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Love me because I am lost;Love me that I am undone.That is brave,—no man has wished it,Not one. Be strong, to look on my heartAs others look on my face.Love me,—I tell you that it is a ravagedTerrible place.Song—Louise Bogan
-eastwesthomeisbest Chloe was sitting, hunched over on the beach, phone pressed between her shoulder and ear. She shivered in the cool evening air and pulled her jacket tighter around herself. “No,” she was saying into the phone. “Nothing’s wrong, Dan. Something just came up all of a sudden.” She listened for a moment, fingers running agitatedly over her trouser leg. “Yeah, Trix has really been getting into that stuff. She’ll love the observatory.” She hung up, shoved the phone back into her pocket and sighed, watching the waves lap against the shore. The moon came out from behind a cloud, defining in the gloom her lips, the edge of her cheek.Lucifer watched from behind a dune as the light shifted across her face, making her eyes shine from unshed tears as she gritted her teeth and muttered to herself, “Don’t do this, Chloe. You’re not gonna cry over…” Her breath hitched and his own eyes burned, shutting involuntarily against a wave of regret.He hadn’t known she’d be here when he’d come to stand on the sand he’d lit upon when he crawled his way out of Hell, to watch the tide wash away the stars. But now she was sniffling a little and scrubbing at her face, and he couldn’t look away even as he knew that this moment was private, that he had no right to bear witness to her pain. Not after what he’d done.“It’s all true.”The fear and betrayal in her eyes had left indelible marks on his already battered soul, and he was almost glad of them, of the patent proof that love was not his lot and never would be. But it was impossible to be so high-minded when the wreckage of his arrogance lay strewn on the shore, crying over someone so unworthy as him when she deserved… everything. But he knew those things that she wanted could never exist.Father, but he was a selfish creature.Still so obsessed with himself that even now, with her mere feet from him, he couldn’t look upon her without seeing his own failures, his own frailties. She wiped at her nose, rising to her feet, brushing sand from her jeans. Her spine straightened intentionally the way it did when she needed to be strong and he took an involuntary step forward with the almost violent impulse to stand by her side.But he couldn’t let this be about him.“Lucifer…” He choked on a breath, mouth already opening to explain, though he knew there was no explanation sufficient, but she wasn’t looking at him with heartrending disappointment. No, she was glaring up at his stars that twinkled serenely, if mockingly down at them. “Oh god this is ridiculous,” she mumbled and he flinched, at her words or their tone he wasn’t certain.“No, screw it. You tore my world apart, you…” Monster echoed in the back of his mind. “I had an existential crisis, alone, because I didn’t even know that Linda knew. And Maze…” She shook her head. “And after all of that… shit, all I want to know—the only thing—is why?” She was warming up to her theme now, even if her voice was growing increasingly hoarse. “Why me? What the Hell…” She shuddered. “What did I do to deserve this?”She sank back to her knees, face buried in her hands. “What am I even doing?” she asked herself quietly, almost inaudible over the waves, but her voice was the only thing he could hear. “It’s not like you’re really listening. Or that you’d care even if you were. Just… How dare you?” She spoke louder now, bolstered by her anger. “First, you kill Marcus, or Cain, or… whatever. And then, you run off and refuse to see me?”Refuse to…?He wouldn’t… He’d never…She answered his unasked question. “Won’t answer your phone, even Linda doesn’t know where you are. Are you still in the city? On the planet?” Her voice broke.The phone had ended up with a bullet in it. He hadn’t replaced it, hadn’t even conceived that anyone would want to call him.She dug her hands into the sand, breathing raggedly. “You hate it there,” she whispered. “Would you really go back just to hide from me?”He wanted to refute her words, even just to himself, but he couldn’t deny that he had chosen this beach as a fitting site for his departure. This beach, where his wings had first fallen, severed and bloodied. Where she had kissed him with all the light and tenderness he didn’t deserve. The place of his rebirth.The place of his unmaking.“Just a sign… a text, a letter, a freakin’ shooting star! I don’t…” Her jaw clenched. “I just want to know you’re alright.”“Chloe…” The word slipped from his lips like a prayer to the only divinity he’d ever truly believed in.She shot to her feet, stumbling over herself as she stared at him, eyes wide. “What are…? How are you here?”“I… I…” he stuttered.She stepped up to him, expression closing off. “Have you been following me?” she asked, on the verge of outrage.“No,” he reassured breathlessly. “I came here to…”“To leave.” She turned away, shaking her head again.“Yes, but…” She started walking back up the beach, back to her car. “Don’t go.” He was pleading, but he didn’t care—what was his pride to the warmth of her presence?“Why?” She turned to glare at him. “You were going to.”“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I didn’t want… I never intended—”“Stop. Just… stop.” Her voice was hard. A tear threatened at the corner of her eye. “I don’t care what you meant to do anymore.”“I hurt you. And you… you didn’t… None of this is your fault.”“Why didn’t you just show me?” She sniffed. “Did you really think so little of me? That I would run away?”He bit his lip, not managing to keep the bitterness from his voice. “Everyone runs.”Her hand reached for him for an aching moment before she let it fall back to her side, eyes downcast and weary. She sighed, her breath steaming out softly, and sank to the ground, all the fight taken out of her. He sat next to her hesitantly, uncertain if he was allowed this but unwilling to be farther away from her than he had to be.The tide slowly withdrew and the wind picked up, making her shiver. He clenched his fists tightly against the desire to warm her, comfort her. He hadn’t realized how strong the instinct to care for her had become until he’d been denied it, had denied it to himself. The stillness was absolute, but he forced himself to break it. This had to come from him; it had to.“I have never lied to you, and I will never lie to you.”The echo of the first time those words were spoken made him shudder. She glared at him. He accepted her scorn readily, feeling it burn through him. He took a breath, exhaling slowly, deliberately.“Ask anything—anything—and I will give you nothing but the truth.”She considered, her mouth still tight, but her jaw no longer shaking. “Why me?”He closed his eyes. “My Father, he—”“No.”It was half a shout, but measured; a punch to the gut he could almost physically feel. She continued while he recovered from the blow. “Linda told me about… that, and honestly?” She shrugged. “I don’t give a damn. I know who I am. No, the real question is—why me? Why you? Why… us?”There were so many answers, all of them true—a whole universe of why that he was too much a coward to plumb the depths of. But at the root of every reason was a single unassailable fact, no less true for its simplicity, its sublime mundanity. “I fell in love with you.”She nodded, face betraying nothing, and he wished for the ability to draw out her desires more than he ever had before, would relinquish his divine mantle in a heartbeat just to better know how to bring her happiness.“Why have you been hiding from me?”Her voice jolted him from his thoughts. He opened his mouth to deny it, reflexively, but… the truth. Perhaps he hadn’t exactly been hiding, but he hadn’t made any attempt to contact her either. “I… I didn’t think you’d want to see me.”Her expression didn’t even flicker. He looked away, unable to maintain eye contact any longer. The seafoam shone in the moonlight like crystal; a single crab made its slow way down the sand. He ground his teeth.“I didn’t want you to see me.”A noise like a sob caught in her throat. The crab was picking at something in the surf, dark and glistening, but an errant wave crested its tiny body and it was swept away by the tide.“I can’t be him. That human you could maybe love.”He stood, moving away from her, feeling every inch of distance. His fingers hurt just a little from the cold and he reveled in the pain; he had never thought he’d miss mortality so much. “I can only be this.” He let his wings manifest. He needed her to see, to understand, but his other face… she didn’t deserve that punishment. “I can only be me.”She didn’t gasp, didn’t stare, merely rose. A chilling gust caught at her braid and his wing shifted involuntarily to shield her. He glanced at it, anxious, but then her gaze caught his and he couldn’t look away.“I have another question,” she said, quietly but firmly.“Anything.”She took a step forward, crowding him, her breaths brushing his lips. “Do you still love me?”His feet went numb and she seemed, suddenly, so far away he could barely see her and yet so near she might contain, within herself, the undivided universe—the sea in her eyes, the dry land in her skin, Heaven in her soul and, in the strands of her hair, every one of her perfect gleaming stars. In the face of such radiance he was undone. He didn’t… he couldn’t…“Det… I… Chloe.”“Nothing but the truth, remember?” she chided gently.Had she moved closer? She was the only thing he could see. His hands shook with the effort of not reaching out. A tear slipped, unhurriedly, down his cheek, but instead of shame, coiling hot in his gut, a warm ache was flickering in his chest. Like the kindest fire. Like starlight.“Eternally.”And he was falling; he was falling, but he wasn’t alone. Because there, her fingers on his jaw, her joyful laughter in the air, was Chloe, and she was leaning up, pulling him down, pressing her mouth against his. And when the heat faded, his eyes flitted open—he hadn’t noticed them close—and she was smiling like beatification, whispering against his lips.“I love you too.” And they were still lost in the depths of night, sunrise hours away yet, but he could have sworn he saw, for an instant on the horizon, a softly glistening light. The very edge of dawn, red with the threat of rain, perhaps, but also pale with the promise of day. Slipping over the mountains and the city, rising to wash away the stars, but only to replace them with a purer blaze, one that burned more strongly.Her smile shimmered in this glow, brighter even than the moon and, as she took his hand, took him up the beach to her car, took him wherever she wished, he could only gaze upon her light and vow to try to be worthy of its shine.
-eastwesthomeisbest