"I mourn this broken world, I am the Scapegoat - everyone piles their sins on me and lights me with regret on a pyre of hatred," Lucifer sighs, tears falling through his cigarette smoke. He is dressed in cream slacks, an ivory shirt, and looks like a deflated swan as his loafers are messily tied and he sinks into the blue ether. "What's the point, Shannon? I punish myself enough already. Look at this wretched heart you hold. I have damned you."
"I love you, Lu, isn't that enough?" I cry, reaching out across the burning fires of aether and enfolding him to my chest. He is wracked with sobs, and his spine is flayed by his own making, as if he were some vertebrae puppet, the discs and ribs sticking out like a gory pudding as the viscera of his back stain my blue dress. "I'll stop hurting you, I promise you. I hate it when you torture yourself."
