Chapter Text
He held her hand, gently tugged in the sheets as her breathing slowly turned from whimpering to a slow halt. The detective had fallen asleep at last, away from the numbing pain that was slowly spreading across her body, day by day. Her eyebrows were glimmering under the pale hospital light in a dim greyish white as if ash rained down on snow-covered grounds.
The door behind him stuttered open. He was humming something that the sound was lost in the silent atmosphere. Amenadiel stood five feet behind him, brows furrowed like a marble statue that would not be wavered by the passage of time. If he was perceptive like usual, then he would have found the lines of worry that were embedded in the stern expression. However, Amenadiel doubted his brother would not be able to see or hear anything even if he shouted in his face.
“Go home, brother.” the angel said with a deep sigh, “It’s time.”
He ignored Amenadiel, the melody was uninterrupted despite the invisible flinch which was a result of the idea that someone is thinking of pulling him away from her. Was it Dad? He knew his thoughts were vague and unsteady, like a candle fire in the cold breeze. Dad must have come to take away another thing from him, just like he always does. But not the detective, how could he take the detective?
“Brother-”
The second Amenadiel’s hand touched his shoulder, the Devil flinched with all his nerves bubbling out like a mother han hiding eggs below its belly. He heard a distant yet distinct hiss between his outburst - Amenadiel cursed in words that he would say his holier-than-thou brother could never fathom a few decades ago. A few decades, in his world, was not but a flicker of an eye, yet it all seemed like forever ago.
Amenadiel did not scowl at him for the blood that came out of his arm due to the sudden spread of his brother’s white wings. Instead, he stared at his brother’s feather. Those pure cream white beings shivered like newborn babies in the deepest of winter. Their owner didn’t turn his head around, but Amenadiel could feel the divinity inside his brother is flickering out of colour.
“Close your wings, Luci.” Amenadiel said quietly, unlike his self-defined persona of the most fierce soldier of God, “People will see them.”
“Then let them see. ” he let those words spill out his mouth like venom that could poison the tree of knowledge, the twisted expression on his face reminded people of the animalistic characteristics of the serpent that doomed humans into their original sin, “Maybe I can send them into Azrael’s arm due to shock alone, then she would be too busy to care about the detective. A better idea, maybe I should have a talk with Azrael if she dares to show her flunky face around here.”
“Lucifer, stop.” Amenadiel’s voice grew cold, he could sense the depth of divinity shimmering beneath. God’s favourite son rarely threatens his wayward brother these days, especially after the decades they spend together on earth. He would almost chuckle at this familiar tension given to him by Amenadiel, it was annoying yet amusing like a stray dog wagging its tail at you while covered in mud. If only the eldest angel could loosen the irritating undertone of his words, “Do you know how deranged you sound like right now? Chloe’s time has come, it’s the nature of life. No mortal can avoid the inevitable. Even the blessed will one day walk the gates of Death.”
“But not the detective,” he interrupted Amenadiel, the buzzing sound in his ears expanded following each words coming out of his brother’s mouth, “not Chloe.”
Amenadiel sighed again. That self-righteous bastard. Standing there as if the being lying there that was snatched away by the grasp of dad was not his friend as well. Talking about the cycle of life, he sneered at that thought. No, it won’t happen on his watch.
“You two had a wonderful life, Luci.” Amenadiel whispered with more unwavering determination in his dissuade, no, command, “The house where Lux used to be, three hybrid children, the songs you sang to her while she fell asleep and slammed into the piano in the last days. I thought dad gave you guys enough time to say goodbye. She was an amazing detective, working till the last minute of her breath. Thousands of souls in the Silver City is at peace because of her. She was an amazing mother, Trixie has become a truly influential human and Chloe’s name will be whispered by her to her children and her children’s children. She was a brilliant friend; Maze, Charlie and I will make sure her story will withstand the test of time. Where she is going, she won’t be alone. Dan and Ella is waiting there for her.”
A gasp escaped his throat with dangerous connotation - although in Amenadiel’s eyes he was gasping for air because the pain he was in - but the Devil knew that it was not sorrow but hellfire. Raw and clean like the feeling of wings cutting through the howling wind that engulfed his body, it was such an unpleasant feeling that left a mark on his mind forever sine the day he fell. Now it came back like an old friend, he hasn’t felt dad near him in so long that he forgot how much God took from him, enough for him to consider plunging a sword through his almighty heart.
“How dare you?” the Devil hissed, his eyes turned into a scarlet red, yet those pupils were flickering with the reflection of morning starlight, as if meteor rain crushing into Hell, lit up the eternal darkness inside, “How dare you start using the past tense in the same line as her name? Let’s see if Dad want to scrub off someone you care about from the world. Imagine the doctor or Charlie lying here about to be wiped from existence. ”
The sudden sharp cut into his flash was unexpected. Grey wings like the sharpened blade that reflected the maniacal look on his face. The Devil stilled, his face that was shifting between its devil and human mode grew stable. He almost forgot that Amenadiel had limited tolerance for his outrageous speeches, these few decades might have corrupted the guard he had around the buffer angel, but God’s strongest soldier was never to be messed with his full power on. However, he held up his head high with a hysterical laugh as the pain struck through his body. Amenadiel gave him the look as if the angel was the one who was attacked with a mix of confusion and hurt. It was the same look he gave the brother who rebelled eons ago on the rubbled battlefield of the Silver City. His mind strayed towards an interesting thought, the Devil wondered if they fixed the statue of dear old Dad standing in the middle of the city that was a light year tall - he purposefully destroyed that thing with the intention of letting no one to worship it until the end of time.
“Be warned, Satan. No more threat towards my family.” Amenadiel’s angelic voice peeked through the body of a mortal man in a sweatshirt that Linda gave him repeatedly after forgetting their anniversary due to Alzheimer's disease, “You are crossing a line. Chloe is not going to be wiped from existence. I am here to take the blessed soul of God back to the Silver City, that’s where she belongs, that’s her home.”
“Well, that’s not my home,” he whispered, letting those quite words sink in.
Amenadiel faltered, he shoved his huge grim wings back into his back. The expression on his was tainted by sympathy for his brother, even though the angel was still loyal to Heaven to a fault, but the years on earth gave him a new perspective of his rebellious brother that he thought he knew for millenniums. His brother was an unpredictable pattern of blinking eyes gilded the night and wild scorching hellfire. But now Amenadiel also knew that the Light Bringer could be the warm flicker in the stove during Christmas nights. Chloe Decker was the Devil’s container, she stopped Lucifer in setting the whole world on fire. All the unruly hellfire of Hell was focused on one person alone. And that person’s live-fire was the one thing Lucifer couldn’t control, no matter how hard he tried.
His dark eyes clearly saw through his brother’s hesitation. “At least let me say goodbye one more time, brother.” The Devil whispered in a voice that could infect any heart on earth, the gentleness and sorrow in his voice was like having a firefly dying in your palm, “I will not be able to see her again.” After all, heaven was not somewhere the Devil could follow the detective to.
“Fine,” Amenadiel finally agreed, “I’ll give you five. Do whatever you have to do.”
“I will,” he said.
“I’m sorry, brother.”
He watched the angel walk out the door. he whispered in a voice that his brother couldn’t hear, “I’m sorry, too.”
The sound of an angel flying away was deafening yet quite. Imagine the cry for help of a man drowning, after the initial screams for help that could pierce through any creature’s heart, the only thing left afterwards is the rings on the water surface. That was when Amenadiel figured out something was not right, because when he burst into the room again. The only thing welcomed him was the high peach sound of the electrocardiograph and a thin line.
When the doctors came squirming in to declare the time of death, the Devil was already gone. He had stolen the soul of Chloe Decker away from Heaven.