Lucifer [Louis] [On Hold]

24 | R e m e m b e r

MELANIE DIDN'T HOLD back in the slightest; she was still bombarding him with questions as they went for their third lap around the hospital. She enquired further about the Beyond, her memories, some of the times she had apparently spent with Lucifer in her youth. All of that which her illness had stolen from her.

It was overwhelming to hear things about herself and the experiences that had shaped her into the person she had become and not be able to relate to them, to remember them. It pained her to feel so out of touch with her own life and to see Louis so saddened also by her memory loss.

"It'll all come back soon," he reassured her - and himself, she suspected - several times as they wandered through the empty halls of the cancer ward. 

The vacant beds, tangle of wires and blinking monitors left a bad taste in her mouth. She had spent the last several months of her life in the hospital and she had never felt as alone and helpless. Despite no longer being by herself, the place still left her feeling empty. She could only blame that on the blank spaces in her memory. She had a strong feeling that once she was herself again, she would feel a little more at ease.

"I thought you said that the souls you claimed went with you to Hell," Melanie pointed out. She paused as her gaze landed on a lone wheelchair sitting by the window of the room on her left. "You've claimed my soul. Why am I here? Why have you not taken me to Hell?"

"Well, if you want to go to Hell so badly, you should have just stayed dead the first time round, Melanie," Louis teased. He crossed his arms and followed her eyes to the wheelchair. "I could take you to Hell right now if you so wished. But once we're there, there's no returning to the Beyond. So, if we leave here without your memories in tact, you'll only be half the person you are - were - when you were alive. So I tend to remain here with my souls until they are ... fully charged, let's say."

"So I'm on fifty percent basically?"

"In a manner of speaking." His gaze fell to her face. "I know it's all a lot to take in."

She scoffed. "You think? Finding out you're dead, your soul has been claimed by Lucifer and you're to be his slave for all eternity... Not the most pleasant of things to be thrown at you out of the blue."

"Except it wasn't; you knew all of this already. Before the dementia. You'll remember."

"I better," Melanie snapped before she pushed past him, her shoulder knocking against his. She heard him chuckling to himself as he caught up beside her and slung an arm around her shoulders like they were best pals. "Oi!" she protested and shoved him off.

He held his hands up in surrender. "I apologise, Granny."

"You watch your mouth, sonny," Melanie scolded, pointing her finger in warning at him. She frowned at her hand, realising the effect wasn't quite the same unless her skin was wrinkled like a prune. 

Jenny had always told her she was a feisty old hag and some part of her deflated at the realisation that the years, months, days, hours that had shaped her into the woman she had been on her death bed, no longer existed. At least not in the same way.

She was still her, though changed. 

There were flashes of memories from her life she could still recall, both happy and sad. She knew she had lived a long and mostly happy life, blessed with her friends and family, the places she had visited and lives she had touched, though it was all so bizarre to have the memories of an eighty, nearly ninety, year old woman's life crammed into the body of an eighteen year old.

"You're thinking," Louis said suddenly, breaking her from her thoughts. 

"Yeah. I was just thinking how strange it is to be young again but to still remember everything about my life. Well, almost everything," she amended as he raised a brow at her. "You know what I mean."