Chapter Text
A lifetime ago, Lucifer saw nothing when he closed his eyes beyond the backs of his eyelids. Safe in the red-black darkness, he would drift off to sleep and dream meaningless, nonsensical dreams.
Sleep was a reprieve once, a blessing. And now...
Suffice to say that these days, after everything he has seen and done, Lucifer avoids sleeping to the best of his ability.
He brushes off concern for the ever darkening circles beneath his eyes with a scoff. He is Lucifer of Pride, former Morning Star, the final Angel Sovereign. Losing a little sleep here and there means next to nothing to him. His siblings--or, Lucifer’s heart aches to admit, what is left of them--say less and less the more that he dismisses it.
That is, when they decide to speak with him at all.
The occasions where they can all speak amicably without a fight have drastically diminished. Is this what Lucifer has condemned them all to? An eternity of pointless, petty squabbling?
They are all so… Different now. Devilhood has that effect on an angel, it would seem.
Even Satan who was born a demon shows signs of change. Faster to anger, more free with his rage. More and more frequently has Lucifer been called on to reign his wayward youngest--no, not youngest now, King Diavolo had declared him fourth --brother back in. Once, without thinking, and relying heavily on past experience, he had sent Beelzebub to help bring Satan down from his latest temper tantrum.
Lucifer will eternally be grateful that Belphegor saw fit to call on him when he did--otherwise, they all might have very well lost yet another of their number to senseless violence.
It was a simple lapse in judgement, but it had so nearly cost them all so very dearly.
It seems impossible now to imagine Satan as he once was, just a young thing barely reaching Lucifer’s hip-- spitting mad at some small inconvenience or other, but calming the instant that Beelzebub wrapped him up in a tender, familiar embrace. Lucifer is not sure who was more stunned by the outcome of the errant errand, himself or Beelzebub. He certainly knows who was more hurt by it though, in the end.
There is a distance now, between them all. It’s shaped like their missing sister, solidified by their shared grief. Made ever wider by Lucifer’s personal guilt, the secrets he’s begun to keep. Not that any of the others know--or ever will, if Lucifer has his way.
He knows they all resent him now for what he’s done, for the choices he made, for how he led all of them to ruin. It hurts to lose his brothers’ love and admiration like this, but he would rather they hate him and be safe than love him and be…
Well, It doesn’t bear thinking about, now.
With the war finally over, and what’s left of his family securely under his ever watchful eye in the devildom (for the most part--and he has to be content with that. He has to be.) Lucifer had initially felt that he could relax, just an inch, just for a night.
Diavolo--Paymon, once, but no longer--had entreated him to spend the evening with him as he had almost every night since the war had concluded and peace was struck. His invitations were never unwelcome, despite how often Lucifer would deny him. If he went to lie with Diavolo --no matter how well he would sleep after. Such sweet, dreamless sleep-- he wouldn’t have the night time hours to catch up on work.
Becoming a Cardinal Sin came with a surprising amount of paperwork for all of them. Given that paperwork is a chore which Lucifer has been intimately familiar for centuries on centuries, he hadn’t thought much about taking the lion’s share of the work from his brothers. What would it matter to them if he sorted through their responsibilities and delegated from there? It’s not as if any of them were well accustomed to being responsible for anything. He’s simply doing them all a favor.
But that one night, Lucifer had made the mistake of taking Diavolo up on his offer. It always felt good to indulge in temptation, no longer fighting his very nature to preen, to be praised, to take, and take, and take without guilt. Without shame.
So he had indulged, and Mammon had taken the rare opportunity of an evening without Lucifer’s watchful gaze to guide him to play fast and loose with the peace treaty. Flaunting everything Lucifer had worked for to gamble in the human world. He hadn’t even come back with more than he’d lost, but that wasn’t even in the same realm as the point.
Had he ever been so irresponsible before? Lucifer cannot recall it being so--he had trusted Mammon implicitly back then, often leaving the second oldest in charge of their siblings for hours, if not occasionally days at a time. Mammon had been one of Michael’s better warriors--and even if Lucifer had detested Michael toward the end of his time in the Celestial Realm, he could at least recognize the quality of his education in Mammon’s strength.
Where had his reliable, good natured brother gone? When had he been replaced by a profligate spendthrift with a mouth bigger than the ego he boasted of so poorly? There had been a time when Mammon had been the only person who could make Lucifer laugh, the only one he’d felt comfortable enough to confide in. Now all Mammon seems to do is give him tension headaches that, as of late, threaten to become migraines.
After having dragged Mammon home from his escapades by his ear--back to where it was safe , why did he have to go and play the fool? Why couldn’t he see that if he just stayed put that everything would be alright? That Lucifer would take care of him, take care of everything, if he would only just --the nights that Lucifer would allow himself with Diavolo became farther and fewer between.
Subsequently, that meant the nights that Lucifer spent awake at his desk grew more and more frequent, which, of course, had a favorable impact on his productivity.
Or at least he had considered it favorable. Up until this very moment.
Now, as Lucifer sits at his writing desk with his inbox startlingly, woefully barren, it dawns on him that not even paperwork is infinite, as impossible as the notion sounds. He stares at his pristine desk and empty hands in muted shock. An irrational part of Lucifer feels something like betrayed, but mostly, he feels--
He does not want to think about it.
...Well.
He supposes…
He could go for a walk? Evening strolls have always helped to clear his head, at the very least.
Lucifer heaves a sigh and leans back in his chair, the knots in his back protesting the sudden stretch as he starts going through the motions to drag himself up and out of the seat he’d been occupying for the past… Lucifer glances at the clock mounted on the far wall. How long had he been holed up in his office for this time?
He had sat down not too long after dinner, so surely it couldn’t have gotten too terribly late?
The clock defies him, and reads a solemn four in the morning.
Lucifer groans, scrubs a hand over his eyes. He hadn’t meant to let himself work so long.
The tired pounding ache behind his eyes doesn’t lessen much with his ministrations, which means he ought to at least close his eyes and lie down in bed for the next scant few hours. If he’s going to keep up his little charade of resting, he’ll need to retire to his room regardless.
It wouldn’t do for any of his family to see him exit his office in yesterday's clothes, obviously. But the threat of sleep is enough to keep him wary. Will he be able to abstain if he lies down now? What if he does fall asleep--or, even worse, what if he oversleeps ? He has an appearance to maintain--and a part of it is that he is expected to rise before his family. He’s supposed to be present.
Lucifer rubs harder at his treacherous, tired eyes. The risk of teetering off the edge into slumber is too great now--he’ll…. Do something else instead. Disappointment wells up in him like bitter black bile.
What a sad routine he’s developed.
What a pathetic creature he’s become.
As loathsome as it is, this is still better than the alternative. To sleep, to dream .
Depriving himself of proper rest is more than worth not having to watch his world fall apart, over and over again in the hellscape of his nightmares. It is more than worth not feeling the phantom sensation of Lilith’s cold body in his arms. More than worth not being forced to relive watching horror dawn, naked and raw, on his younger brothers’ faces when they saw what had become of him after his fall. Their disgust, their terror, their pity and sorrow and grief.
Lucifer had hardly wanted to experience any of that the first time-- so why would he ever willingly subject himself to it all again?
Stubborn to a fault he might very well be, but stupid he most certainly is not . He refuses to be laid so low by his own subconscious, and if that means sleeping in fits and bursts for the rest of his assumedly eternal life, then so be it.
With a final, frustrated sigh, Lucifer throws his coat over his shoulders and leaves his office. His steps fall softer than his mood would like, but there is little he would hate more than to rouse any of his assumedly sleeping siblings from their own slumber with his insomnia.
His family’s new estate is nothing like their home in the celestial realm. It was a picture of beauty, all high arches and clean white walls and sprawling gardens, filled with the odds and ends that long lives tend to accumulate.
Their residence now is comparatively empty, impersonally decorated in the characteristic dark and rich colors of Devildom nobility. It is fitting in the sense that that is exactly what they are, and ill-fitting in literally every other way possible. Lucifer knows that Diavolo had done his best to make them feel.. Well… At home , but it was more or less a wasted effort. Lucifer doubts that this place will never truly feel like home to them, not without--
Lucifer pauses in the hall, his fingertips just barely grazing the wall. He sighs slowly, shakes his head.
Not… without time.
He very much does not think of the secret room he’d had made before his family had officially moved in. He does not think of it in great, painful detail. He doesn’t. He can’t.
The garden at this time of night--morning? Ugh--is not much of a vision, even in the faint moonlight. The indistinct shapes of the shrubbery and the fearsome, devilish forms of the statues don’t do much to add to a sense of peace or tranquility, but the air is crisp and clean, which Lucifer supposes is pleasant enough for his purposes.
He settles himself onto a stone bench and tilts his head back to study the stars.
Lucifer breathes in, slowly.
The stars shine in distant coldness down back at him, indifferent, mocking. He had once been the crown jewel amongst them, and now here sits-- with a sore neck and aching eyes and a heart that he refuses to acknowledge the weight of. Truly, how the mighty have fallen. Lucifer’s lips quirk of their own accord into a sardonic, rueful little smile.
A shooting star streaks its way over the bowl of the sky-- a brilliant, brief flash of debris burning up in the Devildom’s atmosphere.
Is that what I looked like , Lucifer wonders idly. A speck of light as I fell, and then… nothing?
Time passes as slowly as the night blooming flowers slowly unfurl, and Lucifer’s eyes grow heavy. He closes them and promises himself he’ll retire to his rooms properly soon, just a minute more.
Just a moment more of the silence, in the quiet peace of the near dawn.