Do you think Lucifer ever misses his brothers the way Michael misses the times before the war?

No.

.

there is a place where even divine maps end, marked HIC EST NIHILUM in Metatron’s spidery hand, because even dragons will not live in the not-places beyond the edges of the world. There are no lions, or stars, or wind. There is not even Hell there, for Hell won’t be invented for a few millennia and some back-and-forth about metaphysics.

there is only Lucifer, alone.

.

Beelzebub comes on the fourth day, limping, one of his wings broken and dragging behind him in the ash. (It will never quite heal, his caronoid aching in the cold of the eighth sphere.) There is no soft place to fall, he says at Lucifer’s stare.

(Lucifer had never seen violence, before)

If you have come to persuade me of my folly, and bring me home—the ‘home’ is an accident, a slip of the tongue he will never make again—then you have come in vain, Lucifer tells him.

Beelzebub cocks his heads quizzically. Elder brother, did you not hear me? I have fallen from Heaven, see how I have broken my wings in coming to you—I have chosen my side, brother. If this is folly, then we are joined in it.

oh, Lucifer says.

oh.

.

he is the first, but he is not the last. Lucifer’s brothers fall like stars from the sky, and come to him with broken wings, shattered limbs, scars from where re-entry burnt their being. There is no soft place to fall in the place-that-is-not-yet-called-Hell.

once, the sky above them is lit white and blue with a great fire, and Lucifer’s heart leaps into his throat—

but it is only the seraphim Asmodeus, and Lucifer is left, aching.

.

there’s a girl in a garden, and her eyes are like unto Michael’s eyes.

for that, Lucifer breaks her open, smashes her eggshell skull against a tree and pours knowledge of good and evil through the fissures. He watches her choke on the apple’s core, watches the horror of it dawn on her face as she begins coughing up ash and black ink.

this is what you are, he whispers in her ear as she retches up rotting fruit. you are full of locusts and bile and hunger, and that is all you will ever be.

it is his gift to humanity—Michael’s eyes, full of Lucifer’s hope.

.

(the first time he meets Michael on the battlefield, he grabs his brother by the gorget, and pulls their mouths together. Michael is whitehot-burning grace, and Lucifer is power and blood and pride, and they—)

only, the first time he meets Michael on the battlefield, Michael has blood on his hands and mud slicked up to his knees, and when he looks at Lucifer, Lucifer can tell he is seeing only corpses, their brothers lost this day—brothers slain even by Michael’s own hand, and—

Lucifer stumbles into Beelzebub’s tent that night, whiskey on his tongue. See me, he murmurs, kissing the only being who has ever chosen him above all others. Look at me, see me. Only me.

I do, Beelzebub breathes back. I do.

It is all wrong. It is all Lucifer has.

.

in some, dark and unvoiced part of his being, Lucifer hates them—hates them as only the god of idolators could, his brothers and sisters who knew the glory of Heaven and chose Lucifer instead.

better to reign in Hell, yes, fine, but they repulse him, those who chose neither and content themselves beneath the second-brightest star in the firmament.

.

Gabriel recoils at the sight of Lucifer, repulsion twisting his fair features. Lucifer has not met with any creature so bright for centuries, and to look upon him is blinding. Look at you, little brother, he laughs, look at how you’ve grown.

I do not know you, Gabriel says, drawing his sword. You are no brother of mine.

Raphael hides in his infirmary when Lucifer’s armies pass.

Michael’s brightness is dimmed beneath blood and scar tissue, and when he says, Lucifer, that is dim and bloody too. But they know one another of old, and when Lucifer says brother, Michael says, yes, and that is enough, that must be enough

(that is all Lucifer has.)

.

once, God descends into Hell. He says, Come home. Let Hell collapse around you, come home, I love you. I have never not loved you.

Lucifer laughs wildly, until he is dizzy-sick with it, until he is on the ashen ground, laughing and aching and he doesn’t know if he’ll ever forget how grief-stricken his Father could look, in that moment, how bereft. 

not enough, he wants to say, it’s not enough.

.

Lucifer has forgotten why he started, what the point of this was. All he remembers is the fighting, that time on the battlefield when Michael leaned over their crossed bayonets and kissed Lucifer on the forehead; Beelzebub by candlelight, poring over maps, his jugular bared to Lucifer in a gesture of unwarranted trust. Eve, her mouth full of ink, and saints with their hallelujahs, like paper shields against the onslaught of the world. Stars and sin and a Heaven he barely recalls, except that it had been full of music. Armies chanting his name, which is something like love, if nothing at all.

he is always cold, and he doesn’t—he doesn’t know when it’ll end, can’t remember how it started, all he is is hunger and cold. He could swallow the world and it would never be enough.

he doesn’t remember why he thought it would be.

.

do you ever miss—

no

never.