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The grief is as old as his love.
Existence is as inevitable as when existence changes and is as inevitable as when existence ceases.
Still. He feels it, every time one of his creations’ presence in the universe dies. He mourns every one of them, as they shed their shells, turning to clouds of gas and dust, some exploding into supernovae and some diminishing into remnants and some gradually cooling until they no longer emit anything at all.
He loves every one of his stars. They are his and he is theirs, their being intertwined into both of their cores. There is a piece of him in every one of them and a piece of that love too.
Lucifer has never been one to understand human children. They were too rambunctious, complicated, and messy. Stars, though. Stars are simple. Content in inhabiting the space in which they do. Massive beyond human comprehension but so small in the grand scheme of the universe. He remembers the feeling of holding their essence in the palm of his hand. Holding them close as he formed their celestial bodies with care.
“What’s got you so down in the dumps?” Chloe asks Lucifer.
“It’s nothing,” he says, the lie thin even to him.
She cocks a brow. “Wanna try that again?”
“What would you do if you lost Trixie?”
The question startles her, both the gravity of it and his lack of use of a rude nickname for the girl.
“Uhm,” she says, the word stuck in her throat, unused to the grim serious expression that adorns Lucifer’s features. “I don’t know. I don’t really like to think about it.”
“Just… just try.”
“Okay…” She takes a moment to consider the dark, horrifying concept. A mother’s worst fear, losing her child. “I… I don’t know, Lucifer. Why are you asking me this?”
“Just a macabre hypothetic, Detective,” he says with a tight smile, or an attempt at one. “Don’t mind me.” He clears his throat, averting his gaze. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Chloe has work she needs to finish and she tries her best to not let Lucifer’s odd behavior impact her work. It’s only when she’s clocking out that she realizes she hasn’t seen him all day. She asks around if he had been sticking his nose into anything he shouldn’t but finds that he went to the stairwell and never returned.
Preparing for the worst and hoping for something easy to fix, Chloe makes her way up, her gut leading her to the roof.
Lucifer sits with his knees close to his chest, his head tilted up as he sadly stares at the sky. His eyes trace the faint formations that dot the darkness.
“You humans and your light pollution,” he says, breaking the tense quiet and acknowledging her. “You can’t see the stars like you used to.”
She sits next to him, unsure of what to say. She’s unfamiliar with this side of him. It scares her a little.
“I never really looked at them. You into astrology?”
He chuckles sadly. “You could say that.”
The wind blows. Cars rev. The city sings and Lucifer is silent. It’s wrong. He shouldn’t be so quiet.
“I didn’t raise them. Not like how you raised your daughter. But I watched them grow. Watched them as millennia passed and they got older each day. I watched as age damaged them. They always felt so everlasting. I never prepared to outlive them. I never prepared for how it would feel to see their light go out.”
And suddenly his question from early means something entirely different.
“Oh… Lucifer…”
“I don’t want your pity.” He looks back to the sky. “I just want them back.”
What would she do if she lost a child? She would miss her forever. She would never move on. She would love them for the rest of her life and miss her even more.
They don’t talk about it. She wouldn’t dare bring it up. But she knows now, knows the loss Lucifer has suffered, and the love he has that he wouldn’t dare show.