Lucifer is used to being without answers. His father never talks back to him; millennia have passed and he still doesn't know why he was cast into Hell. All he has are guesses. There was a time, in the very beginning when he had screamed himself hoarse, begging and pleading with his Father.
why why why why. help me help me help me Father please…
He had been weak and foolish then. Now. Lucifer knew better. If he wanted answers regarding his current predicament he was going to have to find them himself. His time around humans almost has him reflexively asking his father for answers despite himself.
He bites his tongue and crushes the thought before it can come to fruition. Instead, Lucifer pulls down book after book from his personal library, taking them into the kitchen so he can pour over them in search of answers.
Chloe is still unconscious in his bed. She is beginning to run a fever, which causes dread to swoop through his stomach and fill his lungs. In Chloe's all too frail body the panic is harder to crush, and it blooms sooner. Where she is burning up in his body, he is slowly beginning to freeze in hers.
He knows where his chill comes from. He can feel his soul fluttering in his chest, reaching for its other half — his wings. He can still feel the echo of their warmth, but it's fading all too quickly. When he'd severed his wings, the chill that had run through his body then had been different, worse because it was wholly unfamiliar. He'd swallowed it down with every ounce of stubbornness in his being and shoved the achingly painful longing his soul felt, having been wrenched in two into the hidden corners of his mind.
Here and now, the yearning and the chill are back. His wings had been returned to him for five weeks now, and he had already grown used to the feeling of wholeness they gave him; he had already fallen back into his chains, something his body had missed, craved. Without his Purpose being etched into his being he'd felt lost, a tiny boat unmoored in stormy seas. He had ignored his Purpose since his Fall, but it had stayed with him, the tether of it comforting, even as he hated it. He had been Made to crave subjugation, and no matter how much he hated his nature, raged against it and fought it, it remained. He was the third most powerful being in the universe and still he could not Will himself to be something else.
Today, of course, he'd awoken human, the smaller half of his angelic soul resting inside the heart of Chloe Decker. His head was silent, and he could not feel the tether of Purpose. Human souls and bodies had no need, no desire for Purpose and subjugation. For now, he was living without them. A tiny, cruel, selfish part of him wanted to leave well enough alone. Finally, finally, finally he was human — the very thing he had desired since he'd first laid eyes on their kind. He crushes that selfishness, that weakness. Chloe Decker does not deserve the punishment of his flesh, does not deserve the chains of Duty and Purpose carried in his wings.
He reads book after book, straining the weak senses of his (now) human body, searching for some kind of answer. For her, he needs to fix this.
He and Chloe are both slowly, and soon to be agonizingly, dying in their wrong bodies, and he has no idea how to tell her. Her fever had gone up by a degree and a half in the last hour. The half of his soul that lived in his luminescent wings, that gave him Power, Purpose and Will was burning her soul. Her tiny, fluttering human soul a slowly dying candle drowning in wax.
The soul of his that fluttered in Chloe's chest was constantly reaching for its chains and anchors, for the wings, each failed touch deepening the chill in his (her) body. If he can't end this soon, he knows he will come down with hypothermia. Chloe's body will die first.
There are three possible causes to their current situation: Father's Will, the Will of one of his siblings, or some spell by a common hedge witch. He hopes they've been cursed by a hedge witch; then at least there would be a simple solution to their little problem. Still, he doubts. His life has been nothing but rotten endings so far; the possibility that this act will end in tragedy is high.
He grits his teeth for a moment before releasing a strong and loud breath, dropping the pressure from the whole of his frame. He vows to Chloe that he will find a way to save them, to right this situation and she slumbers on none the wiser. He has to, really. There is no space for failure. He has no idea how many days they have left, how long it will take for their respective bodies to perish, but he knows that it won't be long.
Lucifer rummages through his closet, careful to be quiet, not wanting to wake Chloe. She is infinitely safer the longer she remains asleep, not expending the dwindling energy she has. After a few all too long minutes, he finds what he's looking for — the thickest, most warm sweater he owns. It won't, of course be enough to chase the chill settling throughout him, but it can't hurt.
Lucifer is so cold. He wonders if this pervasive chill is what humans feel in the winter, in the ice and the snow that blanket the northern regions of their world. Some warmth seeps back into him as he shrugs the sweater on, overlarge on Chloe's tiny frame.
Still, he is empty, aching and freezing. He knows that he need to keep moving, keep researching, but it is already somewhat difficult to concentrate.
Theoretically, he understands what human hunger is, but the reality is worse than he's imagined all these years. He leaves the bedroom sparing one last glance at Chloe, swallowing his fear, his chill and his hunger down and makes for the kitchen.
The rhythm of preparing food is comforting and easy to get lost in, a nice distraction from the fear that is curling inside him. With all of the ingredients prepared, the only step remaining is to cook it up. But Chloe remains asleep, so he covers up the food with plastic wrap and returns to his piles of books, his frantic search for any trace of this happening before.
He has no idea how much time has passed since he'd sat down at the counter. The words on the page he'd read have lost all meaning, the memory of them dispersing in his memory like grains of sand in a river, impossible to catch and keep.
"Lucifer?"
The soft sound of Chloe calling out for him startles him in to awareness, sending a jolt of sensation through his whole body. He glances at the clock. Chloe has been unconscious for ten hours, though it's felt much longer than that. Time feels slow and wrong and his body lethargic from the cold.
"Lucifer?" Chloe calls out again.
This time, he stands up and shuffles across the penthouse, back towards her.
He is almost at the entrance to the bedroom when uncertainty hits him anew. Does Chloe want him to come in? Will she flinch away? Doubts whirl around him, a mere echo of the constant whispering that usually lives in his head.
Still. He stands in the doorway, looking at her, somehow trapped, transfixed. He studies her face (his own) searching for her in it. Perhaps it's his age, his different relationship with solid, unchanging physical form, but he doesn't see himself at all when he looks into her face. All he sees is Chloe, scared, uncertain, shaking, lovely Chloe. He swallows.
Her face smooths over; she must have decided something, made up her mind because the apprehension and uncertainty is missing from the new expression that graces her face. It's some strange imitation of her usual focused, ignoring my feelings until this case is over face. The one that hides her grief and her weakness from a world that wants to crush her for them.
He feels trapped in the moment, and only when she begins to move towards him does time seem to speed back up. She moves slowly, unsteadily. He can see the edges of fatigue that surround her and he remembers that they're both dying. This fact races around his mind, clamoring, trying it's best to force its way out of his mouth, into the silence between them.
He resists the urge. It doesn't seem like a conversation starter really. Oh, by the way, unless we get this fixed we're going to be dead in a few days.
He will let Chloe ask the questions. If she asks him the right things he'll tell her they're dying, but otherwise, he is a steel trap. His chest burns with the secret.
"How long was I out for?" She asks.
This is a good question, an easy one that he has answer for. He almost sighs in relief.
"Ten hours," he says, quirking her a small smile, hoping that it's enough to deter her from questioning him too deeply.
We're both dying rather quickly in the moment. His too cruel mind reminds him and he swats the thought away. Right now, the last thing he needs to do is panic.
"Oh," she says. The look of confusion returns to her face, and her voice is soft, almost inaudible to his ears.
Nervousness flutters through him. Chloe isn't going to be able to take charge in this moment. Her brain might already be beginning to lose itself to the heat of his wings.
He fidgets, and then blurts out, "I have yet to find anything conclusive on the origin, nature or solution of our little problem."
Technically, this is the truth. There isn't anything he knows conclusively from his research, but he has his suspicions.
"But," he pauses, dragging the word out, considering what to say next, "That does not mean that one won't present itself soon."
We have to find one soon. He thinks. If we don't…
Still, he does his best to inject a sense of hopefulness to his tone, a taste of his usual irreverence.
"Finding a solution for this is something we can do together," she says.
Her together, rushes over him, a momentary bit of heat. He is glad, so glad that she is not going to run away from him.
This doesn't, his more rational mind reminds him, mean she doesn't hate us.
Lost in his thoughts, he misses more of the rest of what she says.
"—something to eat," she finishes swallowing. She telegraphs her nervousness with every movement of her body.
However, her desire for food is something easily solvable. He turns and starts for the kitchen, gesturing at her to follow him.
She does. An odd silence sits between them, made quieter by the emptiness in his head. He returns to the food prep, but out of the corner of his eye, he can see her looking around at his notes and his books, the detritus of the research he'd done earlier while she slumbered on.
Now that she's awake he can't take her temperature, as he'd been doing obsessively before. The demons that exist only in his mind keep whispering premonitions of her death to him. He is only peripherally aware of the rest of the meal prep, lost in his own thoughts, and then just lost.
He sets Chloe's plate in front of her and notices the pained expression on her face. Sharp terror runs through him a lightning strike burning him with aftershocks.
"I keep hearing these voices in my head," she says, "They never stop."
He feels stupid, incredibly and utterly stupid for a beat. Prayers. He curses, at himself, at the universe. His mind has been so blessedly silent today that he'd managed to forget about them. But Chloe, Chloe doesn't have that luxury. This time the lightning strike of emotion that runs through him is drowning guilt.
"They're prayers," he tells her, "You're hearing prayers."
His voice is flat and his mind is distance, racing. How can he explain this to her? He's never had a need or a desire to explain this to anyone before, but now, now he has no choice.
"I'm truly sorry you have to bear witness to those prayers, curses and invocations. The kind of things some people ask the devil for are truly heinous," he says, wishing he could offer her something more.
"I can't really understand them," she says. Even in this moment, she is trying to comfort him.
He gives her a pained smile, "I'm glad. There are some voices that one should be able to live their whole lives without," he murmurs.
She picks at her food in silence, not meeting his eyes.
His research has been worse than inconclusive, but he doesn't want to show her how little he knows, he panicked he feels.
We're both dying rather quickly in the moment.
He says nothing. There is a possibility that he's considered in the past few hours. He has no idea whether it would work. But something is better than nothing. If they do nothing, there won't be any more time for either of them to do anything.
He knows perfectly well that an exorcism done properly works on a demon. But he has no frame of reference for this. Could it work for them? Much as it pains him to admit, even privately, he is still an angel. There has never been an angelic possession of human form. What they are experiencing is a first for the whole universe. How bloody wonderful for both of them!
The cold is clouding his thoughts again. Something in him gives him the certainty that his yearning is going to devour him whole.
"Much as it pains me to say it: believe we may in fact have to consult some priest or other about this situation," he hears his voice say.
He feels distant, disconnected from his(her) body, as though he is floating away. He lets his body shiver fully and it is just enough to jolt his focus back. His yearning and the deepening cold that is filling him need to stay on the back burner. He can't submit to them, not now, not ever, not if they both are to survive.
He begins to eat, but the food tastes like ash in his mouth. He wants … he wants… his thoughts begin to spiral again.
All the while, she says nothing, chasing instead to study his face from across the table.
We're both dying rather quickly in the moment.