The Devil is real. And he's not a little red man with horns and a tail. He can be beautiful. He's a fallen angel and he used to be God's favourite. (Currently in LA.)
Not all heroes are remembered, but all villains are immortal.
Look at Lucifer, he’s the brightest star in the morning, and the constant star of the night.
Name another love that gave eternity in the night sky.
God didn’t grant half as much to his angels // L.H.Z (via lhzthepoet)
He didn’t like… this. Whatever had just happened, with the hotel and the majority of July having passed them all by while they were inside, Raziel wasn’t fond of it. Couple that with the bizarre dream he’d had this morning along with the fact that, when he walked into his club, more than one of his employees had commented on the fact that he looked like he’d had a rough night. He had had one, a month long one in fact, but everyone had been nonplussed about his return. As if they hadn’t noticed that Raziel had missed an entire month. That bothered him, too, made him worry about whether or not there was more to the latter half of that dream than he’d originally thought. But that was something he would sort of once another matter had been attended to.
He’d made a promise to Olivia that he would get the cure for her friend, and one of his Saints, if she could help him get to Kiara. She had done her part, he’d given Kiara to Lucifer. Abaddon had freed the Horseman at some point, but Lucifer had guaranteed that he’d gotten what he needed to continue producing the cure. Before anything else happened around here, as it was bound to, Raziel wanted to make good on his promise.
He didn’t bother lifting his head from the desk when the phone on his desk. Instead, he blindly reached out to depress the speaker button and was greeted with one of his bartender’s voices, “tall, dark, and handsome here for you, Boss.” Raziel only straightened after telling her to send his brother back, ending the call and reaching for the glass of vodka on his desk. The motion made the self-inflicted wounds between his shoulders ache, but he ignored it, taking a sip of vodka before casting his gaze to the door when Lucifer came through. “Sleep well?”
He wanted to know if Lucifer had had the same disturbing dream or if it was just Raziel’s mind plaguing him.
Lucifer had gotten the text about the progress on the cure this morning—after the escape from the Hotel, and after that dream that had all the bells, whistles, and alarms going off. For both reasons, rather than returning the text, Lucifer left his Los Angeles apartment and made his way to his brother’s strip club, OMFG. He laughed to himself every time he read the name: was it Raziel’s wishful thinking coming to fruition, or had the club been honoured with that name for another reason? Either way, its cleverness gave Lucifer a sense of amusement. The establishment was to his liking: it was a place where people were invited to be more themselves, and that was something Lucifer always supported, angel-run or no.
A bartender called back for Raziel, but Lucifer didn’t wait for the permissions. He moved back toward the employee area regardless. Raziel wanted Lucifer’s attention: how he got it wasn’t his decision alone. Besides, he was carrying precious wares, and didn’t want any unforeseen delays between the handoff. When he entered the office, Lucifer noticed the glass of clear liquid right away, though it was only late afternoon. “I’m assuming that’s not water,” Lucifer quipped, knowing Raziel’s proclivities and preferences. Far be it from the Devil to judge on indulging. “Got any ancient bourbon for a long lost brother?” he amended with a laugh before sitting in one of the seats across from him. “I’ve slept better. Especially when my dreams didn’t involve the Tree of Life and the disappearance of Grails.”
He shrugged, his usual unaffected and gregarious demeanour firmly in place. “But, to the primary question you asked—” he took a small, clutch-sized leather case from the lining of his suit jacket pocket and slid it across the desk. “One dose, it’s all I’ve got. It’s the original. I haven’t finished enough of the synthesized cure yet, I’m—” he paused, considering better, but then allowed himself to share. Sharing was the only way both sides were going to survive this. “I’m determined to make sure it cures our kind as well as humans. But this... this will cure your human.” At least that much, Lucifer could promise as return.
Abaddon hummed along to herself, unlocking her door amidst snatches of conversations she indulged herself in, despite the lack of company. She strode in easily, dropping the keys in a decorative bowl by the door, hesitating when she saw someone by the window. She cocked her head and walked in closer, laughing as she recognized the silhouette. “Dad! I’m afraid I didn’t get you anything for Father’s day yet. I only do last minute shopping,” she commented without a shred of shame. “Ruh roh,” she continued idly as she took in the general atmosphere, settling into her couch casually.
“Can’t be good if you look that serious,” she remarked, grin still firmly in place and not at all shaken by the sudden appearance of a somber looking Lucifer (never boded well for Samyaza when she saw that expression). “Better break out the F-word. Hello, father. To what do I owe the pleasure? And no, I’m really not lying about not having a father’s day gift.”
The laugh that came easily from Lucifer’s lips indicated that, normally, such a delay in holiday gifting seemed almost expected from Abaddon, who was so impulsive and so spontaneous; in years past, a gift might be the day-of, and it could be a burned city or it could be a newly purchased brothel or it could be some ancient bourbon literally stolen from some catacombs or the secret stores of some socialite or royal. The delay, inevitably, led to a surprise delight. The trouble was the present moment, not the talk of presents. “I’m glad to hear you didn’t get me anything yet,” Lucifer said with an almost warm tone to his voice, letting her know he still held fondness for her, despite recent choices. “I was under the terrible impression your idea of a gift had devolved into undermining Hell’s attempts to save the world from entering the void.” He took another swig of bourbon and rearranged his legs, but didn’t stand.
Lucifer winced, faintly, but there, when she called him father, sitting on the couch as she was, still joyful even in crisis. He had given her that—to find bright spots of pleasure in even the darkest days—but was it a shade too far, now? Did that prohibit her seeing the days for what they were? The end days. “I’m really quite pleased to hear that releasing the first Horseman from my care after trusting you with her was not your idea of a good gift.” Lucifer shifted his gaze from the smile still trapped and nearly neatly sculpted into place on her features to instead meet her eyes. “I have to demote you, as much as it pains me to do so. I do hope you’ll find ways to regain your title. And, in time, there will be a punishment suited to your crimes.” He didn’t specify, nor would he; with a short sigh of disappointment, he simply asked, with the intent laid bare already: “What were you thinking, Abaddon?”
Stepping off the plane - Lucifer’s, of course - felt like stepping onto a patch of green after a long and sweltering summer in the desert. It was like breathing for the first time. Most importantly, it felt like coming home. Just being in the same city as Lucifer again had given her a boost of energy. Though it had only been a few months since their last meeting it felt like no less than years to Babylon, they’d been apart for longer throughout the years but with the events going on in Los Angeles she’d been anxious to be in her safe space once again, even if only for a few hours, and the only place she could ever recall feeling truly safe was with the man whom had been her first (and only) hero.
The place he picked out was no less extravagant than she had expected even if she had insisted several times before that she didn’t need anything fancy for a simple visit. Secretly, she was always glad when he chose not to begrudge her. Every girl enjoyed being splurged on every now and then. She had initially chosen to draw out the hello by taking the time to admire the decor but as soon as she saw him standing there she knew she couldn’t wait any longer. Upon reaching him, she definitely felt something off - something she attributed to the mark on his face that most certainly hadn’t been there the last time she had seen him. “Did Belial do this to you?” She questioned, hand lingering above the scar in a show of unconcealed concern.
When Babylon entered the room, she took all of the air with her. Countless breaths taken into her lungs, everyone else’s air less for something like gasping at her presence. She always knew how to command a room—and herself. For that, Lucifer was impressed. He wasn’t his daughter by ‘blood,’ though that avenue was forever closed to him now, but instead by something deeper, something cosmic. He had chosen her as his own and she made him proud every day. Sometimes, if he didn’t focus too hard, he could almost pretend the dark edges to their features were a shared gift. When Lucifer looked at Babylon, part of him felt what all fathers felt: a different piece of immortality, the knowing that, should you ever leave, a bit of you would still be there: the memories, the lessons, the smiles. Babylon had become one of Lucifer’s greatest satisfactions, one of the things he could say, undeniably, he’d done right and right by. And for those reasons, this dinner was all the sweeter.
As she stepped toward him, he pulled out the chair for her ease, only pausing to kiss her on the cheek in a warm greeting. Her hand lingered over the scar on his face and he literally resisted the urge to say but you should see the other guy as he felt the heat of her concern hovering. “No, not Belial,” Lucifer said, restraining any emotions he felt about the ungrateful now-Horseman, instead settling into a tone between derision and boredom when he said, “Satan came by for an afternoon swim. It was... inevitable, I suppose, but I think we cleared the air.” Lucifer smiled, winsome and laughing, shifting the topic—if she pressed, he would talk more, but he preferred to spend the evening with a celebration of her. Business—which was what Satan was now that she was to be Prince—could wait. “But I’m far more interested in catching up with you. Shall we dine?”
From the other side of the door, Lucifer could hear the tell-tale signs of anger—good. Stating things to evoke anger was all he had left to use at that point, with other people and other tactics exhausted. At least she still had that spark, at least she still had it in her to be angry. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew she was no longer sitting and doing nothing, the clacking of her heels and the chaos that ensued meaning something he said had gotten her off the floor, something had stuck. All it ever had to be was her choice: she just had to own it.
The Horsemen—War and Famine particularly—had put her in the situation, but how she dealt with it was for her to decide. He would have even accepted an honest “leave me here,” if she’d said it back, he would have walked away and respected that choice, however much he disagreed. But this noise from inside the room was progress. Whatever got her out of grief and into acceptance—even with a midway stop from depression to anger—would suffice if it got her out of the Hotel and back into the real world.
The door did open by her hands, however bloodstained, and it dawned on him what had happened: she killed the Belial that had been inside. He didn’t make comment on that, nor on anything else, as she exited the room and sought his gaze, nothing but anger and unhappiness in her eyes. He hoped the anger was reserved for those orchestrating this mess and not the person trying to get her out, but—it wouldn’t be the first time that someone was angry with the Devil. If he had to be the target of her immediate ire, well, he’d lived through worse.
At least she was going to be alive to calm down from it. The Devil rarely was thanked for anything, so he shrugged and took it in stride, composed once more, as her acid tongue directed him to say nothing. He had nothing left to say, anyway: he’d put a lot of effort into speaking already. He gestured to pretty much directly across the hall and a little up, toward the elevator chasm Raziel was exploring. She knew as much as he did. Without a word, he walked toward Raziel, Crowley, and the rest, hoping to find his own way out.
There was something about Lucifer’s voice that could lull someone in and Renee was no exception. Yet, she wasn’t terribly interested in the content, it was just noise that filtered through her awareness; It was cadence and the comfort imbued in the voice that she let help her drift, let eyes close gently which was where she wanted to be.
Eventually however, there was interruption in the form of force followed by finesse, making altogether too much noise as weight slammed against door and lock audibly clicked, unsetting and resetting itself, moved by power beyond the control of most, but it was power she believed in, she knew that there were things in this world that went beyond what was tangible, what was visible, what was understandable to the average person with the average experience; She had long lived with an example of such a thing. She wanted to ignore it, ignore the fact that Lucifer had devolved from simply keeping her company to actively attempting to save her from a mess she was unwilling to even attempt to save herself from, but it was difficult. Something in her recognized a truth in the attempt, though she didn’t know what to do with it.
Lucifer was willing to fight for her when she was unwilling to fight for herself.
It reopened eyes and turned gaze to door as she considered it all again, ignoring words that split silence and fed into what she already knew as they started up again almost in sync with the first serious reconsideration of not leaving. She tuned back in, listening to him again because vaguely, she supposed, she owed him that for the effort and for other things; Belial wasn’t the only one who had allowed her certain liberties, though the difference was the balance had always been plain in the latter case and it hadn’t bothered her.
( “if you’re going to cash out of it all, don’t you want to do it on your own terms? Not—left behind in some once-was warehouse, then forgotten like a duct taped cardboard box with no label?” )
She looked around a room that reminded her of time gone by that all but echoed of music and better times in her memory, dripping of someone’s reimagining and recreation of what she knew. It wasn’t a half-bad attempt, though she could have done it better, and it was as good a place as any, perhaps better to let things end for the implication of impending almost solitude and circumstance that forced helplessness of everyone who wanted to impede in the quest to obtain it.
A small smile, dark amusement played in corners though because Lucifer understood just as little as everyone else. Perhaps, if she could believe the idea of the impossible, then everyone was enduring some personal misery, but for whatever they had experienced, she frankly had no impetus to leave. There was no danger, there was no clear and present reason that would force survival instincts and motivate her to act rather than think about the truth; This was her personal misery, nothing more than the truth said aloud to force acknowledgement and acceptance. In a a fashion, it was no misery at all, it was a mercy. But she’d never quite find the words to explain, though she tried-
“Don’t you see? If you would all just leave me be, these would be my terms. This is the choice I want to make.” A pause, “He’s right and I’m just so tired of pretending that if I wait long enough it wouldn’t be true anymore. I have nothing left. I never had anything to start with.”
Lucifer grunted and slammed his first against the door; usually one to show the utmost of restraint when it came to most emotions, Renee’s response and the setting in which it was given made him want to punch a hole through the mahogany. And, what’s more, it would have, if it hadn’t been the Hotel’s door. Then, he started laughing. “It’s ironic, you know,” Lucifer said, his voice, however, as controlled as always, that same mirth to its edges, like the two of you were in on a secret against the world. “My nightmare room involved saving you from death. You were tied to a stake inside a boiling cauldron—not a very clever metaphor, I’ll grant you that—skin peeling and boiling and all. I could save you from that, but now, when it counts, I can’t save you from yourself. You’re your own boiling.”
If this was really what she wanted, then this might be his last words, so he had to make them count for something. Even if that something was just succumbing to brutal honesty, without the charm or frills to soften him the way he liked to be known. “So what if it is true? At this point, darling girl, it’s you. You just want to be done with it, the horror of choice removed, the terror of responsibility. You think the world is just done with you? That you’re the first person to ever be left, raw splintered and alone, making a casket of yourself, holding not even a carcass to show for it?” There was a depth of such genuine emotion in his voice as he said this. “You may have lost him, but he never defined you. You were what made him powerful. You ever consider that? And I don’t have a literal Godforsaken clue why you were spared this way when the Vow broke; perhaps because it broke, rather than died—but why you? Don’t you want to find out?”
Lucifer stood, knowing she’d hear the sound of it through the door, the impact of his intentions: soon, she really would be all alone, possibly dead, possibly worse. “But fine, be your own danger. At least that will be something you have for yourself. Tune me out as you wish. Your doubts are killing you, so subtle you don’t even notice.” He could Persuade her out with his Devil-given powers, but he wouldn’t violate her that way—and hopefully she realized that. Forcing her into opening that door would only do what his room had shown him: turn a friend into a betrayer. “Please, Renee, don’t be the first that the Doubtmaker steals. After all, you have one thing from forever: your name. It means rebirth.” Lucifer heard voices coming closer, identifiable voices with bodies rushing past him, further down and across the hall. Raziel was shouting orders and Crowley, Kezia, Maria, and Zoe were talking back.
He couldn’t stay much longer. “Raziel’s here, he’s found a way out of here, and—I’m leaving here, because if I know anything, this is a one-night affair... there’s no way the Doubtmaker can sustain this Hotel for longer, at this point. I don’t want to ‘leave you be,’ I want you to open that door and come with me.” Lucifer sighed, softly, and watched bodies leave the third floor; he’d have to follow suit soon enough. “I’ll carry you out of here if I need to, but that means touching your hand again, seeing your face, and I can’t open that door without you.” His voice grew only slightly more muffled, with a bit more space between him and her door, but still there, lingering, serious. “So, you say it to me, and you mean it so I can respect it: tell me you choose this, and I’ll go.” The Devil would consider it one last favour to an old friend.
It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t, it wasn’t to be made to feel like so. His every word let Renee see the night and herself through his eyes, let her see herself through the lens of that woman and her context rather than the present and it made for an unsettling mix; Hope to contrast despair only to feel it morph to disgust as she realized ninety years ago, she would have been appalled to see herself like so.
She was supposed to be better than simply broken.
It roused her a little, made her wonder why she had ever let herself get like so, made her wonder why she hadn’t forced decision upon herself and done something to prevent it from getting this bad. If she had made a choice somewhere… well, there would have been something.
And so, she let gaze flicker around the room looking for something that might help her understand what was happening, rather than simply ignoring it altogether, because she simply didn’t. Crowley said it wasn’t real, Raziel said it wasn’t real, Lucifer implied imaginary happenings and a desire to break on behalf of some third part, and there was a part of her that knew in the face of all this, that she was a fool for not simply accepting it as fact, but she didn’t understand. There was nothing here impossible or fantastic, there was nothing here that even for a moment shimmered like an illusion or seemed off. The closest she could get to naming anything that was the uncharacteristic silence from a creature who had filled her hours with much to much chatter over the years and to cling to that as something incongruous, as something wrong seemed ridiculous. There were other answers for that behavior that made more sense.
Yet… she forced herself to consider the impossible, for just a moment, shoving hurt that felt like it could suffocate her to the side, dimming it to something more manageable to allow for somewhat clear thought.
What if everything that’s happened since I walked into this room was meant to make me like so?
The idea should have made her angry, the violation even more so, but she found herself thinking it didn’t really matter. If it was all imaginary, if this wasn’t really Belial, then it was something pulled, instead, from her own mind. But fabricated circumstance made the conclusions drawn no less true, and made her no less tired of trying to find a way to combat it to change what was inevitable; She hadn’t been even remotely close to as independent as she had thought she was and everything bore the fingerprints of others as well as her own. And if she hadn’t done anything alone, well… he was gone and she should have died with his disappearance. That would have been the right end rather than this, which was hell for lack of any option she could comfortably latch to.
If she still believed, if she had been able to walk into the Church of Sinners and find the same sense of comfortable certainty that she had held previous, it would be different, but she had tried that and she had ended up crying because it felt wrong. If the idea of standing with War and the Horsemen felt even remotely comfortable, if the idea hadn’t come with a very distinct feeling that she’d change in the process and know herself even less for giving up things that had once mattered, it would be different. If the two options she really had felt wrong and the idea of choosing neither and starting over as a third was appalling what was left? Nothing.
This is what it means to be redundant. Every choice is wrong because they aren’t any meant to be right and there’s nothing left.
It was the conclusion she returned to even as Lucifer waxed philosophic about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because she was barely listening to him at all, only tuning in enough to understand he was trying for a parallel; Her life to a piece of fiction meant to be compelling story but nothing more. It wasn’t worth expressing, but underneath the nihilism there was a spark of indignation that he would think that appropriate. Her story, her life, wasn’t expressly existent for anyone’s amusement, even as it had been Belial’s time and time again. And furthermore, being unbreakable made for good television, but that wasn’t real life, or at least, wasn’t her life.
But what was the point in expressing any of that? She didn’t want the argument, didn’t want to hear him try to convince her otherwise and so she simply kept her own counsel and said nothing at all.
The silence on the other end of the door was still paramount; either she was listening, lost in thought, or dead. Opting for one of the former two scenarios, Lucifer tried to keep up his company, his rambling. Yes, there was some parallelism to the Buffy story, but part of it was him speaking to himself, also. Part of him would always be designed by Baal, the father he’d killed. In some ways, the first God had created his own undoing, and that’s the original story, the true father of them all: we create our own undoings. That was Baal’s true legacy. And being cast out of Heaven—he’d known that was coming, with the murder—and put into a realm he didn’t know with people cheering... that was somehow scarier. He was never God, but he was the Devil, a title and power he hadn’t fully understood and hadn’t deliberately chosen, and here were all the expectations and liberations of an entire people. It was his choice that put him there as a consequence, and, down the line, every choice after that brought him here, to Renee’s door, telling stories about how easy it is to let go, but how hard it was to choose to keep going. Maybe that was the root of his own room: every step of his labyrinth, he had chosen to keep going. Saviours and betrayals be as they might, he had chosen to keep going. He hoped there was something in her that needed to keep going, too, even if she didn’t know how yet.
His voice was still comforting and calm as he told another story, his own musings, out loud; “Half of what we’re fighting for is the memory of it all. Memories like that night, that ring true, that still make noise in the ether even though none of those words still sound from our lips. It’s not just nostalgia: it’s science, that it’s still there, just waiting to be tapped into, to be rediscovered, listened to. Still there for the listening, if you know how.” That was true, factual, hard. “You know better than most how the pantheon works. We’re not just thought-up into existence: we exist. Even if every human on earth turned their backs on us, left us weak, broken, powerless, and confused—we’d still exist in that liminal space. A lack of belief doesn’t erase us, only disempowers us. I, personally, don’t ever plan to find out what that feels like—a whole country filled with the half-lives of the divine, nothing more than shadows. I’ve felt that inside before, but being surrounded by it, being engulfed, suffocated by the state of it all...” For Lucifer, that wasn’t an option. He’d be alive, but probably mad, and if he’d survived in-tact since the dawn of time so far, he had no designs on letting it all fall out of his head, surrounded by others who were equally powerless to do anything about the situation. That was a nightmare the room hadn’t shown him, but it was an intimate fear Lucifer knew all the same. “And being unable to do anything about it. Truly unable, not unwilling.”
A soft sigh escaped, and he realized he could at least try to spring her free, hoping it wasn’t too much a violation. There wasn’t much Lucifer could do from the outside; he reached up to the handle and made his battered body stand on those self-same damaged feet, causing a ruckus of noise as he tried to pry the door open, tried to slam it open with the force of his weight, and then, with tentative grace, seeing if his telekinesis would work on the door. He heard the clicking of the unlocking mechanism, but it set itself right back. Lucifer couldn’t hold it, not in this space. Being in a Horseman’s playroom, on her turf, put him at a distinct disadvantage and spoke to their growing power, which greatly concerned him, seeing as Famine was still disembodied. There was no telling the chaos that would come with after integration. He sighed, slumped back down against the door, and said, “Renee, I can’t leave you here, but I can’t get you out. I—I don’t know if you’re still alive, still listening, but you’re one of the few still stuck in their rooms. Please... no one can do it for you, but even if you’re going to cash out of it all, don’t you want to do it on your own terms? Not—left behind in some once-was warehouse, then forgotten like a duct taped cardboard box with no label? I—I don’t know how to get you out.” Lucifer, admitting he didn’t know something... that was definitely one for the history books.
Lucifer’s voice was the thing that cut through silence in the truest fashion, a reminder that there was a world outside these walls, not that Renee was particularly interested in engaging with it any longer - she was stuck without a spark and without it there was nothing left; All she wanted was to be left alone, and vaguely, insofar as she was thinking about anything, she didn’t understand why it was so hard to get what she wanted. She hadn’t asked for saving from the truth; It was high time she accepted it for what it was, really. Why couldn’t anyone else understand that?
Just as she had for Crowley and Raziel though, she did listen, at least for now. She listened to him go through the exercise of recalling a night she occasionally still favored with a fond smile and wondered why he was doing this. That night numbered among ones that had remained vivid, the emotional element for her making it so; She had found it reassuring, though she hadn’t quite acknowledged it, because a decade was long enough to convince her that this wasn’t some fluke that would crumble under the weight of the plans she had. For half a second, a smile born of the memory flickered across face, before it began to hurt, filling in the emptiness she finally managed, because to acknowledge that night meant to remember herself blindly happy, to remember how she had held court that night and laughed. She resented that, that he could make her feel like this again.
Lucifer wasn’t supposed to hurt her too.
She didn’t want to respond, not once it started to hurt, not when it was walking a line anyway, for dealing with Lucifer had always been that, not for her own personal reasons but for ones that were had always essentially been hers because they were as inescapable as that. Simply put, Belial didn’t like Lucifer and she had known that from the very start, from the very first interaction of theirs she witnessed, a thing awkward and stilted, a thing that left her utterly confused by what was clearly animosity, unexplained. He had said nothing as of yet, at this intrusion through the door, but frankly, she didn’t imagine that silence would last anymore than she believed that Lucifer would simply walk away if she opted to remain silent. The devil didn’t get to be that without a little bit of persistence.
“What do you want?” she asked, her own voice taking her aback some. It was tired, sure, but it wasn’t that which caught her unawares. Instead, it was the way it sounded raw despite the fact that she hadn’t wept here, the way it cracked on the last word. Hands rubbed across face as further whispered words slipped from her, not really meant to be answered, because she doubted he would even hear it, “Can’t you just leave me alone?”
The long silence on the other side of the door meant she’d been thinking about it—she could remember the night, the cold bite in the air that meant it was still winter in New York, back when winter still meant cold, still meant snow, and hadn’t given way to an extended grey rainy season in recent times. It was the kind of air that made you cough, just to warm up your throat. Inside, though, there’d been no lark of warmth; Renee wasn’t a daughter to him in the same way Abaddon and Babylon were, but she didn’t have to be. He considered this, the weight of his own room still heavy on his mind. Renee had always been more independent, had her own ideas, her own way of looking at the world in order to construct it into something that could serve her. Lucifer sympathized with that and his respect for the trait in her had only been a blessing. “It was a good night,” he said softly, thoughtfully, as if talking to himself. As if ruminating. “You didn't need me to give you permission. You made what needed to be made. Only you saw it. Always had an eye for the changing times.”
Her raw voice demanding what he wanted made him stop in his thought process; others had already interceded, but he’d known as much from Crowley’s entreatment. On the other side of the door, Lucifer shrugged. “Just keeping you company, at the moment. Alone and loneliness are two different things. I just got out of this ridiculous bit of cosmic magic—stellar stuff, if I’d had done it, but I didn’t, so you know, can’t much approve of it,” he said with a disarming laugh. “Had my hotel room tell me that my every decision will be my own downfall. That the people I love will inevitably betray me. Tried to convince me to give up on fighting the end times.” The laugh then wasn’t one of charm, but of absurdity. “Like that room knows anything real about me. I don’t ever let go of anything that doesn’t have my own claw marks raked through it.” He ran a hand through his stubble, wondering just how much to share; just how much truth there’d been to the warning, and whether it was an omen for the current moment, or just a Horseman’s passing fancy. “Ms. Thomas—didn’t think that through, common enough name, you know? Thomas. Doubting Thomas. The Doubtmaker.”
His voice returned to the thoughtful one, focusing on the carvings on her hotel door, almost absently feeling the groove of it, and then pulling his hand back—just to check that all the fuckery stayed on the other side of the door. “Anyway, so, got me thinking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You ever see that? Big in the ‘90s, kids loved it,” he started, and he almost closed his eyes to remember the scene, but thought better of it—kept them open, stayed alert even through his musings. His voice had a comforting tone to it out of habit, the kind of voice you could just listen to, the sort that might read you a book on tape, or do a podcast as you drove thousands of miles cross-country, the kind of voice that keeps you company on long nights’ journeys. “There’s this moment that Angel, this guy Buffy had loved who just—went bad—he takes everything away from her. No weapons, no friends, no hope.” He paused, remembering how defeated Buffy had looked, at sword point near asking for her own death but refusing, something inside herself fighting its way free. “He says, Take that all away, and what’s left? Asking her to submit to being broken, to being defeated, to dying... and she just looks at him, but in the camera angle it’s almost like she’s looking at you, through you, and she surprises him with Me. He could never break her. No one could.” Lucifer shifted his weight, moved the way he sat for more comfort. “Good stuff, that.”
Location: 303 @ Hotel California
Date: 11:50, June 24th, 2017
Availability: @quaiintrclle
It was hard to shake the feeling of the room; he’d come out the other side of that door, but had left behind a—if he was being honest—disturbingly tempting scenario of post-Revelation. But what good was a half-life, that shadow world, even if everyone was present in it? What eternity to touch nothing but soot and ash? To be forever with Talia, but without a heart to feel for it? Yet, it left him shaken all the same, the questions it posed: how did the Devil wind up with enough people he wanted to survive, on two hands? It was a few too many for self-preservation, which was his own highest goal, inherently. And still, here he was, pinged by his protege, the bright future of Hell, to try and beckon out Hell’s current poster child: Renee.
His feet didn’t have shoes on them any longer, what little was left after standing on the cauldron removed so it didn’t merge with his skin, but the pain in walking was still present as the Devil made his way to door 303—the number that had been dangling from Renee’s room key. His clothes were splotchy with ash and his face, his hands, streaked with soot. But first thing was first: trying to get Renee out of whatever personal nightmare Ms. Thomas—doubting Thomas, very clever, Doubtmaker—had conjured up for her. Exhausted, but able to sense fully again, he pushed his energy toward those spaces as he collapsed by Renee’s door, knowing better than to force in on her privacy. Instead, he did what he could to prove who he was:
He waxed poetic about her. “Hey, Renee—Renee, remember that time in 1927? Man, back when we ran New York. Remember how we held the ten year anniversary in the Back Room? That little place, you know, it’s still around, but it doesn’t look like it did then. Things change over time. But the bones—the bones are still there. You still can’t get in from the street. You have to know which grimy little steps with the broken pipe railing to go down, and then you have to know which way to wind. Which grates to duck, which fire escape to go half-up, which door to knock on that still has no windows, no view. But once you get inside—it sings. Sound never dies, it just carries on, quieter and quieter, but still there.
Renee, I can still hear you making that toast. It chimes off the walls of the place, seeps into the wood—the floors are the same, did you know that? They just shined ‘em up. And that bar you liked to—well,” Lucifer laughed, he couldn’t help it, “your echoes are still there. It was the most hope we’d had—I’d had—since the middle ages. You remember what you drank? Ah, or what you were wearing?”
Crowley: If anyone throws the snitches get stitches line at me, I'll make sure to give them stitches myself but I can't get Renee out. I don't know where you are but you're better than me with people.
Crowley: Help me, please. I'll do the hell version of overtime if you do.
Lucifer: I just did the version of levelling up where you learn not to help other people... but since you asked so nicely, and that was such a terrible vision of the future, I'll give it a go. Heading to 303 now.
Location: Third Floor / Closed
Date: 10pm, June 24th, 2017
Trigger Warnings: Gore, blood, implied death, crucifixion mention
The prickling of Lucifer’s omniscience had of course intimated that tonight’s soiree was going to have a less than pleasant outcome; but “unpleasant” and what this was represented as entirely different. In Lucifer’s room, it seemed almost all of his ‘sensors’ were out of whack; he could only imagine what Raziel was feeling, or perhaps the once-was angel was more used to the lack where new senses now filled him—or perhaps his senses were unaffected. Lucifer was skeptical of his room, knowing by now the markings of a Horseman’s plaything, and if this was anything to gauge by, the belief wielded by the first two had led the third to have quite a lot to toy with. Naturally Ms. Thomasˆ was probably loving having God and the Devil in her claws. Lucifer set his mouth into a firm line, considering his artfully arranged surroundings, which were altogether not distasteful, but this wasn’t the time for it.
Slowly, the room changed, seeming to accentuate his discomfort. His sensed were a little dulled as a Devil with a pantheon in need of a boost—but this room was worse. Everything in it maintained its shape and structure, but became unfamiliar: from where Lucifer stood, from beneath his shoes, eked out a soot dark dust that swarmed to engulf everything in that selfsame darkness. It wasn’t an unknowable darkness; it wasn’t the void, empty of any and everything. No, simply, everything was lifeless and ashen. Ash fell from the ceiling like a mockery of snow. When Lucifer went to find his footing, hand trailing for stability against a wall, his fingers came away coal black, and the wall shifted away after he touched it. It wasn’t a melting; no, it was more like a cracking. Like the beams decided to separate and re-merge in a different way. And then suddenly, the room was impossible to navigate.
Lucifer was on the outskirts of an inky labyrinth, the walls unforgiving and cold, the texture of tree bark. Every few steps he took, the walls shifted around him, his sense of direction getting skewed further, the light fading and becoming harder to ascertain if he was going forward or back; all he had was his sense of touch and these strange walls with their burnt-out textures. The ash continued to fall, sometimes getting in his eyes, but he managed to find a red string by his feet: the only splash of colour, no more sturdy than a yarn. Like a lifeline, Lucifer grasped it, seeing it as the only information he’d been given as to a way out. He had to get out—the end of the world wasn’t going to happen with the Devil and God trapped somewhere in a maze. The idea of the world quietly taken over while the deities were shoved into a nouveau Tartarus was, indeed, the stuff of his nightmares. Would the yarn make it better or worse?
“Hello?” he called out into the darkness, both with voice and mind, to sense any reply. Nothing came, the sound swallowed up in softness, the way a scream folds into a pillow case. Choking back a bit more emotion than was useful at the moment, Lucifer made his way onward. He’d seen the roils of Hell; surely, he could withstand what the string brought him. A sharp turn showed Raziel hanging in a crucifixion pose, but upside down, as all the blood rushed to the head of his corporal form, eyes lolling and bulging, lips turning blue around a tongue fat from lack of water, unable to speak, only to cough around the drifting ashes. Immediately, Lucifer tested to see if it was only his senses, or also his powers, which left him in this space; it seemed he could use telekinesis, but barely; not enough to cut his brother down with only his mind, but enough to pry a part of the bark of the wall and fashion it into a blade after a fashion.
After cutting Raziel down from the wall, Raziel stared at him with empty eyes and a thankless mouth, following like a shadow as the walls shifted again. Lucifer returned to following the string; down a flight of stairs he went, stairs that went down and down and down, seemingly endless, and he almost grew tired of the downward climb. Raziel was soft-footed behind him; Lucifer looked back to ensure he was there, chiding himself as Orpheus, who should have known better—but Ms. Thomas was hardly the God of the Dead, neither in guardianship nor in power. Lucifer would reign, he was determined. Finally, a small plateau came to pass, and on it was Renee, and Babylon, and Abaddon—all ties to a stake inside a boiling cauldron, their skin pruning and boils beginning to form. What meal were they for? Lucifer didn’t have the time to piece it together, but he freed these women whom he looked after like daughters, unable to stop himself from saving them.
He stood on the side of the cauldron, his foot blistering from the heat, and undid their knots, their ropes. His feat would heal, in time. Faster than most angels and demons—but not fast enough to be painless as he continued his descent down the staircase, the trio of girls fell in line behind him, soundless and thankless and soft-footed with Raziel. The string became more taut as he rounded a bend and the stairs dropped off; he couldn’t even see where he stepped, but he had to trust he was meant to keep going, that something would carry him along. The pain underfoot let him know this to be true, each step leaving a bloody trail behind him, though the floor was unknowable. And then he saw Leviathan, his best friend, his confidante, the only person in the whole cosmos he knew he could trust without hesitation nor question. And she was being lowered into the nothingness in a coffin with a glass top, but her the strength of her fists did not seem to change her trappings.
Lucifer jammed his bark-shiv into the side of the casket where its closure made rest; he wouldn’t trim the ropes lowering, for fear of losing her forever. Instead, he pried open the coffin, the makings of the place having an effect on itself, until he could separate it with enough space so Leviathan could pry herself out. She didn’t speak when she was freed; she looked through him and joined her place in the rank and file behind him, wordless and heedless and soft. Lucifer felt half-mad at the thought of it, but pushed away the questions that made him uneasy: Why weren’t they happy being free? What was this place? After all, there was no time for it. Who else did he need to save? Who else was in this wasteland of dust and ash? Was this what the apocalypse truly looked like: not nothing, but a pale horse of nothing? An almost-something? An eternal memory of a nightmare imagining a once-was dream of life?
And finally, there was the center of the labyrinth, with the red string having found its inception. It was a circle of falling ash and nameless tree bark, and those who he saved formed an outer circle, their shadow selves with shadow mouths and soot dark feet making black noise. Lucifer barely registered it, because in front of him, holding the other end of the twine, was Talia, her face lovely and serene as she held a beating heart in her teeth. It seemed to be his own, beating in time with what pulsing he could hear that was so loud thick it was deafening, the way quiet can be when surrounded by more silence. She pressed her teeth closer together and Lucifer gasped in pain. But behind her, there was a door. He didn’t know who this Talia was, but he couldn’t believe she would hurt him, not like this. She wasn’t made for that, it would unmake her; it couldn’t be true. Lucifer turned to warn his friends—
—only to find that their mouths were bloody, too. Saving others never did save yourself.
He looked from them to Talia, her eyes bright and loving, her hands reaching, inviting, saying, Just stay here; haven’t you had enough of the fighting? What has saving this world ever done for you? All of your friends become enemies. But here, the war’s already lost, and what a relief for it. Here, stay with us, stay with me, my love, stay with me, where I can never die again. And he felt himself reach for her, the way that you always go on reaching for the one that you love—the one you can never be rational about, the one who always has final command over your heart, no matter how much time has passed—he went on reaching—for her, always her—
—but he saw the ash falling on his hand, and he looked at her not for the spell she was but for the soul he remembered, and for the first time in a long time, he allowed himself a tear, a tear for all of the betrayals he’d felt, and all the more he know he’d yet to endure, and the loneliness that would always be a part of his burden—and he reached past her, to the door.
Location: 2C @ the Kavanagh
Date: 7pm, June 14th, 2017
Availability: @abaddonian
Lucifer doesn’t announce himself, doesn’t let Abaddon know he’s coming. He’s come to Los Angeles—to stay for awhile, this time. With the Gates of Hell closed, he could only do what was available to him; that was manage the overground. With the apocalypse around the corner, there was nothing keeping him in Vegas any more, so he had chosen—once he’d healed enough—to come to the city of angels. But the first order of business was not angelic in nature; no, this was one of those horrible heart-to-heart talks a father never wanted to have with a wayward daughter: one that ended in demotion. But freeing a Horseman who was an agent of destruction on top of the only source of viable cure was not a forgivable act, outright.
Lucifer sat in Abaddon’s apartment and waited for her to come home. She’d appreciate the element of surprise and Lucifer was a patient man. In the meanwhile, when he’d normally prepare dinner or perform other niceties, instead he simply poured himself some of her bourbon, sat in a comfortable chair by the window, and waited for her to arrive.
Location: é by José Andrés
Date: 7pm, June 9th, 2017
Availability: @motherofabominations
Lucifer was still feeling the aches and pains from his jaunty outing with Satan, but looked much better than the demoted demon, he’d bet on it. It was harder to heal without wings and Lucifer was still his own highest divinity. All that being said, he still had a badass scar across his eyebrow and his sides still felt pangs of anything but regret. But definitely pain. He was in condition, at this point, to do what needed to be done: give Babylon what she had earned. Especially with Belial becoming War and Abaddon’s turncoat, it was important that he fill the Prince shoes in a timely fashion. Gressil was hellbound—at least someone was on the right plane of existence, thankfully—but that still left Lures open and Chaos eventually impending.
He had invited Babylon to visit him in Vegas on this fine Friday evening. Last time, she had preferred to dine in, but this time, in celebration, he figured they’d go out. Last time, he’d offered to inconvenience Chef José Andrés with a little-notice drop-in which would have undoubtedly usurped some human’s dream meal; this time, he’d made reservations in advance. To the point where they wouldn’t even be dining with 6 other strangers—instead, it would be just them in the intimate setting. They were in a room with a wall that resembled a card catalogue, the light honeying everything a golden hue, with the best innovative Spanish cuisine this side of the border. He did hope she would like it.
Babylon was due to join him any moment; he straightened his tie and stood beside one of the chairs, ready to pull it out for her upon arrival.
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