The moment Cain's hand closed around Lucifer's, the world dissolved. There was no rush of wind, no tunnel of light. The living room carpet simply vanished from beneath his feet, replaced by a sensation of weightlessness. He saw Lucifer hovering before him, a serene smile on her face, and then—
They were there.
His sneakers touched down on a surface that was not floor, not grass, but a fine, gray powder that puffed up in slow, dreamlike clouds around his ankles. He looked up.
The Earth hung in the black velvet of space, a magnificent swirl of blue, white, and green, immense and breathtakingly close. The sun, a fierce, unfiltered star, blazed from behind a jagged lunar horizon, casting long, sharp shadows.
Holy shit, Cain thought, the words echoing in the perfect, airless silence inside his head. We're really on the moon.
As his full weight settled, he instinctively dropped to his knees, the soft regolith giving way. Panic, pure and primal, seized him. His mouth opened in a silent scream. He couldn't feel air moving. He couldn't hear anything, not even his own pounding heart. He clawed at his throat, turning frantic eyes toward Lucifer, who still floated a few feet above the ground, watching him with amusement.
Bring me back! he tried to shout, but no sound came out. I can't breathe!
Lucifer laughed. The sound didn't travel through the vacuum; he heard it directly in his mind, clear and bright. "Do not panic. Obviously, I am aware of your physiological limitations. For this brief excursion, I have temporarily suspended the concepts that would cause your termination here. Your requirement for gaseous oxygen, the vacuum's effect on your fluids, the extreme thermal variance… consider them paused."
She drifted down until her feet lightly brushed the lunar soil. She extended her hand to him again, her expression shifting from amusement to gentle encouragement.
"You are in no danger. Stand."
Cain stared at her offered hand, then at the impossible planet looming above him. Hesitantly, he tried to take a breath. His lungs filled smoothly, easily, with… something. It wasn't air as he knew it, but it sustained him. The crushing pressure, the boiling of his blood he'd expected—none of it happened. Only a profound, surreal stillness.
He looked up at Lucifer's waiting hand and her beaming face. A slow, incredulous smile spread across his own. He took her hand.
"Thank you," he managed, the words feeling thin in the unnatural quiet. She helped him to his feet.
He turned in a slow circle, his sneakers scuffing the powder. The desolate beauty of it was overwhelming. The stark contrast between the brilliant sunlit highlands and the inky black shadows. The complete, utter silence.
"It is beautiful, is it not?" Lucifer asked, watching the wonder play across his face. "I understand many humans dreamed of this precise moment. You should optimize your enjoyment of it."
Cain could only nod, his throat tight with emotion. He looked at her, then out at the vast, empty plain before them. An impulse took him. He extended his hand to her, palm up. "Walk with me?" he asked. "I just… I want to walk on the moon. If you want to come."
Lucifer's eyes lit up with pure, unadulterated happiness. She took his hand faster than he could blink, her grip warm and sure. "I accept your offer!"
For about ten minutes, they walked in a companionable silence that wasn't really silence, but an absence of all familiar sound. Cain led the way, Lucifer matching his slow, bouncing strides exactly, her earlier celestial grace replaced by an eager mimicry of his human gait. Finally, Cain stopped near a large, weathered crater rim. Without ceremony, he sat down in the gray dust, sending up another slow-motion plume.
Lucifer stopped beside him, her head tilting in confusion. "Why have you placed yourself upon the ground? It is soiled with fine particulate."
Cain smiled up at her, his face illuminated by the stark sunlight. "Sometimes, to really enjoy something, you have to be okay with getting a little dirty. You can't fully appreciate a moment if you're too worried about staying clean." He patted the spot on the regolith beside him. "You can sit too, if you want. No pressure."
He fully expected her to demur, to remain standing in her pristine, levitating perfection. But Lucifer looked from his face to the empty space beside him. After a brief hesitation, she carefully lowered herself, arranging the borrowed trousers around her as she settled into the lunar dust. She smiled, a little shyly. "I am sitting."
Cain grinned, turning his gaze back to the Earth. "It's incredible," he whispered. "All of this. Being here. Meeting you. All in one day."
"I concur," Lucifer said softly, following his gaze. "I have never visited this rock before. I always considered it a tedious, oversized stone. But I was mistaken. There is no such thing as a tedious moment when you are accompanied by someone."
The intimacy of the statement, the vast, silent backdrop, loosened something in Cain. A question, random and deeply personal, slipped out. "Have you ever been in love?"
Lucifer froze. The easy smile vanished from her face, replaced by a deep, melanch stillness. Her golden eyes seemed to look through him, into some ancient, private distance. Cain watched her, the long silence stretching in the void. He waved a hand in front of his own face. "What? Is there something on my face?"
Finally, she spoke, her voice quiet even in the mental link. "Yes. I am familiar with the sensation."
He recognized the expression on her face. It was the one he saw in his own mirror every morning. Haunted. Hollowed out by loss.
"You lost him?" Cain asked gently.
Lucifer seemed to snap back to the present. She gave a single, sharp nod. "I did. I lost the one I cherished." Then, almost forcibly, she summoned a smile, a brittle thing that didn't reach her eyes. "It was a long time ago."
"Michael is your sister, right?" Cain ventured. "Couldn't you… I don't know, be with him when he got to heaven?"
Lucifer shook her head slowly, her gaze drifting back to the stars. "It is not so simple."
"Is he in Hell, then?"
"Do you believe," Lucifer began, her tone shifting to something more philosophical, distant, "that every story, every existence, has a definitive beginning and a conclusive end? Like a book. A chronicle with a final page."
Cain thought about it. "I guess. If you put it that way, then yeah. Everything ends."
"He does not have that book," Lucifer said, her voice barely a whisper in his mind.
Cain blinked. "How? So he never existed?"
"He existed. He exists. But his end… is not predetermined. It is not written. There is no final page to turn to."
"Oh," Cain said, the concept too vast, too strange to fully grasp. "I see."
Lucifer seemed to shake off the weight of the memory. She turned to him, deliberately changing the subject. "And you? This love for Amelia. Is it of a romantic nature?"
"No," Cain said quickly, firmly. "It wasn't like that. It was a deep friendship. The deepest. I just want to tell her I'm sorry. One last time. Maybe then… I could finally stop feeling stuck."
Lucifer studied his profile, the way the earthlight reflected in his eyes. "If the circumstance arises," she said, her voice soft but clear, "if I encounter another Archangel here before Michael locates me… I will endeavor to find a method to grant you passage to heaven. So you may deliver your apology."
Cain looked at her, touched and horrified in equal measure. "No," he said firmly. "You don't need to do that. I've… I've accepted it. Some things happen. Some things you regret. You learn from them. You already told me what it would take, and I don't want to put that on anyone. Especially not you. That's my burden."
A playful glint returned to Lucifer's eyes. She leaned closer, poking his arm. "Are you going to initiate a weeping response? Your facial muscles are contorting in a manner that suggests imminent crying."
Cain burst out laughing, the sudden, loud sound startling in the mental quiet. The heavy moment shattered. "Fuck no," he said, wiping at the corners of his eyes where no tears had actually formed. "I was just… carried away. The moment got to me."