It's always a roll of the dice if Istredd says something that sets Lucifer off. It's only the people Lucifer cares the most about that can pull this out of him, the people that have seen him without all the layers of masks. It's the unfortunate side effect of being close to the devil. He doesn't hold back with them, doesn't smother down whatever it is--whether it's good or noxious--that he's feeling.

He can't help it, sometimes. The whipcrack reaction that Istredd isn't better than him. That there's not some fount of strength there that is just unobtainable to Lucifer. That this hurricane squished into a barbed-wire tangled, cage of a vessel, isn't weaker.

It's that deep dark reminder that needs to spit back at him, or rather the stone anchor to ground Lucifer, not shove away his rage, just hold fast and steady to it and Lucifer just closes his eyes and breathes and those rankled emotions don't go away but they don't worsen, either.

"I know."

He does. It's just fogged over. Hard to reach. The mental synapses grasping through shadows and just missing the landing half the time. And it's--a ringing truth, 'I know' to all of it. That Istredd's form of self-destruct may be different than Lucifer's but it's still just as brutal, how his love for Lucifer is, that neither of them would want the inevitable results.

He knows.