Lucifer held Audrey faithfully as the day slipped by and the rain gradually relented, almost synchronised with her tears. When sunset came, she was already fast asleep in the cradle of his arms, having finally succumbed to exhaustion. Her torment continued, however; he could tell by the slight creases between her brows and the restless way she fidgeted. Lucifer wished fervently that she'd summon him into her mind again, but her unease indicated she was trapped in the dark depths of a terrible nightmare, and to call upon someone required a solid state of awareness.
Instead, he did what he could to soothe her from the outside, hushing and smoothing away her anxious expressions as night fell and crept into the early hours of the morning. He couldn't bring himself to wake her after the boundless hurt she'd displayed, and he supposed reality wouldn't be much better for her anyway. Especially, he suspected, when Gabriel emerged from the darkness and stepped up onto the gazebo with a herringbone-patterned, woollen blanket draped over his arm.
He'd never seen his brother so despondent as he perched on the edge of the platform and unfolded the blanket. To his surprise, he flung it out over Lucifer's head to wrap around them both, rather than just tucking it in around Audrey. A little discomfited by the gesture, he kept his watch fixed upon the sleeping girl in his arms, and it seemed that Gabriel favoured the same idea.
I should be happy, Lucifer sighed mentally. If she's the key because of Gabriel's love for her, I should feel relieved over this. A small, hoarse whimper emanated from Audrey's throat and his instinctive reflexes had him rocking her gently and caressing her face before he was even aware of it. He didn't dare look up at Gabriel as he calmed her distress, feeling the heat of his moonlit tears right through the cold, night air between them.
"She loves you, regardless," he assured his brother, unsure as to why, in a whisper no louder than the breeze among the trees. Perhaps because I love her, he realised secretly, gazing down at Audrey as he would a sister. "She wouldn't have wept for an entire day if she didn't."
Gabriel remained silent for a long time, watching as Lucifer ran his palm tenderly over his advocate's hairline. The tiny bulges of her corneas slid around under her eyelids as she dreamt.
"I don't know why," he whispered back finally; "I've given her nothing but reasons to hate me."
Lucifer gave a quiet huff of a snort, careful not to disturb their beloved, and looked up at him.
"Come now, Gabriel," he smiled wryly; "she somehow managed to see the better side of me, did she not?" A similarly dry humour warmed his brother's eyes a little. "I've never met anyone so compassionate. She doesn't take things at face value; she makes her own decisions, and she's decided you're a good man." The archangel reached out to skim the backs of his fingers along her wrist with a gentle sigh, and as he reached her knuckles, her hand twitched slightly before it stretched out, seeking his familiar touch. She nestled her palm against his, gripping his fingers tightly, and he stared with sorrowful adoration. "She isn't biased by your guilt," Lucifer identified.
Gabriel raised his sapphire eyes to meet his brother's emeralds, just as the sky watches over the land and endeavours to protect it from the beautiful, star-strewn vacuum beyond. The darkness that had maintained a vignette around his view of Lucifer, since he'd seen him bargain with Evil, dissolved into the silver glow of the moon above, and he saw his brother beneath the Devil's mask for the first time in two millennia.
"If she believes in the best of you, then so do I," he pledged, reaching his unoccupied hand out to rest upon Lucifer's blanket-swathed shoulder.
A tentative smile tugged at the exiled brother's lips as he returned his attention to Audrey, though his care wasn't really needed any longer. Her face was relaxed and her breathing even, Gabriel's presence chasing any troubles away. As the moonlight began to fade, overpowered by the sun's first glimmer across the garden, Gabriel looked up at the horizon, just visible through the trees, and smiled too.
Deep, golden light filtered low through the magnolia buds and the dew-laden grass, like the amber eyes of God himself. The dawn brought with it a plethora of life: rabbits and deer ventured boldly out from their shelters among the trees, grazing on the lush greenery in the rising sun; otters slid into the river, chasing and splashing one another playfully between the reeds under the bridge; skylarks hovered overhead, gracing Eden with their chorus of song: the first sounds of the day.
Lucifer's tears of relief dripped upon Audrey's face as he watched the majestic garden come to life before his eyes after being parted from it for so long. She stirred with a deep sigh, and her brows knitted together in confusion as she wiped away the droplets on her cheek. Squinting up in the bright, morning light, she discovered the source of the leak and began to push herself up; it was only as she did so that she realised one of her hands was held captive.
She blinked at Gabriel sleepily, uncertain of what to say as she recalled the events of the morning before, but she didn't pull away. Her love didn't seem to have noticed she'd awoken anyway; his gaze was following something on the ground at the entrance to the marble rotunda, hidden from her view by the edge of the altar.
He slipped his fingers from around her hand and got up, watching the gap in the balustrade all the while. Slowly moving towards it, he braced himself with one hand on the wide banister and bent down, until only the back of his head and the top arcs of his wings were visible. When he stood up again and turned towards her, he was holding a small, prickly ball in his cupped hands. It shivered slightly as he came to sit back down, and he handed it over to Lucifer, who stared, enraptured.
A tiny, brown nose poked out from under his thumb, and he raised it to reveal a pair of black, beady eyes surrounded by light, beige fur.
"Hello, old friend," he half laughed quietly, his tears streaming rapidly down his stubbled cheeks as he manoeuvred himself around Audrey to give her a better view.
He turned the brave little creature on its back and it rested in his palm with its nose and paws facing up at him as he stroked its tummy with one forefinger. The hedgehog sniffed at it and reached out its tiny arms to grab on.
Enamoured, Audrey turned to grin at Gabriel, but he was gone. The sun was almost fully risen now, and she could just see his winged back disappearing into the forest.
"He'll be back," Lucifer comforted, noticing her disappointment, and attempted to distract her in the meantime. "Do you like animals?"
She couldn't help but smile as she nodded, turning back to the bundle of needles in his hands. Grinning at her answer, he passed the hedgehog to her and climbed down off the platform. As he approached the entrance, more wildlife began to appear around them; one of the deer looked up at him from a few trees away, and began padding towards him. A couple of brown rabbits hopped around the outside of the balustrade until they reached the gap, where Lucifer bent to meet them as they leapt up onto the stone. Picking them up one by one, he set them down on the table where Audrey sat, cross-legged, nuzzling her new friend against her cheek.
By the time Lucifer was done, she was accompanied by a doe, two rabbits, a frog, a dormouse and a couple of otters. The gazebo had become a menagerie as he reunited with the inhabitants of his old home, talking to them as though they were human, and Audrey introduced herself to each of them accordingly.
As the hours passed, she grew especially fond of the white-speckled doe, who possessed a certain mocking humour when she looked at Lucifer, like a sister would roll her eyes at a younger brother's silly faces. She found herself developing a sort of kinship with the deer, and leaned her arm along the top of her back as they shared private smiles over his soft side.
Lucifer was sat on the corner of the altar, one of the rabbits nestled into the crook of his elbow, when, out of nowhere, a small, pulsing dot of green light shot in over the balustrade and stopped dead between them, hovering in the air like a firefly, though it would take hundreds of them to burn as brightly as the little, apple-green star. It zoomed around Lucifer's head, then circled Audrey somewhat leisurely in contrast, before darting back off into the garden and disappearing over the trees.
"What was that?" Audrey gaped, unable to tear her eyes from the spot where it had vanished, and the animals seemed just as captivated. It was quite certainly one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.
"A soul," her companion replied in an equally awed whisper.
He, too, stared long after the tiny light had gone, with the same strange, haunted look Gabriel had worn when he'd seen Jenny's sketch of the tree. She never got time to think any more about it, however, as she noticed something moving in the distance.
The sun was almost at its highest point and Gabriel beat his obsidian wings over the bridge, soaring towards them. It was time.
As he landed about a metre short of the gazebo and made his way towards them, Audrey was sure she could see a smirk twitching at the corners of his mouth at the sight of all the animals. The doe lifted her slender neck to look up at her with her glittering black eyes, as though imbuing her with confidence for what lay ahead. After leaning over to kiss between her eyes, Audrey wrapped the abandoned blanket around her shoulders like a shawl, got up and joined Lucifer by the entrance, waiting to be released.
The tension rolled off him in tangible waves; his fingers splayed and contracted in a nervous, continuous pattern by his sides. She threaded her own between his to stop them and gave them a gentle, encouraging squeeze.
Gabriel stopped with his toes to the marble step and extended a hand to each of them. The barrier was still there – she could feel the static running over her skin like slowly submerging herself in water as his hand guided her through it. Once they were free, he let go of his brother and silently moved to Audrey's side as they set off across the grass.
The narrow, elaborately-wrought bridge was only wide enough for one, and Gabriel stepped up to take the lead. He grasped her hand loosely, as if he expected her to pull away at any moment and had no intention of stopping her. Irritated that he seemed to have learned nothing from her words the day before, she tightened her grip. She could tell he'd noticed the change by the way his brow relaxed a little, and guilt redoubled over her heart. I'd be the same, where he's concerned, she realised.
She couldn't believe she'd fallen so hard in four and a half days, but to her it just made it that much more real. She'd never been in love before, despite her numerous ex-boyfriends and countless liaisons, because she'd never trusted anyone enough to let them get that close. Her parents had always fought so often that she'd developed a severe lack of faith in love from a very early age. Now, in under a week, her life had changed so radically; she had changed. She'd used to value silly things like popularity, though she'd never have admitted it, and she'd always demanded respect from people but had never really earned it. She looked back on her former self and the archangel's hand she held onto made it feel like years ago.
She'd never known it could be so strong; the compulsion to be near him and make him happy was overwhelming. Since that first meal they'd shared, when he'd returned to her as nobody else ever had, and dismissed her tainted past as inconsequential, even though he was undoubtedly more aware of the weight of sin than anyone she'd ever encountered, she'd known. There'd been no stopping the crumbling of her shields once she'd dared to hope, and his promise had been their final ruin.
A squeeze to her other hand halted her reverie as they journeyed through the towering, verdant forest. She glanced up at Lucifer, whose eyes flickered across towards Gabriel and back down at her.
The irony wasn't lost on her; the Devil is encouraging me to apologise, she thought with a wry smile that she had to bow her head to hide. He's right though.
"I'm sorry," she professed, looking up at her love as he held some ferns aside for them to pass.
He fell back into line with them on the other side and regarded her with a heart-piercingly blank expression.
"You've nothing to be sorry for," he replied.
"I knew it would hurt you and I said it anyway."
"You never said anything untrue."
Audrey blanched; with nothing left to say, and no real comfort in return, she allowed herself to be led on in silence. Her eyes stung as she worried she'd pushed him too far this time, and the skyscraping trees began to thin out without her notice.
It was, therefore, easy for Lucifer to surreptitiously snag his brother's attention, too, giving him the same pointer as he had to Audrey. Gabriel looked down as a hot, anxious tear rolled down her cheek, her gaze fixed, unseeing, on the ground a few steps ahead.
He stopped her among the bluebells at the edge of the forest, and Lucifer leaned against a tree as he beheld the view beyond the forest, trying to make himself scarce with a smug, internal grin.
"Audrey, I mean it," Gabriel implored, brushing her tear away with his thumb as he took her face in his hands; "Never be sorry for telling me the truth. I beg that you do, always." He was close enough that his gaze skipped between her aquamarine eyes, but still too far for Audrey's preference.
She stepped forward in relief to wrap her arms around his middle, and with her ear pressed to his beating chest, she felt balanced again.
Her vision settled upon the assembly ahead, and the balance was gone.