Casting Lucifer out was in an effort to prevent a war as Angels would be forced to choose sides between their parent and their sibling.

Not killing him was a luxury he only reserved because the Goddess of All Creation begged it so.

Removing his gifts and casting him into Hell for all eternity was cruel.

~?~

Over the centuries, Lucifer had learned to deal with his blindness.

(He never liked it.

People called him the Prince of Darkness, he who cloaks himself in shadows, without acknowledging the dissonance. His name literally meant light-bringer; he'd always been comforted by the sight of the stars and the sunsets he saw when he went down to Earth. The hours before dawn were excruciating, and he often came back to Heaven before the sunsets were over, only to come back for the warmth of a sunrise, watching the light shine over everything again and making everything seem reborn.

But the explosions of colour across the skies brought by Chroma and the clouds, lit orange and gold by the last rays of day from his own stars were beautiful beyond belief. The deep blue turning to midnight blue turning to aquamarine, then pink, purple, blue, gold, orange- sunrises were indescribable.

He could sense warmth, and in fact used a mix of seismic imaging, sonar, and thermal imaging to see, but there was nothing that could compare to the feeling of sunlight on his skin, across his feathers, as he flew.

He could hardly fly anymore, either. That bothered him more than it should have. Thermal imaging didn't always account for the little bugs, and the air currents often interfered. It was hard.)

Maze told him the scar across his nose, splitting his eyes, was distinguished, and that she liked it.

He often covered himself with a silk scarf either way, because at least then, he could pretend he was staying blind of his own volition.

~?~

People liked telling him things, things they didn't often tell other people.

Despite not having eyes, that was something he'd been able to work around. He could sense, through his three techniques for 'sight', where the eyes of human were. Staring into them wasn't so difficult.

As long as the other human could see and would stare into where they assumed his own eyes were, he was alright.

(That didn't happen while he still had his sight. 'What do you truly desire' wasn't a necessary trigger phrase before his blindness; they just told him because they got the sense that's what he wanted.

He didn't have to look in their eyes for it, either. He just had to look at them, and through force of capitulation, they told him. Always.

Not anymore. His gifts had been reduced.)

William Shakespeare, grateful for a muse and a sexual partner, taught him how to read things that weren't engraved. By heating the page just enough so the ink would light up but not enough that it would melt off the page was good, and, immensely grateful to the writer, Lucifer not only gave him inspiration for the next six of his plays, but also sucked him off while he was writing them.

(The ink blots and crossed-out words and paragraphs and sentences and shaky handwriting on the original copies and drafts (especially the drafts) was not to be questioned, thank you very much.)

~?~

Mozart taught him how to play the piano, and by this point, he was relying on humans as his main source of entertainment and knowledge. Aside from Maze, of course. She was one of the few demons that wasn't dull as a rock.

Mozart composed even after he turned deaf. That was because Lucifer was capable of hearing notes just as well as he could predict their harmony, and occasionally made notes.

Of course, they liked having sex together too. Lucifer was energetic, with an inclination to burn off energy and anger on unsuspecting humans that tend to feature prominently in history, and Mozart wasn't picky.

~?~

He supposed Dad was laughing at him in Heaven.

Walking everywhere or taking the bus wasn't something he would have done under any other circumstance. He served as a good token minority for everyone else, he supposed: Hey, look at the blind, pan guy in charge of a nightclub!

Joke's on you.

He could do things just as well as a seeing person. He just couldn't see things like everyone else could.

(But Dad help him, what he wouldn't give to see colour again.)

~?~

All of the clothing in his wardrobe was relatively simple, and all the same colour and fabric: black and cotton, save for a handful midnight-blue shirts of cotton-polyester (one of which was small enough to make you feel sorry for the buttons whenever he flexed or just moved), and one silk near-black dark purple t-shirt that showed off his muscles and made females drool on his shoulder. All his pants were black and cotton, and his shoes were black dress shoes or white running shoes.

(It absorbed the heat of sunlight so much better.)

The scarf over his eyes never felt era appropriate, but with all the street performers... He could almost breathe easy.