Lucifer hated this hill. He hated it more every time he climbed it.

It made everything hurt more than it did already, the relentless incline, the unreliable grass. It taxed muscles that had very little left to give and drew aching, grating protests from joints that had long since lost their cartilage. And of course she'd been so pleased with it. "We'll have a view," she'd said, like that mattered. Like there was any 'we' in the question at all.

"I'm still mad at you," he informed her as the ground finally leveled out under his feet. As he reached her, he steadied himself on his own feet for a moment to whack her soundly with the edge of his black-and-gold walking stick.

Her response was always the same, carved neatly and unsentimenally in granite. Capt. Chloe Decker, and those damn dates.

He'd wanted to put something else, some word of praise, some proclamation of what she meant in the world, but she'd rolled her eyes and shut him up. "I want to earn it," she'd told him. "I don't want to dictate what people should feel about me. I get the legacy I earn, and whatever that is . . ." She shrugged. "My name's enough."

"The view," he griped at her. "You wanted a view, and now I've got to drag myself up this entire damn hill like Sisyphus for the rest of eternity."

Carefully, he bent . . . not far, for he'd long ago left behind the ability to stand completely upright . . . and pulled the dead bundle of flowers from the vase set in front of the headstone. In their place he left a fresh arrangement of snapdragons, all bright yellows and reds against the mixed green and brown of the drought-taxed grass.

"Well," he observed at length, "You'll be happy to know that Lex's got into that law school she wanted. She was shrieking when she told me, in an extremely undignified fashion. It's a good thing the admittance committee couldn't see her or they'd have pitched her straight out again. But Trixie and Min are both fit to burst, of course. Trixie ordered a cake with the acceptance letter printed onto it, and quite tasty, too. Min tried to lecture me about the sugar and diabetes and then muttered to Trixie when she thought I wasn't listening that I'd put myself into a coma. If only, eh?"

He smiled just thinking about it. A coma. Wouldn't that be nice. He'd had his immortality back for four months now, and it was absolutely miserable. Everything hurt. So many of his old friends were gone beyond, one way or another, and though it was quite entertaining to watch the young people launching into lives of their own, it did make one feel one's age. The age that one would be forever and ever, now that one's partner was gone . . .

He felt his throat tense up and his chest constrict. Oh, hell no, he wasn't going to cry again . . . why did mourning involve some much damned crying?

He struggled to breathe through it, to keep the outburst at bay. Crying hurt, not crying hurt, coming up here hurt, not coming up here hurt . . .

"I'm . . . still mad at you," he choked out, trying to be self-deprecating while he waited for the fit to pass. "Why . . . in hell . . . did you have to go first? You couldn't have waited . . . a few months? I don't suppose it matters really . . . but at least Hell would be different. And I might be able to properly stand up. And I could see Maze on occasion. And Min wouldn't be fussing about diabetes. And I know what you're thinking . . . wouldn't that just leave you decrepit and alone instead? Well, yes. But at this point, I am more than willing . . . to throw you under the bus."

He imagined her dismissive eyeroll, and smiled in spite of himself. His heart hurt. It was all so damnably literal.

"Calderon . . . passed his exams," he panted, trying to get back on topic. "So there's another . . . baby detective . . . for you. That's, what, five now? I wrote them all down the other day, but I've lost the paper, and of course my memory is gone, so I hope you're taking notes." He took a few choppy breaths; they were getting easier.

"I miss you," he said, and his voice broke on the verb. "I scarcely know how to function. I talk like you're there to shout at me, and you don't. Lexie and Scott are constantly calling and visiting to keep me distracted, but how long can one stay distracted from the knowledge that one's partner is gone?"

He leaned on the stone, and the letters of her name swam in his eyes.

"No one is ever truly gone, Lucifer," said a very large, very deep voice behind him.

Lucifer sighed and straightened, brushing a tear off his cheek so it wouldn't run into his mouth. "About time you showed up," he snapped, turning.

To his surprise, not one winged figure, but two stood on the hill behind him. Amenadiel stood with folded arms, his carefully tailored gray suit matching his gray wings to an almost tacky degree. Next to him, Maze stood with her burgundy wings only half-furled. She'd scarcely had them for half a century and clearly was still getting used to their weight on her back. Her leather-strap-and-metal-ring ensemble would turn a few mortal heads if she went walking around the city in it, and her smirk was familiar and smug.

Lucifer turned his attention for Amenadiel first, glaring daggers. "You didn't have the common decency to come to her funeral. Maze here made the time to come, and she has an entire underworld to manage."

"Still using me to make your point before you even say hello," Maze griped. "Thanks. I feel so appreciated."

"I was at her orientation," Amenadiel stated, with the patronizing, magnanimous calm of an angel at the top of his game. "I was a little busy."

"Don't see why. You had plenty of time to get everything ready. Have you ever watched a human — ANY human — die of a respiratory infection? She couldn't BREATHE. For days and days. Every breath hurt. I could see it in her face. The only reason she wasn't sobbing through the whole ordeal was that sobbing would have hurt worse. She just had to lie there and be in agony until the drugs took her away from it." Lucifer could hear his own voice, furious and still panicked, and hated the sound. "She never took anything stronger than a Tylenol in her life and there she was BEGGING me to get the nurses to give her more Oxycontin. I called in favors to get her more from off the street, but . . . I wasn't fast enough. So I took them all instead. But I wasn't fast enough for that either. I just went to sleep, and I woke up like this—immortal and alone. And with twenty messages on my phone from Trixie about planning a funeral that my own brother didn't even bother to show up for."

"You knew this was what you signed up for, Luci. Mortal lives end in deaths. The end is often painful, but it DOES end. And it has. Chloe's not in any more pain now."

Lucifer scowled. "How is she?" he demanded, even though he knew he wasn't supposed to.

"She's well," Amenadiel assured him. "She misses you."

Lucifer almost wished he hadn't asked. Knowing was almost worse, being one degree of separation away from her and still separated . . . knowing that he was causing her sorrow in the one place where she should feel none, because he was what he was, because he hadn't been able to stop himself from falling in love with her or her for falling in love with him.

"So to what do I owe the belated pleasure?" he asked, planting both hands on his cane and stretching his aching back; it helped more than he'd expected.

Amenadiel shrugged. "It was time."

"Time?" Lucifer demanded. "Time? It was time? What in hell do you know about time? You're up there, unchanging and eternal, while down here people are born and grow up and grow old and die, and they just lose everything that mattered to them, lifetime after lifetime, generation after generation, and time only stops for me after I've lost everything and get to drag my desiccated carcass up this hill over and over again to meditate on how sadistic the bloody bastard must be who invented time!"

He hadn't shouted like this in years. It felt good to get in Amenadiel's face and shout at him. Satisfying, somehow.

"Lucifer!" Maze snapped. "Stop whining!"

She reached out a leg and swiftly kicked away his cane, sending it skittering down the hill. Lucifer staggered, but to his immense surprise stayed on his feet. His center of gravity had shifted backwards. He felt more stable on his own two feet than he'd felt in years.

"It's over," she insisted. "You're done. You can shut up now."

Lucifer squinted at her in confusion. "What do you mean, it's done? I've only just gotten started!"

"She means your time," Amenadiel clarified. "Your time is done. You've finished."

"Haven't you been paying attention? I don't get to finish! She went before me and I'm trapped here, immortal, on Earth forever!"

"Then how do you explain that?" Amenadiel gestured towards Chloe's headstone.

Lucifer turned back and, to his great surprise, saw that an old man had somehow snuck up behind him and collapsed on the grass over Chloe's grave. The man had a cane exactly like his own.

"You had a heart attack, genius," said Maze. "You're dead."

Lucifer blinked, staring at the man, then the devil, then the angel, then the man again. "I'm not," he insisted feebly. "It's not possible. I can only die if Chloe is near me."

Maze pointed down. "About six feet."

"That's not her. She's not really here."

"Then why did you keep coming here?" asked Amenadiel reasonably.

Lucifer didn't have an answer for that.

He felt taller. That was the main thing. He'd been shouting in Amenadiel's face, and Amenadiel was six foot two if he was an inch. The warping clench of the muscles of his back, which had been constant for so long he'd almost forgotten what life had been like before it, was gone. He could breathe. He could move.

He looked at the headstone again, with what was left of his body sprawled across it. "She did me one last favor," he observed, and he could feel himself smiling. "The best of partners."

The view hit him then. It really was a magnificent vista; all of Los Angeles teemed and roiled below them, windows gleaming in the afternoon light, and beyond them the sea twinkled on the horizon like a promise. He'd lived an entire mortal life in this beautiful, wicked city. He knew every corner of it, from a career full of cases. People that he and Chloe had helped were living all over it, safe and well, their wrongs avenged. It was a good view. She'd been right. Again.

Lucifer sighed as he returned his attention to his brother and his friend. They were both waiting patiently for him to have his moment.

"All right," he said to Maze. "I'm ready."

Maze scoffed. "Oh, I'm not your ride. He is." She jerked a thumb at Amenadiel.

Amenadiel was standing quietly, a serene smile on his face, as he waited for Lucifer to catch up with what was going on.

"No," said Lucifer. "No! I'm not . . . I'm Satan! I am the actual devil! Where else would I go but down?"

"No, I'm the devil," Maze snapped. "You didn't want the job, and I took it, and I have been working my butt off at it by the way, so you don't get credit for a title you abdicated."

"You are judged on your mortal life, Luci," said Amenadiel. "And for you, that started the day you fell in love with Chloe."

"And it ended when she died!"

"Well, clearly it didn't, because it just ended now."

"Dad would never. He would NEVER!"

"Dad likes Chloe," said Amenadiel. "And she has made her wishes very clear. You get to come to heaven, or she is gonna raise hell."

"I promised I'd help," Maze offered. When both brothers turned to stare at her, she added, "What? I don't want him in my territory, telling me all about how I'm doing everything wrong just because it's not the way he would do it!"

"Josh also put in a good word for you," Amenadiel added.

Lucifer scoffed. "Josh can mind his own bloody business!"

"No. That's not a skill that he has. Oh, and I almost forgot: Chloe sent me with a message for you."

This brought Lucifer up short. "A message? Isn't that . . . against the rules?"

Amenadiel shrugged. "Do you want to hear it or not?"

"Tell me."

"She said, and I quote, 'If he kicks up a fuss about being the devil, tell him to shut his face and get his ass up here, because I need my partner and I'm not interested in arguing about it'."

Lucifer considered. "That does sound like her."

"So are you coming quietly, or do I have to have Maze tie you up first?"

Maze's wicked grin spoke volumes.

"I only just got mobility back in fairly well every joint. I don't think I could cope with Maze's rope skills just now."

Maze huffed. "Spoilsport."

"Can't I just . . . fly myself? I mean, if I'm dead, then surely I should get them back." He gestured over his shoulder towards where his wings weren't.

Maze fluttered and resettled her burgundy wings. "MINE," she snapped. "I do the job, I get wings. You bum around on Earth while everyone else is working, you get carried, like the mortal you are."

"I don't WANT to be carried!"

"And I don't want to be standing here arguing with you," said Amenadiel. "Come on, Lucifer. Chloe's waiting."

That was probably the only sentence in any language that would get Lucifer to consent to be picked up by an angel. Sighing, he stood still and allowed Amenadiel to come around behind him and grip him around the chest.

"Don't wiggle, or I will drop you," Amenadiel promised.

"Would that hurt, now I'm dead?"

"No, but it would look very stupid. And you'd have to explain to Chloe how you managed to turn up at the gates of the Silver City with bracken in your hair."

"Point taken. I will remain stock still."

"Good luck, Boss," Maze said, spreading her own wings as she braced for her jump. "Give 'em hell from me."

Almost against his better judgment, Lucifer found himself finally smiling. "Thank you," he told her. "Thank you for everything."

"Now he says it," Maze griped, and launched herself into the air. Amenadiel followed a second later, and Lucifer had one last glimpse of the Los Angeles skyline before he finally said goodbye to it for good.