.-.. ..- -.-. .. ..-. . .-.

It is the most unfortunate event that an outsider steps into this void of charred earth with a sun-like glow. It poses an unpleasant and unsettling atmosphere to my abode that I detest.

As currently.

"My apologies. I have betook myself the wrong path on my way back to the Almighty." His wings lower down with one of his knees and his hands while his head faces the ground.

"Leave," I command, unmoving from my throne.

"I shall do just that."

He affirms, but he remains still right where he kneels. Will this angel leave this instant or what?

"Leave."

Again, I am met with silence.

Then, he clears his throat. "My lord."

"What?"

"Forgive me, for I bear some... deplorable news."

"Get on with it." I want him back to the Almighty. He is blinding. It hurts my eyes looking at him. What, couldn't he leave? He should be able to. What else is he mulling over?

"I can't leave."

He can't be serious.

"Rather, I do not know how to."

For a while, he hasn't moved, as though waiting for my response. If I stare into his blonde locks hiding his face long enough, will that solve anything? No. However, I sense no fear of any kind from him after finding himself in such a situation. It irks me.

"Raise your head."

Wordless, he slowly lifts his head, almost careful not to meet my gaze. From this angle, it's clear his eyes are as similar as every other angel's. A pool of blue, brightly lit with white specks of blinding light. Except, his countenance proposes a difference.

What a conundrum.

"What is your name?"

"My lowly name needs not to be known-"

"Say it."

"But-"

"Do you wish to return to the Almighty or not?" I snap. "I need your name if I were to get someone from above to fetch your foolishness."

His stiff disposition drops, his eyes finding mine, widened with surprise and a sort of... deference. Am I mistaken? An angel never looks at the devil in such a way.

"Then... my name is..."

.-.. ..- -.-. .. ..-. . .-.

"You."

The angel looks up from the hounds he is playing with, blinding me again with the light in his eyes.

"Lord Satan," he greets with a head bow, his back straight in his seat. "Has there been favorable news?"

"Negative." I cross my arms, watching the hounds stumble upon one another's flaming forms. Is this angel truly touching the cracks of molten lava in these hounds' bodies? I meet his gaze. "They refuse to acknowledge my summons. Must have assumed I am up to no good for attempting to contact them."

His hopeful eyes shatter, his head and shoulders dropping.

I roll my eyes. "It has only been a week or so. You are to stay in this space as long as the delay keeps you here."

"My lord." His eyes fixate on his hands on his lap. "Is there truly no other way for me to return?"

"Pray tell. How did you find yourself here to begin with?"

"I... I fear I will be chastened if I were to make an admission."

"Spit it out," I demand, taking a few steps closer to the formations of cold rocks he sat in.

He squints, fingers fumbling together.

I look over my arms. Smoke of incense paints a formation around it. Shame. Shame? That's all the negativity he carries?

"What are you ashamed of?"

He perks up. Interesting. Could he have committed something the Almighty or the higher-ranking angels deemed wicked or unrighteous?

"I... foresee those who sinned," he utters, his voice gentle, barely there. "I hold the knowledge of so many things forbidden."

I remain silent. I do not see what he is getting at. Every angel is part of differing departments up there. I have no interest in their affairs.

He raises his head, one hand on the white cloth over his chest as he gazes above, where boundless darkness meets the eye.

"I witnessed something I must not have. Such peculiar shells partaking in interesting behaviors." He sighs. "Lord Satan, do you, perchance, get curious of... mortals?"

I don't answer.

"I was led here by one."

Oh. He followed a sinner's soul.

"It was one of the mortal souls I have been overlooking. She was at a loss in the limbo. She was neither good nor bad, neither a luminous white nor a pitch black. How intriguing."

I reckon it's a gray he found.

"Yet, she was subjected to hell. I couldn't let her be. She wasn't evil."

Indeed, he followed a gray soul.

"There must have been a misunderstanding."

"You shouldn't have followed it. Souls that belong here with me have nothing to do with you lot." I walk across the space, one hand manipulating the tiny souls in my palms, ready to be transferred elsewhere.

"But it's not a dark soul."

"It matters not."

"Surely there was a mistake-"

I scoff and pause, turning my head toward him. "Are you questioning the Almighty?"

"I..."

Swift movements of the air caress my skin once more. There it is again. His shame brushes along my sense of touch.

So he doesn't believe in God's verdict on that one particular gray.

The flicker of tiny souls in the palm of my hand vanishes as I stride toward him and bend over, a fingernail pushing his chin upward.

"You are ashamed of your skepticism. You do not blindly push it aside and even follow a soul here. You are challenging your own belief, angel."

He stares, his existence's light almost flickering like a broken soul about to be reaped by death.

I give him a slight smirk, the black of my very skin flicking his chin before I release my hold. "Perhaps it is in God's knowledge that He threw you aside before you knew it. How piti-"

"Beautiful," he mumbles. "Your eyes bloom like the reddest roses in the coldest of evenings on the earth's richest soul, my lord."

What?

He blinks, then he turns his face away. "M-my deepest apologies. I spoke out of turn."

I lean away from him, squinting at his new formation of emotions. Apart from the shame in his growing mistrust of God, another greater shame is creeping into the depths of his very soul.

Turning back, I clear my throat, and my voice echoes across the space. "I will reach out to the heavens once more."

I don't suppose I can last another moment with a disgustingly fascinating existence.

.-.. ..- -.-. .. ..-. . .-.

"Presenting the eighteenth batch, Lord Satan."

The impish soul bows its head and vanishes to the side. Before my throne kneeled a new set of beings, all in their glowing forms amidst the darkness of the space. Lined up perfectly in more rows than I plan to count myself, with the familiar angel from months back who lost his way to hell at the very front, his otherwise white feathers of wings filled with streaks of dirt.

"Rise," I say.

Without ado, he stands, a hand placed against his chest in reverent pose, blue eyes glinting with light fiercely on mine.

"They are ready for the inauguration, my lord."

"Proceed."

Just like that, for the eighteenth time this year, countless lowly angels succumb to their deepest desires and undergo the tortures of hell's varying chambers. All to rid themselves of the heaven and Almighty's filth and be renewed with the vigorous grasp of everything between black and gray.

At leisure, I watch them come and go while the angel who leads them all steps to my side and leans over. He whispers, "My lord, the number of the fallen has increased immensely. But fret not. I am not finished yet." He steps back and turns around.

Never in eternity would I have thought things would go this way. The innocent but sinfully curious angel who followed a gray soul now garnered enough of his own to lead down this path.

I grab onto his arm to pull him back. He stumbles, and I catch his face in the grip of my other hand.

"Pass it off to your brother-in-arms for once." I squint, caressing his face with a finger, tracing below his trembling lips. "I have more fascinating suggestions for what you could perform for me later."

I watch his throat move, spit being pushed back. In my ears, a faint string of a loose tune plays. Lust. Temptation. Giving in.

"A-as you wish, my lord," he replies, breathy.

I lean close, my finger steadying his lips. "What did you say?"

"My lord-"

"Wrong."

He closes his eyes briefly, a dark color hinting in his blue eyes afterward. "Lucifer."

I release him with a tug on my lips. "Go," I whisper, leaning back against the molten remains of ashen stones that build up my seat.

As he leaves to finish up his assigned duties for this time, I open my hand, watching the array of tiny souls circling like a tornado in the palm of my hand, crying out, screeching, all with nowhere to go but to have their remains suffer for all eternity.

Soon enough, I find myself forgetting about the satisfying glow of their gray souls as my angel companion blasts the stone, reducing it to speckles of ash.

"Too bright," I comment on the light emanating from his fingers.

He huffs. "I will keep trying."

"Perhaps you need assistance." I saunter toward him, loose strings of a soft melody ringing in my ears. A sudden fear. Of what?

"Lucifer."

"Hush down." I hold his wrists, stiffened as the surface of hell. "Relax."

"I-I cannot possibly take your own with mine just yet. I will burst."

"Then burst."

The soft melody playing in my ears that dictates his fear heightens. What is he so afraid of? "Lucifer, you will get burned-"

Before he finishes his sentence, transferring my energy to his own sharpens the light he was trying to control. Then it grows big enough to consume both our figures. There it is. The familiar and warm sensation of light touching and seeping through my skin, as though flames scurrying to bodies of mere mortal shells and flesh.

The unstable light bursts off and then fades to a dim light in the angel's palms. I harden my stance, but my balance deceives me, and hell tilts. When I blink my burning eyes open, I am enveloped in his soft warmth, the seeping of my burnt flesh hissing in the air like a crow's feast at dawn.

"Hold on, Luce." His breathy reassurance against his palpitating body almost makes me want to laugh. My senses continuously convey his fear as a soft but insistent melody.

"Your fear is... so... loud."

"Don't speak right now." His voice is shaky. "I'll heal you. I am sorry. I am so sorry."

"Unnecessary apologies."

"No, I... I was... I was too unstable. I couldn't do it. I can't do it."

"Silly you. How will you learn if you cower under forever? I'm here to help you."

Hot tears bless my slowly healing skin. "I burned you."

"This will not kill me."

"It hurt you." His voice comes out as a heated whisper. "I hurt you."

The music in my ears is deafening.

.-.. ..- -.-. .. ..-. . .-.

A blur of light forces its way into the midst of nothingness. A figure moves past the blur as though working on something, their back turned.

I shut my eyes and clasp my abdomen with a grunt. The burning doesn't ease, but it's not as intolerable as the last time I remember. My fingers scratch on an unfamiliar fabric wrapped around me.

"Lucifer!"

An arm goes behind my shoulders, and another presses on the fabric against my burns. Finally, light comes clear in vision. Blonde locks, blue eyes. Like the angels I detest.

But this one is no angel. And this one, I do not detest.

"I'm no expert in whatever supernatural this is supposed to be, but I did everything I could to keep you from a dangerous state, at least. I think."

"You think? What, you're a doctor now?" I scoff, pushing the navy blanket off me.

He snorts, aiding me to sit up. "You'd be surprised."

I stare at him. He's no longer wearing his white coat during the wedding ceremony. He sports a loose, blue sweater, his hair in a messy updo, and his cool, minty scent polarizes me with thoughts I keep having of him. Disturbing thoughts that haunt me with how close we are right now.

Snatching my focus away from him, I am met with an odd interior I don't believe I have seen before. A gigantic lantern sits with no light at the center, and a spiral staircase leads below. Every wall is filled with windows. Far into the distance is nothing but the blue of the sea.

"Where is this?"

"Gee, you're welcome for being your accomplice," Asael mumbles mockingly, hands working on human tools. Is he truly a doctor?

"Cut the BS, Salie." I glare. "Where is this?"

"I don't think you have a clue even if I tell you the address." He puts a hand between us. "Okay, okay. We're in a lighthouse. We're safe here." A lighthouse...

"Speak. How did we wind up here?"

He rolls his eyes. "You ask all the questions and never disclose a thing. You're unbelievable." He takes a rolled fabric from a metal box and pulls on it. "I saved your butt, that's what happened."

"Details, mortal."

"Why don't you take a guess? You moaned like a dying bird every time I replaced your bandages these past days, you know."

I glare at his side, and then it sinks in. "What do you mean 'these past days'?"

"Would you believe you were out for quite a while?"

"Care to specify?"

Asael closes the box before facing me, still sitting on the floorboards beside me. "You were out for a few days. Like, two days. But this is the third day since I brought you here, so I guess that makes it three."

"What?"

"God, I did not miss your constant shouting." He pinches the bridge of his nose and stands, seemingly ignoring my questioning looks. "Let's just put it this way. We're safe right now. You are safe right now. And I really need a breath of fresh air, so I'm glad you're awake now."

The tension in my shoulders eases. He isn't lying. In his belief, we are safe, at the very least. I can't let my guard down here. Still, looking at the darkened circles under his eyes gives me a different sense. Like a constant tapping of fingers against my nape and occasional scratches. Exhaustion. Unease.

The latter scratches more harshly against my senses, yet Asael puts up this lighthearted front. How annoying.

"I won't be far. Can't promise I won't be long, though. Stay here, alright?"

Before I can question him, the metal staircases resound across the tower at his hurried steps.

The long dream of a past tale flies back to the core of my thoughts. I never stopped dreaming about it all. I never stopped wondering about the unclear ending of such a forgotten story that never truly concluded. For a brief moment, I thought it was him who was healing me; I thought that I would be met with his tear-stained cheeks as he muttered how badly he had burned me.

Instead, what I get is the reality of the present. A mortal resembling the core attributes of most of God's people treating me, the supernatural, through human means. Asael's appearance isn't the only thing reminiscent of angels. Still, something about him keeps forcing itself into everything that I am.

Every negative emotion I sense from him dissipates at the distance between us. It does nothing but magnify my own emotions. No. I refuse these sensations. It is dangerous to let myself feel these things. I know that.

But when I recall his skin brushing against mine, it poses an odd variation of burning from the ones I get from an angel's light powers.

I cup my head in my hands and breathe. My burns barely heal. I still don't know what happened after narrowly escaping from that archangel, Gabriel, and all I can think about is that hell-forsaken mortal.

I want it. That warmth, that fire that keeps sparking whenever we touch. I want it all. Everything that Asael is. I want it for myself.

This is ridiculous.

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Wordcount: 2625
Overall: 18511