How does one write a letter to the one you love when you know you will never stand a chance at seeing them ever again without crying?

 

Lucifer stared down at the blank page of the letter paper. The paper had been a gift from Charlie, as a way to try and cheer him up and encourage him to do like the bomb woman and the redeemed snake sinner and write Angel something.

He’d been sitting here for hours now, hidden in the space up the stairs behind his bed in his tower, his attempts squeezed into tiny, tiny balls as he tossed them to the side.

All he could think about was how much he missed Angel. There were ways for winners to come down to Hell for specific reasons (or maybe that just applied to those in Heaven’s service, like Adam and his son, no one had ever actually told him the rules on that), but in his case… For the first time in thousands of years, he’d been faced with Michael, who had made it clear in no uncertain terms that as long as he had a say, he would never allow Angel to set foot back down here again, and Lucifer, he was stuck down here forever. Heaven had made sure of that when they chained him to this realm.

He held no illusions that Michael would change his mind any time soon, if he ever would. He hadn’t even allowed Lucifer to talk to him through that live feed Charlie’s friends had managed to set up. Hopefully he’d allow that much eventually. At least he’d allowed Angel to speak to others, just not to him.

 

He thought about the last time they’d kissed, the last time they touched.

They hadn’t known that was what it was, back then. Neither of them had known that that day, Angel would face his own sins, those that had secured him his spot in Hell in the first place.

Even with his terrible memory, that was something he wouldn’t forget. He wouldn’t allow himself to. Because if he did, he feared that he would lose his mind with grief. And so he held on to the memories like a lifeline.

 

That morning, that last morning together, when he’d pulled Angel out of bed at dawn, not to do anything special, but to watch a silly soap opera Angel had gotten him more hooked on than Angel was himself, arguing over stupid plot points and eating a lazy breakfast because neither of them felt like cooking, and Lucifer was trying to rely a little less on his magic for everything.

Angel had gotten him used to trying to do more things the way humans did, had helped him find the benefits to doing things at a slower pace, the way he’d always done with his ducks and… just about nothing else. Even if a slow pace to Lucifer wasn’t that slow to Angel. But Lucifer had gotten so used to doing almost everything with his magic, that most things had been instantaneous to him for millennia.

And now, it was difficult not to go back to relying on it.

Not when depression sunk its teeth into him again. It had always been there, right in the periphery, always waiting, biding its time, flexing its claws. But sharing a living space with Angel had made the depression easier to bear most days, when Angel didn’t let him turn back to self-isolation for too long, learning when to drag him out of bed or let him be on the days when it all just became too much.

 

When Lilith left, he’d only survived because he had to. He couldn’t die, immortal in every sense of the word. But back then, at least he’d had the hope of her returning one day. And she had, just not to him. Not like that.

But this time, he’d felt nothing but hopelessness. Happy for Angel, that he’d been redeemed, yes, but he still mourned the loss of being able to share each other’s space. It was hard not to let his depression swallow him whole.

He was so proud of Angel. For facing his sins, for growing and improving to the point that whatever deemed him worthy of going up to Heaven after all saw the potential in him, even though Angel had admitted to him that he didn’t actually care that much about getting redeemed. But for the first few days he’d been nearly overcome with grief. With loneliness that made him feel utterly selfish.

Clenching the pen between his fingers, he started to write again.

‘I still love you. I miss you every day. I’m sorry about ensuring that you’ll never see your friends again unless they too get redeemed.’

 

He tore the paper out, squeezing it into a ball and throwing it away. He could hear it bounce off the window before rolling down the stairs.

No, he didn’t need to be so damn depressing. Better not tear up that wound any more than it already had been.

He rewrote the first two sentences again, pausing. Staring out of the window at the chaos that was Pentagram City.

‘I will think of you, love you, adore you, even after the world ends’, he added, hesitating. Was that too much? He’d always been told that he was too much, too intense. That his love was smothering. Until Angel, the only one who hadn’t thought so had been Lilith. But Angel had told him that he didn’t mind it, not one bit. That he kind of liked it, even. Maybe they had been such a good match because Angel was kind of strange about love too, but in a different way to Lucifer.

He let it remain, trying to continue.

 

‘I hope Heaven is treating you well. Charlie told me that you’ve found that sister you always wondered where she was. I’m happy for you.’

His tears stained the paper, but this time, he pushed through. Ignored them. He could rewrite the letter later, when he had found all the words.

‘I’m so damn proud of you. For how you’ve grown, for who you are. I think you’ll be a good influence on Heaven. Maybe you’ll even be able to pull some sticks out of a couple of asses. They’re in desperate need of that.’

Then he was stuck again.

 

Was it too short? Or was it enough to get his feelings across, at least a little bit? He knew he didn’t want to end it like that, but how did you even finish a letter like this? Especially when it would undoubtedly be hard to smuggle past Michael.

He stared down at the letter, at the splotches his tears had turned some of the letters into, just barely legible. Wiping his eyes and cheeks with his sleeve, he chewed on his lip.

The pen shivered in his hand, fingers trembling. He could hear the acid rain hit the window in front of him.

‘I love you. So, so much. Yours,

Lucifer’

He folded up the paper, slipping it into its matching envelope before he could overthink it, writing Angel’s name on the front.

He grimaced as he licked the back closed. Humanity had been able to create so many things, how had they not made an envelope that tasted less horrible to glue shut yet (well, neither had Hellborn, he supposed)?

 

Looking down at the letter, he felt the way his hands trembled, still. Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, he willed his tears away, failing entirely.

He let his magic envelop it, dropping it in Charlie’s and Vaggi’s office, right on the desk alongside a hastily scribbled note to ask them to see if it could be delivered.

With another burst of magic, he let a single Hell rose from the palace gardens rest on top of it.

He wished he could’ve added more, but since it had to be smuggled past Michael and his guards, this was risky enough.

He could only hope and wish that it would reach Angel in the end.

And maybe with enough time, Michael would soften. Angel was hard not to like, but maybe he was a bit biased.

 

As he stepped down the stairs, he let the rest of the papers and envelopes rest on his workbench.

Hopefully, Angel would be able to send him a response, if his letter reached him.

Then, the letter paper would be there, waiting for him.

Ready for him to spill his heart all over the pages with ink.

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