Chapter Text
Lucifer was a wreck and it was hard for him to put a finger on the one thing that had caused him to fall into an endless, hopeless downward spiral. For years he had been trying to find the one domino that had caused it all, only to end up with more and more unanswered questions.
Sometimes it felt hopeless and pointless to keep on trying. He had so many lingering questions, so many unsolved puzzles and when he did manage to follow one of the many red threads, all he ended up with was a huge tangle of thousands of strings that concealed what was burning on his unholy soul.
Charlie had been moved out years ago, Lilith had disappeared with her and he was alone in a palace that was filled with memories of a time that had been more colorful than anything he had now. Only the countless pieces of art and portraits in the long hallways provided company for the fallen angel, but they didn't fill the emptiness inside him.
Lucifer had tried his hardest to fill the gap, but nothing seemed to help. He just felt like the creatures inside him were tearing apart the seams of what he was painstakingly trying to mend. Bridges behind him were torn apart and the path in front of him was paved with broken glass that cut into his limbs whenever he tried to take a step forward and push on.
So he was stuck. Stuck on an isolated island while the sea of time flowed past him, the ghosts of his past behind him and only the hint of hope that things would get better in front of him. And the more years passed, the more time went by, the deeper he lost himself in pointless brooding, the more he asked himself only one question, which overshadowed his problems like a chapter headline in a novel.
Where had it all started?
Lucifer had often heard that time was just a construct. It was not something you could grasp or measure, even if people tried to do so and control it. But what exactly happened when you attempted to control something that could not be controlled? What happened when you realized you were running out of time even though you had so much left to do? Humans panicked and tried to artificially prolong their short lives, even though their bodies were never made for it. They nursed the seriously ill in the hope of not losing them, even though they were only postponing the unavoidable and the painful, but not removing it from the world. Until one day, full of fear, they realized that they were about to die and regretted that they had only ever been afraid of the future and had forgotten to live in the moment.
But what happened when you didn't run out of time, but instead it stretched out in front of you like a piece of sticky gum that kept getting longer and longer, with no end in sight? What if all the time in the world was placed in your lap and you could do anything, see anything, experience anything, feel anything, love anything, hate anything, fear anything, lose anything? What if time really was just a construct of numbers and measurements that meant nothing to you?
Life became dull, gray and boring. At some point, the new inventions no longer astonished you, at some point you had done everything and at a certain point... you just worked. Like a clockwork mechanism that was set when it was created before it was left to its own devices.
Lucifer felt like that clockwork. He felt how he functioned. How his heart beat in his chest, but it wasn't alive. How his lungs filled with air but he didn't breathe. How his stomach filled with food, but he didn't taste it. How his body fell asleep but he did not dream.
How he created but didn't create.
He stared at the latest duck in his claws with a frown and once again witnessed what only an artist could witness. Imperfection.
He was sure that if he showed the duck to someone else, or perhaps put it away and have another look at it later, it would appear different, but for the moment he saw every mistake he had made with it. He saw how one eye of the toy was slightly higher than the other. He saw how the beak hung unnaturally crooked and how the little detective hat he had given it was far too small. They were only minor mistakes, but he felt almost personally offended by them. So much so that he burned the little creature and left his desk in a huff.
The King of Hell made his way through the countless piles of other rubber ducks and pushed open the double doors to his office before leaving, furious with himself and his mistakes.
He glanced at the many portraits from happier times, wandered past the kitchen, which made his stomach growl, and past Charlie's old bedroom. Only at his bedroom, which he had once shared with Lilith, did he pause in his rampage and look at the beautiful, dark door in which he had lived so many dreams.
He no longer slept in this room, but had moved into a room that was actually intended for guests. But since he wasn't receiving guests anyway, except maybe Ozzie or Bee visiting him for the once in a while, he had decided that he might as well use the spare room. It was easier to ignore problems when you weren't confronted with them. Even if repression wasn't a good idea, it was the path of least resistance and Lucifer didn't have the strength to keep fighting for lost dreams.
His hand hovered over the doorknob for a few seconds before he slowly pushed the door open. He stopped in the doorway and took in the room.
It was large, even larger than any other bedroom in the palace, and so luxuriously furnished that the French Sun King would have been green with envy. Heavy, purple brocade curtains covered the beautiful bay windows, which had not seen a rag in many years, an archway led into the dressing room and right next to it into the bathroom. Lilith's dressing table still stood unchanged against the opposite wall, scattered with expensive cosmetics and the beautiful perfume that Lucifer had never got enough of. Most of the room, however, was taken up by the enormous king-size bed, above which hung a purple canopy. The satin sheets were unchanged, the countless pillows still perfectly arranged and if a stranger saw it, they would think the bed was arranged like this every day.
But Lucifer knew better. The bed was untouched. For years. Like him, it stood still in time and only the fine dust cover bore witness to the decay of this room.
But it wasn't the bed, the bathroom, the dressing room or the dressing table that Lucifer came to this room for. It was the large painting that was opposite the bed, a monument to what this room had once been.
His legs slowly carried him to the bed and he sat down on the end of it, folded his hands between his legs and looked at the portrait.
It showed him and Lilith, caught in a passionate embrace in a swirl of embers and fire. Their mouths almost met in a kiss, and though Lilith had always criticized the fact that their lips didn't actually meet, Lucifer had always loved it. The kiss was the product of a long journey they had taken together, a journey full of hurdles and problems and the Seraphim would have been willing to take that journey again anytime if the product had been the same. The journey was the destination, you had to enjoy it, feel it and perceive it with all your fibers to appreciate the destination.
Someone who never had to make a journey, who never had to overcome hurdles, would learn to appreciate the end. If someone was given everything in life, a house, a car, money, then they would never appreciate it as much as someone who had worked long and hard for it.
The journey was the goal and that was exactly what this picture was supposed to realize.
But now, it was like a taunting sonnet. Just another knife thrust into his chest, which he found difficult to bear, and the symbolization of the chapter headline of his book. The illustration of the questions: When and why?
His wife had left him. Without a word of explanation, without a trace to follow her. If her remains were not all around, one could almost believe that she had never existed and Lucifer realized that all the descent into dark nothingness had begun when she left his life. Lilith was the small flame that had kept his spark alive. The last bond between his old home and his new one. When Lilith disappeared, she took a part of him with her, and he knew he would have given it to her willingly had she asked.
Although his heavy heart was filled with melancholy, he still felt doubts. Doubts that had accompanied him for years, like a nasty whisper on his shoulder, teasing him with lies. Doubts that led to sadness, sadness that led to self-pity, self-pity that led to incomprehension and incomprehension that led to anger.
Anger that everything seemed so unfair, that people were playing with him and his feelings. Anger that he secretly knew he deserved better than this!
Painfully, he remembered his fall, the hopelessness as he had looked up from this pit to the shining place in the sky which used to be his home; close enough to see it, unable to reach it. Like Icarus, flying too close to the sun and burning his wings.
Lilith had been by his side and had promised him that everything would get better. That they would overcome this challenge together and that he would never be alone, no matter what. And yet here he was alone, trapped in memories and thoughts.
Why had she left him? Why had she broken her promise? What gave her the right to play with his heart like that? When she had left him, it was her who had torn down the bridges that he had painstakingly repaired. She had taken away his self-confidence and left him with nothing but a broken man. He hated that even though she was gone, she had such control over him. That it still hurt, even if he wasn't thinking about it.
How could it be that a person who wasn't present had such a hold on his life? Was the pain his broken little heart felt not enough? Had he not fallen enough? When was enough enough? When did he reached the point where he no longer had the strength to get up; the point he craved but also loathed?
And still he could not hate her. He could not condemn and demonize her. He could not let her go and continue on his own path. Like a fool, he had blindly placed his trust in her and now watched as this gift tore him to the ground, for he still hoped that one day she would return. He still hoped that this was just another obstacle in their journey and that any pain, fear and sadness he felt now would be worth it once he held her in his arms again and their mouths drew close for a kiss.
The product of a journey.