Lucifer didn't spare a look toward the six demons that trailed behind him in anxious line like ducklings following their mother. The rocky road was annoying enough, but while flying over the currents would be a far faster way, he would not know what to look for. The only demon who actually dared to open her mouth to him before this little field trip, walked a step before him, her booming voice tingled with fear.
And, for the first time since he came back to Hell after Charlie's kidnapping and squashed the blooming rebellion, it was not a fear of him.
Monster, Anuka said. Enormous. Breathing inside the mountain of monumental granite blocks. Black, scaled and loud.
He was not sure if any of those claims were true, but he had doubted that it could be loud if nobody heard it till now. As he trudged the ash-covered path, uneven and cut roughly by demons brave enough to walk it to shorten the way instead of swimming over the vast waters of Lethe, he started to suspect that the monster could very well be singing Ode an die Freude (Ode to Joy) on top of its lungs accompanied by entire choir and still be left unheard.
Cocytus - A river of Wailing - was the most aptly named of the rivers of Hell. (And here, he nearly gave himself a pat on the back, as he was the one to name them, regardless that their names were 'borrowed') It flew as a lazy stream through a large swath of empty plains that would one day turn into corridors full of prison cells. The geography of Hell was constantly shifting, and with it the ways the water flow. Cocytus clawed its way through the stone and hid there for few kilometres only to turn into a swirling dangerous mass of yellow tinged water that echoed from the cracks inside its stone tomb while it hit the bottom far, far below. It's echo was deafening even from where he stood, terrible and exhausting, bouncing off the high towers of granite.
He did not like the way the hair stood on the nape of his neck.
Hell was a home of monsters. They were thrown here by his Father before the time Hell had gained its name, long before Lucifer had gained his own. They spawned here. Crawled from under the ground, fully formed or in parts hastily slapped together, blind and deaf and ravenously hungry. They hunted. Alone or in packs.
And they listened to no one, not even their King.
Demons born of Hell weren't built to be afraid, not truly. For most of them it was an instinct of a larger predator encroaching on their terrain. A simple fear of a lion trapped in a circle of hyenas.
Lilim were different.
Just human enough to understand humour and grief. Enough to construct community, exchange tales, feel pleasure beyond the physical.
Enough to love.
Enough to know fear.
Hell had only a handful of Fallen. It needed an angel as its ruler, any angel at all, but to be one, they'd have had wings. And when Lucifer Fell all who followed him down, burned the same as him. He kept his wings, trapped in his cage and chains, watching his brethren tear off their backs the still smoking remains, and scavengers taking off with claws full of bones and ash-filled feathers to feast on the marrow and scraps of fried crispy skin.
He doesn't know where they went. Who they were. They'd melted into general masses, indistinguishable from the rest, except Azazel who frequently kept Lucifer company. He was as mad as the Mad Hatter and twice as entertaining, but the times he ventured out of his quarters in his rare bouts of sanity were short and left Lucifer filled with pity and creeping tendrils of guilt. It did take something out of him every time he would wind his arm around his insensate friend to leave him in a softest room available in Hell and abandon him there to bounce off the padded walls like a pinball.
There was so little in here for archangel to truly fear.
And too much that could go wrong at any given time.
Dad, he hated that place.
He was so trapped in his thoughts he had not noticed Anuka stopping and nearly walked right into her back. He saved himself at the last moment and squinted over her head at what she had pointed to him, her small clawed hand outstretched.
The hole was a size of his fist. Now that he focused he could hear the rumbling sound, like thousands of rocks rolling down the mountain, multi toned melody of gentler clacks of pebbles, the rustle of boulders scraping against each other and booming sounds of metric tones of stone hurling over steep height. The rest of the demons huddled themselves unusually close to each other and, at the simple move of his hand, Anuka joined the crowd.
He crept forward. He had to bend his head a little, but with a proper bit of manoeuvring he managed to peer through the hole. It was black. He saw precisely nothing. He threw an irritated glare over his shoulder, but frowned when Anuka gently waved at him to look again. He turned, not without a sharp sting of suspicion making him set his hand on the hilt of the blade and forced himself to gaze into the darkness.
Except it wasn't as dark as it was seconds prior.
A miniscule sliver of murky light shoved in the topmost corner and torturously slowly expanded until it showed… little. Nothing more really, than a path of light curling around the expanse of glimmering scales. Only something truly enormous could possess scales that size, each the size of a his entire wingspan. As the hole that expanded like a funnel where he pressed his face to warm rock started to fade once again, Lucifer finally grasped that it was inhaling, covering that peep-hole with its own body.
"Back to Dis with you." They didn't have to be told twice, demons scattered, apparently any unity gained dissolved like a fog as they scrambled down the path with yips and growls.
Lucifer waited till they were far enough before he opened his wings. There was a path of light falling on those scales, so it follows there has to be another way in. Hopefully one big enough to fit him. He Took flight. Let himself soar on the unpredictable winds, circling the mountain-top. Finding an entrance is like trying to find a difference in one of those two near identical pictures, except designed for adults and in monochrome. It took him long twenty minutes to spot the clearance between the two slabs of uneven stone. It's just big enough to fit him.
Without wings.
Predictably.
He hovered, calculating whatever he should just speed up and hide his wings for a second, opening them on the other side, before it occurred to him that he would be just like a tasty moth trying to greet the spider by tangling in its web. He doesn't see much, and the more he thinks of it, it was probably that whatever light he saw from the ground was refracted by the polished piece that hangs and stretches over the hole. He decides to climb in.
Wings winched at the last second as he throw himself onto the wall, grunting at the impact. He clung to it by his fingertips, and, after finding a good space in his shoe to fit in, he heaved himself up. He climbed face first, arms grasping in the narrow space, until his body hung three-forths in and he could finally look at what abomination had invaded his kingdom.
The other spots of light are smaller but it's enough to take in the whole interior. And the monster fills it well. It's startlingly magnificent. Hell was known for its ugliness in all forms. Everything trapped here after any length of time in some way became corrupted, disfigured or blemished. The monsters most of all. But this one, this looks like what humans would call Jörmungandr... once they stopped screaming. A serpent coiled in a seemingly endless rope of opalescent black and hints of garnet at its belly. Hard bony spikes lied in rest along the length of its back and, when he risked a closer look, he saw that swathes of its skin were patterned like billions of feathers. They left him with an impression that, should he scratch the outer skin, wings would erupt from its back in multitude.
He was nearly sorry he had to kill it. He slid closer, trying to find a good position to open his wings and dive down. It's wholly cliché how one of the stones he was leaning on, escaped from under his hand and hit the creature's spine. The monster stopped breathing. It unspooled. Expanded. The constant sound it made, the scratch of its scales on the ancient polished walls, loud enough to be heard for miles. Lucifer could finally see its head. Triangular, horned, with a maw filled with thousand bleach-white teeth. Its forked tongue tasted the air.
There was something pulling at his memory, something that makes the sight achingly familiar.
Lucifer prepared himself to jump.
The tip of its gargantuan snout hung less than ten meters from him, he could see his own silhouette reflected in the sea of the golden eyes. It blinked at him slowly and the booming hiss reverberated one word when the serpent opened its maw.
"Bossssss?"
He was looking at the Serpent of Eden.
The restaurant they dined in was nearly empty bar the skeleton staff, all of which decided at some point to practice selective deafness to protect their sanity. Except the server, who sat unobtrusively in a corner, listening to every word. It was the most interesting shit that happened this week, and call her crazy, but somehow she believed that every word said at the only occupied table was truth.
Something about how one guy eyes are completely yellow, how the reservation was under Lucifer Morningstar and non-ironically vintage clothing on an entity dabbed lovingly as 'angel'.
And she was pretty sure that the sign above the counter hadn't been touched for years. In her memories before five PM it was 'borsch', but yet it reads 'wine' as a 'soup of the day'.
"I think you are exaggerating, my dear." Aziraphale patted his husband on the knee when he made an offended sound as he chided Lucifer softly. It was nice to get together with other supernatural beings after the radio silence. The way that Crowley had simply disappeared from his life with no explanation for months had been a mixture of fear, worry and boredom. And him resurfacing again, but with Satan of all the people at his side was slightly nerve-wracking, but it did turn out all right. It truly calmed him down that he and Crowley were no longer alone in their love for humanity. Even if Lucifer took the 'love' part and run with it, ending head over wings in love with one single example of the species.
"You should know better that I do not lie." Lucifer raised his chin, equally offended at the comment. Chloe hid her smile behind a napkin and brushed her shoulder against his. Her phone pinged at her side and she catches his glance before reading the message. It looked like Linda had made it through the traffic. Good. She could distract the angels with little Charlie so she could go to the toilet without missing anything. She wished that Lucifer could be less stingy with the details, but it looked like the only way to make him open up about Hell was poking at Crowley's own visceral hate of it.
"Oh, so there isn't any 'artistic license' involved?" She watches as Lucifer gets lost in his head in a blink of an eye and then shakes his head, fingers tapping on the glass he holds loosely in one hand.
"If anything, that is an understatement. When he left, he took down that mountain right to the roots. Shook himself like a spiny, scally dog and then writhed for a few minutes in the debris till he turned it to dust and poof! from under those scales pop all those wings." He leans forward to show all his teeth to Crowley who rolled his eyes so hard he probably saw the insides of his head." You looked like a flock of startled parrots!"
"Slept too long, everything itched like crazy." Explains Crowley with a half shrug. His mouth pulls into unhappy line. "It took months to change myself back."
Aziraphale throws him sympathetic look, knowing well how much Crowley doesn't like changing back and forth. He once explained it that he fears not remembering how to turn back, but there was a sneaking suspicion forming, that it was more about the fact that Crowley was simply more comfortable as a snake then as a man-shaped being. He puts back on the plate the fork with a perfectly baked potato speared on when his mind catches up to Lucifer's words. He stares at his husband.
"Mountain." He breathes out, "My word, darling, the last I've seen you you were mere forty five feet!"
Chloe rolls the words in her mouth, like this way they would make more sense. How forty five feet of snake can be called anything but 'too much'? ' She thinks about dinosaurs. Then reminds herself that blue whale is bigger than any dinosaur, and it still doesn't fit, because she is also thinking about mountains. What makes a mountain. What high it needs to be to stop being a very steep hill? How big are mountains in Hell? How much bigger is the Serpent of Eden then good proper earthly little blue whale to hollow and crush one? How to hold onto her sanity without trying to imagine it?
Lucifer chuckles, as Crowley scratches the back of his neck. Like it's normal. Any of it. Including, possibly kilometres long, snake.
"Snakes grow through the entirety of their lives - even if those are immortal lives. Like lobsters. And I've been in Hell for what feels like eternity before I've been found. Besides, the last time you've seen me like that was in Eden and even that was stupidly long time ago."
Aziraphale nodded to himself, potato finally making its way to his lips. He still appears to be in shock and Crowley helpfully fills his glass with wine, before he steals a sip. He gets a pouting angel face for his troubles, which loses nothing of its effectiveness even when Aziraphale's cheeks are full of potatoes. He kisses one of them unashamedly and washes down the taste of wine with his scotch.
"Oh, I remember him when I saw him for a first time! He was all of forty centimetres long and looked like a slinky!" Crows Lucifer, his hands showing how long exactly he thought Crowley to be, coming closer until miniscule space was left between his palms.
"Ngk." Didn't agree Crowley. He was most certainly larger then that.
(He wasn't.)
"Oh, do tell."
There was no way to count the days. He counted seconds, once. Just after Fall, when still slightly mad from pain, he got swallowed by the Most Horrible of Tortures - boredom. He counted seconds, and when he'd lost the track too many times in a row, he counted bars of his cage, links of the chains - those that were visible, other obscured by the pool of liquid fire and blue gleam of sulphur. Then he counted ash flakes, their multitude neverending and mind-numbing.
It was long past the time he'd stopped screaming for and at his Father, begging and pleading and then raging like a beast. It was fitting that, monster that he was, he was given his own cage, half sunken in the lake. That he was tied like a disobedient dog to its heavy unmovable expanse, kneeling in the shallows with just his face and shoulders above the still surface.
"No, darling. Just no." Interrupted Chloe, her hand grasping his in comfort.
"I'm setting the mood, Detective!"
"You're not setting shit, Boss." Injects Crowley with a shake of his head. His smirk tad too honest to fully earn its name, but his eyes shines with understanding. "And I know the guy you speak off, so I'd appreciate if you don't call my friend a monster."
Lucifer rolls his eyes, but underneath the table he, taps the side of his Louboutins against Crowley's foot. He smiles when Crowley's leather shoes thump his back.
He doesn't know how much time had passed, every day is the same as he tries to free himself from his bindings. And then one day he registers movement. He keeps staring at the vast bubbling lake, blinking hard, trying to guess what exactly he is seeing. It looks like a ribbon wiggling above the surface. Black and delicate, it heads his way. It's close when he realizes it's some sort of animal. It looks like bi-coloured rope with stardust eyes and in its tiny maw is a jagged shard of a stone. It slips inside his cage after a moment of hesitation and slides onto his shoulder. Its body weights nothing and is smooth and soft. Lucifer turns his head to look at it and the little thing raises gently and boops his chin with its forehead. It's the first contact he has with any living being since his fall.
It's jarring.
It's wonderful.
It's the most comforting thing that happened to him since his skin burned and then thickened enough that the pain no longer blinds him into incoherency. The rope-shaped animal rests there, tucked into his skin, tail no thicker than his pinkie wounded around his neck.
He doesn't know how much time passes. He doesn't speak, the creature pants softly with a shard of stone trapped between its long teeth, sulphur boils and baths everything in eerie blue. He is tempted to nuzzle the little thing to see if it would feel as soft against his scarred cheek, but the animal starts unspooling from its place and within a blink of an eye it disappears behind his back. He turns, or tries anyway, to see wherever it went, but it's gone from his sight.
And the he feels it. Underneath the surface of the lake - light brush against his left elbow, delicate slim long body sliding down, wrapping around his wrist and weaving between his fingers. And a shard of wickedly sharp stone, no bigger than his thumb, pressed into his hand. An inch from the keyhole.
He nearly drops it, then and there, breath sizing in his lungs.
He squeezes the shard so hard he feels it's impression digging into his skin.
The hope is even sharper.
The animal surfaces close to his chest. It's breathing quickly and climbs onto his shoulder again, then onto his head. It curls there, before he feels its powerful muscles working and the negligible weight is gone once again. He tilts his head as far as it can go and sees the black scales circled around the lock on top of the cage. One drop of clear liquid falls from sharp-toothed jaw and Lucifer thinks that he doesn't imagine the tiny hiss of corrosive acid hitting the lock.
"He had burned through the lock. It took so long that he grew to the size of an anaconda. He opened the top and I've not seen him since then. Once I got out of the chains I climbed through the top and then Maze fished me out. Rest is, as they say, history."
"I don't understand only one thing. Why would you save him?" Chloe pushes down the glass and then turns so she can look between Lucifer and Crowley, finally focusing on the letter. " That came out wrong. I mean, you've said that taking even one inch of that stone takes literal ages. You had to take that chip, swim with it through the lake of liquid fire and then spend months? years? years dripping venom on the locks... and then you hid. If you wanted protection it would have been the perfect excuse, but you've hid. You never admitted to saving him until Lucifer was the one who recognized you. So why did you? "
"Not important. " Hedges Crowley, his eyes on the plate as he spears food onto his fork, terribly interested in not speaking about it.
"It is. It is to me." Lucifer leans over, knowing very well that he has the best puppy eyes in creation and not an ounce of shame about using them as a devastating weapon. He wondered. For decades that turned into centuries and then millennia. He knew Crowley to be The Serpent, but he had never seen him in this form and there were plenty other snake-shaped demons. In all the years it took to free Lucifer, Crowley had not said a single word even when Lucifer was talking at him to the point of growing hoarse in fear that the tiny thing will disappear, that he will blink his eyes and it would all end up to be an illusion, hallucination born of his failing mind. But Crowley stayed. He nudged him every now and then, slept around his neck-a living, breathing reminder that freedom was possible. He stayed. Right down to the moment it was over, when he coiled on Lucifer's shoulders, bumped him lightly on the head as if to say goodbye and opened the cage only to leave and not come back. He should have known sooner, there is only so many demons with golden eyes. "I've never got to thank you. Thank you Crowley. You'd saved me from unimaginable torment and it's a debt I will never be able to repay. But I would like to know why. Please."
He could see him break under the combined power of Lucifer and the clear curiosity on Aziraphale's face coupled with /Question/. Crowley rarely refused those.
"You were kind to me. "
"What?"
"You were kind. To me. Sixty million years in Silver City and still you were the one of the two of all millions of those feathered pricks who gave me five fucking minutes of your time every now and then even with the masses begging for your attention. You and Raphael were the only angels who didn't treat me like I was an inconvenient pebble stuck in your sandal, so I figured...I followed you. You didn't do anything wrong, and neither did I but we still paid for it. Didn't owe you anything after that. But, I thought of you as my friend and if I could do one thing and one thing only to both piss off Him Above and pay off for all the times you didn't turn me away when I was just an annoying Virtue which no department ever wanted, then I'd free you."
"Darling..."
"Hush, angel. Let's not pretend that you were any less lonely in that place." Crowley jabbed his fork through the piece of meat, his fingers white around the handle and then let it fall against his plate. He sighed, wrapping his fingers over the short glass and stared at it listlessly. His other hand travelled onto Aziraphale's thigh, left open and then full if warmth when their fingers met. "Sorry, angel. Didn't mean to snap at you."
They exchanged a look that spoke volumes, bodies unconsciously leaning towards each other. Crowley turns until his yellow yeas bear into Lucifer's.
"I was under no illusion that I will be liked in Hell any better then I was in Heaven so I helped you and then hid. There was no need in setting myself up for disappointment."
"So you've escaped and became the best demon who ever demoned." And in Lucifer's opinion that was the most honest truth. Crowley gave humans the choice and that was something he could fully stand behind.
It hurt, a bit, that Crowley hadn't believed in him back then, that he'd run away instead of reaching out. And then he thinks of a snake shorter than his forearm, no thicker than his thumb braving the vast width of the turbulent burning lake with a shard of stone patiently worried over from the firm unmoving block. And then of gigantic creature that let him ride on his back and scare the demons into near incoherency, winding about Pandemonium in a lazy spiral. Decades of talking. Gentle fingers in his hair when nothing he did seemed to be working and time was flying away through his fingers. A demon who didn't know that he was supposed to bow. Nicknamed him 'Boss' with the same feeling behind as when Lucifer called Ella 'Miss Lopez'. Put his feet on the furniture, had no sense of personal space and kept referring to Beelzebub as 'bub'. Who, in the end, opened his swallow-black wings, driving Lucifer into short moment of absolute incoherency- and settled himself casually on the arm of The Throne like a bored gargoyle, whispering inappropriate commentary at the worst possible moments.
Angel who kept him together.
Whatever fears Crowley once had, he was well and truly over them.
"…to counter the worst angel who ever angeled." Quips Crowley, a shadow of a smile on his face as he takes Aziraphale's hand to his lips.
"Oh, this is what we are calling it now? Are we doing a recreation of your statue?"
"What statue?" Askes Linda from the door, manoeuvring between the tables with a bag over one shoulder and a baby carrier in the other hand. Aziraphale stands and pushes the chair so she could put her things down. She accepts the wave of greetings, letting the carrier face them. Charlie lays within, sprawled like a starfish with lips pulled into perfect 'o'. She takes his hat and opens his light sweater before she asks again. "What statue?"
"Oh, let's order some dessert and I will have a story for you." Crowley raises his eyes towards the ceiling and scowls at it fiercely before his head thumps next to his plate. Aziraphale dabbs his mouth with a napkin." The story of Good And Evil Wrestling with Evil Triumphing. It involves two sheep, a horse named Steve, three kilograms of peanuts, pocket watch and one pair of glue-on atrocious side whiskers..."