CHAPTER FOUR

YOU LOOK EXACTLY LIKE MY WIFE

" we both tell the same story but to your ears,

his version will sound different "

- me

Warmth.

The warm scent— something like vanilla, roses, and honey... her scent had always been so recognizable and intoxicating to him, and then the feeling of being held—  but as his dream climaxed, there was a sudden change in his environment.

Just as the sea washed away the things that dared to linger too close to it, her scent was emptied from his mind; and all he could smell was the stale sense of nothingness that consumed himself and his room just the way he took. He opened his eyes, wrinkling his nose at the scentless, icy air washing through his palette. The dull roar of his air conditioner was now filling his senses, and today, for some reason, just the simple event of his air conditioning whirring to life was enough to overload him.

He rolled over onto his back, thrashing away from the warm blankets that had consumed him up and snatched him away into such a peaceful sleep. He hated to depart from them so soon, but the least of his worries at the moment represent the sudden lack of warmth. Stumbling into his hallway in nothing but a t-shirt and shorts, he frantically turned off his air conditioning as fast as he could, his perpetually clammy fingers fumbling with the control panel.

After a few tense moments he managed to turn it off, and once he found himself encased in silence once more, he merely stood there for a while. He doesn't even completely understand what the rush was anymore, turning off his air conditioning didn't do anything but make his house quiet again and leave him more alone with his thoughts.

Did I really think...? he pondered, lumbering back down the hall to his bedroom, shivers at present taking over his body, did I really think that turning off my air conditioning would bring back her scent? I've been washed of it for years. I've been sober of her for years. A simple altering of my surroundings isn't going to bring back anything but the resounding pain that I am a lone being.

He laid down on his bed after rearranging his blankets into a more established state, his feet nearly hanging off the edge of it as he stretched out and stared at his ceiling. The days where he dreamed about her were always more hard than the normal ones. He was left reminiscing and thinking of his own lonely eternity for the rest of the day afterward, sometimes even the day after.

His life and his existence had been so full of danger and love and lust and adventures, but the longer he was left to rot away in his own home while enslaved to his 'career' that he held so close to his heart, he began to wonder if he was ever meant to feel those things again.

Feel her again.

His mind was hardened, concrete, and he had reassured himself time and time again that there was no need to resist it; there was no need to resist the feeling of becoming stagnant, and no need to relentlessly seek love again. God had always meant for him to be alone from the very beginning, and he knew that, right?

That was why he abandoned her, right?

Why does it hurt so much?

This was something else 'The Devil' found himself questioning often. If he was indeed meant to be alone, and if he was supposed to die the slowest death known to mankind without a soul but his ever-growing full of hatred wife to question his absence once he no longer existed, why did it still burden his soul?

Perhaps, in all the millennia's that he had spent with Josephine, this was the most prominent thing he had learnt from her. He had spent so long being subjected to neglect and torture that there was perchance nothing that could ever reverse the things that had been done to himself; and there was nothing that could sway how he felt about himself and his surroundings. There hadn't been any desensitization in sight for the Queen of Hell and thus there would be none for its king.

He crossed his arms over his chest, his sharp, curved, and meticulously gentle nails rasping lightly against the skin of his arms as he rubbed his shoulders in an attempt to warm himself.

Shutting his eyes, Lucifer could hear her voice clearly in his head... of a night when they laid their heads next to each other on a crooked bed in a small inn in 1936. If he dared to, Lucifer could still remember the way she held his hand that night, fidgeting with his ring.

"I wonder if they knew what they were doing," she had started by saying, "Your Father and your siblings, I mean. I wonder if they could see ahead, as they claim to be of the ability to do, and I wonder if they could see us now, even as we lay here. I wonder if they could foretell the deep set, soul crushing pain of solitude we feel, and the ever-bearing weight of eternity on our shoulders."

Josephine had been in a mood these days. Randomly getting mood swings. Yelling at him. Crying in the bathroom.

"They have reworked your brain to their liking, and injected into you rather ruthlessly the curse of empathy and emotion, and now we both have no other choice but to marinate in it. Every day is a step more approaching to the darkness that will one day take hold of the world, and one day is a step closer to me floating aimlessly in space, or padding sorrowfully through the ashes and embers of what used to be ripe and lively."

"Everything is dying," Lucifer had replied, somewhat able to comprehend what she stood. They both had a little bit to drink that night... this would all be a dream next day.

"Everything is dying and so are we, but never will I be able to accept the peace of death physically. I-I feel as if I am experiencing a slow rot of my brain, and of my soul, and eventually I will no longer be capable of processing the things that occur to me logically. If you were to ever leave me, I will be a husk, regressed back to the state with which your father in the past had me, only able to cry and beg for the forgiveness of the presence of the humanity I torture that is unable to even hear my plea."

The morning he hadn't given any thought to his wife's words. Or the next. Or any other day. Her words came back almost a hundred human years to haunt Lucifer.

He rubbed his eyes with his palms, gritting them into his sockets slightly, trying to hold back the tears threatening to form. He was the Devil. There was no point in crying, was there? He needed to take life by the horns, or perhaps himself by the horns, and grasp his head back into the things that mattered.

Like his new job.

His new job with Chloe Decker— a woman of true caliber. He sometimes pondered how he ended up like this; so far from his natural role. Being manipulated and shamed for the expanse of time he had, he supposed, had illuminated him to fear himself as a monster. He, despite hating humans and the earth as a whole, could not live without them.

He loved them.

He loved the unlovable creatures that he was forced to share his home with, and that was for a reason that was as simple as it was complex. In learning to dote on them, they had saved him. They had given him a sense of purpose and a reason to keep going. Sure, he wasn't ideal, and nor were they; but regardless of his mistakes that happened rather sporadically, he was rewarded for his efforts. Told he was a good man. A gentle devil. The epiphany of tender, love and care, and of being passionate about one's job (even though his job had been owning a night club for the good part of the past five years).

He had loved Josephine too, though.

He had loved the beautiful Angel that he damned to a life of horror with himself. He had saved her just as she redeemed him but in the end, all it ever came down to was how he had to leave her.

No matter how many times he heard those words; and no matter how many times he was termed a gifted, a good person, it never got old. Even though most people who said it didn't really mean it, he could never grow tired of it. Those were words he had been seeking his whole life— words he ever only got from one person.

He rested with his palms clasped over his nose, concealing his eyes, and therefore hiding himself from the world. Every so often he could still feel it. That feeling, that sense of bliss that he got when he was with her, like nothing could be better than it was for himself. Like his life had finally reached its peak, he had crawled up that great big mountain of sorrows, and he was all set.

The day he had felt when she agreed to wed him in front of his father.

If only he had known how wrong he was then, to frolic through the sand with her like nothing could ever go wrong for him again. He merely wished that he'd have drank up every moment with her like a fine wine, because laying here, cold and alone, he truly felt like he'd never have anything close to the love he needed again. He could tell himself that he was fine with all he desired. Could rehearse over and over again in his head why his abstinence from anything remotely similar to love was mandatory; for both the happiness of her and himself. But in the end, that didn't make it any better for him.

Not one bit.

Deep down, he knew it wasn't fine, because it hurt him so bad, and was a fate worse to death to him. There was nothing that could take away or lessen the pain of loneliness for long, not even the job he'd so meticulously devoted himself to— being married to her.

'In perpetuum et unum diem'

It meant 'forever and a day.' Simple words. The exact number of days he had promised to love her. The exact amount he was inevitably going to love her.

He hadn't apprehended it, but the more he had been pondering all these things, the colder he had gotten. His body was tired, and he no longer wanted to be awake. It was odd that he had gotten up today only to return to sleep once more, but times when he dreamed of his past or his love were always different for him than they for others, so he could justify his own strange behavior this one time.

They didn't have to ponder over loving the only woman that ever loved him back would ultimately end her. They didn't have to go through the thousand scenarios he had made in his head where she left him just so he could leave her first.

They didn't have to wonder if whether seeing her face all over again would make him want all of her once again.

He rolled over onto his side causing the springs in his mattress to creak beneath him, he pulled his legs just a bit closer to his chest to conserve heat as he tried to drift off to sleep again.

There, he thought, closing his eyes. This will do quite nicely to warm me up, and when I wake up from my sleep, I can have a cup of tea and go to the LAPD. Or go get a drink from Lux. Today is no different than any other... I just had a bad dream and thought a bit too seriously about my time here, on earth and my future. Fortunately, the future is a long way away.

He drifted into sleep shortly after completing this last thought, warmth completely overtaking him for the first time since he had woken up just a few hours prior, hoping that his nap would give him better dreams and inspire him to take on the rest of the day with a different perspective.

It was a different perspective indeed.

And it was a different— 'way too different to be considered normal'— day.

And such remained the life Lucifer Morgenstern had created for himself in LA but he didn't know how everything was going to change all over again.
Change... but then not all changes were bad.

Lilith once told Josephine that pain was the most stubborn child that resided in a person— so dramatic and needy as it begged to be felt. She had said that it was the most prominent sign of being a human, of being something more believable. She hadn't believed the mother of demons as she spoke, dismissing her words because pain to Josephine was just a loose term describing something as insignificant as a lousy paper cut.

'Huh,' it now made her think, 'Ironic how her pain now was a thousand paper cuts littering her bare skin.'

Her feet dragged across the pavement back to her small apartment because the woman was sure that she would break if she saw Chloe and Lucifer together for one more minute.

Are they sleeping together? Are they friends?

How long has Chloe been lying to her?

Her hands were still tight in a fist, and Josephine knew that her nails had already pierced through her skin and marked her body with another scar to remember what happened tonight.

It had been the most unexpected thing— one minute she had been putting Trixie to sleep while planning a mini party and the next thing she knew; her husband was standing right across her almost like he could pretend he didn't know who she was.

Now, that shit hurt.

She knew Lucifer. She knew him better than anyone in either heaven, earth or hell ever could and that's why, one could say it wasn't really a surprise when there was a knock on her door almost two minutes after she arrived.

I will not fall prey to his charms and lies.

"Josephine!" his perfect accent entranced her for a minute, reminding her of his bitter-sweet promises, "Would you please just open the door?"

She didn't reply.

"Jo! Please... I-" he let go a loud sigh before using his super natural force on her door-knob, breaking her lock, "need to speak with you."

Josephine, now left with no tears to cry stood about eight feet away from him, her brown eyes glaring at Lucifer in a rather scary way.

"How sad," she shrugged nonchalantly, "I don't really give a fuck about what you want."

Lucifer seemed unbothered by her attitude, his eyes drifting off to his (ex?) wife's house with a bit of disgust. The plain furniture seemed to bug and Josephine smiled a little inside at his discomfort. Serves him right.

"Josephine," he raised his eyebrows a little, confusion remaining on his face like acne on a teenager, "I—  I just... is that really you?"

If the angel did not know any better, she would say that Lucifer almost looked happy to see her.

                                                                                                           "No."                                      

For a moment, Lucifer's expression faltered in defeat knowing it was going to be pretty hard beating Josephine's angry exterior but then 'he was the devil! There was no one on Earth that should defy him!'

"Funny," he smiled like a little kid, "You look exactly like my wife."

Josephine bit back an insult. Looking at Lucifer now, the angel couldn't help but wonder how the fuck she managed to stay so long (like million years long) with such a doofus.

It was uncanny, really.

"Why are you inside my home, Lucifer?" she sighed—  saying the words slowly so that he could decipher her merry words.

"Why are you on Earth?" he shrugged and Josephine made a face at him before giving him a light salute.

"Touché."

Lucifer looked around at her house again, his eyes lightly drifting on to the number of books she had stored in her book shelves—  all classics —  and the very 'fifty-year old virgin aesthetic' she had made for herself.

He cleared his throat and looked into her eyes—  so intoxicatingly murderous. Then without any words forming in his mind, he began to speak.

Without knowing what to think, Josephine decided she was not going to listen.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: UMMM HELLO?? LOOK WHO'S BACK :))) (it's me btw... im the one who's back) HERE YOU GET CHAPTER FOUR!!! (AFTER SO LONG WTF ANNA) BUT I HOPE Y'ALL ENJOY WHAT I GOT COMING!!! SAD ABT THE LACK OF JOSEPHINE-LUCIFER (shipnames?) MOMENTS BUT I THINK THIS WILL DO.

ENJOYYYY!

Qotd

Who, except Tom Ellis ofc, do you think would be perfect for the role of Lucifer?

My ans.

Ummm i have a fantasy in my head where ian somerhalder plays him...?