A/N: No mere repetition but a sincere thank you to Sop12345d for taking the time and doing the beta!

Also once again, I'd like to say thank you for your reviews, favs and follows. Especially to the "regular" reviewers, but of course to everyone else just as well. I really like to hear your thoughts about it and it's interesting to see what you think where I might be going with the story ;)

Chapter 6: 5782 days

It has been 5782 days – almost 16 years – since he had left. And what a long time this had been!

Not once had she seen him in all this time but she couldn't stop the laugh that escaped her throat when she finally did. How cosmic this had to be. A cosmic joke so to speak. There she was, lying here, dying for all that mattered, and he finally showed up once again.

"About time," she croaked out, her voice still barely a whisper.

"You've looked better," was merely his reply, but a fond smile still made it to his lips – a smile that still made her sob.

She tried to say that he himself looked just how she remembered him and that somehow she missed him, even though she barely remembered ever knowing him at all. But the words didn't want to come out of her mouth. She was too weak to speak as of now. This darn cancer had taken too much out of her.

Still, she had one more question to ask and she just needed an answer even if this would be the final straw to kill her. So she looked him in his eyes – those dark, warm eyes that were actually still looking fondly at her. How could he look this fondly at her?!

"Here to pick me up?" she finally managed to press out when the increasing beeping of those damn machines she was hooked up on keep reminding her that she could not play this cool – because she simply wasn't cool about any of this anymore.

Fucking cancer seemed to be winning after all. Karma was a bitch!

Instead of smirking at her with that leery smile she had seen before, he continued to smile at her fondly.

"No, not at all," he replied making her already weakened heart skip a beat in anticipation.

"What then?"

"I'm here to wish you goodbye since I can't accompany you to where you'll go."

She didn't know what to say to that but she could feel the tears flowing down her cheeks even if she was way too weak by now to hide them. There was no need to anyway because he was already helping her out with that when his hand carefully and almost tenderly wiped the tears away.

"Farewell, Charlotte."

~~o0o~~

She knew something was off before she even turned around. But she would never had expected this. Almost sixteen years and he was sitting there on her couch as if nothing had ever happened, as if all those years had been just her imagination going wild.

She actually took out her cellphone to check on the date.

"Hello, Linda…" he practically purred at her and she couldn't help but feel totally naked. And oh… how she would still love to get totally naked with him, despite the age that had caught up to her quite a while ago.

"You… you haven't changed a bit," she finally managed to say, a small smile making it to her eyes.

"Well, you know how it is. Immortality and all that… not aging… and stuff." He actually looked kind of embarrassed to remind her of it.

But she couldn't find an answer to that one.

"Why are you here?"

"Needed to say a goodbye." And her heart skipped a beat thinking who that might have been. But he spared her the worry, revealing it before she could even ask the question. "Charlotte."

"So…"

"Just arrived from there."

Linda nodded, not sure what to say to that. She had come to know Charlotte quite well over those years – had come to really like her by the way. So her losing a terribly short fight against this cancer was hurting a lot more than it had seemed possible those almost sixteen years ago.

"Did it hurt?"

"Not anymore." Ever evasive but still ever truthful.

"Did she go...?" He merely shook his head and Linda couldn't do anything but feel relief for her lost friend. Another lost friend…

"You know what happened during all those years, do you?"

He simply snorted and raised his eyebrows, daring her to ask something this stupid of him again. Of course he knew, but she still couldn't stop herself from continue to babble.

"You know about Chloe's boy?"

The smile faltered.

"Marcus?"

And was right back.

"Dan?"

Again the smile vanished and he slowly nodded. "Kind of met him recently."

And that was so not the information Linda needed him to reveal. It really sucked to know about all this celestial beings and all their… stuff. She averted her eyes. This was too much, way too much information right now.

"She made Captain last week. Did you know?"

He didn't answer this time and when Linda looked at him she could see the sadness return to his eyes.

"Was about time considering her track-record," Linda continued, a small smile gracing her lips when she thought about the party they'd thrown at LUX for Chloe. One of the rare moments they could convince her to return to that place without feeling miserable.

"Whenever there'd been a case nobody could solve, she would take it, and if she didn't find anything there would be some guy crawling out from under his stone to give her the one missing piece or the perp would just show up and turn himself in."

The man on her couch still kept quiet but there was the hint of a smile on his lips while he listened.

He knew already, didn't he? Of course he did. He probably knew all there was to know about them – about her anyway. What she did, what she ate, maybe even what she was dreaming about – if she ever dreamed nowadays.

So Linda decided to turn the tables around. "What about your brother? Met him recently, too?" The question was out before she could stop herself. Did she even want to know about it?

"Not really my kind of neighborhood," he replied, voice once more going cold. So those two hadn't been on good terms after they vanished from the face of the Earth – so to speak.

"Guess he got promoted or something when I finally went back to… work."

The bitterness in his voice was hard to miss but she couldn't bring herself to investigate this further since it would lead her to nowhere anyway. She had once tried to help him cope with his feelings and she had utterly failed – failed him. Her trying to help him had only made things worse and now sixteen years had gone by…

"Why are you here, Lucifer?" He didn't answer her right away. "Really, Lucifer… why are you here?" And not with your former partner, for that matter. But she didn't voice that last part.

"I have a favor to ask of you, my dear doctor."

She sighed and turned away once more. Of course he was here for another personal, selfish reason. How could she have expected for him to change in those years? For him, sixteen years must be nothing but a whisper in the wind.

When she didn't answer, he got some papers from the inside of his still pristine looking Armani suit – the dark grey one, the one he had always liked the most as she very well knew. Shoving them over the coffee table, he looked at her expectantly.

Linda didn't dare to actually look at the papers, though. Was this the final contract with the devil? This time a handshake wouldn't do?

"I need you to sign this as a witness."

"What?" That was when she finally looked at it and realized it was a testament – his testament. Only the date didn't fit today's date. "This date was from before you… left."

Ran out on us was what she had wanted to say, but she somehow got the feeling he'd had enough time to ponder this one.

"Why…?"

"Well there would be way too many questions if I made my testament that many years later, wouldn't there?"

There was a smile on his lips, but it didn't reach his eyes anymore. Instead, there was sadness there, the same sadness she remembered seeing the night before he left them.

"Should I read this?" Linda asked and finally got the papers as well as a pen.

"There isn't really a need to, but you can, if you want to."

"Will I go to hell for this?"

"Oh my dear, dear doctor… I thought we established this a very long time ago." This time the smile actually reached his eyes. "This will be the last time you will ever see me. If you wish so."

Her heart skipped another beat at that. It wasn't that she didn't want to see him again. He'd been her friend and she had cared deeply for him at one time. But nowadays, this seemed like a lifetime ago and most of the time he was a fond memory from what seemed to have been another lifetime ago.

She finally signed the papers, and shoved them back, although she couldn't resist glancing at the name of the person that would inherit all what had been his on this earth. It didn't matter anymore, though, did it? She was done with his antics anyway. He had just dropped by to tell her that an actually dear friend of hers had died, so what further harm could this one favor do?

Still, she couldn't resist the question. "Why her?"

He actually smiled when he got the papers back and carefully put them inside his pocket once again – as if to made sure that nothing would happen to them.

"Trix went to law school, works with the DA office now. You know that. How would it look if she suddenly takes over the management of a night club?"

He merely shrugged but then beamed at her with that boyish little grin on his lips she used to love so much.

"Can you think of anyone better?"

No, she couldn't. Frowning, she thought about it for a moment, only to conclude that it was indeed somehow befitting. Trix had had some trouble with the law when she was a teenager – much to her mother's chagrin, as one could imagine. But she had turned around – even though Linda had always suspected that Chloe's daughter was bored out of her mind with the job she now had.

So maybe he was right. Of course he was right. Hadn't he always been right? In his own way. Well, except for this one time… when he hadn't understood himself and his feelings. When he had been too late to realize his own desires.

"What if she won't accept it? Not signing the papers or something?"

"She will."

He sounded confident about it. Much too confident for her liking but she did not dare to ask. For sometimes, not knowing is better. A lesson that she'd learned the hard way.

"So, dear Linda…" Surprised, she looked up, pulled out of her thoughts all of a sudden. It took her a moment to come back to the here and now.

"What do you truly desire nowadays?"

There was no need to resist his eyes but somehow she wanted to prolong this for just a second – just to revel one more time in those amazingly fascinating eyes. But she could barely hold herself up against the pulling in her mind, making her finally spilling it out.

"To forget the truth about you and your family. To get the bliss back. The bliss of not knowing what lays beyond."

His smile was fond when he nodded and got up. She stood up quickly, looking up at him expectantly, but when she looked into those sad eyes of his, she suddenly wasn't sure anymore where this would lead her - and if it was the right decision. Was she going to forget all about him? That wasn't what she had wanted! Just… just this tiny little bit of truth about him being… well, the Devil.

He gently gave her one last kiss that she was likely to remember for the rest of her days before he whispered in her ear:

"Goodbye, Linda."

~~o0o~~

When Beatrice Decker came home that night, she had the strange feeling that something was off in her apartment, but she couldn't quite put a finger on it. For a moment, she contemplated to call the cops – or her mother at least. But then… there wasn't really something missing, nobody in there, everything still in its place. Something did feel wrong, though.

Only when she went to bed, she finally saw the small sheet of paper on her pillow, the writing in the most beautiful cursive writing she had ever seen.

"Tomorrow."

A/N: There it is, now you know what she's supposed to sign in return for him taking Marcus out of the picture.

One more chapter to go. Please don't forget to review :) Thanks!