Fire and Smoke

Keep Calm and Carry On

It was definitely hers. Lucifer hadn't moved, his lips pressed together as he watched her. His grace was back in place, tucked within her where it was supposed to be. She pressed into it, gently feeling where its hooks had dug into her: the perch felt ... precarious, balanced on the edge and moments away from slipping into oblivion. She stepped forward, but something caught against her foot, something soft and heavy, and she stumbled. A body lay on the floor, already cold. The face was unrecognizable; the flesh was charred, and empty sockets stared up at the stipple brush ceiling. It was clearly a man, and the body just beyond that was a female, several years older. "Right." Lucifer's thoughtful eyes followed hers. "Apparently no one in this family is strong enough to hold me for long." His wing flicked out, skating over the bodies. "Those two burned through quickly. This one seems to be lasting a bit longer." He motioned her forward with a crooked finger, and Alex skirted the corpses with a frown. "But it won't last forever."

Alex drew closer, and she could see the faint fissures that were starting to tear through his exposed skin. "How are you feeling?" She reached out to put a hesitant hand upon his chest, grace pressing up against his. There was a moment of resistance before it opened up, letting her inside. "I — I was scared Amara had killed you."

"I think she tried." Cold fingers brushed against her cheek, and Alex's head tipped up with a soft hum. "Luckily, she was still weak, and I was ripped out." The touch pulled away. "Well? Did Dad manage to lock her away or, uh ..." His eyes flickered towards the window, and Alex's shoulders fell as wind rattled the windows.

"No. Chuck is ..." Alex's mouth dried, and she paused to wet her lips under Lucifer's stare. "Chuck is dying. Amara — she did something to him." Her hand moved from his chest to grab his wrist, tugging him away from the wall. "The Winchesters are building — like a bomb or something, but I don't know if they can do it without you —"

Lucifer's face exploded into light. Alex flinched away as his grace spilled outwards, coiling through the air. The temperature instantaneously dropped, leaving her last breath hanging frozen in the air, and Alex's feathers puffed out as the light faded. The vessel whose hand she had been holding collapsed, faceless, to the wooden floor, and Alex stepped back as a dead arm hit the ground where her feet had just been. "Lucifer?" She spoke the name out loud, listening as it reverberated through the empty house. She felt along his grace, tightly coiled around Castiel's, and a voice carried through the air as if an answer, a soft and barely-there whisper. Alex turned towards the noise just as a white light flooded from the stairs, and Lucifer's grace hummed within her. There was a moment of silence, and then footsteps echoed through the wooden beams above her head.

They were lighter than Alex expected, and the young angel tipped her head as they approached. She knew it was Lucifer — the wings, as always, made identification obvious — but she didn't expect a child to step into sight. The girl was small, no taller than five feet, and the oversized crimson wings that spilled from her slim shoulders only exaggerated her unimposing height. "Sorry." Lucifer shook out his feathers with a thin scowl, and Alex's eyes dropped down onto the primaries, which dragged along the floor. "What were you saying?"

"I-I — uh ..." Alex cleared her throat, searching for her old train of thought. "The Winchesters. They can't kill Amara on their own. You — I'm sorry. Where did uh, she come from?"

"Upstairs. I kept her unconscious and subdued once I had her consent." Lucifer's lips twisted into a frown, a look that appeared more as a pout than anything else. "Vessel hopping isn't easy, but I'm trying to make the most of it." He stepped over the bodies as he approached, and Alex shifted back as he stopped in front of her.

Her wings flittered as she looked down into the round, feminine face, and it wasn't long before she had to turn her eyes away. "What are you gonna do about ... this?" Alex motioned down to the three bodies that lay around them. "You can't just leave them here."