Watching over you ✔ (Lucifer fanfiction/Deckerstar)

Twenty-seven years since Lucifer went back to Hell

It took Lucifer seven years until he decided that it was time to go back to Earth. He had spent the past years finding reasons not to go, from not wanting to find proof that would force him to admit to himself that he was no longer a part of the Detective's life to seeing with his own eyes how many years had passed. But he eventually ran out of reasons that didn't come down to one emotion: Loneliness.

As much as he'd tried to push it aside, it wouldn't go away and it didn't want to be ignored any longer.

There was no doubt, and never would be, that she'd be as beautiful as ever, no matter her looks and her age. Lucifer would forever know and see the beauty that lay inside her, in her soul, no matter what happened. That wasn't what tormented him. No, the questions that haunted him led his mind into a different direction.

What if he couldn't look at her anymore because it hurt too much to see her ageing because of what that process implied? How deeply would it struck him to see all the years he had spent missing her drawn onto her skin, wrinkles telling stories of the time others had been allowed to live with her while he had been damned to stay in Hell?

Her age would remind him of her mortality, not that he could ever forget about it. But while it had been easier to ignore while she had still been younger, it would now be increasingly difficult to push those thoughts aside. And while he was lonely now, too, he could only imagine the whole different shade of loneliness he would experience after she'd have moved on to Heaven.

But for now, she was still alive, for all he knew. And suddenly he was anxious to see her.

So since he'd realized that he could either let his loneliness consume him even while she was still alive or face it head on like he had learned from Linda, he was gathering courage, and today was the day. He'd go up. He pushed Azrael's silver feather in between his white ones and, casting one last look around over his doomed kingdom from the top of his throne, steadied himself and took flight.

Lucifer needed a moment to adapt his eyes to the hilarious amount of blazing sunlight falling from the sky as his feet touched sandy ground. He took in his surroundings and found himself close to the ocean. The sound of waves rolling onto the shore was unmistakable and the most soothing one he had heard since the last time the Detective's voice had touched his ears.

He turned to the beach and slowly started walking towards it. It was crowded with people enjoying the perfect summer's day with family and friends. If his intuition had led him here, surely the Detective had to be among them. His eyes wandered over the crowd until he spotted her. She was sitting on a blue beach towel with her head turned sideways, the silhouette of her face dark against the sunlight dancing on the water behind her.

Lucifer's heart swelled with emotions as he stayed rooted to the spot, looking at her from a few yards away. Yes, he had been right: She was as beautiful as ever. The way she squeezed her eyes against the light and curved her lips up into a gentle smile hadn't changed at all.

Lucifer was so absorbed by her that, at first, he didn't notice what, or rather whom, she was looking at. But then he followed her gaze to see two children kneeling only a few steps away from her, building what she'd call a fairytale castle and he'd call a pile of sand. But their construction wasn't what caught his interest. Their features were. The older one, a girl with freckles all over her face, had the same focused expression that the Detective used to have when thinking about the connections between different leads on a case, and the younger one, a boy with tousled hair, beamed with the same carefree happiness he had encountered in only one other child during his time on Earth.

Before Lucifer knew what was going on, he realized the corners of his mouth had gone up. The expression felt so unfamiliar that he had to touch his lips to make sure it was real. He couldn't remember the last time he had smiled. There was no reason to smile down where he spent his existence these days.