Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was five in the morning, and Charlie had been crying for five hours straight.

It was five in the morning, and Lucifer had not slept in two months.

It was five in the morning, and Lucifer—

Lucifer—

Lucifer didn’t know what else to do.

“Please,” he begged the squalling infant in his arms, his legs tired from hours of pacing and his arms threatening to cramp from holding her for so long. In the quiet of the nursery he felt impossibly alone. “I don’t know what you want. I don’t—I can’t…”

He closed his eyes, taking as deep a breath as he could manage, his eyes ticking to the mantle clock that taunted him from the chestnut dresser. Look at you, it seemed to simper at him. The fallen star, can’t even take care of the very thing he defied Heaven to create. Another thing you’ve ruined, and she’s only been alive a few months. What would your wife think? Did she die only for you to fuck this up so spectacularly?

The reminder nearly brought Lucifer to his knees, grief thick in his throat, making his eyes sting, memories clouding his mind—nightmares, all of them featuring Lilith’s face: her rage, her determination, her pain. A Sinner, even the first of her kind, could not hope to stand against the wrath of the First Prince of the Heavenly Host and Adam’s army of Exterminators, but she’d tried for him, even knowing it would mean her destruction, pressing their child into his weakened arms and begging him to run, to save her.

I can save you, too, Lucifer had tried to tell her, but they’d both known it was a lie. Charlie’s creation, her formation, her birth—it had left Lucifer weaker than he had ever been, and so when the wrath of Heaven had turned on them, on him for having dared to go against God’s order, to create where only He was meant to, Lucifer hadn’t the strength to stand against them. All he could do was flee, his freedom bought with his wife’s death, and now he was here, in the first place his portal had brought him, and God, it should have been him.

“I know,” Lucifer whispered as Charlie continued to cry. She’d seen so much in her short life—how had he failed her so much already? “I know, kiddo, I know.”

A gentle light appeared at the tips of his fingers, but he forced it back. It seemed like cheating—worse, a betrayal—to even think about forcing her into a state of calm, so instead he continued to walk, the clock marking his steps. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven to cross the room, and then seven back, over and over and over, Charlie’s wails unceasing, crawling into the parts of Lucifer that bred an instinct he never should have had.

Motherly.

He shuddered, bringing her little face to his neck, closing his eyes against the shrieking, but it kept building in that place, hammering on that instinct until Lucifer thought he would break, a sob leaving him as he curled over her, the light of the Morning Star crackling under his skin until Charlie let out an unholy scream and it burst out, illuminating the parlour and streaking across the room, slamming into the radio that rested innocently on the table in the corner. Almost immediately the radio roared to life, the music blasting at full volume, sending Lucifer scrambling, his hands shaking on the dial as he tried to turn it down, cursing under his breath as he turned the wrong one, the station changing.

“Sorry, sorry!” Lucifer cried as several different voices filled the room in rapid succession, interspersed with more music, but nothing was turning the radio off, so he kept going, one hand supporting his daughter while the other sought the correct dial, only pausing to think when the sound of a man’s voice filled the room, his head ringing, beyond frazzled. His hand was still frozen on the dial, and he closed his eyes, intending on taking a deep breath so he could clear his head and turn the damn thing off properly, and so it took him a moment to realise the room had gone nearly silent.

Well, not silent. The man’s voice still crooned from the radio, curling in all the dark spaces of the parlour, but for the first time in days Charlie had gone quiet. When Lucifer carefully brought her away from his shoulder it was to see her staring, wide-eyed, at the radio, enraptured, her tiny fists rubbing briefly at her face as the broadcaster continued to speak.

”Why, once upon a time, the idea that energy could be harvested straight out of thin air would have seemed like a fiction from the imagination of Jules Verne…”

Charlie shifted, and Lucifer’s breath hitched, bracing himself, but no more wails were forthcoming. He carefully settled her back against him, her tiny legs curling up, her little lungs no longer steeling for the next battle. Instead he felt her soft puffs of air against his neck, and this time, when the tears came, Lucifer allowed them to spill down his cheeks, his hand falling limply from the dial and moving instead to rub at her back, trying to pretend he wasn’t silently sobbing in relief and gratitude as the man on the radio continued to speak. It didn’t matter what about, and indeed Lucifer hardly paid attention to any of it, only catching scraps here and there as he slowly sank to the floor, his head resting against the wall. He was simply happy something had worked.

Thank you, he prayed to no one in particular, for he had learned long ago that no one listened to him, and when the broadcaster’s voice gave way to jazz and Charlie remained asleep, Lucifer was glad no one was around to see him weep further.

“—they say this city doesn’t ever sleep. From the river to Rampart, you can still hear the pianos humming, the horns crying, and a couple souls laughing in places we no one supposed to know about… Ah, but that’s New Orleans for you, is it not? She’s got a heartbeat even the law can’t still, and if you’re still up to listen… well, it means you’re either restless, or you’re guilty.”

“Maybe both,” Lucifer murmured, eyes closed, Charlie asleep against him. He was grateful for it. She wasn’t old enough to judge him for the way his voice cracked, but he’d hate for her to hear it nevertheless.

One day, she would grow old enough to know just how weak he’d been. Just how much he’d failed her even in her first hours of life.

For now, he’d take her lack of tears, and send his gratitude to the man on the other end of the radio waves.

It became routine after that. Lucifer learned the start and stop times of the radio shows, and he and Charlie became devoted worshipers, Lucifer moulding their schedules around every broadcast.

When the broadcaster moved his show to include the mornings and started reading the headlines as well, Lucifer simply adjusted. After all, what did it matter what time it was, so long as it did not stop? Lucifer had no job he needed to show up for, no facade he needed to upkeep—even here, in his exile, his powers would keep them fed and clothed, a roof over their heads, and it was all too easy to stop others from peering too closely at them in the little house he’d taken at the end of a crowded street.

Perhaps it would have been smarter to move, to take them somewhere more isolated, but what better place to hide than in a city? Lucifer may have been removed from the politics of the human curse he’d unleashed on the universe, but he’d still ruled over the mortal souls of Hell, at least nominally, and he knew damn well how easy it was to disappear into the underbrush. The more people there were the less likely anyone was to look too closely at what was, on the surface, a regular human man and his daughter. Lucifer was just another face in the crowd to them, or would be, if he ever left the house.

He’d have to eventually, he knew. Charlie wouldn’t be a baby forever, and she’d need friends, and besides it wasn’t as though they needed to stay here forever. Crowded cities were as common as violence among sinners, any one of them would do, but for now… for now she was safe here. For now they would stay. He could provide everything they needed, and the radio man spoke to them of the outside world. It was from him that Lucifer learned the name of the city they were in was New Orleans, that they were in the United States, and that the year was 1929. It was summer, apparently, which meant he must have been here since late winter or early spring, but Lucifer was too busy squinting over the novelty of paying attention to the local anno Domini to pay much attention to the seasons.

The rest of the day show often consisted of politics, which Lucifer abhorred and tuned out—standard talk, local city updates, and a disturbing amount of crime, which the radio host seemed to relish. It always made Lucifer’s mouth twist, eyes narrowing at the joy the host seemed to take in reporting some of the crimes, but Charlie ate up anything the host said simply because it was spoken with his voice, and Lucifer figured at this age it wasn’t like she’d remember the exact words, anyway.

“They say a body was found near Bayou St. John. No name, no wallet, only a silver locket and a tune whistled by every child on Rampart Street. They say the police are looking, but ah, what is the point? The bayou already knows who did it, and nobody keeps secrets better than her.”

He learned to prefer the night shows, always broadcasted from another station, always spoken in a different vocal pitch: low, crooning, and full of dark promise.

"Now, some folks say this hour belongs to the sinners—the drunks, the gamblers, the blood-letters, the ones who can’t stand quiet long enough to hear the heartbeat of the city. They’re wrong, of course: this hour belongs to the ghosts. The monsters. The ones that always get… under the skin. They’ve got more to tell than we do.”

As for the radio broadcaster himself, Lucifer eventually learned, after some weeks, or perhaps months, to remember his name (sort of—it was either Alastor or Alfred or Alexander or whatever; he remembered it better when the host wasn’t annoying him), spoken at the beginning and end of each airing, when Lucifer paid attention. Beyond the politics, the local information was more useful, and eventually Lucifer began to actually pay some minor attention to the going-ons of the city he had hidden himself and his daughter in—something he had never bothered with in Hell, and that he hadn’t foreseen caring about here.

After all, what did it matter? Lucifer, created by his Father’s hand, had existed in the world before Man, and in the countless millennia since his creation, the kingdoms and empires of Man had risen and fallen just as quickly, there and gone between one blink and the next, their influences trickling down into the realm Lucifer had ruled as each blackened soul had tumbled downward, bringing with them new powers, new innovations, new ways to commit countless acts of hatred and depravity. There had never been a need to pay close attention to specific details. There had never been a need to care.

Now, though—

“This really isn’t very baby-friendly,” Lucifer muttered, listening to the radio host talk about how the local law enforcement had pulled more body parts out of the bayou, meticulously describing what had been recovered and what had not. What an asshole, Lucifer thought, not for the first time, but Charlie adored the man’s voice, and so Lucifer would keep playing it, no matter how much of a bastard he thought the host was on occasion.

”I read you a story last night, about a body found out by Bayou St. John. They printed it again today—a little more detail this time. They say she was a singer who used to down at the Gold Lantern on Conti, her voice as sweet as her manners were discordant. Strange, isn’t it, how a tune can stay long after the singer’s gone?”

Lucifer frowned, noting the dark curl of the host’s voice around the words, but he dismissed it readily enough, as he did every time. There was always a vicious note of satisfaction in the man’s voice when reporting on the city’s crime, but it was nothing compared to the depravities of Hell, and so Lucifer listened with a low hum as he gently rocked Charlie’s cradle with a bit of magic. Eventually the host moved on to other topics, the ones more useful to Lucifer himself, the ones he could use to learn from to try and function in this alien world, and he was utterly engrossed in something the host was saying about the local jazz players when a knock at his door nearly sent him tumbling to the floor, his heart pounding in his breast as he stared, gormless, at the door.

If it’s Michael, he would not have bothered to knock, and if it’s Adam, you can kill him with ease, he tried to tell himself as the panic clawed at his throat, but the thought didn’t help. Wordless, he glanced around the house he called his own, its interior magically enlarged and far fancier than something one might expect in this area—not something he wanted anyone else to see. Not something he’d expected anyone else to see when he’d moved into the house at the end of the road.

The knock came again, more determined this time. Go away! he wanted to say. What do you want? Go away! He grimaced. In Hell, there were few who would ever impose upon Lucifer unannounced, and that wasn’t unique to Lucifer—everyone knew that to intrude where you weren’t welcome could open the door to whatever sort of horrific violence the psychopaths of Hell were capable of. Best to simply avoid others. Even the Overlords were strategic about their movements.

But he wasn’t in Hell, Lucifer reminded himself. He was on Earth, despite all the rules that forbade him from stepping foot here; despite the agreement that had previously confined him to Hell before Lilith was cut down, and any agreement between Lucifer and Heaven shattered with her death.

Sinners come from humans. You cannot trust them, something dark and mistrustful inside of Lucifer whispered, but he did his best to push it back, drawing in a breath of air he didn’t need.

I don’t need to trust them, he told himself. It’s enough that I can best them.

With a careful wave of his hand he restored the interior dimensions to what they’d been when he first acquired the house, furniture shifting to fit accordingly as Lucifer slowly got to his feet, making his way over to the door. When he pulled it open, it was to see an older woman who looked just as surprised to see Lucifer as Lucifer was to see her.

”—have to wait and see,” the host said over the radio as Lucifer and the woman stared at each other, almost of a height. There was a pot of something in the woman’s hands, and the smell that drifted to Lucifer was as delightful as it was unknown, but while Lucifer wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been a human woman, and for the life of him he didn’t know what he was supposed to say, or do. Instead he could only stand there, impossibly still as the woman’s gaze roamed over him and went from shocked to wary, and—God, hells, he was still wearing his casual sweater, his hair a mess, and he could hear Charlie’s gentle little coos from the cradle, parked as it was by the radio in the parlour, and—

The woman was speaking, and Lucifer finally remembered to blink, to breathe, her language drifting to him and sorting itself in his head, allowing him to perceive and understand and finally reply, once he managed to get his tongue unstuck from the roof of his mouth.

“Sorry,” he blurted immediately, his mouth forming around the word désolée,her tongue now his, as all were, and the woman stopped, arching a brow. Lucifer ran a frazzled hand through his hair, hoping his laugh didn’t come across as hysterical as it felt. “No, I—would you mind terribly repeating yourself, madame, I only—well, I’m afraid you’ve caught me at—I only—well I wasn’t expecting visitors—“ ever, never ever, how did she even know to knock”—and—“

The wary look was slowly fading in the woman’s eyes, replaced, equally slowly, by amusement, and then soft comprehension when Charlie’s baby shrieks reached them—laughter, thank whomever, at something the radio host had said, or, more likely, how he’d said it.

Babies were intelligent, the daughter of the Morning Star most of all, but even Lucifer‘s pride could not convince him that an infant could understand the finer nuances of a motorcar.

“ Pauve ti bete,” the woman murmured, poor thing, and Lucifer’s exhausted mind could not determine, in that moment, if she meant him or his daughter, for having such a fool for a parent. A father.

But you are not—

“Please, come in!” Lucifer blurted, the words tumbling from his mouth, accented and articulated as though he’d always spoken them, as though this language had not been completely known and unknown and unused to him only minutes before. The woman spared him another amused look, though underneath it he could see something more understanding mixed with the same wariness of before. She stepped in, the pot still in her hand, sparing a glance at the radio and the cradle so pointedly placed beside it. Lucifer flushed, his human guise making his cheeks pinken, even as golden blood thrummed in his veins.

“She likes the host,” he explained with a shrug, his smile strained at the edges. The woman seemed oddly amused still and Lucifer, flustered, continued to prattle on, trying to explain and uncertain why. “When we first came here, his voice was the only thing that could stop her from crying—we rarely ever miss a broadcast, and if we keep this up I’m sure I’ll have a little jazz musician on my hands at this rate…” He trailed off, expression softening as he glanced down at Charlie, before he cleared his throat. “Oh, let me—let me take that, it looks heavy—“

The woman eyed him skeptically, as though not convinced a man nearly as small as she could carry it any better, but she relinquished it and Lucifer placed it very carefully on the table, babbling his thanks, saying something about how good it smelled because it did, whatever it was.

“Charlotte,” the woman said then, interrupting him, and Lucifer froze, eyes darting to Charlie, five seconds from panicking before the woman continued: “Charlotte Duval.”

She clearly wasn’t expecting Lucifer’s slightly hysteric laughter, nor the way he brought his hand back to his face, trying to hide his relief and the unexpected jump of fear. He’d have felt if she were a demon, no doubt, but God, what if?

“Sorry,” he wheezed again, waving to one of the seats. “Forgive me, sorry, it is only—Charlotte! You share a name.” He gestured to his daughter, and the woman’s expression changed to one of delight. “Had a, uh, bit of a fright, sorry, I—it’s all very… You’ve caught me at a bad time, well, it’s not really a bad time, it’s more that I am… very surprised, I didn’t think anyone knew we were here—“ shut up, shut up “—and an, sh—ah.” Fuck. “Please have a seat? Wherever’s good.” The furniture was nice, at the very least. Lucifer had ensured that when putting the house back to how it was, and after looking at him with an arched brow she slowly sat. Lucifer did as well, trying not to collapse into the nearest chair as he struggled to catch his bearings.

You are a primordial creation, or very nearly, Lucifer scolded himself. There is nothing on this Earth that could harm you.

But there were plenty that would try. And not all threats came from the mortal plane.

There were plenty of things not on the Earth that could kill him, after all, and had nearly succeeded.

She’s not one of them, his mind whispered again, more helpfully this time, and Lucifer ran another hand over his face, shoulders slumping. Yes, of course… I know that. And he did. He could sense the pulsing, bright soul beneath her skin. Human, and not one blackened by sin.

“My apologies again, Mme Duval,” Lucifer murmured, and this time, when he smiled, he knew the strain was less evident. The exhaustion was still there, perhaps, tugging at his grace, at the soulless core of his being, but the softness on his face was shockingly sincerely all the same. “I have been a poor host. A mess, really, I… It’s been an adjustment here. Without her mother. Lucian Magner, ma’am, at your service.” He shifted to his feet again in one fluid motion, sweeping into a brief bow, before he froze. Hells, is that even still the protocol? he thought mournfully, but the woman seemed more charmed by it than anything, though there was a sharp glimmer of intelligence in her eyes that Lucifer took note of.

“Magner,” she said, smiling faintly, though with a touch of surprise. “That is an Irish name, yet you speak our tongue so fluently. There have been so many of you Irish recently.”

Lucifer blinked owlishly and moved to shrug before thinking better of it. “I’ve always had a talent for languages?” he said, wincing at the way his answer ticked up at the end, too much like a question. “It was Charlie’s—ah, that was… is… what we call her—mother’s tongue. I learned for her, before we came here. We wanted Charlie to know it. It was… is… important.” The lie was seamless and immediate. What was the Devil, if not a consummate liar? What could the Devil do, if not weave a tale? Once, Lucifer had done it for the amusement of the other angels, and for Lilith herself, and when Charlie had been but a thought growing inside him, and now—

Like so many things, time had twisted it.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Mme Duval said, reading between the things unspoken, and though Lucifer knew it was a common human expression, it was crushing to hear it applied to himself; crushing to realise, once again, that he was potentially in a position where such condolences were warranted. He doubted she’d have offered them if she’d known who it was she truly spoke to, he thought, eyeing the plain golden cross that dangled from its chain around her neck. “I suppose that answers some of the questions I had. I confess, for a long while, I was not sure anyone was living here at all. I’d heard whispers that someone had taken the house at the end of the road, but no one could recall seeing you, and part of me did not expect an answer to my knock this morning. You never spoke to anyone, never introduced yourself… Speculation ran a little rampant. Everyone had their theories. The children thought perhaps it was a ghost, especially since some of them said they saw strange lights from your house, and we could glimpse shadows behind the curtains.”

Lucifer froze. Shit. Shit! “I was—early on I, ah, I tried to see if… I have a torch. Ah. A flashlight. I was flicking it at the walls, trying to get her to sleep…” He trailed off, wincing. Mme Duval merely looked at him, and Lucifer couldn’t tell if she sympathised with him, pitied him, or thought him mad. One of those was surely worse than the others.

“Mm. Yes. I think I understand better.” Her expression was soft as she glanced Charlie, and Lucifer didn’t protest when she placed a gentle hand on the carved wood of Charlie’s cradle, though he watched carefully, ready to intervene—to kill, if need be—at a moment’s notice. “You have been overwhelmed, monsieur, have you not? Tending this little one all alone, with no help at all. I remember the feeling well when I was raising my son. You must have the sweetest girl in existence, for I have hardly heard a peep out of her on the street, but that does not make it any easier.” There was a note of steel in her eyes now, and Lucifer, struck dumb at the idea of anyone offering sympathy, compassion for the Devil, even unknowingly, could only nod, hoping the stinging of his eyes would go away if he blinked enough.

“She—her mother—“ Lucifer’s voice cracked. Pathetic. Pathetic! He took a shuddering breath, wishing he didn’t need to breathe at all to maintain this guise, and ran a hand through his hair. “It was not a good death. I am still, ah…” A helpless shrug. “Apologies. I am not used to company, as you can see—not that I’m saying I am not happy to meet you, Mme Duval, of course that’s not it, but—well! I’m a bit out of practice, and my family, we are not on good terms, and she never had any family, so I just—I only…” He trailed off, helpless, glancing up at the roof.

Mme Duval hummed, her mien more considering now. She was older, Lucifer thought distantly, in a way angels could not be, and in a way humans were not before he and Lilith were cast down, and he realised, with a bit of shock, that he’d never seen a human woman like this before, with gentle lines creasing the corners of her eyes, the dark skin of her hands weathered and starting to wrinkle, to thin. Was this was happened when humans aged? She wore her hair under a cover, but if she didn’t, would her hair be starting to grey, too? He knew it objectively, but to see it before his eyes, unspoiled by the ravages of Hell and the transformations that often overtook its denizens—

Father’s greatest creation, something in him breathed, something old, something long forgotten. Deliberately forgotten.

You are the most hated being in all of creation, Adam had snarled in the moments before Lucifer had fled, and though it wasn’t the first time Lucifer had been told that, it rung in his head as he stared at this human woman, her soul glowing brightly in that place mortals couldn’t see.

His beautiful abomination. His daring impossibility. His most precious creation.

”—but today we are seeing what was once just a fantasy borne into fruition by spectacular genius—” the broadcaster was saying, and Lucifer exhaled, inclining his head towards the radio. Charlie had drifted off at some point, and he laid a gentle hand over her, resisting the urge to send a little pulse of golden magic through her, even as his grace reached for her soul.

Then, to his horror, he was weeping again, and this time in front of an audience—a stranger, who did not know him, who had no responsibility to him, but who, after a moment, hummed and reached out and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. She didn’t embrace him, which Lucifer was thankful for, for he wouldn’t have known what to do if she did—he, who had gone so many thousands of years without a kind touch from anyone besides Lilith—but she stayed, and she did not look at him with condescending pity, and when he was over she stood, business-like, and held out a hand.

“I do not know where you’re from, monsieur,” she said, “but here, we are a community, and we help each other, something you’ve clearly gone without for too long. Now that I see what’s going on, let us get you sorted, hm?”

Father’s greatest creation indeed.

“Wait,” Lucifer asked, when the jambalaya had been dished out and she’d firmly seated him at his own table, Lucifer hurriedly conjuring dishes into the cabinets and drawers for her to find. “You said everyone was speculating. That they had theories. What theories?”

Mme Duval arched her brow. “Oh, many. That you were a boutlegè. That you were in with the Matranga family. Mm… others thought you did not wish to associate with us, though of course, we didn’t know what you looked like, and it would make little sense to move to Tremé if that were the case…”

Lucifer blinked. “Tremé?” he asked. Her eyebrow stayed arched, but when she realised the question was genuine, she seemed confused.

“Tremé. That is where we live.”

“I thought this was New Orleans?” Lucifer asked, like an idiot. Now she looked outright baffled.

“It is. Tremé is the neighbourhood—did you know nothing about it when you moved here?”

Lucifer shrugged, a hand on the back of his neck. “It seemed nice,” is all he could say, because this was the third place I went and my wife’s blood was still on my hands and I was tired and everything seemed warmer here and I just wanted to stop running would have probably sent her running, thinking he was mad again. “Everything was a bit of a blur.” A pause. “Why would what I looked like have any bearing on whether I’d want to associate with you?”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Do not be daft."

“Who’s being daft?” Lucifer replied, confused himself now.

If she was annoyed before, now she seemed flummoxed, but there was also a spark of anger in her eyes that Lucifer could not understand, her face hardening, her eyes narrowed and piercing. Lucifer, feeling suspiciously flayed, leaned back in his chair, his own eyes going wide.

“What?” he spluttered. She searched his face, continuing to stare at him as though searching for something beyond Lucifer’s comprehension. When he only continued to look confused, something eased in her expression.

“You are a strange one, monsieur,” she said eventually. Lucifer just shrugged, turning his head to check on Charlie in her cradle so she couldn’t see whatever expression he was doubtlessly making. Strange, yes, that is one way to describe the literal devil at your table. Others would have far worse words. Truthfully, he didn’t understand the shift in the conversation, and he wasn’t about to tell her that what he looked like to her now wasn’t his true appearance regardless—nor was he going to reveal that he’d taken so many forms over the endless millennia that sometimes he forgot what his original form had even been.

“Ha, yes. That’s been said before,” he murmured when the silence began to grow awkward, reaching out to trail a finger against Charlie’s slumbering cheek. She’d drifted off at some point listening to the man on the radio, and he tilted his head slightly as he recalled how she’d looked at birth—her true form, or one of them. He wondered if she’d ever be able to wear it again.

“Mm,” Mme Duval said, still watching him, before she gestured firmly to the food. “Eat. I’ve not so much that I’ll see it go to waste.”

Lucifer smiled faintly, and did as he was told.

After that, Mme Duval became a frequent visitor to their home, and Lucifer adjusted to maintaining smaller living quarters, settling for slowly using his magic to upgrade his dwelling in a time frame less suspicious to the humans.

When Mme Duval had asked where he got the money for such things, Lucifer could only look away. “Life insurance,” he’d said. It was something he’d heard the radio host discuss once. “From my wife.”

She hadn’t asked again. What she had done, however, was drag Lucifer out of his home at every possible junction, introducing him and Charlie to whomever happened to cross their paths. Any wariness had quickly given way to amusement, and Lucifer suspected his stature helped with that—he’d kept his regular height, leaving him over a head shorter than many of the men, and he was deceptively slight besides. To these people, he must have seemed the exact opposite of a threat.

They had no idea he could level their world with little more than a snap of his fingers. They had no idea the light of the Morning Star blazed, carefully contained, under the guileless human facade.

Still, for awhile, it was almost… easy. He learned more about the world he’d unwittingly stepped into, and any stumble was easily explained by being a foreigner, a recent widower, or an overwhelmed single father. Charlie, of course, was a big help, with few failing to respond to her infant prettiness and charm.

“I keep telling my son he ought to settle down,” Mme Duval told him at one point, and then at another, sighing as she rocked Charlie in her arms, something distant in her eyes. “But he’s showed no signs of it yet. You’ll meet him one of these days, I’m certain. He keeps odd hours with his job, but he’s promised to start coming around more.”

Lucifer made a noncommittal sound, smiling vaguely. He didn’t say he didn’t particularly care if he met her son, because he liked her, and he liked the delicate balance they’d struck. The more people who became familiar the more danger Charlie was in, and so even with Mme Duval’s determination, he let very few people truly close, and called almost no one friend, their names forgotten between one beat of his wings and the next.

It wasn’t too different from Hell. He’d had Lilith, and he’d had Frederick, and sometimes even Zestial, but it was difficult growing close to the Sinners. Zestial had survived the longest, but Lucifer had always wondered what would happen when a new Overlord set their eyes on him. They only seemed to get more and power powerful as the centuries dragged on.

No, it was easier to keep his distance.

He knew all too well how easily things died.

“I had a daughter, once, too,” Mme Duval told him one evening, months later, watching as Lucifer walked the length of the room, Charlie tucked against his neck. In the low light of the lamp, her face was cast in shadow, her posture eerily still.

Lucifer didn’t tell her he was sorry, or speak any words of pity.

Some losses were too much for words.

”—still riding the good high of their stocks and bonds, the simpletons,” said the radio host as Lucifer hummed over the stove, the smell of tagenias filling the kitchen.

 Mme Duval looked amused, then turned her head to cough briefly. Lucifer tried not to frown—he’d been noticing more of that, lately.

“You were not pulling my leg, mssr, when you said it was your favourite.”

Lucifer shook his head. “I arranged my entire schedule around whenever this—“ he faltered, not wanting to curse in front of a human woman the way he would in front of a demon. “Well. It helped, in the early days. When I thought I was losing my mind.”

It still did.

Mme Duval looked at the little tagenias. “Wheats?”

Lucifer blinked. “Pardon?”

She shook her head, gesturing to the tagenias again. “Wheats.”

“Err. There’s wheat in it?”

This time, she rolled her eyes. “I am asking what they are. Hotcakes. Pancakes? Wheats? Do they not feed you proper food in Ireland?”

Lucifer, who’d never stepped foot in the land he was pretending to be from, looked back at the pan. There were so many variations of these things, but he’d always had a soft spot for tagenias and  staititas, if only because they were some of the oldest ones he still remembered how to make. Tagenias, staititas, pati-shapta, rishiki, serabi with kinca, salukara, clătite—variations across the years, the centuries, all of which he’d picked up as the years continued to trickle by. Lilith had always teased him for only preparing the sweet versions when it was his turn, and he’d smiled sheepishly. When he’d been pregnant still, they were some of the only foods he craved, and he’d carried that with him.

“I suppose so,” he said. “When I—when my wife was carrying Charlie, it was all she wanted. I got good at it.” I’ve been good at it for thousands of years.

“And now for a bit of jazz, ” said the radio.

“That boy,” Mme Duval muttered.

“Pardon?” Lucifer asked.

“Nothing, cher.”

“—and here’s what’s making headlines this Tuesday morning. If you’ll remember yesterday’s news, the discovery of a another unknown body shook Tremé. Police have confirmed the victim as Joseph ‘Little Joe’ Batiste, age thirty-seven, a construction hand working on the repairs of the soon-to-be-splendiferous Jung Hotel—“

The radio man continued on, detailing the gruesome scene while Lucifer listened, mixing a batter by hand. Charlie was rapt, as usual, her large eyes blinking as the man detailed the coroner’s report. Something about being mauled by wild animals.

“No,” Lucifer told her, as if she were about to crawl into the bayou in search of said animals. Could babies do that? He was sure his would, if he let her.

“Folks in the cafés and corner groceries are already whispering that it could be the work of the Marcello family—a body disposal gone wrong, perhaps? A startling display of incompetence? Or perhaps simply a bit of rotten luck on the part of poor, wrong-footed Mr. Batiste.”

The host sounded oddly gleeful, but then again, the host’s daytime show was always different from the night, even down two the two differing names. Lucifer shook his head. There had been a fledgling attempt at bringing the radio to Hell when he’d been carrying Charlie, but the radio waves operated different there than they evidently did up here, requiring no small amount of power to truly harness. Perhaps not an issue for everyone, but it seemed none of those who may have possessed the raw power yet cared enough to try.

Perhaps, if he ever went back, he’d give it a try.

For now, he focused on the food. He could have simply snapped his fingers and made it appear, but there was something soothing about the repetitive action. Charlie couldn’t eat solids yet, according to Mme Duval, but that—

Well, that—

Lucifer glanced at the windows, where the curtains were drawn.

That’s what her mother is for, something in his mind whispered. To nourish her, as you have been. Lucifer shook his head.

“Lilith’s her mother,” he said aloud to the ghosts in the shadows. “That doesn’t change.”

Of course it doesn’t change. What’s changing? It was never the truth to begin with.

Lucifer batted that thought away. It was starting to sound suspiciously like the radio host.

“For now,,” said host continued, after detailing a bunch of salacious theories that made even Lucifer snort at the absurdity, happy for the distraction, “the city waits, doors locked and ears open. We’ll bring you word the moment the suspect is caught. Until then, keep safe, keep your wits about you, and as always, keep your radio tuned right here to the the Lagniappe Hour.”

“Right,” Lucifer said, glancing at Charlie. “Who’s hungry?”

He ran into the man late one evening, Charlie asleep in the little carrier he’d fastened for her—something many in this era seemed baffled by, but that was hardly Lucifer’s fault. Sometimes designs from the past still worked.

“Shit,” Lucifer muttered, sending out a little pulse of his power to check and make sure Charlie was still secure on his back, ignoring the man he’d virtually slammed into—or who’d virtually slammed into him—when he was rounding the corner.

“Charming,” a voice said, from far above Lucifer’s head. “I would watch where you go next time, monsieur. It can be rather dangerous for the incautious,” the man continued, and though the voice seemed measured at first, Lucifer could detect the ill-contained derision. It dried up the instinctive apology that leapt to his mouth, and he smirked instead, sharp and meaner than he’d had any reason to be in the last few months. The man was tall, much taller than Lucifer, but with a simple blink of his eyes Lucifer could see him clearly, the darkness of night and the absence of the moon no longer an issue for a creature made of light.

“I can see perfectly fine this night, monsieur,” he replied, putting pointed emphasis on the last word. “Maybe it’s you who should pay attention.”

A set of teeth flashed in the dark—a smile. Without thinking, Lucifer smiled back, equally as challenging. At his back, Charlie continued to sleep, blissfully unaware. Lucifer wondered if the man could even see her.

Then, with false cheer, Lucifer said: “Good evening,” and brushed past.

He didn’t look back. What was the point? It wasn’t like he’d ever see the man again.

“You’re sure you’ve got her?” Lucifer asked, hovering anxiously at the door while Mme Duval—“call me Lotte, Lucian, before I get cross with you”—rocked Charlie back and forth. He didn’t have to leave, he’d told her over and over, but she thought he was going insane cooped up in the house, and besides that, she’d told him his hovering over Charlie was getting to be worrisome.

“You have to learn to be apart from her sometimes, just as she has to learn to be apart from you.”

You don’t understand! Lucifer wanted to shout. You don’t understand the danger! You don’t understand what I’ve done in bringing her into this world, the rules I broke, the consequences of our choice! You don’t understand what could be coming for her, or that only I can protect her.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t say any of that. Mme Duval was a human, and only that—she could not understand the literal devil at her doorstep, nor could she comprehend that awkward, polite widower Lucian Magner was the same warning in the stained glass window she prayed under every Sunday at church.

Instead, he could only suck in a breath and quietly check the countless wards and other magical spells and sigils he’d woven into both his small house and hers—ones that would alert him if any of Heaven or Hell’s denizens drew near, or anyone with ill-intent towards Charlie or Mme Duval herself.

“She’ll be fine,” he told himself, only a little hysterical.

Mme Duval smiled. “I’ll take care of her like my own.”

Lucifer could believe that, even if he wasn’t sure he’d ever believe in safety again.

What was the point in being one of the most powerful beings in all of creation if you couldn’t protect your loved ones when it mattered most?

It was a strange thing to see a man’s soul in the daylight. Indeed, it was all Lucifer could see as he stared at the blackened twist of shadows in the man’s chest: the sum of everything he had once been and now was.

Lucifer should have stepped away from him immediately. Weeks, months of sheltering Charlie so ferociously—he should have taken his child and vanished immediately. A human might not be as dangerous as a demon, and certainly not as dangerous as an angel, but they were not helpless things. Yet, Lucifer stayed, entranced by the murky cloud, the dancing darkness. To see a human soul like this, corrupted and terrible, before it could twist the body down below in the realm Lucifer had once been—still was, something cruel reminded him—king of… it was extraordinary.

He didn’t know what to think about it, except to wonder what would happen when this man died; how the corruption would change him from the tall, dapper creature that stood before him now.

“If you’re quite finished?” the man snapped, and, ah, yes, there it was, the condescension ill-contained over a mask of what Lucifer had been slowly starting to learn was called Southern Politeness. South of what, he didn’t know or care about, but there it was all the same.

“Ah,” was all Lucifer said in response, blinking slowly. “Pardon?”

The man’s eyes were dark, and they creased slightly at the corners—the only outward sign of his irritation. Lucifer, who had long learned how to wear a smile even when he didn’t feel it, could appreciate that the man maintained his, at the very least.

“I asked if you were finished staring, monsieur.”

Lucifer blinked, then jerked back, muttering something under his breath. Then he took in the man’s appearance, and paused as recognition struck.

“Oh,” Lucifer said, flat. “It’s you.”

The man’s eyebrows lifted slightly. His hair was brown, Lucifer noted, but it looked lighter in the sun than it did under the moonless sky. “Me?”

“The rude man from the other night,” Lucifer said, mouth pulling into a smile of his own. The man’s brow seemed to climb even higher.

“I beg your pardon?” he said, and there was an undercurrent of darkness in his voice now that made Lucifer pause, peering at him again, at the way the dark thing in his chest seemed to writhe.

 “’I would watch where you go next time,’ monsieur,” Lucifer recited, mocking. Lilith had always sighed at him for only half-remembering what people said, until the moment he zeroed in on something specific and couldn’t forget it if he tried.

How many things still rung in his head decades, centuries, millennia after the fact, after all?

Lucifer, for your crimes, we cast you down—

The most hated being in all of Creation!

Lucifer, get out of here! Take Charlie! I’ll hold them off—buy you time!

The last one had his eyes screwing shut, and he exhaled. When he opened him again the man’s expression had shifted, more sedate now.

“Ah, I remember. The imbecile with no sense of direction or preservation.” It seemed familiar, his voice, but Lucifer didn’t know how it could be, beyond what he remembered of the other night. Still, the insults seemed to strike a place inside, awaking something he’d thought long dead.

It had been a long time since anyone had dared speak to his face with such open disrespect. He was only glad Charlie was currently at home with Lotte—and god, how he still worried every time, but there was no convincing Lotte otherwise, so Lucifer instead wandered the city in the hopes that perhaps something would call to him one day, would draw him from the stupor he’d felt himself falling into in the months since he’d landed here—so she wouldn’t have to see her father (mother) being impolite.

“Well, I’m so very grateful for your concern over my well-being,” Lucifer said with false brightness, “but I assure you the most dangerous thing out there is me. I’m perfectly safe.”

Lucifer would give the man credit: he would have made a formidable primero opponent. Unfortunately for for him, however, Lucifer wasn’t bluffing.

“Do I need to call Jackson and tell them they are missing a patient?” the man eventually asked, voice even. Lucifer just continued to smile.

“Nope,” he said, still with that same false cheer. “Incredibly sane, I assure you.”

“It is only that you are rather, hm. Small. It’s a terribly inefficient design for intimidation, and I cannot imagine someone so, well, as you are would pose much of a threat.”

Lucifer made a low sound, still grinning. The man’s eyes were focused on him, hard, but there was something assessing now—like Lucifer had caught him unaware. Whether it was a pleasant realisation Lucifer couldn’t tell.

“It’s the element of surprise,” Lucifer replied with a bit of a laugh. “See, you they’d see coming from miles away, tall and overbearing as you are—me?” He shrugged, then straightened his vest. “Well!” His smile sharpened. “They’d be gone before they knew what hit them if they tried anything.”

After all, even if someone did managed to maim him with a human weapon, it was hardly as though it would actually do any damage. Perhaps that was stupid to reveal to a man he knew had to be dangerous, had to be concealing something beneath the smile, but there was something freeing in being able to even say the words out loud when he’d felt like nothing but helpless prey since Michael had decided to bring his kingdom to its knees.

“Mm. Well, I suppose I’ll keep an eye out for any knives in my back should we meet again, shall I?” the man eventually said, and Lucifer, a shapeshifter, only smiled wider.

“It wouldn’t be in your back,” he promised, and to his surprise the other man actually barked out a brief laugh—derisive, but with a thread of genuine amusement. Likely he thought Lucifer meant the knife would be in his knees, and not that with a wave of his hand Lucifer could crumble his skin to ash and ferry the dark thing in his chest down to the ruins of Hell, but, well.

Lucifer couldn’t be expected to spell everything out. That’d be boring.

“Alastor,” the man said then, smirking. He didn’t hold out his hand, or do anything else that Lucifer learned polite people usually did in this place, but then again, Lucifer didn’t either.

“Luci—Lucian,” he said, stumbling only briefly over the name and trying to ignore how the name tasted like embers on his tongue.

“Hm,” Alastor replied. “I will lay a lovely little flower on your grave when the time comes, Lucian.”

“I’d prefer a worm,” Lucifer said idly, thoughtlessly. Alastor’s eyes twitched at the corners, like Lucifer’s reply had been unexpected again, but his smile remained, ever-present. Instead of trying to over-explain it, Lucifer simply shrugged, and by the time they parted he felt oddly light—like the verbal spar, however brief, had shaken something loose.

If only he knew what.

Chapter Text

He danced with Charlie to the jazz music playing in the parlour, grinning widely as she squealed and laughed her little baby laugh. Already she had grown so much from the tiny little thing he’d clutched to his chest and fled with, and he felt a stab of something akin to agony as he realised just how little time he’d have with her like this. Perhaps in Hell he would have been able to prolong her childhood, but here, it was best to let her grow as any human infant might grow, and so all he could do was helplessly watch the days, weeks, months fly by and delight, secretly, in all the new things she seemed to discover every day.

“Daddy’s little star,” he cooed, because Lilith was gone, and she could not be mummy’s, even if Lucifer was her mother in truth. Their little family may have been broken, but he was still here, loving her, and that had to count for something, didn’t it?

Her response was another brilliant smile, and if Lucifer was crying a little as he smiled back, well.

It wasn’t as though anyone was around to see.

At some point he conjured a photo of Lilith, remade from memory. In the photo she wore clothes she’d never worn, and stood in a park she’d never had the chance to walk in, but she smiled like he remembered, and his hands only trembled a little as he held it before the mantle. Humans so often called their hearths the heart of their home, and Lucifer had watched entire cults of worship spring up around the concept, their voices rising in sacred hymns.

Daughter of Saturn, venerable dame, the seat containing of unweary'd flame;

In sacred rites these ministers are thine, Mystics much-blessed, holy and divine…

The words floated to him and he inclined his head, the golden magic slowly enveloping the frame, enlarging it slightly as he guided it up. The women of this era favoured their shorter hair, but Lucifer did not shorten Lilith’s, instead painstakingly recreating the golden cascades, neat and beautiful under the fashionable hat he knew she would have loved.

Charlie would never know her, but for however long they were here, Lucifer was determined she would see her, and that Lilith would have this small way of watching as Charlie grew the way Lucifer knew Lilith would have wanted her to. It may have taken them millennia to agree on her creation, millennia to determine if the rules they were going to break would be worth it, but for the brief moments Lilith had known their child, Lucifer knew she’d loved her.

Loved her enough to give up her own eternity to protect her.

Exhaling, Lucifer watched as the portrait settled itself over the hearth at last, more ancient echos whispering through his mind like so many prayers.

 Eternal, much-form'd ever-florid queen, laughing and blessed, and of lovely mien;

 Accept these rites, accord each just desire, and gentle health, and needful good inspire.

Charlie’s fussing broke through the reverie, but he still smiled as he picked her up, shooting a bolt of light at the radio and watching it sputter to life, music filling the little parlour.

“See that?” Lucifer asked, looking up. “That’s your mother. She loved you more than anything.”

Charlie didn’t understand a word, but that was all right. She would one day.

He both dreaded it and looked forward to it.

“Ah, and a very warm midnight greeting to the sinners, the worms, and perhaps even the saints. If you’re still awake, well, perhaps you’ve got a few demons of your own playing in the nearby shadows. The papers tonight have a curious story for us—some poor fool they found in the bayou, no face worth burying, but the hands… the hands were clean. Scrubbed raw, like he’d been trying to wash something off. Police say he drowned, but of course, anyone who’s looked that river in the eye knows that the bayou won’t give you up that easily.”

“What rot,” Lucifer muttered, glancing up at the mantle as he sighed and shook his head. He glanced at Charlie, whose eyes were growing heavy but who had not quite fallen asleep yet, and shook his head. “If I catch you ever being that sloppy, kiddo, we’re going to have words.”

She didn’t respond, of course. She was just a baby.

And she would be better than him regardless.

When Lotte came over later that week, she noticed the photo immediately.

“Your wife?” she asked, and Lucifer could only nod. There was a calculating edge to Lotte’s expression as she took in the portrait, a slight narrowing of her eyes.

Lucifer had never seen a photo of her husband, the father of the two children she had borne. He knew better than to ask.

“Pretty,” Lotte said at last. She didn’t bring it up again that visit, but Lucifer often caught her staring at the portrait after that.

“Lilian,” he eventually stammered, caught entirely off-guard when Lotte asked her name abruptly on another day and doing his best to lie on the spot. Lotte’s eyebrows lifted.

“Not very Irish.”

Lucifer winced, and shrugged, and stammered something unintelligible. It was only marginally better than his instinctive response, which had been to ask, why would it be Irish? before he remembered his own fake name, his own fake backstory, and winced again, trying to recall what he'd already said about the fake version of Lilith he had to present to everyone else.

“Well, we were always sort of, ah… outcasts,” he managed to stammer. "And Lili—Lilian wasn't Irish.  She was French."  Lotte raised an eyebrow but shook her head, taking pity. The subject dropped in favour of whatever she’d heard from the neighbours that day, and Lucifer breathed a sigh of relief.

”—so if you’re listening, best keep those hands clean. The bayou remembers dirt, and she calls the worms her own.”

Lucifer paused, the voices of a thousand sermons flooding his head, echoing in tongues long dead. They sounded like warnings.

He shook his head, dismissing it.

He saw Alastor a few more times after that. Strange, going so long without noticing him, and then suddenly being unable to avoid him—at least in a sense. It was never at normal times, though. For months since Lotte’s (in retrospect) intrusion into his life he’d been slowly learning the others in the neighbourhood, if only to ensure he knew all the potential faces and could swiftly identify someone who didn’t belong or could pose a threat. There was the milkman, who'd startled Lucifer the first time he'd appeared; the nosy widow from far down the road, who nonetheless had known better than to pry into someone else's dead spouse; the young family with the five children, the youngest of whom was Charlie's age, and the rest of whom often ran up and down the road during the day, playing games that Lucifer would sometimes study from the large front window; and, frankly, too many countless others, but Lucifer had learned one thing, watching them all: that it was unusual for humans to wander aimlessly at night. Too dangerous, he imagined someone would say, if he’d ever bothered to ask, but for Lucifer, who had stared at the same sky for millennia, aching for the moon and stars he’d once known, and who could not be killed by some mortal with a knife or a sword or a rifle, it was the perfect time still.  When Charlie would not go down, and the radio show was not on, she seemed to enjoy the motion of being walked outside in the dark, too.

Evidently, Alastor agreed.

He seemed just as surprised to see Lucifer as Lucifer was to see him, stilling where he’d emerged from the trees right in front of Lucifer and Charlie.

“Lucian.”

“Albert,” Lucifer replied, just to be difficult.

A pause. “It’s Alastor.”

They stared at each other. A city like New Orleans never truly slept, but they were far from a place where one might expect company, the music that sometimes played well into the night if one knew where to look, where to listen, having long since faded as Lucifer walked, Charlie growing steadily more restless at his back, all increasingly upset babyspeak that he hoped Alastor could not hear.

“A strange place for a midnight stroll, I would say,” Alastor murmured into the strained silence. Lucifer blinked; it was a concentrated effort to ensure his eyes did not glow, the way they were often wont to do. Lilith had used to tease him about it, and it was something Charlie had inherited, too, though so far Lucifer had been able to suppress it in Lotte’s presence.

“I could say the same,” he said, only a little incredulous. Alastor smiled, but there was something unsettling about it... and unsettled in turn.

With a low hum Alastor reached up to adjust his glasses, and Lucifer’s eyes caught on the dark stain on his sleeves before Alastor clasped his hands behind his back.

“Hm. Well, good evening, Lucien,” Alastor drawled, changing the vowel sound at the end of Lucifer’s false name, turning as if to leave.

“What’s out there?” Lucifer blurted before he could stop himself. Alastor’s smile was like a knife in the dark when he turned his head.

“Why, monsters, my dear. Or so they say. Myself, I have noticed only the bayou and an abundance of water, boats, and the occasional vexing intrusions of city developers that come with it. I suppose I should add the intrusion of fools to that list.”

Lucifer snorted. Charlie had gone still, silent—her breathing evening out and her little body growing heavier. Strange. He’d been near-certain she’d been on her way to continuing the meltdown that had prompted him to leave the house in the first place.

“Do you not believe in monsters?” Alastor’s voice again, a croon in the blackness, and Lucifer tore his gaze away from the dark treeline and the waters that lay beyond. New Orleans was surrounded by water, it often seemed, and at some point he’d tried to learn the names of the various bayous and waterways that ran through or around the city. Some stuck better than others. He didn’t know what the one closest to Tremé was called, only that it was there, and that more than one foolish soul had drowned in its depths in years he had not borne witness to. He didn’t realise he’d been walking so close to it.

“Goodnight, Alastor,” he said in lieu of response, moving past him.

“You would bring a child out here?” he heard Alastor’s sharp voice call from behind him, the surprise clear. Lucifer huffed, glancing back only once.

“Don’t worry!” he said, infusing his voice with a sudden brightness as he walked away. “She’s well used to monsters in the dark.”

“How did you do it? Without your son’s father?” Lucifer asked one day, slumped at the side of Charlie’s cradle. He made a pathetic sight, he knew, and Lotte evidently agreed, for she bullied him into standing, pressing a wooden spoon into his hands.

“Make yourself useful,” she said before turning to cough delicately into the handkerchief she’d pulled from her breast pocket. Lucifer paused, looking at her with more than a little worry, but she waved him off. She’d been looking more pale recently, and the coughing had become more frequent. He wasn’t concerned about Charlie’s health, but he’d become increasingly concerned for Lotte’s.

Still, he obeyed. Outside the laundry hung to dry, and so the wash day meal commenced, low and slow while the chores were done. He could have simply snapped his fingers and had it all done away with, he supposed, but he’d come to appreciate the distraction menial tasks provided.

Well, that, and he wasn’t too keen to blow their cover for something like laundry.

“I wish you’d let me look at that,” he told her, frowning. “The cough, I mean.”

“Why?” Lotte asks, arms crossing. “You’re hardly a doctor, cher.”

“Not anymore,” Lucifer said without thinking, the lie leaving him wincing as she stared, eyes narrowing. Fuck, he thought, reeling. Shit. Fuck. Why. Fuck!

“Mssr Magner.”

Lucifer winced again, looking anywhere but at her, hearing the censor in the words, and the fact that she’d reverted to his false surname. He’d never been a child, not truly, but there was a tone Michael would take, once long ago, when Lucifer was pushing at the boundaries of anything, everything.

Lucifer, he would say. Plague-dark eyes would narrow, and Lucifer would know he was treading close to dangerous territory. From time immemorial that tone had been enough to force obedience.

Until it hadn’t.

His hand came up, ghosting over his stomach before he dropped it abruptly, a nervous laugh leaving him.

“Just! It’s nothing. Forget I said anything,” he blabbered, his fake skin reddening. “Just—ah. I. Nothing… nothing.”

“Were you any good at it?” Lotte asked, her tone carefully neutral. “A good doctor is always needed, Mssr Magner, especially around these parts.”

Lucifer looked down, eyes closing, hating himself for the further lie he was about to tell but knowing it would stop her from pressing. “Not good enough to save my wife.”

As expected, she did not press immediately, but the aura in the kitchen was stilted for a few moments until she offered, voice still measured and even, careful in a way it had not been since the beginning: “It was la grippe that took my daughter. The doctor here—he was no good. He could not save her. I think he did not try, sometimes. Other times, with so many dying, I wondered if he even could try. My children’s father was long gone by then, so I never learned to rely on him. Maybe la grippe took him, too. Why not? It seemed to take everyone else… so many young ones. But not me. Not my son. And my son was always a good boy. Dutiful. That is how I did it without their father, too. I did not need him.” There’s a proud tilt to her chin. “Le Seigneur a donné, le Seigneur a repris.”

Lucifer closed his eyes, exhaling roughly. “Yes, well, He does a lot of taking,” he murmured.

Lotte’s answering smile was wry. “Yes. But he did not take my son, and he has become a fine man, and so I thank God every day for that.” She sighed. “That boy. He sends me money still, and visits more than he should, though I tell him to save it for his own life. His own family, should he build one.” Another pause. “The community could always use a good doctor. One that cares. You should think about what I have said, Lucien.”

Lucifer swallowed, glancing back at Charlie in her cradle, listening to the radio croon.

“I will.”

“I’m starting to think you’re up to something nefarious,” Lucifer remarked casually one evening, arms crossed over his chest where he leaned against the wood of his own home.  The cigarette in his hand let off a gentle glow, and he watched with an ill-concealed smirk as Alastor visibly startled, whirling around.

“What—“ Alastor started before cutting himself off, his eyes narrowing. There was no moon that night, but Lucifer could see him nonetheless—just as he could see the knife Alastor had pulled out, and then carefully tucked away. Were Lucifer a human, he might not have noticed it at all, but Lucifer had never been human, no matter the skin he wore.

“It’s just not normal, you know? Skulking about the bayou at night,” Lucifer drawled. Charlie was fast asleep in the house, wards set up to alert Lucifer should she wake, or should anyone who shouldn’t be in the house step foot inside. Nothing about this was wise, and yet.

And yet.

Alastor’s eyes flashed behind the lenses of his glasses, and Lucifer allowed his face to split into a grin.

“Perhaps I was merely out for a stroll,” Alastor said, and Lucifer would give him one thing: he had a remarkable game face. Whatever game it was for remained to be seen.

“Are the streets that muddy? It hasn’t rained today,” Lucifer remarked, faux-innocent. Alastor’s expression flickered, but he kept the smile, and he didn’t look down to the darkened hem of his trousers, or to his shoes, the shadows of the night casting his face in a black cloud that would be impenetrable were Lucifer not the fucking Morning Star.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re incredibly nosy?”

“No,” Lucifer answered honestly, “but I’ve been called just about every other insult you can think of, and then some, so, hey, at least you’ve managed to come up with something original.”

Alastor’s face did that thing again before settling back into a sharp smile.

“Good night, Lucian.”

“Yep,” Lucifer responded, watching Alastor continue past with a slow blink. He brought the cig back to his lips, then exhaled, watching as the smoke curled and formed the shape of a mallard.

It was a long time before he went back inside.

The storms never woke Charlie. The lightning could flash, the thunder could roar, and she would remain sleep, oblivious to what storms could herald.

For Lucifer, who knew all too well, it was different. Sometimes he could ignore them, but other times they kept him far too alert, and then it was his turn to listen to the radio host, mouth pulled down as he rested his head in his hands.

"They say the city’s built on bones, all the dead buried too shallow, floating up when it floods. Maybe that’s why it never really cools off here, even when the storms rage: too many souls too close to the surface. Too many doors half open.” The host laughed, his voice lowering. Lucifer slowly lifted his head, turning to the radio. “And my, what those doors usher in; what forms they can take. Have you ever heard how the old folks talk about the crossroads? Out where the dirt meets the cane fields, where you can hear the night breathe different? They say if you stand there long enough, someone’ll make you an offer.”

A slither of something cold made its way down Lucifer’s spine, his face wiping of all emotion as he listened.

“And maybe that’s what’s happening here, hm? The killings. The lack of answers. Maybe an offer was made… and maybe somebody said yes.”

The hosted laughed again, the sound distorted by static, and Lucifer’s lips thinned.

”I know many of you have seen enough to know there’s places in this city where prayers don’t reach, and the ground feels hollow under your feet, like something’s moving just below the soil, waiting for someone to call its name. Maybe that something is the Devil, or maybe it isn’t. Perhaps it is simply the worms in the dirt, the only company to the dearly departed. I hear Lucifer has a mighty fondness for them, for they resemble the serpent from the garden, and like a snake companions a garden, a worm may companion an apple, hm? Perhaps they accompany him when he greets a new sinner, welcoming them to the fiery gates below.”

Another pause; another crackle of static from the radio as the thunder rolled. Lucifer’s fists clenched so hard he worried the table would crack, or the Heavens would split.

“Ah, but if Hell’s got a gate, I figure it’s not fire and brimstone—no, it’s a back alley off Basin Street, and a door that never stays locked.” A low chuckle. Faintly, Lucifer heard the sound of a record playing, an echo of jazz filtering through the air, but he did not take his eyes off the radio, his eyes glowing an eerie red in the gloom, teeth just a little too sharp behind closed lips. ”But that’s all our time for this stormy night, is it not? And I must bid you all a good night. Sleep light, darling, but remember: keep your lights low, your windows shut, and if the air starts to smell like copper… that isn’t the storm coming.”

The next time the thunder flashed, the shadows cast on the wall revealed the monster Heaven had always made of him.

He wondered how much longer he could run from it.

His hand shook as he held the chalk, looking at the near-complete seal on the floor of his home. Just one more line and it would be finished, and he could call to him the last figure in Hell he still trusted to tell him what was happening, what the fallout of his departure and Lilith’s death was.  Indeed, Frederick von Eldritch’s twisted sigil was already starting to glow faintly, responding to the call of the Devil.

“Fuck,” Lucifer whispered, squeezing his eyes shut, Charlie sleeping across the room in her wooden cradle, the radio crooning in the background. He reached out, the glow of the sigil more pronounced, and then—

He threw the chalk across the room, hissing angrily as it vanished into a golden portal.

“Fuck,” he snarled again, leaning back against the wall and bringing his knees up to his chest.

He was a coward, running and hiding from that which he feared.

He could only hope Charlie wouldn’t pay the price for it one day.

He was walking through the areas around Congo Square one evening, mind a million miles away and doing his best to stop Charlie from sobbing, when he almost crashed into the giggling woman and her companion, arms curling around Charlie even as the apology spilled from his lips.

“Ah, pardon me, I don’t—Alastor?”

Lucifer wrinkled his nose even as he said it, the smell of liquor rolling off the two of them. He scowled, not because he particularly cared about the drinking—fuck’s sake, he was the King of Hell, even now, even hidden away and reduced to this, and he was used to far worse than alcohol—but because Charlie’s eyes had blinked open and she’d begun to fuss, squirming softly.

“Lucien,” Alastor said, but there was a strange quality to his voice--something looser, warmer. Amused, but far less acerbic than the last time they’d spoken. He’s drunk, Lucifer realised. “I should have known you’d turn up. You are remarkably like a bad penny, so to speak.”

“Alastor! Don’t be rude! Who’s this handsome cat?” the woman at his side cooed, short and plump and inebriated, shooting a wink at him from under a fringe of blonde hair. He’d long given up distinguishing between human tongues, and simply adjusted to what he heard.

“A thorn in my side,” came Alastor’s drawled response. The woman giggled, and Lucifer suppressed a wince at the volume of it.

“My, my, pleased to meet you, Mr. Thorn,” the woman laughed, leaning forward. The two of them were remarkably upright for how much they must have consumed, but her movements upset the balance, causing them both to sway dangerously. Without thinking Lucifer reached out, placing a hand on Alastor’s shoulder, unsurprised when the man’s eyes narrowed and he batted the hand away. Lucifer rolled his eyes.

“You keep very odd hours,” Lucifer said, watching them. The woman laughed.

“Oh, you tease!” she said.

“Volume, Mimzy, sweetheart,” Lucifer heard Alastor murmur, and she giggled.

“Oh, Alastor, you know the law ain’t gonna care much.” The words were flippant, and she flicked a strand of blonde hair over her shoulders, eyeing Lucifer with more than a little obvious appreciation. Lucifer glanced at Alastor, raising an eyebrow, but the man didn’t seem to care that his date was flirting with someone else. Lilith had never liked it when others were possessive over her—I cannot stand how he smothers me, she’d told Lucifer once of Adam, untold centuries ago, in those halcyon times before the Fall—but whenever demons had tried it with Lucifer when she was around, she’d been quick to send them on their way in no uncertain terms. Her own protective streak had only grown when Lucifer was carrying Charlie and she’d learned, for the first time, how precarious their position was should anyone find out the extent of Lucifer’s weakness.

“—and anyway,” the woman was saying, snapping Lucifer out of his spiralling thoughts “—he ain’t the type to snitch, are ya?” She was smiling at him, and Lucifer blinked.

“Snitch about what?”

She laughed. “See! Told ya, sweetie. You should bring him to the joint! I own it, you know. Best giggle-water around, promise you that.” She winked at Lucifer again, and he laughed nervously. “Do you dance, sugar? Oh, of course you do! So fancy… you know, we really need more dancers! Alastor here’s about the only one who can keep up with me.” She elbowed him, but Alastor only responded with a vague hm. He seemed to be making an effort to sober up, his eyes increasingly heavy on Lucifer. “You got a name, feller?”

Lucifer was fairly certain Alastor had already spoken it, but he tried to smile, strained though it was. “Uh. Lucian. And yes, I dance.”

“Lucian! How ritzy! Where ya from, sugar? You sound like a local, but I ain’t never seen you ‘round these parts! And trust me, I’d’a remembered. Oh, you gotta come to my club. It’s near the old square here, see. Alastor’ll show you—that one’s a real sugar man.” Another laugh. “He’ll dance you dizzy! Leaves a girl spinnin’.”

“I’m sure,” Lucifer said. The woman squealed and leaned forward again, like she was intending to kiss his cheeks in the way Lucifer had seen others do here, but Alastor’s arm around her stopped her momentum, his face turning towards her, murmuring something in her ear. She giggled, then seemed to really focus on Charlie for a first time, pouting.

“Oh, but if you come, leave the kid, dollface—kinda brings down the jive, if you know what I mean. But you’re more than welcome to bring the wife! The more the merrier!”

Lucifer shifted, eyes narrowing. “My wife’s dead.” The words came out more flat than he’d intended, and he felt the heaviness of Alastor’s gaze again as it returned to him, but he couldn’t read past the vague smile on the other man’s face.

The woman—what did Alastor say? Mitzy? Mipsy?—blinked. “Oh! Well, that’s terrible,” she said flippantly. Lucifer stiffened. “Shouldn’t wear the ring, though. Might give people the wrong impression! Oh, but listen to me go!”

“We really should be off, sweetheart,” Alastor said, cutting in neatly. He spared a slow blink for Lucifer, then hummed. “Leave the man to his, hm, nocturnal wanderings.”

“Nocturnal wanderings! Alastor, don’t be cheeky. As for you, mister, consider this a standin’ invitation. I’d better see you around! Come on, sweetie, ya gotta finish escortin’ me home—such a gentleman!”

Lucifer stepped to the side, letting them pass. At some point Charlie had fallen asleep again, and he blinked, wondering how it was she’d settled so fast, before shaking his head and moving on.

Lotte had informed him of the laws here, when Lucifer had unthinkingly offered her some wine he’d conjured. You must be really new here, had been her exact words, but there’d been a frown on her face, and she’d looked at him like a puzzle she couldn’t quite piece together. Still, she’d informed him of the country-wide ban on alcohol—good luck, Lucifer remembered thinking with a dry scoff—and Lucifer had done what he did best: promptly forgotten it. He recalled it now, though, as he walked, unsurprised that there were clubs around that still catered to the locals.

Where there’s a will, and all that, Lucifer thought to himself, huffing, because humans were nothing if not wilful. It was clear Alastor must frequent certain establishments here, if the woman’s words were anything to go by, and Lucifer thought back to the last time he’d seen him, creeping around the treeline at the edge of the bayou, and frowned. Perhaps that was why he kept seeing him at night, Lucifer thought as he walked, smoothing a hand over Charlie’s head. The dark stains could have easily been from wine.

A mundane explanation after all.

Now he just had to try and believe it.

“Cher, you are going to have to figure out another method of soothing her one day,” Lotte told him as Lucifer paced, a crying Charlie in his arms.

“She’s been better!” Lucifer insisted, because it was true, she was growing and learning every day and he was so achingly proud even as he tried not to drown in a well of his own inadequacy in the face of her sorrow. The radio man was not on air at that moment, and Lucifer quietly cursed him, wherever he was. “It’s just—it’s the most ethical way I have of soothing her immediately. And her teeth are coming in! It upsets her! I’ll figure something out. Do human laws still frown on kidnapping?”

Her eyebrows flew up, and Lucifer sighed. “A bad joke,” he muttered. “I promise I won’t kidnap the radio host and force him to speak to my baby for hours on end. Wouldn’t even know where to begin, anyway.”

Lotte hummed, a glint in her eyes, and coughed delicately into her handkerchief.

In retrospect, Lucifer should have been more paranoid.

Alastor was there again when Lucifer came home from one of his Lotte-imposed walks. This time he’d taken a chance and nipped off to another part of the world, knowing it was far past time he started listening and making sure no danger had followed him to some other part of the globe, but the sights and sounds of Corinth were already fading when he made his way back to his house, only to find Alastor frowning at the locked door next to him.

“Lost something?” Lucifer asked, and Alastor turned to him, eyes narrowing the barest fraction, smile mild.

“Ah, Lucien, was it?” he asked, as though they’d not said each other’s names a half-dozen times by now, Lucifer purposefully getting his wrong half the time and Alastor seemingly delighting in changing it to Lucien instead of Lucian. Not that Lucifer cared.

“Yep, that’s what they call me.” It was absolutely not what they called him. Sure, it was, in a roundabout way, a derivative of the same root word, but it still left a tacky taste in Lucifer’s mouth every time he heard it: close enough but never quite right. “Why are you at L—Mme Duval’s door? She’s not there.”

“Why am I—“ Alastor broke off, his head inclining, something thunderous in his mien that vanished just as quickly. Still, he smiled. “And how would you know?”

Lucifer just rolled his eyes, but at that moment he heard Charlie’s wail come from the other side of the door and he pushed it open, knowing the sound of a teething cry.

“Try the radio?” Lucifer asked, pathetic, trying not to cry himself in the face of her pain. If Lotte weren’t here, perhaps he could be a bit unethical and cheat with his magic, but his daughter was looking at him with eyes that always seemed to see too much, and so instead he merely took Charlie into his arms, the door left wide open behind him.

“I told you you couldn’t always rely on that, cher,” Lotte chided gently. "There are other ways.  I will soak a cloth in cold water and let her chew it; that may help."  Lucifer shot her a sad, strained smile, resting Charlie against his shoulder and murmuring softly to her as he walked the length of the room, humming a soft tune under his breath. Singing had started working as of late, too, where needs must, and she hiccuped softly at the sound of his voice, stuffing one tiny fist into her mouth, so he supposed he must finally be doing something right. It was an easy enough thing to do, at any rate—if there was one thing Lucifer knew well, it was music, whether centuries-old melodies created by humans long dead or the ones he created himself, the way he used to in Heaven, when he would sing his heart out and bask in the warmth of his Father’s approval. Michael, too, would often smile, letting Lucifer’s songs pull him from his duties on occasion, joining in with a low harmony.

That was the melody Lucifer hummed now, sweet and haunting and ancient, something never heard by human ears before.

It was why he didn’t notice the other human darkening his doorway at first, but when he did, when he turned and saw him there, Lucifer felt the shift in himself, his countenance darkening as he looked at a perceived threat, his mouth twisting, his power crackling under his skin because he would kill this man, no hesitation, if he thought for one moment that black soul might try and lay a hand on them—

“Alastor, mon chou, you are early.”

Lucifer stopped abruptly, eyes ticking between Lotte and the rude man from the street, and oh, oh.

Oh no.

“Oh no,” he said aloud, looking between the two some more. He wasn’t stupid, no matter what some people thought. Humans all looked alike to him, in some ways, certainly more so than the twisted demons many of them became when their souls were cast down to his realm, but after months spent with just Lotte, he liked to think he’d become adept at telling some of them apart, at least, and as he stared at them now he could see the similarities, as well as the differences. Alastor’s hair and skin were a few shades lighter than Lotte’s, and he was almost comically taller than her, but the shape and colour of their eyes, the cut of their cheekbones, the twin expressions they wore—

Lucifer wasn’t an idiot.

But he was, suddenly, something remarkably similar to afraid, and it made his eyes narrow in an anger that he tried very hard to smooth out. The only thing that comforted him was that he could clearly see Alastor doing the same, his smile going strained at the corners as his eyes flashed before he visibly made the decision to remain civil, likely for his mother’s—his mother’s—sake.

“Alastor,” Alastor said, extending his hand, his eyes hard and his voice harder. The warning couldn’t be more obvious if he tried, and Lucifer hid his grimace as he reached out in turn, taking the proffered hand, his other still supporting Charlie. “The elusive Mssr Magner, I presume. Pleasure to be meeting you. Quite a pleasure. It’s nice to finally put a face to the name.”

“Right,” Lucifer said. He suspected the two of them were about as convincing as Jack the Ripper playing a nun, and both of them dropped the handshake as quickly as they politely could. “Nice, to, uh. Meet you for absolutely the first time, too. Not-Albert.” He shot a look at Lotte, who was watching the exchange with a spark of amusement. “I never got the name from your mother, but she speaks of you often. Fondly.”

“Yes, she has mentioned you as well, of course. I must say, you are much shorter in real life.”

Lucifer’s eyes narrowed, even as Lotte gently swatted her son’s arm.

“Alastor, I raised you better than that,” she chided. Alastor’s smile twitched at the corners, but he inclined his head, eyes sweeping from Lucifer to Charlie and back again—Charlie, who had gone quiet, and was looking at Alastor with large, unblinking eyes.

Lucifer frowned.

“Your mother has been a great help to me,” he said, the words pulled from him reluctantly. Still, for all Lotte had done for him, he suspected he could summon some politeness for her strange son, whose black soul contrasted hers so readily that the sight of the two of them together almost gave him whiplash. Lotte’s soul was not perfect—there was a glimpse or two of darkness now and then—but it was as any human’s should have been, and next to her son’s, it appeared as a saint’s might.

“She has a kind heart,” Alastor said, unwittingly echoing Lucifer’s thoughts. “Hm. She tells me you have been good to her, too.”

She’d refused his money over and over, but had accepted his help in other areas—tasks generally reserved for men, which he took to with a little help of his magic, not that anyone knew that. Then there was Lucifer’s unspoken gratitude, the things she’d hopefully never noticed, like how the food she brought back from the market was always better and more plentiful, the fabrics she wore sturdier and less prone to lose their colour with repeated washings, and how the food garden bloomed more brightly this year, overflowing in its abundance. Any favour she asked, he was happy to do, and he wasn’t a fool: she liked to spend time with Charlie on her own. He’d seen the wistful look in her eyes sometimes when she was holding his daughter, and never commented. He suspected it was soothing for her. He only hoped it could be, though they were all aware Charlie would never replace the daughter she’d lost.

His sister, Lucifer thought, eyes flicking back up to Alastor. “I’ve done my best,” he murmured. “Uh. Sit down, I guess, we’re just—well, Charlie’s fine now, it seems. So. Sit. I’ll get the, uh, music, maybe, and then we can… sit. Some more.”

Lotte’s mouth twitched into a smile, and, well.

That looked like her son’s, too: close-lipped and amused, eyes slitted, like she knew more than she was letting on.

And Lucifer’s first substantial interaction with said son had involved threats of bloodshed.

Wonderful.

To distract himself, Lucifer reached out to the radio again, switching the dial on, Charlie calm in his arms. Music trickled into the house, but he fiddled with the dial a few more times, eyes narrowed.

“He’s not airing right now, cher,” Lotte called, and Lucifer huffed.

“Yes, I know,” he muttered. “More’s the pity.”

“Trouble with the radio?” Alastor asked, his voice almost smug. Lucifer tried not to roll his eyes, straightening up. Charlie was still oddly silent in his arms, her fat arms waving aimlessly, her eyes never leaving Alastor.

“No,” Lucifer said, short. “Just trying to find a station.”

“Lucian and his daughter are devotees of one particular broadcaster,” Lotte said. Her voice seemed way too smug, too, another thing that sounded similar between mother and son, and Lucifer glanced over at her, frowning.

“Yes,” he said, drawing the word out slowly, sensing a trap but not knowing where it was laid. “Well. He’s Charlie’s favourite. He—“ He bit off the sentence, huffing, shooting a narrow-eyed look at Alastor before he could stop himself. Be nice! Be nice! “When we first landed here,” he began instead, delicately choosing each word, “Charlie had… problems. Sleeping. There was an… incident, and I—“ attacked the radio with ill-controlled power like a fledgling “—knocked the radio over. It started playing, and she liked the host, and, well! He plays good music. It’s not that, ah. Convoluted. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to find decent music.” Lilith used to tease him about it. Lucifer had always loved music in all its forms, but as time passed and more forms developed, he’d developed a fondness for certain types, as one often did. He still remembered when polyphony had debuted, and how wonderful it was when it made its way down to them, and how sour he’d been during the Reformation when much more boring, sedate music had started to take over. When he’d been carrying Charlie, he’d become even more peculiar. Perhaps that was why she, even as a baby, was the same.

“Oh,” Lotte said, smiling and ah, yes, definitely a trap. “Alastor is also very peculiar about his music.”

Lucifer cleared his throat, shifting nervously. “Oh?” he asked, hoping it sounded casual as he glanced at Alastor. The desire to draw his finger across his throat in an exaggerated threat was present, but he beat down the impulse.

“Mother,” Alastor said. It sounded like it was coming through gritted teeth.

“Oh, don’t choose now to develop modesty, Alastor. My son’s a radio host, cher,” Lotte said to Lucifer as she moved around Lucifer’s kitchen with a familiarity that spoke of months of knowing. “I’m almost positive you’ve heard his broadcasts before.”

Lucifer didn’t like where this was going. “Have I.” He looked to Alastor, whose expression flickered in that way Lucifer had seen before, and Lucifer hadn’t lived for thousands of years by being a complete moron, so he cued in to the reason for Lotte’s sly expression immediately.

Oh, no. No. Nope! No. Absolutely not. All those and more were on the tip of his tongue, but even as he thought them, even as he lowered his gaze to glimpse the dark, slithering thing that lurked under Alastor’s skin, he realised one more crucial detail: that he was the fucking Devil, and he wasn’t about to give Alastor the satisfaction of seeing him flustered.

Instead, he smiled, eyes narrowing. “So you’re the one who’s been narrating to my daughter and I for months?”

“It appears so,” Alastor said smoothly, smirking.

“Wonderful,” Lucifer said, his smile abruptly sharpening as he placed Charlie snugly in Alastor’s lap, laughing at the shocked expression that momentarily crossed Alastor’s face. “I hope you’re familiar with bedtime stories, Albert. I have several for you to start on.”

Then he crossed his arms, laughing, delighting in the way Alastor looked at his daughter like she was a cauldron of boiling oil liable to tip over at any moment, even as he saw Lotte try to cover her own shocked laughter. Perhaps later he’d panic about the implications of handing his child off to someone like Alastor, but for now, he could only enjoy the interplay of emotions the other man was trying so desperately to hide, something ancient in him cooing at gaining the upper hand.

Game on, Lucifer thought, grin wide as Alastor met his gaze with narrowed eyes. Let’s see what you’ve got.

Chapter Text

“Adalbert! Off to work, are we?”

“Alfred! Looking grand!”

“That you, Adolfo? Could use a hand with this.”

He did it on purpose, of course. Gleefully so, as the weeks and months crawled by. He knew Alastor’s name, couldn’t forget it if he tried despite the fact that he still couldn’t remember the names of most of the neighbours he’d lived amongst for however long he’d been in New Orleans, but there was something so satisfying about the way it always made Alastor glance at him, narrow-eyed and clinging to civility by a thread.

There was also satisfaction in the way Alastor would give as good as he got, volleying thinly-veiled insults back at him, both of them snapping their teeth when Lotte’s back was turned only to return to perfect manners the moment she was within earshot again. Pardon me, Your Highness; excuse me, Your Majesty; did I strike a nerve, my dear little princeling? Alastor would mock, and Lucifer would pretend those titles didn’t strike an instinctive fear into him and snap back. Months had passed like that since the introductions had been formally made, but some evenings Alastor seemed to be a little more unbalanced than usual, his fingers drumming at the wooden table—frightfully human.

Lucifer twisted his dials anyway, of course. Why not? It helped distract from the monotony of the days.

“I am beginning to think you lied to me about your name,” Alastor told him through gritted teeth after an argument one stormy evening, which he was inexplicably spending in Lucifer’s house instead of going out and haunting the bayou like some sort of vengeful wraith. He claimed it was because his mother was feeling poorly and needed the home to be quiet—or at least as quiet as one could be in the midst of a late-autumn storm—but when Lucifer had worriedly asked if there was anything he could do, Alastor had shaken his head with a thin smile. Still, the comment made Lucifer pause and glance over, though in the end he forced himself to laugh and look away, glad his back was to the man as he stood, intent on something to drink.

“Why’s that, exactly?” he replied, as smarmy as he could make it.

“Because,” came the hissed response, “surely such a vexing creature would be named Lucifer instead of Lucian.”

Lucifer faltered, nearly dropping the cups he’d been retrieving from the glass cabinet. Charlie was on a blanket at Alastor’s feet, gnawing on a doll that looked suspiciously like Bethesda von Eldritch—something that brought Lucifer a pang whenever he let himself think about it, because he missed them, surely; Frederick had been his only true friend for years, and Bethesda and Lilith had always been close—and Alastor had hardly glanced at her, whereas usually he’d lean down when Lucifer was distracted and indulge, even if only for a moment, her more babyish inclinations. Instead, he glared unerringly at Lucifer, like he wanted to strip the skin from Lucifer’s bones, and the only thing going through Lucifer’s head was a litany of he knows he knows he knows.

It was impossible, of course. He couldn’t know. But for a moment the panic was there, and in that moment it was all that mattered.

“Ah, well,” he said once he recovered his voice. You will have to kill him, something grim inside him said. “It’s, ah. It’s. Well. I only—“

When he glanced back, the cheeks of his traitorous human skin red, it was to see that Alastor’s ire has receded and he’d lifted an eyebrow instead, doubtless surprised that his jab had struck.

“It’s all from the same root word, at any rate,” Lucifer hurried on. “Lucian, Lucianus, Lucius—lux. Though, uh, with fer added, of course. Light-bringing, and all that jazz. It’s a calque, you know. I once heard someone debate on whether the fer came from Old English, but it was already—well, it was already in place. Very familiar. You know, Þær æfter on þam circule lucifer up arist, and all that rot. If I could write that on a piece of paper, you’d see! I used to have a friend, too, who talked about it all the time. ’Whether thou bryngist forth Lucifer, that is dai sterre, in his tyme’ he told me once. There’s even older, though I doubt—it’s all—well!” He cut himself off with a nervous laugh, aware he was rambling. Alastor’s expression had gone from smug surprise to something smooth and considering, and Lucifer laughed anxiously again, placing the cups down on the table. “So. Almost the same. Not, eh. Not quite! Not quite. No.”

“Hm,” Alastor said, after a brief pause. “Would you say you are a religious man, Lucien Magner?”

Ah. Aha. Fuck you, Lucifer thought. “Would you say you are a moral man, Alastor Duval?”

Alastor’s mouth twitched. “Like most men, I have what is called a moral code proper, yes. Do not avoid the question.”

Lucifer’s teeth gnashed. Were he in Hell and not suppressing his more angelic tendencies so strongly, he suspected his eyes would have flashed red. “My Father was, but I’m afraid I was always the black sheep of the family. Why?”

“You have a… more than passing familiarity with scripture, at times,” Alastor commented lightly. “More to the point, you seem to speak a fair amount of languages. I knew some young men overseas with classical educations, of course, many of whom were bound for the church before—“ he cut himself off, uncharacteristically, his mouth thinning. Lucifer’s brow lifted, but Alastor didn’t give him a chance to ask, continuing: “And yet, that also does not quite fit. You speak French like you were born to it, despite living here only a very short amount of time and coming from a country where, if my memory serves, French is rarely spoken. You hardly seem to notice when I switch to English, or, indeed, when mother does, or anyone else. You not only speak French, you speak Gombo like you were born to it. It is a mystery. You are a mystery. My mother does not pry, but I’m afraid I am a much more… curious beast.” Those brown eyes blinked slowly at him. Were Lucifer in possession of a pulse, he suspected it’d be racing. Shit.

“I was a linguist?”

“Mm. Not a doctor, then?”

Fuck. “N-no, no, you’re right, it’s…” Lucifer rubbed at his face, trying to buy himself time. Then he remembered something Zestial had said ages ago, soon after he’d come to Hell. “Part of being a doctor is learning tongues—languages,” Lucifer repeated slowly, trying to pay attention to the tongues he spoke this time, so that he did not accidentally say it in Zestial’s now-archaic one. “Yes,” he said, more to himself, as he continued. “Many of the, ah. The old medical texts. They were in Latin, right? And—“ he wracked his brain for the tongues he’d known and forgotten and known again, the ones that no one living even remembered the names of, let alone spoke, save him “—Greek. Not to mention Egyptian, and, uh—Sanskrit! Yes, Sanskrit,” Lucifer muttered, more to himself. He’d hardly ever bothered learning the individual names—he simply spoke them as though they were one and the same, as before Babel fell. “And their translations too, and all the other important treatises, I’m sure. Oh! And then there was that bit from Crete, too—very, um. Lovely. Informative, the Minoans. Nasty luck. They had that bit about spontaneous lassitude that I swear the later Greeks just lifted.” He shook his head, huffing softly.

Alastor watched him, a strange stillness overcoming him. “I see,” he said, plucking each word like the strings of a lyre. “And you know all those languages, then?”

“Of course!” Lucifer said hurriedly. “Everyone does.” He smiled with a confidence he did not feel.

“Everyone does,” Alastor echoed. “Of course.”

Silence descended for a moment, and Lucifer tried not to fidget, only saved when Charlie began to fuss a little and he scooped her up with a low hum.

“You say you’re from Ireland, Lucien?” Alastor asked at last while Lucifer swayed with her in his arms to the tinny jazz playing in the background. He and Alastor could agree on the music, at least.

“Mm. Yep. Lovely country.” And it was, the one time he’d snapped himself there, only to hastily return, hating to be so far from Charlie. Lucifer tried not to tense, expecting another volley of questions, but instead Alastor lapsed into silence again, the shadows of the evening casting his face in a sinister light. Eventually, Lucifer offered, cautious, like a mouse feeling its way around a trap: “I liked knowing all the tongues. I loved wa—“ watching the way the humans used to all communicate so effortlessly, before the tower; before they reached too far towards the Heavens, as I once had. Before Father stole their tongues, and left them to try and learn to speak all over again. But that would sound insane, so he merely cleared his throat instead, giving a gentle shrug and glancing down at Charlie. He would have to feed her soon. It was always much more of a hassle when he had to play this human role. “I loved learning about the connections,” he said instead, more quietly than he meant to. “How they changed. Adapted. How… I suppose… humanity always finds a way. I used to admire that about them.”

The silence returned, and eventually Lucifer went to the cabinets, struggling to reach the top shelf where the baby bottles were kept without cheating with magic when Charlie’s hunger cries started up. He nearly startled when a hand reached over him, snagging one of the glass bottles, Alastor’s chest nearly to his back for a brief moment.

“Sit down,” Alastor said, firm. “You look ever so foolish, bumbling about. Honestly, why you and mother insist on putting the things you need on the top shelf…” He shook his head, and Lucifer, lips parted, eyes wide, obeyed automatically.

“Right,” he said, weak.

When Alastor handed him the warmed bottle some moments later, Lucifer took it without one of his usual barbs, and the rest of the evening passed listening to the storm.

“Do you like the cold?” he asked Charlie one sleepless night. The radio was silent, the wind howling outside. At the table his daughter played with an assortment of baubles Lucifer had conjured, modelled after things he and Lilith had prepared for her in Hell. One of them, a little wooden duck, was currently her favourite, and she gnawed on its smooth head with abandon.

Lucifer smiled, bittersweet.

In Hell, she would have been a princess. He could have given her everything (almost anything, something whispered). Here he was forced to hide not only who and what he was, but he would be forced to smother what she was, too, until she was old enough to take care of herself.

It wasn’t the future he and Lilith had envisioned for her. It wasn’t the life he’d whispered to her in the dark nights, one hand resting over his belly while Lilith slept next to him, telling Charlie of all the wonderful things they would create for her; the kingdom that lay in wait.

You could go back, his thoughts crooned. You should go back.

“Why?” Lucifer asked aloud, scoffing. His powers were recovered now, brimming under his fingertips, angry at being pushed down and contained in a way angels of his calibre were never meant to be. “To rule the ashes of what’s left?”

The voice in his head was silent.

Lucifer ran a hand over his face, then drew it back, his palm damp.

He hadn’t even realised he’d been weeping.

“How very grisly,” Lotte murmured, listening to the radio as another murder was detailed, supposedly a mob hit. Lucifer, who’d been bickering with Alastor over the proper ways to make flat cakes while Alastor simultaneously complained about the broadcaster’s second-rate reporting, made a vague sound.

“It’s sloppy,” he said, dismissive, waving the wooden spatula in his hand and scoffing. “Mindless slaughter and violence—like watching Jack Ketch work an axe! Hacking brutally where finesse is needed, and then leaving everything out. Wonderful. Great. You’re in a mob; you have henchmen. Am I supposed to be impressed you gave an order to someone else and then left a trail so clear that what passes for the law here will haul you in in five seconds? At least use the knife yourself, then. It’s a lack of skill these days, I tell you. And probably love, and nurture, and a whole host of other things.” Lucifer huffed, but when he looked over, both Lotte and Alastor were staring at him—Lotte with something resembling concern and wariness, and Alastor with something much darker, and much more considering.

“What?” Lucifer asked.

“Ireland, you say,” Alastor murmured.

“We have gangs in Ireland!” Lucifer protested, because he knew that much. “And lazy murderers, too. And no, before you say anything, I was not in an Irish gang!”

“I wasn’t about to suggest anything of the sort,” Alastor said, tauntingly. Lotte sighed at them both.

“I’m sure Lucian is no stranger to the violence men can inflict on one another. It would have been unavoidable,” she murmured to her son, something meaningful in her voice, and to Lucifer’s surprise Alastor stiffened, his entire face going completely blank for a moment, his knuckles bone-white. Lotte herself almost seemed to wince before she took a deep, steadying breath.

My son fought in the Great War, Lucifer abruptly remembered Lotte telling him once, but there was no pride in her voice when she recalled it. Lucifer, who remembered the millions of souls flooding into Hell like a damn had burst—and who also remembered speaking seriously to Seraphiel when she’d mentioned a similar influx into Heaven, the both of them temporarily united in their matching grim realisations—had to turn to hide the way the corners of his mouth threatened to turn down.

“Yes, well,” he said, turning back to the bowl and its deflating batter and shoving the spatula in, intent on getting it to the stove. “Who wants—what did you call them? Pancakes?”

“Were you truly not in a gang?” Alastor asked, one leg crossed over the other as he leaned back in the chair.

“Of course I wasn’t in a fucking gang! And I wasn’t in anything else, either, before you ask,” Lucifer hissed at him, careful to keep his voice down to avoid disturbing Lotte and Charlie, who were both asleep, the former of whom had been looking more and more tired recently.

“It would be a convenient reason to come to New Orleans, with all the… troubles over there.”

Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Jesus Christ. I swear on my immortal soul I was not in a gang.” The fact that he did not have an immortal soul notwithstanding, of course, he thought with a grimace.

The lenses of Alastor’s glasses glinted in the low light of the room. “Hm. But you are running from something, of that I have no doubt. Perhaps it is not from a government, or a mob, but there is something isn’t there?”

Lucifer stilled, and it was a moment before he turned to look at Alastor, face devoid of emotion. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

“And if I do want the answer?”

Lucifer’s eyes sharpened, focusing in on the writhing black thing Alastor called a soul. When he spoke, he could hear the dark warning in his own voice and knew, that were he in Hell, there would be physical manifestations of his anger to back up the quiet threat he uttered. “Then I will demand answers of you in turn.” He smiled. It was not kind. “You know, for the sake of fairness.”

Alastor looked at him. Lucifer stared back, unblinking. When Alastor finally glanced away first, Lucifer almost imagined he could see three pairs of shadowy wings on the wall, arced threateningly, and a pair of horns that stretched up towards the darkened shy.

“Is she ill again?” Lucifer asked another evening, late into another winter, when Alastor again darkened his doorstep sans Lotte. The narrow-eyed look Alastor shot him was its own answer, and even Lucifer knew better than to needle him about this. Instead, he watched as Charlie crawled towards the source of the now-familiar noise, and pursed his lips without comment when Alastor lifted her.

“We listened to your radio show again the other day,” Lucifer said once they were seated in the small foyer.

“No complaints, then, Your Highness?” Alastor sniped, ignoring the toddler pulling at the leg of his trousers.

“No,” came Lucifer’s mild reply. “Charlie likes the bits about the Marcello family, I think.” He blinked slowly, inclining his head and expecting Alastor to make some sort of comment about it, about the sort of morbid child Lucifer was raising or about Lucifer’s supposed gang connections, but Alastor only continued to brood, Charlie babbling to herself in Alastor’s lap and crawling over his shoulder, until eventually Lucifer rolled his eyes and stood, putting the kettle on the human way. He didn’t much care for coffee, but he’d learned early on that Alastor did, and so eventually he’d learned to brew a cup or two, if only because he’d given up simply being able to rely on his powers with two unexpected… additions to his life liable to walk in his door at any moment.

He placed it in front of Alastor when it was finished. The mug was a bit of a lark, really—some cheeky little thing he’d conjured up when Alastor’s back was turned and pretended he’d found in the market, ’Smile ’Til it Hertz’ emblazoned on the side with little music notes. Alastor’s face had done something hilarious the first time Lucifer had presented it to him, and Lucifer had considered it a job well done.

Now, Alastor looked at it with the sort of long-suffering resignation that Lucifer had come to expect from him, but he took the mug anyway as he always did, bringing it to his lips.

“Do you want me to look in on her?” Lucifer asked after a beat. His eyes ticked down, and he gently reached out to where Charlie was gnawing on the back of Alastor’s chair, all her teeth in place and all the more destructive for it, lifting her into his own arms.

She’ll be two, soon, Lucifer thought to himself, blinking slowly. Maybe she’s two already. Fuck.

He’d never been good at keeping track of time.

“Do not push your luck,” Alastor muttered.

“I’ve been pushing my luck since my date of creation,” came Lucifer’s flippant response, absently handing Charlie another of her toys to chew on—better than the chair, though it couldn’t really harm her. He wondered if he’d have to flame-proof the wood once she got old enough to start shifting into her demon form, before he wondered how he’d go about suppressing it until the time was right.

Then he wondered, belatedly, if she’d even have one, and if he’d have to worry about suppressing it at all. After all, they weren’t in Hell, and Charlie was, well—

What she was.

(A thousand broken rules and a death sentence, if the full extent of what Lucifer had done ever became known.)

When he looked up again, Alastor was staring at him over the rim of the mug.

“What?” Lucifer asked, defensive.

“Oh, nothing,” came the almost sing-song reply. “It is only that I marvel at how much you resemble a fish out of water, sometimes.”

“Why would a fish be out of water?” came Lucifer’s baffled reply.

Alastor smiled thinly. “Why indeed.”

“Lotte told me you had a sister once,” Lucifer murmured. Lotte was asleep on the chesterfield, which Lucifer had, at some point, altered to be far more comfortable than any human-made creature comfort should be, and Alastor was brooding in the doorway, watching her with an inscrutable expression.

“Did she, now.” There was something dark in the words: a warning. Lucifer came up to stand at Alastor’s side, hands slipping into the pockets of his trousers.

“I think that’s why,” Lucifer said after a moment. “I was a mess when I came here, you know. She helped me. I…” He trailed off, then swallowed. “I owe her a lot. A great debt.”

Alastor’s eyes shifted to him in the gloom, heavy and black.

“Yes,” he said, soft as silk, the sort Lucifer could feel tightening around his neck, “you do.”

“Good evening, ladies and gents, young and old, from Rampart Street to the riverfront—this is your host coming to you live over the wireless from the glittering Red Ingénue right here in New Orleans. You’re tuned to the thin end of the dial, friends, and if you found us…” A low chuckle hummed over the radio, Lucifer’s hand stilling on the dial. “Well, let’s just say you’re in the right company. The trumpets are shining, the dance floor’s filling up, and, well, cher, if you aren’t here, you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be. Or perhaps we are.”

Maybe he’s right, Lucifer thought, sitting on the chair and resting his head wearily against the wooden side table, listening to whatever it was Alastor was broadcasting live that evening—some dance hall event, by the sounds of it, which was a sight better than whispers of doorways and a Janus face. Not that it mattered: Charlie was rapt, and though Lucifer did not need rest like many, it was getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open. When Charlie had been a fresh baby, and everything had been new, it’d been so much harder for these moods to sink their claws into him, but now, in the dead of winter, with Charlie growing steadily, her personality shining more and more with every passing day, he could feel the creep of the shadows again, the weeks starting to slip from his grasp.

Strange. In short years he’d spent here, among the humans, he’d gotten used to at least trying to mark the days, the weeks, the months, in a way he hadn’t since he and Lilith had first been cast down, and yet somehow, he’d still managed to let two years slip between his fingers. What was time to a being who had existed since before the dawn of it, after all?

 “Tonight, folks, we’ve got a treat: the famed Dermot ‘Darby’ Colon and his Kildare Stompers are setting up to give you the hottest notes this side of the bayou, with Miss Antoinette Landry primed at the mic. If you’re listening from home, pull the curtains tight. Don’t want the wrong ears hearing what the right ones enjoy. And if the fellas in blue knock, well… you didn’t hear it from me”

Lucifer hummed, listening to the sound of a clarinet trilling experimentally and the tinny sounds of a cheering crowd, huffing softly at Alastor’s crooned warning. There was a distant thump, like a closing door, before the first song started up in earnest, the audio quality not what Lucifer was used to.

He used to dance to music like this in Hell, as he had to all the music that had come before it. Sometimes he and Lilith would host well into the evening, and she would weave spells with her voice: the shining star of Hell, more than Lucifer had ever been. Sometimes he’d sing with her, and sometimes she’d have him perform on his own, and then they would melt into the crowd of the ballroom, dancing until night became morning.

But always he’d had her.

Quietly, he continued to listen to Alastor’s commentary over the music—and it was Alastor, he knew, even if he hadn’t introduced himself properly. Then again, this wasn’t Alastor’s usual station. Instead, Lucifer had simply been flipping dials when the familiar voice trickled through, and he wondered where this fabled Red Ingénue was.

“Oh-ho, they’re cooking, now! This is the kind of music that makes you forget about the rent, the rain, and that no-good fella who promised he’d call.”

Lucifer rolled his eyes, half-lidded as he sprawled across the chair, one of his arms dangling off the chair’s arm, the other providing a cushion for his chin. Charlie’s cradle was rocking itself with little sways of golden magic, and her eyes had long since closed, the music filling the otherwise quiet space.

He’d need a proper bed for her one of these days. She’d need one now, if they stayed long enough.

He was beginning to hope they would.

Foolish, just like the sentimentality behind keeping the cradle for far longer than Charlie ever needed.

Isn’t that what you do best? Be foolish?

Speaking to Lilith in the Garden? Foolish. Granting the humans free will? Foolish. Defending his actions to Heaven? Foolish.

Breaking his Father’s cardinal rule of creation in order to conceive the very child who now slept soundly in the cradle she was rapidly outgrowing, and would have outgrown if Lucifer didn’t keep expanding it?

Lucifer laughed bitterly. The very height of foolishness. He wondered if he’d ever return to Hell, or if they’d live this half-life here in the human world forever, always forced to move on once it became clear they weren’t aging. Or perhaps Lucifer would simply make use of his shapeshifting, playing out role after role, watching everyone around him die, condemning Charlie to a life as lonely as his own would surely be.

No. He couldn’t do that to her.

He also couldn’t go back.

Could he?

After more than two years away, what would he even return to? Hell had never been without Lucifer to hold it together. He knew damn well there were demons who liked to claim a great many tales, but the truth of the matter was that there had never been a Hell before Lucifer’s great folly, and so there had never been demons. The endless dark had been broken first by Michael’s flaming sword, and then kept at bay by Lucifer’s shining light, and until Lucifer unleashed free will on humanity, there’d never been any need for a Hell, and thus no pits for the Hellborn demons to crawl out of. Lucifer’s power had held even the most power-hungry of the demons in check, their hierarchies slowly forming around him, and now that he was gone, who had stepped in?

Or had Heaven simply swept the realm, leaving none left standing without the threat of the Morning Star to keep Seraphiel and her misguided sense of justice at bay?

He didn’t know why the thought made something ache in his chest, even after everything.

“Now we’re slipping into something smooth,” Alastor murmured over the waves, his voice low, crooning, intimate. ”Mm, ‘Basin Street Blues,’ for the sweethearts in the corner and the lonely hearts by the wireless. Close your eyes, dear listener, and you can almost smell the jasmine down Esplanade...”

Sighing, Lucifer closed his eyes, the shadows pressing harder against his temples; weighing all-too-heavily on his mind.

“Well now… sounds like the party’s about to get interesting. You stick with us, and if the music cuts sudden, just know we’ll pick it up somewhere else… same time, same shadows.”

He slept.

“And she has not said a word?” Lotte asked, frowning, looking at Charlie where she babbled nonsense to her toys.

“No,” Lucifer replied, watching his daughter with a fond smile. “Why?”

“Both Alastor and… my daughter were speaking by now. You often could not get Alastor to stop talking,” Lotte murmured in response, shaking her head. “And oldest children tend to start speaking earlier.”

Lucifer shifted, clearing his throat. “Well. I’m sure she will, uh. When she’s ready.”

He certainly wasn’t about to explain to her that he wasn’t entirely certain what Charlie’s growth trajectory would be. Lucifer and Lilith had both been created, brought into being without the need to grow as she did, and Lucifer, who had broken so many rules of creation to bring her into being, could not say how a being made mostly of him would change as time passed.

“She’ll talk when she’s ready,” Lucifer repeated, firm. She would.

He tried to quash the fear welling within him, and the guilt that whispered that this, too, was his fault.

“Jesus Christ, why are you here?” Lucifer groaned, rubbing at his eyes as Alastor slipped into the house at whatever ungodly time of night it was. His sleeves were stained again, and in between lightning flashes, Lucifer thought he could see matching red stains on Alastor’s vest and face.

“Were you actually asleep?” Alastor crooned, low and mocking.

“Yes, you prick! I can sleep, you know!” And he’d been having a rare peaceful one, until the sigils Lucifer had secretly cared into the wood of the doorway activated, telling him someone was there.

Alastor hummed, pushing down the hallway to where the small lavatory was. “I did not wish to wake mother.”

“Don’t you have your own house? I know you never used to be around this much—I went so many blissful months without your annoying face at my door,” Lucifer complained, shutting said door and glaring at him, but even as he did, he could feel himself giving in to whatever this was. Charlie could not be hurt, not by a mere human, not while he was here, and if Alastor wanted to do… whatever the fuck he was doing, then Hells, he couldn’t make himself care in that moment.

“I have a flat,” Alastor corrected, “with nosy neighbours, and mother has not been sleeping well. I slipped and fell coming back from the radio station, and simply need to clean the worst of the mud off. Go back to bed, Mssr Magner—I do promise I won’t rob the place.”

“Like I’d give a shit if you did,” Lucifer muttered, trudging back upstairs.

He didn’t ask anymore questions.

He didn’t want anymore answers.

“I’m fine, boys,” Lotte snapped one afternoon, when the plunging temperature and thick, damp air caused her cough to come on stronger.

“Right, and I’m the Archangel Michael,” Lucifer said, crossing his arms over his chest, before immediately flinching as his own words registered. He had to fight the urge to glance up at the ceiling, as if speaking his brother’s name would somehow call him here. It wouldn’t, Lucifer knew—he would have to invoke Michael’s name in a far more ancient, echoing tongue for it to truly call to him, and do far more than just say it, besides—but the worry prevailed. None of the other demons or even angels had come to find him, and he was starting to dare to think they might be as close to safe as possible.

“Much as I hate to agree with this imbecile on anything, he is right,” Alastor replied, sharp, drawing Lucifer back into the present, his voice nothing like the soft thing he’d heard on the radio some nights ago. Lotte gave her son an equally sharp look, and while Alastor wasn’t cowed by it, it was interesting to see how he deferred to her.

“Wow, I’m so honoured by the acknowledgement,” Lucifer muttered, rolling his eyes when Alastor glared at him, his smile ever-present but certainly even sharper now that there was a target for his ire who could fight back when he was spoiling for it.

Two days later found Lucifer and Alastor snarling over the kitchen stove, Charlie happily ignoring them as she gnawed on one of the wooden spoons Lucifer had given her, taking a break from lining up her little wooden toys. Biting, it seemed, had become her thing.

“That is not how the recipe goes, you crétin,” Alastor snarled.

“It’s a guideline, not set in stone—“

“If you’re not going to make it properly then give me the spoon and—“

“And what?” Lucifer taunted, holding it out of Alastor’s reach, his smile shark-like as Alastor grabbed for it, leaning far into Lucifer’s space. “After all this getting along, are we back to the threat of knives? Where’s your cleverness, Apollo?” He barked out a laugh, turning, but Alastor’s arm snaked around his waist, holding him in place even as Alastor’s other hand reached for the spoon, neither of them willing to take the spare from Charlie.

“Oh fuck you, you wretched little—“

“Alastor!”

The both of them froze immediately, their eyes shifting towards where Lotte stood in the entry to the kitchen, looking furious. Lucifer immediately relinquished the spoon to Alastor, who took it stiffly, unwinding his arm from around Lucifer’s waist and straightening to his full height. Next to him, so much shorter, Lucifer would have felt like a chastened child were they both not equally in the same boiling pot, and he politely turned his gaze to the corner as Lotte said something about language.

“—thought the two of you were at least trying to get along. No, cher, do not even try to deny it. The two of you have been biting at each other all week, and for awhile before that—I may be ageing, but my eyes and ears work just fine. I know you are worried, but the two of you have been tucked up in here fussing over me for too long. You need to get out of the house. Alastor, when was the last time you were even at your own flat? You used to have a life. I will not have you throwing it away for me.”

Lucifer concealed a small huff at that, remembering his own words to Alastor not a fortnight ago. It certainly hadn’t escaped his notice that Alastor must have maintained his own residence somewhere, indeed he’d accused Alastor of such a thing, but it seemed Alastor hardly spent any time there anymore, spending more and more time at Lotte’s house (and your own, something reminded him) as the months grew colder,

“And you!” Lotte continued, rounding on Lucifer, who visibly flinched.

“Me?” he said, confused.

“You were making such progress. I know it is winter, but you are only ever here with Charlie! I tell you doctors are needed here, but—“ She cut herself off, coughing, frustrated. Lucifer felt the beginnings of guilt prickling at his spine, and he shifted, one hand rubbing at his own upper arm. “You have not had a life since you came here. Mm. No. This ends now.” Her eyes narrowed. “The two of you are going out. Tonight.”

“Mother—“

“Tonight, Alastor. Go do whatever it was you used to in the evenings when you weren’t hosting. And take the reclusive white boy with you.”

“Why?” Alastor scoffed as Lucifer glanced briefly at his own pale hands, frowning, almost expecting them to be black, the way they’d been since they’d been touched by the heat of Michael’s flaming sword.

“You know, I’m not a boy,” he muttered. He was far older than they could hope to comprehend, in fact, but they ignored him, and he didn’t voice the rest of his thoughts. There was something unnerving about watching Alastor and his mother glare at each other.

“Because when I am gone, you will still need a life,” Lotte said simply. Lucifer watched as Alastor stilled, his smile going stiff at the edges, something dark flashing in his eyes. Lotte, watching him also, softened her voice. “You need to go have some fun, cher. You are a young man still. You must enjoy your life, yes? I’ll watch Charlie, and neither of you will worry about either of us.”

“It’s storming,” Lucifer said—not petulant, but uneasy with… everything. He glanced at Alastor, who resolutely did not look at him. “Listen, if Alastor doesn’t want to take me—“

“He does. He will.” Lotte’s tone left no room for argument. Lucifer, who really did want to argue the point, forced himself to let it go.

Alastor still didn’t look at him.

Lucifer wondered if he ought to worry about knives in the dark after all.