Life goes on.
It's a favorite saying of the sky dwellers, one of the first he gets introduced to in the wake of the cataclysm.
At first it only registers as so much white noise, a verbal shrug that seems to fill the silence after your island nearly plummeted to its doom, after your house got leveled by the righteous anger of a demigod, after your crops got burned by a marauding horde of something-or-other.
It fits in right alongside other nonsense observations that seem to serve the same purpose, like "Tomorrow is another day" (of course it is, that's how time works), "No use crying over spilled milk" (why anyone would cry over that, only heaven knows), and "Shit happens" (no shit it does).
They all annoy him in their own fashion – their triviality, the ease with which they come to people's lips, the impotence they seem to all but celebrate.
It's only later, after blood and fire and wings once torn from the backs of his betters given freely, after a loss that plays out over and over, bringing out new shades of grief like an ever-fracturing prism, that he begins to understand.
There is power in acknowledging powerlessness, in giving word to it and having it echoed back by countless others, all equal in their insignificance, all struggling to claw back out of the crater left by the inevitable.
Life goes on, because that is what life does. And you better pick yourself up and follow after it, because as long as you're alive, that's just about the only thing you can do.
*.*.*.*
So he tries.
Contents himself with taking stock of the carnage of his life, with gathering up shards and trying to figure out if they're worth gluing back together or better off given over to the trash heap of forgetfulness. Begins to accept the bits and pieces handed to him by others, small gems to stick to the messy crafts project of his heart, and holds it up occasionally for inspection. It's a right ugly sight, truly, like the patchwork sky dweller homes, holes and cracks filled up not quite as good as new, but for the first time, it's entirely his to shape.
There's a mug with his name on it in one of the Grandcypher's cabinets, the last syllable a barely legible squeeze because an unnamed second artist had to draw a distinctly unflattering portrait on the other side. There's a garishly patterned quilt that keeps finding its way back to his room, no matter how many times he tries to make it go missing.
There's people he's barely met shoving bean samples into his hands and asking him to "work his magic." There's the Singularity, puffing up her cheeks in an exaggerated pout and vowing she'll get him to call her by name yet. There's talk of taking him shopping "for summer," of giving singing lessons to a dragon whose vocal abilities make the meowing of the half dozen ship's cats seem like the music of the spheres, of maybe turning part of the galley into a coffee bar.
There's mocha truffles, and chocolate cappuccino cheesecake, and something called coffee liqueur ice cream pie because mortal kitchens turn out to be repositories of both endless genius and madness.
There's words, filling pages and pages with their inelegance, some to be kept, others to be reduced to ash after writing.
There's sleepless nights, spent following the trajectory of the one the sky dwellers call the Morning and the Evening Star.
There's the mismatch of colors at his back, and on some days, he almost agrees with Lyria that they suit him, and there's no bitterness in the thought at all.
"Are you happy, Sandalphon?" the Singularity asks one morning, when both of their arms are elbow-deep in soapy water. "Here, with us?"
"I am… content," he replies, and finds, to his surprise, that he means it.
*.*.*.*
It all goes to pieces much faster than it should have.
The Crimson Horizon never sleeps, its malignant forces stirring in ever-new pockets throughout the sky realm.
"Well, what can you do," the sky dwellers say, the way they roll up their sleeves a stark contrast to the worry in their eyes, and he tries not to feel touched by the way their faces light up when he echoes the sentiment.
Power from powerlessness.
His strength is not what it once was, especially now that the former owners of his wings have handed the reins to nature and the Supreme Primarch is more a formality to tease him with than a true role.
Still, there are things he can do.
He can heal the wounds of his feebler comrades, and though his magic wavers with uncertainty from having to use it on others, he feels he must be doing something right when they smile at him through their pain.
He can take the first watch, and the second, and the third, senses sharper and sleep a negligible factor, though they will always come around, bleary-eyed and pale, urging him to let them take their turn.
He can take to the skies to dance among the twisted abominations of the Otherworld, have them tear into his limbs with their poison fangs and claws and come out only slightly the worse for wear, his body and heart lighter than he remembers them ever being–
He's always been fighting, in one way or another, has spent millennia running on fear and rage and despair, tearing at the walls of Pandemonium and the hides of monsters in its depths, screaming to the Heavens for acknowledgement, turning the pieces of his broken heart into the blades to cut down those who would take his secret joy from him.
But this is the first time he fights alight with hope and smiles for the sky that his beloved left him, and his diminished powers don't seem to matter at all.
He finds himself sprawled against the deck, ears ringing from a cannon blast that went off too close by.
It takes a moment to ascertain that he's still mostly there, and that there's a little red dragon bawling snot and water into his hair.
Lyria is crying too, but quietly, as she helps him sit up and starts digging through her first aid bag for clean gauze. He's given up protesting that there are better uses for her bandages than a primal who will heal up faster than she can unwrap them.
Well, perhaps not quite.
There's a gash in his side that doesn't seem to want to close properly, flesh refusing to knit itself back together after taking too many of those hate-tipped weapons, and she's getting blood all over her nice white dress in her pointless attempts to patch him up.
He tells her so, and she grins at him through her tears as if he said something particularly funny.
"It hasn't been white in a good long while, Sandalphon," she says softly, and he's not sure how he can hear her so clearly amidst partial deafness and the screaming chaos of war.
He blinks, takes in the mess of rusty red and soot black dyeing the fabric in a pattern of violence, and supposes it hasn't.
"But that's not important right now! Stop squirming, I'm almost done."
He wasn't, not really, that was just wing number five reattaching itself to his back, but he doesn't even get to tell her so before the Singularity comes pounding across the deck, armored boots nearly slipping in the slick of oil and less mentionable fluids.
She's wearing more rags than uniform and has to keep wiping at a fresh cut that's dripping into her eyes, so he can't really help the chuckle when she tries to plant herself in front of him the way sky dweller mothers seem fond of doing with unruly children.
"Why are you like this!"
"I don't know," he rasps out, not quite able to keep the smile from aching against his bruised face, because lectures on caution and safety coming from her are a new thing that will never not be funny. "Why are you?"
"Oh don't you dare make this about me, Supreme Nutjob Moronphon!" and he realizes that some of the wetness she's wiping might not be from the cut after all. "You almost––! And I told you to stay out of range, we can't keep track of every single winged speck in the sky here!"
"If you'd rather take a direct hit from the slavering fanged monstrosities…"
"I'd rather not have all the direct hits take you!"
She makes to stomp her foot, but something in her right leg twists, sliding away at a painful angle, and he's up in a flash, steadying her while Lyria carefully worms underneath her arm for support.
He lets go once they look like they can manage, struck by a fleeting and wholly incongruous impression – the two are nothing alike, and yet, something about the idea that she would rather bear the brunt of war with ship and crew than see him hurt brings to mind a scene he never witnessed, an egg-shaped mass of feathers never seen from the outside, and the one who would rather protect its contents than fight for his own life.
With slightly more care than he'd like to admit, he plucks the baby dragon from his head and thrusts him into the Singularity's hastily readied arms.
"You be quiet and sit this round out. I'm up again."
Happiness may be lost to him, but he'll be damned if they take contentment away from him too.
*.*.*.*
He's tired, he's spent.
There's lead seeping through his veins, the high-altitude winds keeping him aloft more than his tattered wings.
The Grim Basin is churning below him, a roiling mass of clouds seeking to creep over its edges, stretching greedy crimson fingers towards the sky.
Above him, the blue – what remains of the blue, mottled as it is with deep red scars that are leeching the color from their surroundings – above him, the blue falters, shivers.
The world is holding its breath, staring at the bulging summoning circle stretching end to end over this hell mouth, just waiting for a tidal wave of nightmares to spill forth and bring the sky realm to its knees.
He's no longer sure where the Grandcypher is, a grain of sand swirling somewhere far below – they are alive, they have to be, and he will have to find the beacon of the Singularity's power in that maelstrom, the signal that will show him where to aim his last, best shot–
It's getting hard to focus. There's cracks forming along the surface of his core, but this is hardly the first time he was nearly torn apart, and back then, he didn't have anything but himself riding on his own survival.
He won't let it end. He can't.
Not like this and not at all, not for them and not for himself, not when he wanted to live, to learn as many things as life would allow so he could share them, the only tribute of worth he would ever have to give, in that quiet, restful place–
But later, later.
Not when there's so much he hasn't seen yet, hasn't done yet, not when leaving would mean abandoning the people he's sworn to protect, abandoning this world that Lucifer loved so much, that he's come to love himself–
The power of six wings will soon be beyond him, bones and sinews creaking warningly against his back, threatening to tear, but not yet, not yet–
Lucifer gifted him life in a sky of purest blue, and purest blue will be the memories Sandalphon will gift him in turn.
So I have decided, and so it shall be.
The flare that arcs its way towards him is as much a relief as it is a knell, as he reaches deep inside himself to call up the last vestiges of the Supreme Primarch's power, swords flaring to life around him in the colors of the rainbow.
There's a crack, and a splinter– the blades shivering, wavering like a mirage, and no, no–
And then light, so much light, washing over him inside and out, blooming from his back and from his fingertips with the power of a miniature sun, and in the midst of the sudden dance of pearlescent feathers, that much beloved voice–
I heard you calling… my dearest light.
*.*.*.*
TBC
Author's Notes: Hoo boy turns out all I needed to return to writing was to get angry as hell at how WMTSB ended. Lucifer deserved better. He deserved the same chance to learn and grow as everyone else did, and he and Sandalphon deserve a lifetime together to explore the sky they both protected and to start working out those communication issues. For one, they're going to need at least 500 years to figure out the hand-holding thing. XD
And yeah this all spun off the whole unexplained "Lucifer keeps appearing in Sandalphon's ougi" thing. So I explained it. You're welcome. XD C&C is highly appreciated, btw.