Kayla stares back for a full three minutes and twenty-seven seconds before erupting into laughter, bending over double and clutching her sides. She can't help it.
Lucifer frowns. "Well, I've never had that reaction before," he mutters, looking away from her.
Kayla tries to get a hold of herself, straightening up and wiping the tears from her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she says, breathless, "but are you telling me I've been kidnapped by fucking Satan?" And just like that she's off again, giggling madly in spite of herself. The situation is just too fucked up.
Lucifer pins his eyes back to hers sharply. "Don't call me that," he says, voice clear and cold. The iciness in his tone sobers her and she stands still, silent, unable to move. Don't piss off the Devil, she mentally scolds herself, inwardly still thinking this whole thing is too absurd to be anything but hilarious.
Lucifer ponders. "Let me try something. Meg!" he calls, his voice suddenly shockingly loud, and a woman with crazy brown hair in a leather jacket strides through the door at the back of the room. Lucifer turns to face her, his back to Kayla. Wonder why it's always leather jackets, Kayla wonders inanely.
"Father?" she drawls with a smirk as her eyes turn black. "What's the problem? Princess won't talk? Give me ten minutes and I bet –"
"Meg," Lucifer says and there's a dangerous edge in his voice. Meg falls silent and her eyes return to normal. She peers around him, trying to get a good look at Kayla.
"She's not restrained?" she says, a hint of uncertainty in her voice. She looks Kayla up and down, apparently confused that Kayla is unharmed.
Lucifer chuckles under his breath, as he glances over his shoulder at Kayla. "No, I think we've established that's not necessary." He slides his gaze back to Meg. "Where are your brothers?"
"Outside. Awaiting orders, sir."
"Good. Fetch them for me." Meg nods once and turns on her heel, swiftly exiting the room.
Kayla's not really sure what's going on now or whether she's going to remain unhurt, but she's curious, so she figures she might as well ask. "Father?" she enquires.
He turns to her, frowning once more. "Demons," he says, his face hardening. "My creations."
They're silent for a moment, until the door opens again and two men stroll in. They have the same lazy smiles and matching cocksure attitudes. Kayla recognises one, the asshole who knocked her out behind the diner. She scowls and her temple throbs with memory.
He's the one who speaks first. "You wanted to see us, Father?" He sounds so fucking pleased with himself, Kayla notes. Maybe a private audience with Daddy was something to be awed at.
Lucifer remains facing Kayla, his back to them. He eyes the blood on Kayla's temple and frowns. "See is perhaps a nicety." His voice has that cold, dangerous edge to it again, and Kayla sees the two men exchange glances before an odd orange light burns inside their skulls.
They slump to the floor, dead.
Lucifer turns to look at them, pleased. "Full power," he remarks. "That is new."
He calls Meg in to "clean up" and though her eyes are wide, she says nothing as she drags the bodies outside. He tells her to take the rest of the night off. Lucifer waits until she leaves before turning back to Kayla. "They weren't supposed to hurt you," he remarks matter-of-factly, glancing at her wound again.
She's sitting on the floor – her feet had been starting to go numb throughout the whole demon kill charade – legs crossed, staring at her feet. "I wasn't exactly going to come quietly. I stabbed one in the heart."
Lucifer grins at that, laughing slightly and she looks up at him, unmoved. "They're like your children."
Lucifer apprehends her for a moment, before sitting down facing her, mirroring her position. "No. They're abominations."
"Like humans?"
"Yes," he replies, gaze unflinching.
"But they look at you like a father? Knowing you despise them?"
Lucifer sighs. "I… made them. Their existence is my doing. They love me for that. But they're nothing but twisted human souls, soldiers for my army; they don't know that. I was trying to prove a point to my Father, to show him how wrong he was about humans, his perfect little creations." He spits the word with barely-contained rage. "I wanted to show them how flawed they are. So I twisted a soul until no good traits remained, only the murderous, evil, contemptuous ones." He pauses, contemplating. "In the end, all I did was amplify everything I hate about humans. And I got an eternity of isolation in hell for my trouble. So not worth it," he adds satirically, with a grimace.
Kayla stares at her feet. She wonders, not for the first time, if she's dreaming. She's in a basement in the middle of God-knows-where, wearing a uniform with 666 and devil horns all over it, with the fucking Devil himself, except he just seems kinda sad and not really all that scary. If you forget about the fact that he essentially just murdered two of his children in cold-blood, of course.
Lucifer's looking at her again, that look of interest mixed with hardly-hidden disgust. She wonders, again, why she's here, what he could possibly want. If he wanted to kill her she'd be dead already. Suddenly she doesn't feel like sticking around to find out exactly what kind of horror planned for her.
"I want to go home." Anger is starting to build in her again as she lifts her eyes back to him. He looks at her for a moment before answering.
"You don't have a home. You have a place you go when you're not at a job you can't stand. You don't even sleep; not much anyway. You don't have friends. In fact, you can't stand people. You're ashamed to be a part of a species so filled with plain stupidity. You certainly don't have family. They disowned you. Shitty dad made you leave for being different and you've got a whole cornucopia of daddy issues to show for it. You've got an older brother maybe, no, a sister, who was everything. You idolised her, but she turned on you, sided with Daddy dearest, and you left. You're alone. You don't have a home."
Kayla scowls – thoroughly pissed now, 'cause how come he gets to know all this shit about her when she knows fuck all about why she's even here - and averts her gaze. He snorts. "Lucky guess."
She doesn't question it, just clenches her jaw and goes back to staring at her feet. Neither of them say anything for a long time; her brooding, him thoughtful.
"Lucifer," she breaks the silence again, and he fixes such an intense stare on her when she says his name that it's almost too much to look him in the eyes, but she does anyway. "Why am I still alive?" Unconsciously she reaches up to the side of her head where blood is beginning to dry and clot in her hair.
He frowns, first at her question, and then more deeply at her movement. "Let me see." He reaches over towards her face and she flinches away before closing her eyes and forcing herself to relax. Cold fingers like ice press against her wound, and then there's a burning sensation like earlier, but much more intense. The heat coils through her skull and spreads down into her chest and she can feel that he's not intending to hurt her, before it touches the raw anger in her abdomen, the rage that's been building up more and more ever since she can remember. The heat snakes around it and for a crazy moment she feels soothed, calm, but against every instinct she jerks away from his touch because what the fuck. The heat dissipates and her rage, although quelled slightly, rests heavy in the pit of her stomach once more. It's nicely familiar. She opens her eyes and feels her temple, and there's nothing. No blood, no wound. She can't pull her gaze away from his.
"I… I haven't been able to heal others in a very long time," he admits, sounding awed. She waits for an answer to her question, and he sighs. "You're still alive because you're not human."
"Not human." He nods, and she knows she should feel confused, more angry, berated, but honestly all she feels is relief, like it's something she's always known but has never had confirmed. "Then what am I?"
"Are you familiar with my story?" he asks, and she shakes her head, because everything she's seen so far kind of goes against the stereotypical big bad King of Hell stories.
He looks disappointed, but he's patient with her. He tells her about God, about Michael, about the creation of humans and how he simply refused to kneel to them, about his fall, about Lilith, and finally he tells her about Hell. "When Michael put me in the cage, Daddy himself came for a surprise visit. He took my grace, well, some of it. A final punishment, He said. I'd laughed in His face, because the part of my grace He took was pathetic. Some of it was the power I could extort to destroy His precious pets, but most of it was my healing grace. He said I could have it back when I "grew up", to use His rather poetic term. I scoffed and called him a sad old man who was losing His touch, because I could easily wipe out the human race with what grace I had left."
He smiles wryly. "But, of course, He was right, like always. I couldn't even hope to use my full power without my vessel combusting – you saw the condition it was in earlier. I'd need my true vessel, and even then, I'd need galleons of demon blood for it to even hope for it to contain me. Turns out healing grace is kinda important." He laughs without humour. "I can heal my vessel's physical wounds, but not the ones caused by my own grace. Healing others is a big no-no."
"You need a vessel? Like possession?" She knows it's stupid of her, but she'd kind of assumed that angels looked human and that was that.
Lucifer nods. "With consent. Our true forms are a bit much for humans, you could say. My true form would melt your eyes," he adds in response to Kayla's quizzical look.
"That guy gave the Devil consent to ride around in him? Must've been a messed up dude."
He grimaces. "No, he'd just experienced the true nature of his pathetic species. He was vengeful, angry, full of hate for his own kind. He didn't need much convincing."
"I'm angry," Kayla mutters quietly. "Vengeful. All that stuff."
"I know. I could feel it when I healed you. It was rather impressive, in fact." He smiles knowingly.
Kayla grins back in spite of herself, because in all her years she's never met anyone who thought her incredible capacity to hate was impressive. It makes a nice change. "So, the guy – is he like a backseat driver in there, or – ?"
Lucifer shakes his head. "No. He's gone. Dead."
"Oh. How?"
His face twists into an ugly scowl. "A Winchester shot him in the face."
"Winchester?"
"A slight pest control problem. Meg's taking care of it."
Kayla takes a few minutes to mull over everything he's said. Lucifer looks at her seriously. "Kayla, you're my lonsa. My power. A physical manifestation of my lost grace. I can't just take it out of you; it is you, the very fibre of your being."
"So you need me to stay with you?" Kayla muses at the implications of road tripping with Satan himself. A lot of death, she assumes. Destruction. Devastation.
She doesn't care. Really doesn't. In fact, she feels a kind of sick excitement.
Lucifer nods, although he looks torn by her choice of words, like he doesn't want to need anything from anyone and he's certainly not used to it. "If you're with me, I don't need my true vessel. You can heal this one and I can access my full power. Of course, the fact that you're in human form would be my Father's last insult." He can't stop another flicker of disgust crossing his features.
Kayla starts laughing again.
Lucifer scowls at her and she struggles to control herself. "No, it's not – it's not that, it's just – I had a high school teacher who used to call me 'spawn of the Devil' at least three times a week in class, and now I find out she was right all along." She grins, and he gives her a slight smile in return. "But how is that even possible?"
Lucifer shrugs. "Dad made Eve out of Adam's rib; it was probably simple to make you out of a bit of angel mojo. Timed it nice too, so you'd be all grown up for me getting out the cage." He scowls at the floor at the mention of the cage again, and hell, she empathises with the guy, which is strange because she's never empathised with anyone before. But she knows how it feels to be different, how it feels to be betrayed. She knows how it is to be solely fuelled by anger. She breathes deeply before reaching for his hand.
When her fingers link through his frozen ones he flinches visibly, surprised at the touch. "Are all angels cold?" she asks, curious.
"No," he answers, icy fury etched on his features. "I'm cold because my grace is split, torn. It's why my grace is red too; other angels' are blue."
He sounds so broken it's almost sad. "You must be so angry," she says quietly as she focuses the feeling of wrath deep within her. Her palm grows hot and he breathes in sharply, and she knows he's feeling everything she's feeling.
His own anger roars in response to hers, and it makes her feel dizzy so she grabs his other hand to steady herself. He is angry, his rage intensified by an eternity of isolation in the cage. It positively dwarfs her own in comparison, and there's so much hate, so much focus on humans. The word flashes through her mind repeatedly and she sees everything through Lucifer's eyes, every flaw, every defect.
She sees, and she agrees.
Well, she thinks sardonically, she never has been much of a people person.
When she opens her eyes, their linked hands are surrounded by a bright red glow. Lucifer leans in towards her, his features lit up by the fiery light. "So how does Apocalypse Now sound?" he smirks.
Kayla grins.
