Chloe doesn't hear Rory approach: doesn't hear the shaky clatter of the staff as it drags nearer. Her ears are ringing with the rumble of his last words and her lips are buried in the tangled mess of his hair, pleading against limp curls. He's pinning her legs to the floor, draped across her lap with the same, weighty insistence that had greeted her in the spaces of their few uninterrupted mornings together, when he had sunk his head against her thigh and let her trace the rising sun across his chin. He doesn't respond to her touch now like he had, then — with a shy smile and a soft, reverential gaze. He doesn't respond at all.
She folds over his chest, dragging a hand along the length of his bloodied shirt as her forehead drops to his breast.
Please, please, please.
"That's not fair, Lucifer," she whimpers, choking on stained cotton. "You said forever."
She starts at a sharp inhale above her, jerking her head from Lucifer's chest to find Rory looming uncertainly where her brother had stood only moments before. The staff is drooping from her grasp, dangling like a useless limb.
Chloe stares at her, letting the friction of their matched gaze spark the flattened flame within her. She reaches for the hilt of the knife buried snugly in the bunched silk of Lucifer's pocket square and yanks it out unceremoniously, pointing the blade toward Rory with a trembling hand.
"Don't," she whispers, burning with a new brand of fire unrecognizable even to her. It's scorching her gaze, melting blue eyes into black onyx. "Don't touch him."
Rory blinks at her, and for the first time — for the first, real time, the look that passes over her face isn't lethal, or laced with irascible condescension. She looks like a child: utterly, completely lost in a mess of her own making.
"I…" she stares down at her brother; at the wings that lay gray and scrunched at a broken angle. "I didn't…"
"Didn't what?" Chloe says, hitched on the question. Even her breath is stained with tears, breaking from her lips like a swimmer gasping for air. The blade quivers in her hand, and the steel hilt clicks along the silver band of her ring. "Didn't want this?"
She catches the breath before it dissolves into a sob and swallows it back. "Yes you did," she says. "You did this."
Rory tears her gaze from Lucifer, fixing Chloe with wide eyes. "I didn't tell them to," she says, clawing for some absolution from the crumpled form at her feet. "They didn't listen. I didn't want them to attack you, I—"
"This is your fault," Chloe murmurs, deaf to the rambled chatter Rory spews forth. The words are hollow; empty in their realization and devoid of boiling rage despite the unfamiliar fire churning at her core. She stares down at Lucifer; at the blood that's seeped from his breast and mingled with the darkness of her jeans. She's seen plenty of corpses — seen how they shrink into themselves after death like a slipping, pale shadow. But he's not like that. He looks regal: proud, despite the ashen wings and the freezing, insipid whiteness that chills his tanned skin.
He looks … divine. Even now, even still.
She clutches him tighter, bending further across his chest in an effort to drag him closer to her own. The flame that coils within her — furious and red-hot where it had only ever burned white — licks at her breast as she presses herself to him, matching the fluttering rhythm of her heart.
"He loved you," Chloe says, ripping her eyes from him as fresh tears batter the silence. "And you threw it away." The next words are grating, tearing along the shards of her heart. "He loved me," she says. "You threw that away, too. You took that from me."
She's not sure why she's so calm — why she doesn't scream, or lunge for Rory the way she had such a short time ago with Michael. It's not because she doesn't have Amenadiel's necklace, or because Lucifer's heavy weight is anchoring her to the floor. It's something else, something steely that grips the shattered pieces of her heart and hardens them against the overwhelming silence of his absence.
If Linda were here, she'd tell her the same thing she'd told Trixie, all those weeks ago.
It's denial.
Not the shaky, breathless denial that loses itself against an unrelenting truth. This denial is its own truth, hard and fast and unwavering in its resolution. For the first time in all her years as a detective she refuses the evidence that's been handed so brutally to her: doesn't thrash at Rory, or loose the scream that waits beyond her lips, because she refuses the body that lays splayed across her lap.
Her words seem to have struck a chord with Rory, who snaps from her floundering haze. She squeezes her eyes shut and raps the staff on the ground in a frantic attempt to jar herself back to the focus of her original intent.
"He didn't love me," Rory retorts, finding her footing once more but slipping ever still on the words. "None of them did. I was alone up there. I have always been alone. Don't pretend like—like you get it." Her voice stings, and her breaths are more violent — more insistent — than her usual, cutting edge. Chloe knows the tone all too well: that desperate, frantic appeal to rationale that so often accompanied a cornered suspect's last stand.
"Is that what you think?" Chloe's voice is flat. She lowers the blade; her left hand isn't used to the weight, and there's no point, anyway. She won't attempt to avenge him, not when she still refuses to accept the frozen skin grazing against her own. She laughs weakly: a hollow, incredulous note. "Is that why you want to start over? So that you don't have to be alone anymore?"
Rory stares. Her eyes darken in the near-blackness, narrowing with a twinge of defensive resentment.
"This was never about justice," Chloe hisses. Her legs are numb where Lucifer's weight is applying limp pressure, and her right wrist — flush against his chest — is throbbing with a mottled ache. "You don't have a clue what justice is."
"Oh, yeah? And you think you do? At least I'm trying. Nobody knows—"
"HE DID!" The dam breaks, and fire trickles through the cracks in her armored refusal, melting down the steel pieces of her heart like molten lava. "He knew," Chloe sobs, and the blistering light within her keens beneath her scar. "He was good, he was all good, and you took him from me."
"Shut up," Rory says, faltering slightly under the blazing inferno of her gaze. "Shut up." She holds the staff out to the space between them, shoving it forth with renewed vigor. She pinches her eyes shut, muttering a heated mantra beneath her breath with spiked fervor. She opens them once more when the only sounds that accompany her rapid, breathless whispering are Chloe's hitched breaths and the gentle hum of her ring as golden fire laps at her fingers.
"Why isn't it working?" she growls, shaking the staff like a child might rattle a defective toy. It hangs charred and pathetic at her side, unresponsive to whatever hushed muttering she'd been enticing it with. "It should be working. I don't—" She turns on Chloe, stepping closer and nudging the staff inches from her neck. Chloe stares back in immutable defiance, unmoving as blackened chips of wood flake off and blanket Lucifer's shirt.
"It's not right," Rory says, her voice pitched. "You—" she thrusts the point forward again, and it comes dangerously close to grazing the exposed skin of her neck; to drawing forth the same scream that had been yanked from her when it had brushed her temple. "He's dead," she pants, "You should feel guilty. You should have lost the piece. That was the last step. I should—" her gaze drops to the staff; to the smudged, webbed scar across her palm — "It should be working," she repeats, haplessly.
Chloe doesn't respond. Her hair falls lightly over Lucifer's arched features as she lays the knife down gently on the concrete, careful not to graze her neck against the sharpened point that hovers inches from her throat. When the blade is laying with a wistful glint on the ground — when her left hand is free of curved steel — she lifts her palm with cool conviction and wraps it around the staff.
She doesn't shy from the contact the way she had with Cain; doesn't scream the way she had when he'd forced the connection upon her. She urges the staff to fold into her touch, this time: accepts it of her own volition just as she'd learned to harness the light within her so many nights ago.
Rory's grip slackens as she blinks back sudden surprise. Chloe tugs the staff further into her grasp, and her palm tears on charred splinters as it slides up tangled wood. Rory is muttering again, trying to yank the staff back into her sole possession as she wills it to life under her hushed orders. But Chloe's hold is strong — fiercely, unswervingly strong, despite the exhaustion gripping her wrist and the tears burning a path down her cheeks — and the desperate light burning her core flares with the contact like gas to a flame. She can't hear what Rory hisses with such frenzied urgency over the sound of her own thoughts — over the crackling, amplified fire within her and the gentle rumble of Lucifer's voice that she begs to the forefront of her mind.
She closes her eyes against Rory's vicious stare and pictures Lucifer, instead: wrapped in the golden light of the penthouse with lips pressed to the white stone on her finger.
I want you to choose me. Always. Forever.
Her eyes flicker open, shaded black under the heat of immovable resolution. Her left hand tightens on the staff and her right — quelled in its throbbing by the rushing warmth that surges through it — splays across Lucifer's heart and drapes over his still-weeping wound. The light, familiar in its presence and yet entirely new in its current desperation, seeps through her fingers and scorches the base of the staff, creeping up the blackened wood with blinding insistence.
Her thoughts drift briefly to Dan — to the sight of him reaching for Heaven through the gaping door — and to the theory she'd posited to Lucifer what seems like a lifetime ago. She'd done it: they'd done it, as partners — willed Dan to Heaven and purified a life unjustly taken. The raging heat within her seems to affirm her hypothesis: the wood creaks with a jagged ache, and the shadow cast across it begins to lift as she wills the piece within her to purify the rest. It groans in satisfaction as it retakes its golden hue, overwhelming the blackness under the direction of her palm.
Rory howls in pain as the last dregs of darkness slip away under Chloe's purifying grasp. Her hand — already scarred from her first altercation with Chloe in the hills — burns anew with the blistering light that careens through the staff. It falls from her hand with a searing yelp, and its full weight concedes to Chloe, who buckles slightly and leans against Lucifer's heavy form as Rory's hold on the other half dissolves.
For a moment there's silence, punctuated only by the crackling hum of the staff as it burns with freshly returned light. Rory's eyes gleam black and frantic in the dark and she shrinks against the shadowed corner; shrinks the way her brother had refused to even in death. Chloe doesn't look at her — doesn't speak to her, or threaten her with the newly minted piece of Heaven in her palm. She looks at Lucifer, instead: at the way the light of the staff hovering just above him dissolves his pale tarnish and casts his face in a familiar golden glow.
She closes her eyes and begs the light within her for one last miracle, one last time. Her head falls to his heart and the staff in her hands drapes lengthwise across his chest and she prays — to the light, to the sliver of Heaven that lingers beyond the blackness, to him. The piece within her joins in incandescent harmony with the thrumming staff in her hand, and the scar across her stomach threatens to burst at its tattered seams.
Her breath is hot against his breast, spoken against the heart he'd given her time and time again.
"Forever," she whispers, and then she's wrapping him in a white-hot embrace as God's light swarms the corners of Hell.
The heart beneath her palm drums to life with a searing jolt, shoved into action by the tidal wave of Heavenly light that crashes through the staff and her fingers. Lucifer's head shoots from her lap with a violent gasp, and the chest she leans across trembles with shallow panting.
The moment he sucks in a ragged breath, the blinding light that surrounds them vanishes, as if drawn entirely into his desperate inhale. Chloe droops over him as the fire that had overtaken her dissipates as quickly as it had flared, leaving her drained and gasping for breath. The staff rolls from her grasp and joins the abandoned blade on the concrete beside them, still honeyed in its hue but no longer burning with incessant, white-hot fever. Rory sits slumped against the wall opposite them, red wings pressed against ashen cement. She looks smaller without the staff — far less imposing, and the palm that lays splayed and open beside her is burning with a fresh scar that intertwines with the old.
For the first time, Chloe can't feel the light traipsing through her; can't summon up the fire with so much as a concerted glance. There's only a hollow dullness stretching across the seam of her scar, and the crooked ache has returned to her wrist as the warmth dissipates. But she can feel it in him — heating the freezing limbs that had tangled in her lap and rushing through his quiet heart with echoing insistence. When he opens his eyes they meet her with familiar, twinkling darkness, but there's a golden ring encircling the blackness like a halo.
He blinks, slowly, as if to assure himself that the blue eyes which hang desperate and waiting above his own are real — are hers.
"Detective," he smiles, his voice rocky. "I told you you could do it."
A sob breaks free and she throws herself over him, burying her lips in the crook of his neck. Her hands graze over him, trailing across his chest and fumbling beneath his jacket. She gasps, slightly, when they come away clean — when the blood that had leaked without regard for her pleas no longer stains her palms.
"You're okay," she whispers, the words breathless against his neck. She lifts her head and studies him as tears trace her cheeks. "You're — it's real?"
The smile widens, warm and soft and free of the blood that had stained his teeth. He peels his hand from his side and lifts it gently to her jaw, brushing over her with delicate piety.
"Mm," he hums. "It would certainly appear so."
"How?" She breathes, the words caught in his fingers as he reaches to capture her tears.
His gaze slides to the staff beside them and she follows him, running searching eyes across the knotted wood. Amenadiel's voice rings in her ears, cool and clear in the shattered darkness. It grows with its owner, he had decreed, that day in the penthouse — molds to their will.
She had willed him back, and the staff had listened.
Lucifer watches the realization dawn on her face, freeing the numbness in her legs as he stirs from her lap and sits up with hands braced against the concrete. She stands shakily and extends her left hand to him, cradling her right to her breast with a tired wince. He accepts her offer, threading warm fingers through her own and tugging gently at her weight as he rises to his feet. He dwarfs her instantly: where he'd nestled in the confines of her lap with pale affection he now towers over her shoulder. His wings, wrinkled and torn to the tendon, shudder as a layer of congealed dust rattles to the ground.
He traps the staff under a red-soled foot as he looks at her, gazing up at him in shocked understanding. "I never knew you cared," he purrs. He's teasing her: teasing her with a tilted head and a soft lilt even in the darkest depths of Hell — even as he shakes himself from the grip of death with the help of her offered hand.
Fresh tears prick her eyes and the beginning of a laugh bubbles in her throat, thrust to her lips by a wave of overwhelming relief. She turns into him, intent on dragging his mouth to hers, but a weak cough splinters the sacred space between them.
The teasing glimmer in Lucifer's eyes flickers and fades as his gaze falls on Rory, curled with her hands gripping her knees and her wings shrouding her shoulders. She raises a shielded gaze, meeting her brother's immovable stare with a drawn, black blink. The golden band that encircles his dark irises glints like sharpened steel; a glittering reminder of Heavenly intervention.
Without Lucifer's crumpled form anchoring her heart to her chest, white-hot fury seizes Chloe where shocked detachment had previously reigned. She's trembling with burning rage as Rory's uneven gaze flicks between the both of them, even without the familiar flame fluttering between her ribs. Her jaw sets, and this time it's she who steps in front of Lucifer with a barred arm pressed to his waist.
She's bristling; quivering with pitched anger so palpable it sends Rory scrunching further into the shadowed corner. "I'm sorry," Rory blurts, the words frantic.
Lucifer lays a gentle hand atop Chloe's arm and her rage recedes like a low tide, still lapping with mild insistence in the fevered blue of her eyes. He leaves her protective grasp, clicking across the concrete without so much as a word to acknowledge Rory's rushed atonement. He stops when he's looming over her; when her crimson wings are brushing feebly against his knees.
"I'm sorry," she says again, staring up at him with blown eyes. "Luci. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to — but — but, you're back, and…and it's fine, now. Everything's fine. I'll — I won't touch the staff again. I swear. I'm sorry. Luci. I'm sorry. I swear."
He rolls the staff towards himself with the point of his shoe, bending neatly to pluck it from the ground when it approaches. Rory whimpers as he wraps an easy palm around it and extends it to her, point first. When he doesn't make any move to jab it further she blinks up at him in uneasy silence and circles a tentative hand around the offered base, grunting slightly as he tugs on his end and helps her to stand. When he pulls it back into his grasp she folds at the chest, cowing with all the deference of a scolded child.
"What are you doing?" She demands, glancing between him and Chloe in skittish apprehension. She rolls her shoulders slightly — that same, nervous twitch Chloe had come to associate with Lucifer — and her wings stutter on the snag of her voice. "You can't — you can't hurt me. You're God. You're God. I — you are. So you — you can't hurt me." She swallows back dry, suffocating fear. "Right?"
Chloe is silent. She doesn't offer up her thoughts to him as she'd done so many times before; doesn't attempt to counsel him as he stands at the brink of divine determination. She doesn't speak, because there's a part of her screaming for him to bury the staff in Rory's heart — a part so insidious she's afraid it will slip free should she part her lips.
But that's not her. That's Rory's justice — the selfish vengeance of a lost soul. It's not her justice: the Detective's justice — the kind she's striven to impart upon the angel beside her for years and sought to uphold herself for so, so much longer.
"He could," Chloe murmurs. Her voice cuts through Rory's tortured pleading and steals the response building on Lucifer's tongue. He turns to face her, nodding imperceptibly as she speaks the next words. "But he won't."
"No," Lucifer concedes, passing the staff between his hands. "I won't." It's difficult to return to his sister's cowering stare; to tear his gaze from Chloe when she's standing there lit with unceasing loyalty. She'd followed him to Hell and pulled him from death and now, here, she stamps out the flames of broken anger and throws her faith on him, instead.
He folds his hands together in the cluttered silence and bends his head, summoning forth a brief prayer as Rory stands with eyes cast down before him. Gabriel appears in a matter of seconds, flushed and panting and altogether red in the face.
She looks directly past Lucifer and stares at Chloe, blowing a strand of curled hair from her face. "Damn!" She points to Chloe. "You are the talk of the town. And by town I mean, like, the Silver City. You are setting things on fire, girl! And I do mean that literally." She snorts, and nudges Lucifer. He blinks at her.
She shakes her head, her hair bobbing with the movement. She seems to notice Rory in her peripheral and goes rigid, warm features dissolving into a frigid grimace.
"Why did you call me here, Lucifer?" she mutters, staring down Rory like one might eek away from a rabid dog. Rory maintains her pointed staring contest with the floor. Gabriel affects an exaggerated stage-whisper, murmuring from the side of her mouth as she steps back. "She's nuts."
"I need a favor," Lucifer says cooly.
"For…you?" Gabriel asks, casting an uncertain glance to Rory.
Rory's gaze rises slightly, meeting Lucifer's with a hopeful glimmer. He nods. "And for her."
Gabriel frowns. The hint of a smile curves Rory's lips and she lifts her head higher. Her signature smirk edges back across her features as relief wafts over her, and she opens her mouth to loose a smug "I knew you wouldn't do anything, not really" when Lucifer continues, and wipes the burgeoning grin from her face.
"Mum's universe," he says, softly. "Can you get back there?"
Gabriel scoffs. "I can get anywhere. Angel of gossi—of messages. Duh. Not that I'd head there on my day off. The centaurs were way too weird for me. It's like, are you a dude, or a horse? You know, like—" she fades out at the gathered looks — at Lucifer's impassive stare, at the dawning understanding breaking over Chloe's face, at Rory's slipping smile. "Yeah," she says, clearing her throat. "I can get there."
"I want you to take her."
"What?" Rory interjects, peeling herself from the wall and surging forward with her scarred palm raised. "Wait. Lucifer. What are you talking about?"
Lucifer turns to fix his sister with cool composure, and Chloe's leaps with a flitting swell of pride. Rory's petulance is familiar — he'd affixed the same, callow whining to Chloe when they'd first met, years ago — but that was before. Before everything. Before her.
"I won't take your life," Lucifer repeats, his voice mild. "It won't bring back the ones you've stolen. But you can't stay here. In Heaven. In Hell. On Earth. You've made a mess, Rory."
"I said I'm sorry," she pleads, the words empty.
"But you don't know what you're sorry for," Lucifer says softly. "It's not your fault you don't know. You're lost. You're confused. I know, because I was, too. I was the forgotten son, cast down here for all eternity. I was alone. I lost myself. I didn't have anyone to show me the way, until —" he falters, slightly, and his gaze slips to Chloe, standing in watchful silence beside him. "You need help that I can't give you," he says. "You need to grow up. And you can't do it like I did. Mum and dad, they're together now. They've got nothing but time. Perhaps —" he draws in a breath, and his wings shiver with the motion, "Perhaps now they can do right by you, the way they couldn't do for me."
"You—" she laughs, incredulous, petering out when Lucifer doesn't break into a teasing smile. "No, you can't be serious. You're gonna — what, you're gonna ground me? You're gonna send me to mom? To Dad? I just escaped him, Lucifer, this was supposed to be my chance to do better, to be better than him, I—" she furrows her brows; puffs her wings in a flourish of rebellious ire. "What if I say no?" She crosses her arms, glaring at Gabriel with a scrunched snarl. "What if I just refuse?"
He stares down at her with arched, marbled features. "I don't think that's what you truly desire," he murmurs. "I think you want to go."
She scoffs.
"I don't think you want to be alone, Rory. That's what you'll be here. Alone. Cast out, like I was. I'm giving you a chance. A proper chance to grow up."
"I—" she blinks haplessly at him, like a fish out of water, and finally her gaze lands on Chloe — wide and desperate.
"What if I ruined that, too?" She whispers. "What if they don't want me?"
Chloe swallows back the last dregs of anger; pictures Trixie before her, begging for forgiveness. She can't forgive her like she did Michael — not when it's his life she took, instead of her own — but she speaks the truth, nonetheless. "It's a parent's job to love their child," she says, softly. "No matter what."
Rory drops her eyes, and there's a low, pathetic sniffle from her shaded corner as she drags her scarred hand across her cheek. She shuffles forward, tucking her wings away as she walks to Gabriel with a hung head.
"Fine," Rory mumbles, the words nearly imperceptible. Gabriel reaches for her arm with some reluctance, looking to Lucifer for reassurance as she takes her sister's hand.
"O-kay," Gabriel chirps, dripping with feigned cheer as she attempts to alleviate the cloying tension. "See ya around, I guess." She grimaces at her own word choice and shrugs at Rory. "Well, maybe not you."
Rory lifts her gaze one final time as Gabriel grips her arm, nodding to the staff in Lucifer's grip. She seems calmer, without the crutch of the staff and stripped of the darkened countenance to match. More at peace, despite her failed plan and despite the less than appealing future that awaits beyond Gabriel's grasp. More…mature. "For what it's worth," she says, her stare scraping along the floor as it climbs to meet Lucifer's. She shrugs her shoulders, slightly. "You'll be a good God."
Gabriel's wings unfurl, the only untarnished set amongst them — and Rory vanishes in the wake of a powerful gust, leaving only a crimson feather where she had stood.
Chloe and Lucifer stand in the wake of sudden stillness, stunned into silence by the abruptness of Rory's departure. The untucked edges of Lucifer's shirt lift with the gust of Gabriel's exodus, and the strands of hair that have come undone from Chloe's ponytail dance about her face.
Lucifer gropes for her hand in the dim light and finds it, steady now where it had trembled over his heart only minutes ago. He tugs her into his chest, tucking her head beneath his chin and wrapping a broad hand around the nape of her neck.
Neither speaks, stretching the silence for a long, unbroken second. She breathes against the gentle drumming of his heart and presses a cheek to the steady fire in his breast — to the warmth that had belonged to her. She smiles, and the curve of her lips rumples the torn fabric of his shirt. "You did it," she murmurs, laughing softly even as shards of white ash rain from the ceiling and remind them of their hellish station.
"Hardly," he rumbles, his lips grazing the crown of her head. His thumb trails gently down her neck and back up again. "But then, you always did do the heavy lifting, Detective." He returns her laugh, low and even and swimming in clarified relief.
"She's gone?" Chloe asks, turning her head slightly from his chest to stare at the lone feather on the floor, quickly vanishing under the falling ash that piles atop it. "For good? For real?"
His chin bobs against her as he nods. "Only Gabriel can pass between universes. Rory won't be coming back. She'll be with Dad, for better or for worse. And mum, now." He pauses. "It's over."
She can sense his slight hesitance — that same reticence that had followed on the heels of Uriel's altogether necessitated demise. Rory had to go: there was no debate there, but she can feel the loss of yet another sibling piling upon his shoulders like a leaden weight. Two of them, in the matter of as many days — and three in the span of as many years.
"Lucifer," she breathes, pulling back to look him in the eyes. "She wanted to start over. It's why she did — tried to do — all of this. And now, you're…you're letting her. Maybe she doesn't realize it now, maybe — maybe she won't, until a thousand years from now. But she's getting her blank slate. You gave her what she needed, just…just not in the way she thought she needed it." She searches his expression. "You did good."
His gaze softens, and the flecks of golden light that dot his stare gleam like starlight.
"A team effort, then," he concedes, as he allows his forehead to drop against hers. She tips her head up and grazes his lips with her own, tracing a finger down the length of his forearm in muted agreement. She winces when he reaches instinctively for her right wrist, eager to pull her closer, and he frowns as his fingers fly back.
"Not now." She wards him off before he can apologize; before he can fuss over the purpled wrist she cradles at her chest. "Let's just…get out of here, first. Then you can send Maze over to bandage me up, again." She smiles, blue eyes crinkling with the light jab as the ache dissipates under the warmth of his touch.
He opens his mouth to protest, but her stare sends him slinking back before he can start.
"The light," she blurts, in an effort to sway his fixed attention from her wrist. "It's…I can't feel it, anymore. I think I…gave it to you."
"Mm," he chirps, flexing his hand as the same golden warmth that swarms his gaze thaws his fingertips. "I think you're right, Detective." Even as he says the words, he can feel the spark that had jolted him to life dissipating — the golden ring in his eyes fades darker with each, drawn blink, and the thrumming fire within his chest dies as the color floods back to his skin. "Some of it, at least," he says.
He pauses, and cracks a pensive smile. "First my mojo, now this. It would seem we're quite fond of sharing."
She looks up at him, the ghost of a smile painting her lips as the searing heat recedes from his touch. "It's what partners do, right?"
He returns her gaze, glittering even as the golden flecks grow scarcer and the soft blackness returns to his stare. "Indeed," he murmurs.
He steps back, tearing his fingers reluctantly from their perch atop her arm. "I believe I promised you a ride home, Detective," he purrs, rolling his shoulders and stretching his tired wings to their fullest length. They creak with the movement, sending a few stray, hanging feathers fluttering to the floor in a pathetic flurry. The jagged tears from the demon blades are still leaking blood, staining whatever feathers had until now managed to remain untarnished. He grimaces under the angry weight of them, and Chloe's heart drums uncertainly against her chest — she had seen Michael's, gray and sickly and barely clinging to his shoulders when he had departed for Hell — and Lucifer's seem to be faring no better. She's never bet against him before, but she's not positive he'll even be able to cut through the air — not with the faint, ghostly breeze already whistling through the gaping holes in his feathers.
He reads the nervous twinge on her face and rolls his shoulders in response: not the anxious twitch to which she'd grown so accustomed, but a long, deliberate motion. He closes his eyes, and the concentration which masks his expression is a familiar one: that same look of clinging focus that she had donned so many times in the chaos of this past week. She knows the look — can feel the light he's summoning to the surface even as it no longer surges through her.
Whatever remains of the light she had imbued him with he uses, now. His limp wings roar to life, guided back to their former glory by the last vestiges of the Tree of Life — by the final remnants of the fire that had burned within her. When the light dies his wings are bathed in white, again — pure and full and lighting the ashen darkness in divine remembrance. She's not sure if it's merely relief at the sight of them again, or the awe that accompanies their every appearance, but they seem more brilliant than ever before — more dazzling; tinged with glimpses of gold where her light had restored him.
He offers her his hand, and when she accepts it his gaze is full of all the boyish reverence he'd affixed to their first kiss, and to each one after that. As if he's afraid that if he grabs for her too swiftly, or blinks against the image of her, the dream before him might shatter. As if he still can't quite believe that she would put her faith in him, when all he wants is to worship her.
But she's real, and she's here, and she does put her faith in him, even as he pours it back into her. She's more real than anything that awaits them here, in this blackness, and she tells him as much with the hand that squeezes his own. His fingers find her ring and trace the silver band, carving his promise of forever in the milky stone.
She wraps her arms around his neck, bracing her right wrist against her left, and he bends to scoop her into his grasp. Her head falls against his breast and his lips slide warm and chaste against the blackened smudge on her temple.
"Let's go home," she breathes, already allowing herself to wilt to the exhaustion she'd evaded for so long. It grips her now, in the weighty aftermath of their victory — clings to her like a wet towel and melts her down into his arms.
He rumbles softly, humming with all the golden softness that threads through his feathers.
"Home," he agrees, the word nuzzled in her ear.
The notion of home had always escaped him. Hell used to be home, or so he had surmised. These walls; this gaping, never-ending labyrinth of blackened misery. But it dawns on him, now — the understanding that had evaded him for millennia. He'd never had a home — not in Hell; not in the Silver City — not on Earth, so long as he walked through each alone. But now, here, rising from the ashen depths with Chloe nestled and dozing in his arms, he feels it. He understands, now, what had still been left shadowed after so many long years.
This is home. Her, now, pressed to his heart. She's home.