Alien is not quite the right word for what they feel like.

Lucifer knows them too well for that. The bend of muscle under the coverts, the stretch of the furthest primaries, the blinding white color of them. If these wings were unknown to him, it wouldn't be as painful. But they are known, the weight of them is known. They are too heavy one minute and feel like air the next. He'd prefer the latter if he didn't know that it always ended, that the rustling of feathers, his own feathers, would reach his ears, and they would be like anchors again.

He's not sure if he can fly. He hasn't tried. He won't try. There's joy in those memories, a burst of speed past Michael and Azrael when they raced because he was always the fastest and his twin's frustrated groan paired with their sister's laughter. There's joy even in the quieter ones, where his wings weren't letting him experience that, taking him to the stars and beyond them on a whim, but in other memories, too. In Amenadiel playing the put-upon older brother and grooming the mess that Lucifer always left them in.

There are acts he doesn't want to forget, but there is nothing glorious about them.

("They're clean! Can I go now?"

"They are not. Sit still, Samael.")

They aren't even his. Not really. Not ever.

("If you don't want me to do this, then do it yourself."

"I can't! I don't want to touch them! They feel-")

Wrong. That's the right word. He turns a glare on one wing out of the corner of his eye. Wrong.

("You are exactly how our Father made you. How could He be wrong?"

"He made a lot of us. Maybe He got tired and made a mistake."

"Don't say that.")

He can't live like this. He managed in the Silver City. He pretended. And in Hell... Nothing really mattered in Hell. Nothing was ever meant to be pleasant there, that was the whole point, and if a pair of wings made a few more demons afraid than there would have been otherwise, then the King of Hell needed to have wings.

He is not the King of Hell anymore. He won't go back. He's made that more than clear.

He certainly isn't Sama-

He is Lucifer Morningstar, and he does not have wings.

The wings he does not have arch high behind him without his say-so, like they want to stab him in the back. They do something worse. They continue to exist, no matter how much he ignores them, and he won't, can't, ignore them much longer. He can't think with them constantly flapping, can't do anything he enjoys without the fear of them popping out and being seen. He took great pleasure in finding one loose feather that morning, taking his lighter, and watching it burn.

("What are you doing?!"

"Well, ruining your plan, it seems.")

He smiled to himself while the feather turns to ash. There's one thing he knows he's still good at.

Mazikeen won't help him this time. She won't be there to roll her eyes and tell him to quit whining while she severs the muscle, won't be there to grab his shoulder and keep him from falling over when the pain becomes too much, won't squeeze his shoulder with the barest hint of tenderness she dared to show.

("One down. One to go. Sit still, Lucifer!"

"That's harder than it looks!"

"Are you crying? Come on, I know you've been through worse. I was there."

He didn't really have an answer for that. Too busy screaming.)

Who else can he ask?

Amenadiel?

Definitely not. If his brother knows, he'll do everything in his power to stop Lucifer. He'll see this as mutilation. As tragedy. As Lucifer rejecting a gift of forgiveness from their Father.

Linda, maybe?

("Yes. But before you fell, you were known as Samael."

"I don't go by that name anymore."

"That was a name that connotated your father's love for you.")

No. Definitely not.

He considers, very briefly, asking the detective. In the end, it's only a fantasy. One where she looks at his wings, those perfect, beautiful, blinding white wings, and understands that the one part of him that could still be considered holy is the part he needs to get rid of before it kills him. But she's human. If she doesn't run screaming, then she won't understand. She won't see the curse of them. He doesn't want her to see him like this at all, ever.

In the end, it's just him and a blade.

He's done more with less.

It hurts. Of course it hurts. There's always a cost to freedom. This cost is in blood and sinew and is that bone? That's definitely bone. Funny, almost, that the inside of the wing is a brighter white than the outside once he starts cutting. Not so funny, because his hand is covered in blood and it makes the blade slip. He's twisted up awkwardly to get at the wings at all, and he searches in blind pain for where the blade fell, the sickening lurch of the wing's own weight pulling it free from his back, snap-tear of muscles under gravity. Doing his work for him. Good riddance.

He finds the blade and begins again. One wing falls, dead, killed. The other beats sluggishly against the floor like a drugged fox being hunted down. It knows what has to happen next. He's breathing hard, and he's smiling, because it hurts but he's had worse, right? The wrongness of them will be gone soon, and he'll be himself, wholly. Himself, with nothing clinging onto him from the past that he'd already gotten rid of once.

He isn't screaming this time. That's more for lack of breath than anything. Harder to scream and sob and beg it to stop when its your own hand doing it. Harder still now that he knows what's on the other side. He didn't know back then, when he had Mazikeen to drag him kicking and screaming into this, that he could feel free. He doesn't need to be dragged this time. He sprints.

The second wing crumples to the ground.

He is bleeding all over the floor. Will that leave a stain? He can move a chair over here, it's fine.

He kneels, panting, white-knuckled grip on the blade. He can feel his back already starting to knit itself back up. Different scars, this time, probably more ragged than the ones Mazikeen left, but worth it. Something to be proud of. He grins, all teeth, and directs his voice to the heavens, not really caring who's listening in. "Return to sender!" He says, and he waves the blade haphazardly in the air.

He's still bleeding a little. The wings are ugly masses of feather splayed around him. This would, he notes, be the worst possible moment for the detective to walk in on him, as she often does.

He waits.

He pretends he is not disappointed when she doesn't show.

There will be no storage containers this time. No holding on, out of fear or hope or whatever it had been. These ones burn even easier than last time. They feel just as good to watch go up in flames, too.

Correcting dear old Dad's many, many mistakes. Maybe he can add that to his resume.

He feels whole. He feels free.

He feels right.

The wings are back within a night's time.