Chapter Text
~When pride comes, then comes disgrace~
The first thing that started to burn were his robes.
The Angelic robes he'd had ever since his creation, covered with the text of the Seraphim denoting his role, his name – his place in Heaven. The hem of them flapped in the howling wind, his velocity increasing by the second. His eyes watered, tears streaming upwards, towards the light of Heaven that would forevermore be denied to him.
In his arms, he held the woman he'd dragged with him into his disgrace. It wasn't her fault.
Flames licked up the once pristine material of his robe, turning the golden hem black, sparks smouldering ever higher as the heat around them continued to build. How long had they been falling? He didn't know.
How far did they have left to fall?
Another question he couldn't answer.
The embers of his clothing drifted past his face, practically dancing with his floating tears.
Weightless – unlike him. Unlike Lilith.
The next thing to burn were his toes. He could feel the heat of their fall and of the place they were falling towards licking at his feet, his ankles. It was excruciating. Against his chest, Lilith let out a pained yelp, and Lucifer wrapped his wings tighter around her body. So tight that his own arms and legs poked through the feathers and continued to burn, agony shooting through him like nothing he'd ever known before. Like ten thousand stone needles were being driven into his marrow, grinding away at his grace.
It didn't stop him from trying to wrap as much of his small body around the woman he loved as he could, shielding her from the worst of it.
He couldn't feel his toes anymore. Wondered if they were even still there, or if they'd been burnt to cinders. The undersides of his wings were slowly getting stained red, Lilith's blood leaking onto them from an injury she'd taken whilst trying to protect him.
To protect him. When it had been his fault that battle had started in the first place.
The wind whistled in his ears, the light of Heaven getting further and further away. His fingers started to heat, then his wrists. His forearms. Still, he clutched Lilith to him, refusing to let her go. Falling with his back to the ground, making sure his slight frame would cushion her landing.
He would survive it. Probably.
It would hurt like – like what?
Hell, his brain helpfully supplied, taking the word the others had given him and bouncing it around in his skull, the phrase suddenly all too fitting for the pain wracking his body, his teeth clenched against it so tightly he felt one of them break. Sharp shards of bone filled his mouth, and he tasted his own golden blood on his tongue.
Lucifer waited for the sweet taste of it to distort into the iron tang of humanity.
Lilith's arms were wrapped around his chest, her face pressed against his now bare torso. He wished she didn't have to be cast down, too. That she could have stayed there, been forgiven for his sins.
He couldn't suppress a yelp as the pain in his feet reached a crescendo, feeling as though every single bone they contained – and there were a lot of them, he knew that for a fact – had just shattered, all at once. Like a hundred nails had been driven through them, white hot agony giving way to a dull throb.
His upper arms burned, now. Poking through the wings of his feathers, exposed to the speed of their fall. Like his skin was bubbling and melting, shifting and reforming. He sobbed, a choked, horrible sound – a sound he'd never made in Heaven, never had cause to.
It was an ugly sound, an ill-fitting sound for God's most beautiful angel to make.
Why had he done it? Why hadn't he just listened when his siblings and his superiors told him it had been a bad idea, that humanity wouldn't be able to handle the burden that was free will? He'd simply had so much hope – had seen how Lilith had struggled, yoked under Adam's cruelty. Cruelty he shouldn't have been capable of, but had anybody ever questioned that?
No – they'd simply decided Lilith was at fault for her misery. How could he sit back and watch her cry, watch her question her reason for existence – without stepping in and trying to help?
Her hair blew in his face, a dull ache starting behind his temples – another low in his back, but everything already hurt so much that he barely noticed his skin splitting open – the blood running down his cheeks and highlighting Lilith's already golden hair.
A demon, they'd called him, and though he had no context for the word, he knew it couldn't be anything good.
They had to be nearing the ground, now. Lucifer braced himself, ready to feel his bones shatter within his body and pierce his lungs, ready to reach entirely new heights of agony. Lilith stirred against his chest, regaining consciousness just in time to experience the worst of their expulsion.
She muttered something, her lips moving against his skin – but the wind tore them from her before Lucifer had a chance to make out what they were. She lifted her head, her eyes still glinting with a fierce kind of determination. Despite everything, they hadn't managed to stamp the passion out of her, and Lucifer looked helplessly into her face as she tried again.
“Shield us!” She all but screamed, blood still running from the twin wounds on her forehead.
Lucifer didn't know how he was meant to – they'd stripped everything from him, surely?
Still, for her – he would try. He reached into the well of what was once his Angelic grace, expecting to find it empty. His heart leapt into his throat when power glimmered within his reach, tainted and tarnished – but there. He seized it, throwing great ribbons of it from his body, wrapping the two of them in whatever power he had left to him. Even if this used up the last of it, at least he would keep Lilith alive.
The power he tossed out so recklessly shone gold, distorting the air around them as a bubble grew to encase them both. Lilith pushed aside the feathers at his back, stretching to look over his shoulder – and promptly reburied her face in his chest with a panicked shout. Soon, then.
The impact would be soon.
Lucifer closed his eyes, sucking in a breath. He would have prayed, but he knew nobody would be listening to him. Not ever again. The pitch of the wind whistling past his ears changed, and they crashed into the ground with an eardrum shattering boom. His bones didn't shatter – but exhaustion spun through his mind, the edges of his vision going dark.
As soon as he was certain they'd landed, consciousness fled him.
* * * * * *
When Lucifer awoke to the heat of Hell pounding against his skin, he thought for a moment he was still burning up in his fall. The ends of his wings fluttered, uselessly trying to send him soaring back into the skies – and he winced, his beautiful white feathers feeling crusted and heavy. Stuck together, completely matted.
He opened his eyes with what felt like the last of his strength, gazing up at the white portal far above. The demarcation between what had been his home – and his new prison.
And what a prison it was! Turning his head with a pained grunt, Lucifer could see for miles. Endless space, acres and acres of it – and all of it barren, devoid of life. Huge swathes of red ground, and in the distance – rocky mountains. But if there was no life, where was–
“Lilith?” He croaked out, his voice hoarse but otherwise undamaged.
At least they hadn't been able to take that from him. Something about his mouth still felt strange, and he recalled the tooth he’d broken in his fall. Perhaps that explained the way his tongue kept catching on what felt like sharp edges.
A trickle of something new crept into his mind, like the icy cool runoffs of the highest peaks on Earth. It snaked through him, insidious and cloying – tightening his throat and freezing his lungs, until his heart thumped against his ribs like some kind of terrified, trapped animal.
He forced himself up, wings crackling where he pressed his palms against the feathers, trying to gain purchase.
“Lilith?!” He called again, a fraction louder this time. She'd been with him, he knew she had. He'd kept her safe, he'd shielded her.
If something had happened–
“I'm here.” A voice came from his back – and Lucifer ignored the aches still trembling through his limbs in favour of getting to his feet. He almost immediately stumbled, unable to balance, his wings too heavy at his back and his feet – his feet...
“Shh, I've got you,” Lilith murmured, strong hands pushing through the feathers of his wings to wrap under his arms, dried blood flaking to the ground. It vanished amongst the rusty dirt that was all Hell had to offer. Lucifer looked down, struggling to parse the fact that the blackened legs he could see, the legs ending in blunt hooves – were his.
Heaven's most beautiful angel no longer, then.
But he still had access to his power. A little tainted, certainly, not the pure white light he'd once wielded with such joy. A faint golden glow suffused his frame, sloughing off the remainder of the dried blood on his feathers as he shook them out and folded them away. He’d never really had cause to do so, before – no reason to stuff them into the pocket dimension every angel had access to, and they writhed against his subconscious at their sudden imprisonment. They could have that discomfort in common.
What good would angelic wings do him, down here?
“I'm okay,” he muttered, scraping the ground with one unsteady hoof. Trying to figure out where to balance on it, and though he wobbled when he pushed out of Lilith's soft embrace – he didn't fall.
He'd had enough of falling.
His head felt heavy and fogged, his body unstable. He forced himself to plant his feet – hooves – and bend slightly at the knee to keep his balance. As he turned, Lilith pushed something into his hand. A shard of stone, half as tall as he was – and he took it gratefully, gripping it tightly in his left hand and pressing the end of it to the ground to help support his weight.
Lucifer looked up to meet her gaze, his eyes widening with horror when he saw the blood framing her cheeks, trickling down from a pair of huge, curving horns. He reached up, helpless to stop the way tears welled in his eyes even as she gave him a sad, exhausted smile.
“What have they done to you?” Lucifer whispered, running the tips of his claws – he had claws, now, he noticed with an odd sort of detachment – over the hard, keratinous protrusions attached to the woman he loved. She was still beautiful, even with the deep maroon of them tangled in her wind-knotted hair. Lilith caught his wrist, gently guiding his hand back to his own face.
“Less than they’ve done to you, my love. My little angel…” she sighed, guiding his fingers up to his temples. Lucifer jolted, terrified that a piece of the earth they’d crashed into was lodged in his skull, and it was only Lilith’s firm hand on the back of his that stopped him from wrapping his fingers around it and yanking.
“What is th – ouch,” Lucifer hissed, sweet blood filling his mouth as he somehow managed to cut his own tongue open. He turned from Lilith, embarrassed, spitting a gobbet of golden blood and saliva onto the hard stone at their feet.
The ground rumbled, a startled cry echoing up from the both of them as they clutched at one another for support, stumbling backwards as a crack opened up in that barren stone. Lucifer’s blood hissed, trickling into it – and before their eyes, the deep green leaves of an apple tree sapling were sprouting over the fissure.
Something darker coiled around Lucifer’s heart, his brows pinching into a tight scowl. Was this their idea of a jest? Some last mockery thrown their way, as if ejecting them from Heaven wasn’t punishment enough?
How could they be so cruel?
“Lucifer…” Lilith said quietly, her voice slurring. He let out another shout as she wavered on her feet, and when he wrapped his arms around her body her skin was almost as dry and hot as the ground at their feet.
Their feet – Lilith’s feet, and Lucifer hushed vaguely reassuring sounds as he scooped her into his arms, trying not to stumble as his makeshift cane clattered to the ground. He hadn’t felt the heat from the earth except as a baking wave of unpleasantness – but when he held Lilith aloft, he could see the pale skin on the soles of her feet was red and sore.
“We need shelter,” he muttered to himself, glancing at the tree still growing unnaturally fast. Here was as good a place as any, he supposed. If it bore fruit, then at least they’d have food. Water, though, that was another issue, but he would figure something out once he’d gotten Lilith comfortable.
They were the only two here, and it was his certainty that he was doing the right thing that had landed them in Hell in the first place. He hadn’t listened, and he needed to take responsibility for his pride.
He’d barely even known the word before it had been fired at him alongside the slings and arrows of his fellow angels, but as his mouth firmed into a thin line, determination settled over his shoulders like a shroud.
If they wanted to call him prideful, then prideful he would be. He knew it was a sin, but what did it really matter, anymore? He didn’t have anything else left but his love and his life, so he might as well embrace it.
Something flickered in his chest, some burning kernel of stubborn resolve. They’d cast him down into this barren wasteland, but he still had his power. And what’s more – he had the freedom of his choices, unshackled from the demands of the other seraphim. He could use that power how he wanted, without regard for whether it was an appropriate use of it.
Lucifer sank into the well of his Angelic grace, ignoring the oddly slick, tarnished feeling that now accompanied it. He’d get used to that. It wasn’t damaged enough to stop him from casting his senses out – from finding deposits of white stone amongst the red, buried deep. He snatched them from the earth and shaped them into the walls of a cottage, gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes into a squint against the dust and dirt that blew into them.
It was barely more than a hovel – four walls and a poorly crafted door, made of nothing stronger than shale. But the tree growing fast enough that it was already at his calves would give them the wood they needed to expand on it, and for now – Lucifer set Lilith onto the stone floor, catching sight of himself in the polished rock of a nearby wall.
He didn’t recognise the person staring back at him.
His once golden eyes were red, a pair of ugly, angular horns jutting from his temples. No wonder his head had felt so heavy. He jolted at something flicking in the corner of his vision – and felt abruptly sick as he grabbed at it, his tailbone twinging when he pulled at the lithe black tail he’d managed to grasp. The sharp spade on the end of it had a stylised rendition of a heart – as if in reminder of what had led him to such folly.
No matter. Lucifer pulled his lip back with a claw, his reflection blurry – but clear enough to see the sharp teeth he now had. Not broken, then, just… different. He ran his tongue over them, testing their shape – and almost laughed at the absurdity of it now having two forked tips.
“A little bit of overkill, don’t you think?” Lucifer muttered, glancing up as if anyone could hear him. Or would be listening if they could.
Lilith stirred, murmuring out a question – and Lucifer curled his mouth into a snarl, scraping his claws through the stone and leaving deep furrows in it until no blurry reflection shone back.
And then he calmed himself. Set his mind to simpler things, making a mental list of what they’d need to survive.
Water. Food. Clothing of some sort, probably, because while he might quickly adapt to the heat, Lilith’s skin was still that of a human.
Everything outside had seemed barren and empty – but perhaps whatever life was here had simply fled upon their arrival. He probably would, if something with all the force of a comet had just crashed into his home. Besides, if Heaven had wanted to kill him, they would have just done so in the first place.
No. He was meant to stay here – stay here and watch how he’d doomed humanity. Maybe they were wrong, though – maybe humans wouldn’t take the free will he’d shared and turn it to sin. He had to have hope that humans didn’t have it in their hearts to be so evil.
Lilith certainly didn’t.
Okay. Water first.
He stooped to pick up the shaft of stone Lilith had given him, marking a spiralling path away from the hut he’d made. Though he didn’t look back, for every second step he took, the ground trembled. And something swirled in his dusty hoof-prints, some flicker of life coalescing in the dirt. Like mockeries of the beasts he’d helped create, shadowy apparitions fleeing into the distance.
This was his home, now.
And Lucifer would become the master of it.
~to be continued~