — without a further word.
Chloe knows they should talk about it. About Michael, about Maze, about Lilith. But her head is still pounding from his brush with Hell, and the resolute look that had met hers as he'd stood ready to deliver Maze is burning a gaping hole in her heart.
When she lifts her eyes to meet his, he's got that look again. That same one he'd fixed to her when she'd stepped in front of him; when she'd refused to move under the glint of Maze's blade. The look of a promise unfulfilled.
"That'll be all, Patrick."
When the bartender only lifts his head in vague confusion, hand still clutching a sponge, Lucifer's tilted growl makes both he and Chloe start.
"Go."
As Patrick's hurried footsteps recede into suffocating quiet and the slam of a door indicates his departure, Lucifer turns to Chloe with eyes blazing.
"Don't ever do that again," she whispers, voice thick as she surges toward him with a heated word. "That was so stupid, Lucifer, I know you're trying to help, but—"
She's not sure if it's meant to be a reprimand, or if she only means to remind herself that he's still here, in front of her. It doesn't matter what she means, though, because he's kissing her before she can get the rest of the words out, closing the distance between them in a swift movement and tangling his hands behind her head.
"Lucif—"
He steals his name from her lips, pushing her back with his chest flushed and warm against her own. She responds to him when her back connects with the edge of the bar, tipping her head to meet his and parting her lips to allow his kiss to venture deeper. She can feel him trembling against her, buzzing with desire as her hands slip from their bracing hold atop the counter and slide to his shirt.
He's moving faster than she can process, wrapping an arm behind her back and lifting her so that she's perched on the edge of the bar. His mouth never leaves hers as desperate hands tug on the loops of her jeans, raking a tongue across the seam of her lip as he yanks them down past her waist and lets them crumple to the floor.
She's similarly engaged, pawing at his waistband and freeing his shirttail from its usual state of tucked composure. He groans against her as blind fingers dig into his waist and shrug his pants down past his hips.
His movements have been so rapid that she hasn't even had a chance to breathe properly, settling for short, shallow gasps as her head rolls forward against his shoulder and his lips set to work on her neck. When he finally slows, lifting his mouth from her collar and staring at her with swollen lips and dark eyes, she stops breathing entirely.
She stares back at him, daring to break the silence between them with a soft, drawn blink. His hands pause, settled against her thighs, and suddenly she's all too aware of how freezing her bare legs are against the granite counter, and just how hot — searingly, achingly hot — his touch is.
She's never been one for excessive noise — or much noise at all, really. Despite her acting background, she had always found it difficult to let herself go entirely with a partner. She was always thinking about something: a case, Trixie, the gas bill she had forgotten to pay. Plus, she'd be lying if she said she wasn't a little self conscious. Jed had always hushed her with one hand gripping her hair and the other pressed to her mouth, citing a particular preference that her twenty-year-old self hadn't thought to challenge. Dan had carried on the legacy of similar silence, especially after Trixie had entered the picture — but, truth be told, even before her arrival Chloe hadn't had much impetus to put forth more than a halfhearted moan of appreciation.
Now, though, in the gaping aloneness of an empty club, with Lucifer's hands weighing on her thighs and his mouth hovering in patient longing at the base of her neck, she can't help the whine that begs him closer. Nor can she stop the sound from unfurling into a scrabbling moan as the hands against her legs drift upward with agonizing slowness.
She clamps down on her tongue, stifling the whimper that's building within her once more as his finger flits past black lace. As if he can read her mind, he recedes to the inside of her thigh, inciting a disappointed gasp.
"Why did you stop?" He murmurs, his teeth scraping against the shell of her ear.
"Stop…what?" She manages, pulling her head back from his wandering lips as his finger slides up to stroke her again. This time, she's unable to stop the ragged whine that escapes her and she bucks against his palm.
"That," he rumbles, circling his thumb against the underwear that she's now squirming to free herself from, lifting her hips from the countertop in an attempt to escape them. When he stops her motions with a firm hand and drags them down himself, she's no longer trying to smother the noises he encourages from her.
She grabs his wrist.
"Don't go…anywhere," she whispers, choking on the words as he curls a finger inside her. "Don't go anywhere I can't follow you. We're—" she draws in a sharp breath as he slides another inside, using his free hand to pull her body closer to the edge of the countertop — closer to him. "Partners."
He hums at her throat; a low purr of approval that echoes in her own chest as his lips leave her neck and drop to the curve of her breast.
"Promise," he mumbles, the vow hot against her. He nudges her knees further apart with his own, ignoring the strain against his boxers as she shudders at his touch and folds into his shoulder with a tattered cry.
When he removes his fingers she's still trembling against him, drawing in shallow breaths and clinging to his arms with ragged insistence. He waits for her to calm before he moves again, and when she presses her hand against his mouth he slides the tip of her finger between his lips, kissing it softly as her breathing evens.
"What do you…" her voice trails off, unsteady. For all the adoration he's affixed to her over the past five years, she's still remarkably nervous when it comes to this — when it comes to him. Not because she's worried about his prowess, or her measuring up— she's long since cleared that hurdle with the help of one Dr. Linda Martin — but because they're them. Because this is still new, and she's terrified to lose him the way she nearly did just hours ago, and because even after two engagements and a child she still has no idea how to summon up the sex appeal the way he does. Especially not when she's sitting on top of a bar in his very public club, in the middle of the day, with his knee pressed between her legs and his hands skating along the underside of her bra.
Lucifer would be inclined to disagree. No one — no one — has had the effect she's currently having on him: slightly-awkward, breathless questioning and all.
She tries again. "Should I…"
He knows exactly what she's asking — or trying to ask, with an adorably flustered blush crawling up her cheeks and a pair of hands tracing questioning patterns across the dip in his hips. She doesn't know if she should hop from the bar and lead him upstairs; if she should continue in her trek along his waistband — if he's even sure that Lux won't suddenly be swarmed by a platoon of borderline alcoholics thirsting for a midday drink.
Thankfully, he answers for her. He takes her hands from their fluttering position at his waist and deposits them back on the counter, holding her in place with a gentle kiss when she tries to wriggle from the bar.
"No," he rasps, breaking the kiss and nodding as she settles back in place. "I want you to stay."
Her hand finds its home in his hair as he bends, bracing his palms against her knees as his chin goes level with the edge of the bar and his breath puffs hot against her.
"I want this," he murmurs, answering her unfinished question for a second time. "I want you."
This time, she doesn't bite back the whine that burns in her throat as his tongue curves into her.
Somewhere very far from Lux, Maze's blade curves into Rory's staff in a deafening clatter of wood and steel.
"Give it up," Rory taunts, "A demon and an angel? Hardly a fair fight." She laughs, skirting Maze's strike with an easy, mocking speed. When she twists out of the way her face does that thing again — morphing into an indistinguishable blur that halts Maze's vicious attack. She blinks, hard, against the momentary confusion — but it's enough for Rory to swing at her with supernatural speed, catching her shoulder with the blackened point of the staff.
Maze cries out — more in anger than pain — and turns on Rory, who stands fully in-focus once more. Blood drips down her arm where a charred splinter had torn from the staff and ripped along her shoulder. She laughs slightly at the warmth that trickles down her wrist and drips to the ashen ground.
"Fuck you," she nods, hurling her blade at Rory's smug countenance.
There's a brief silence as Rory sidesteps the flying steel — she's not fast enough to avoid a wincing graze across her cheek, but a catlike dodge to the side sends the knife clattering against a nearby column rather than lodging itself between her eyes. She grins, pressing a palm to her cheek to staunch the flow of blood as Maze's face pales slightly.
"Oops," Rory smirks, dragging the fallen knife toward her with the point of the staff.
Before she can bend fully to retrieve her prize Michael is on her, slamming her against the same column Maze's knife has just rattled against. His mismatched shoulder is digging into the base of her neck, driving her back with a speed that flutters the measly wings on his back. Maze seizes the opportunity and snatches her knife, slashing at Rory's ankle as she kicks at Maze from the confines of Michael's chokehold.
Michael relinquishes his hold on his sister as Maze straightens and presses hooked steel to Rory's throat.
"Yeah," she says, returning Rory's smirk. "Hardly a fair fight."
The smile is still written on her lips when Rory slams the base of the staff into the ground, sending Michael flying back on a flimsy gust of air and loosing Maze's grip on her blade. It's all she needs to wriggle free; slipping beneath Maze's arm and slamming her in the back with a blunt blow. Maze's face careens into the column and black blood sprays the walls of Hell, thundering through the lonely halls with a wet, sickening crunch.
Rory staggers forward, limping against her sliced ankle as she raises the staff — now entirely black along most of its length — and poises it at Maze's hunched back with distinct finality.
"You know I can't let you do that," Michael calls, his voice resigned. "I wouldn't be good at the whole sacrifice thing if I just let her die, right?"
He shrugs, sighs heartily, and surges forward with impressive speed, gripping the base of the staff in a high-stakes, celestial game of tug-of-war. His wings flap at his sides and batter her with a violent flurry of relentless wind and she responds in turn, rolling her own shoulders with a spirited chuckle and unfurling a set of fully-plumed, honey-colored wings.
"How embarrassing for you, to bend the knee twice," She scoffs. "But do it now, and I might just let you off the hook. Put you in one of these…cells, instead of killing you right here."
Maze has recovered slightly from her slam to the wall and turns weakly to face them, eyes bleary and blurred with the haze of blood that runs from her brow to her chin.
"Screw her," she shouts to Michael. "We did it. She won't have her army. We're done here. Don't waste your life on her, just bend it."
Michael shakes his head, softly. There's a burning resolution in his marred gaze. "I'm not done here," he mutters. "I took Lucifer's spot. I volunteered to replace him. And he would…" he swallows dryly, flicking his gaze from a panting Rory back to Maze. "He would do everything he could to get you back up."
The words seem to light his resolve into fully-fledged promise, and with the spoken oath comes a blossoming set of steel-gray wings, blooming with silky feathers where they had moments before withered and pelted to the ground. He doesn't waste a moment admiring the fruits of successful self-actualization: he only swipes them toward Rory, meeting her own wings in a locked standoff as Maze struggles to her feet.
Chloe comes apart with legs wrapped around Lucifer's shoulders and hands dragging through his hair, urging him closer as his nose nuzzles against her heat and his tongue traces lazy, unhurried circles.
He doesn't stop when she bucks against his mouth. If anything it only spurs him on, burying a wicked purr between her legs and barely allowing the gasp to settle on her lips before diving down again.
When she's scrabbling at his mussed hair he straightens, grinning darkly at her sharp puff of discontent. He reaches behind her, stretching his full weight against her chest as he snakes a hand behind her back and plucks a glass from the bar. It's Patrick's abandoned cup of water, still frosty and clinking gently with ice.
He takes a long, languid sip, dark eyes never leaving her own. When he casts the glass aside and leans to kiss her, she gasps at the biting chill of an ice cube and the taste of herself dancing on his tongue. He pulls away before the heat of her lips can melt the ice swirling between his own, bending his head once more as her knees settle over his bowed shoulders.
She whimpers at the frozen kiss he places to her thigh, squirming as his lips trail upward and combat the heat curling at her core with icy insistence.
"Cold, Detective?" He teases, pausing and slipping the ice between his teeth as she rolls her hips against him.
The opposite, she wants to say, but her mind is hanging on by a thread. The sight of his hands holding her legs apart and the blossoming spots of red on her thigh where he's trailed the ice against her is already more than she can process.
"Keep going," she chokes.
"As you wish," he murmurs, sliding the ice back to her skin. This time it's more than a whimper that flies from her lips as his tongue arches around her and the scorching heat of him melds in fevered harmony with the numbing chill he drags against her.
"Fuck," she hisses, and her hands fly from his hair to grasp at his shoulders.
"Come again?" He rumbles, with a faint chuckle that echoes through her. She's not sure if the words, spoken devilishly soft and low against the ache between her legs — are meant as a teasing question or a command — so she fulfills both, falling apart with an obscene word as the heat of his lips melts the final brush of ice against her.
Now, finally he lets her rest, straightening fully and urging her back against her elbows as he positions himself between her legs.
"Lucifer," she murmurs, eyes bleary. Her lips are hanging heavy on the moan that's just escaped them, and the fingers that had bunched in the folds of his shirt are now pressed weakly to the cool stone of the countertop.
"I thought about this," he whispers, the words hoarse against her ear. "Wanted you…" he pauses, drawing in a sharp breath as Chloe winds down to his boxers and strokes him through the fabric with a brazen smile. He leans reflexively into her, powerless in her grasp.
"Wanted me when?" She urges as her confidence builds, wrapping her legs around the back of his thighs and pulling him to her. He moans as his hips roll into hers, thrusting against the fabric that still separates them.
"Every time," he mumbles, "Every time…you've been here…with me."
Her mind snaps to the earlier days of their partnership: to the times she'd shown up here, at Lux, out-of-place, underdressed, and he'd urged her to stay, to dance with him, to laugh against the rapid thrumming of his heart. Had he wanted her then? Wanted to worship her the way he's begging to, now?
He seems to read her mind, again.
"Every time," he growls, and this time her hands don't stop to tease him, shrugging the boxers from his hips and sinking her lips against the lobe of his ear as he plunges into her with a tilted groan.
He's looking at her with a wild, feral glint, staring at her like she's the last star in a pitch black night and he's chasing her light. When his strokes finally slow and the tameless look in his eyes shifts to something softer, his head falls against her neck and his stubble rakes along the base of her throat. He captures the curve of her breast with his tongue, leaving a searing line of kisses along the valley of her chest.
"Chloe," he whispers. Her name on his lips, rough and ragged and pleading, tugs at the throbbing between her legs with ruthless demanding. It's enough to send her to the edge as he slips out of her, fully, letting her sink with the absence of him before he fills her again. It's her turn to read his mind, watching him through hazy, lidded eyes as he holds his gaze inches from her own. He's thinking about it again; he's got that look — thinking about the plea she'd sobbed on the dance floor, begging him to stay — that same plea she'd gasped minutes ago, again, against his fingers, and the vow he'd sworn at her hips.
"Chloe," he pants again, her name hot on his lips like a stuttered prayer as he buries himself further inside her, "I promise."
She fractures on the edge of his promise, and takes him with her.
The smug light in Rory's eyes has waned at the sight of her brother's wings renewed. Her own wings tremble, fluffing in a nervous lilt as Michael dwarfs her stature.
"Mazikeen," he calls, his voice louder — more steady — than she's heard before. "We're going. Now." His eyes never leave Rory.
Rory stumbles slightly as Maze shoves past her, kept from lunging at the demon by the point of Michael's wing at her breast. The staff is twitching in Rory's hand, and she flexes the raw, reddened palm that lays restless against the wood. She watches with black eyes as Maze wipes the congealed blood from her forehead and allows Michael's arm to drape roughly across her waist.
There's a curious look in Rory's eyes. Not anger, not defeat — something else, something…concentrated, festering just beneath a wave of rippled focus.
"Thought for sure you weren't getting back," Maze croaks, as Michael's newly-plumed wings thrum to life and lift them steadily from the ashen ground. "Which means I wasn't either, I guess."
"Yeah, well," he mutters, lips flush against her ear as he clutches her to him, "Funny how things have a way of working out."
"Mm," she responds, eyes blurry with the blood that drips past heavy lids. She can sense that they're moving faster, now, and up — up away from Rory, past the looming walls of steel gray that wind in coiled, labyrinthian misery.
Even through the fog that clouds her vision she can see the light — white and blinding against the smoggy atmosphere — that awaits beyond the tip of the highest column.
Home.
She allows her eyes to close as the beating of Michael's wings grows louder, and as the blinding rays grow closer.
If they had been open, she might have seen the peculiar expression on Rory's face morph into one of decided purpose; might have seen her take off after Michael with effortless speed.
Her wings are smaller, and far less intimidating than those of her archangel brother's — but she's faster. Much faster; and much more agile, too, darting past the jutting columns Michael had had to skirt with a heavy flap of great, billowing wings.
She reaches him before he can cross the threshold, just as he nears the tip of the highest column of Hell and just as the longest feathers on his shoulders tickle the piercing rays of light.
Maze feels her, then; feels the gust of wind that signals her approach. She opens her eyes too late.
The staff reaches them before Rory does. She's thrown it point-first like a javelin, hurling it upwards as she continues her furious ascent. There's a roar that rattles the surface of Hell, parting the blackened, hazy clouds as the darkened point rips through Michael's stainless wing and passes cleanly out the other side.
Maze writhes in his grasp, turning to stare at the gaping, bloodied hole that mars his right wing. Michael's wail is barely dead on his lips when Rory appears in front of him, cheeks flushed as she catches the staff with a waiting palm and hoists the reddened tip towards him once more.
In the split second before Rory strikes again Michael throws Maze from his grasp, sending her tumbling through dense, pallid air. Her hands reach blindly for something, anything, and her body connects with the jagged edge of Hell's highest, most precarious pillar as her feet scrabble for a toehold. She pulls herself up with a strained grunt, squinting against the blinding light that peeks through swirling charcoal clouds. She's half-tempted to raise a hand to the sky, to try and touch the hint of home that peeks through hellish darkness.
The idea fades when Michael howls again. He's thrust his wing in front of his chest, defending his heart from the brutal point of the staff as Rory launches it toward him. The defense is successful — his chest is spared from the bloodied, blackened tip — but the staff cuts through his remaining wing with a nauseating crunch.
He hovers uncertainly in the air as wind gusts through newly-formed, gaping holes. He flaps once, fruitlessly, and a searing whistle hums through the tattered feathers, beating him back and pushing him further from the light. He steals a glance at Maze, who clutches the pillar beside him like a scrabbling spider.
He's terrified.
He doesn't beg; doesn't grovel as he slips further down and as his wings lose their command over the dense air. Fear glitters and hardens in his dark eyes.
He flaps once more — a final, shuddering roll of his shoulders that sends him careening uncertainly toward Maze. The action spends him, and he reaches for a grasp against the same column she clings to as his blood pours into nothingness.
"Go home, Mazikeen," he groans, through gritted teeth. The fist that isn't bunched against cold stone balls at his side and catches Rory under the jaw as she soars forward, staff raised. He sends his younger sister reeling, but only for a moment — the hand that braces against the column slips with the effort and he slides further down with a weighted bat of his tired wings.
When Maze hesitates, ever so slightly, his lips contort to a smiling snarl.
"Go," he hisses, "I'm not doing this for my health."
She can't help a dry, humorless chuckle from bubbling up at the twisted words. She nods once, a firm, knowing tuck of her head that he reciprocates as Rory plunges toward them again.
He uses the hand that holds him in place as a springboard, focusing his last reserves of trickling energy as he drums his wings together and propels Maze up — up, and through the final break of clouds as her foot connects with his hand and she hurtles from his grasp. Rory seizes the opportunity of his occupied attention and thrusts the staff between his mismatched shoulders, freezing time for an agonizing moment as he straightens — finally, straightens to his full, unburdened height — against the blow before falling forward upon the point that protrudes from his chest.
Maze turns her head for a split second, scrabbling toward the light. He coughs against a ragged gasp as the staff slips out of him with a splintering crunch.
"Tell Lucifer," he chokes, "Tell him I did it."
Rory cries out — a strangled, frustrated cry — as she watches Maze drag herself from the depths of hell and disappear into the blinding light.
When she turns back the staff that had pinned Michael to the murky air is gone, returned to her hand, and he's falling — vanishing into blackness with ruined wings held high on even shoulders.