We’re baaaaaaack! Last year was a little crazy for the both of us, but we’re super excited to bring Natan Week back for 2019! Last time we had a ton of fun, and it seemed like you all did, too, so we can’t wait to recreate all that energy and creativity this time around. This fandom may be small but we’ve seen your talent and we want to celebrate that again.
This year, Natan Week is going to be held August 4-11, and the prompts we’ve chosen all fit under the theme of Memories, in honor of all the laughs and tears the Memory Arc has brought (and will undoubtedly continue to bring) us. It’s a little different than last time, with all the prompts being points throughout their history where they’ve made important memories.
Here are the prompts!
Aug. 4: Hospital
Aug. 5: Bar
Aug. 6: Bridge
Aug. 7: Warehouse
Aug. 8: Coast
Aug. 9: Motel
Aug. 10: Hell
We’ve also included a bonus day:
Aug. 11: Home
We left them a little open to interpretation since we don’t want you all to feel like you’re confined to canon or the timeline or even the literal location. We can’t wait to see what you all do with them!
Make sure you tag us in all of your posts @natanweek and leave #natanweek2019 in the first five tags so we’ll be able to find them all!
If you’re afraid of forgetting, don’t worry! All of this can be found in our About section.
We hope all of you are as hype about this as we are! Have fun and get creative — we can’t wait to see what you all come up with. :)
There we go, the final prompt for @natanweek, “hell”. I wanted to draw Natalie’s soul between fake and real satan, and yeah, here it is. I think it turned out okay. It’s been a fun challenge trying to draw one full drawing a day and to return to drawing digitally, but now my arm definitely needs a rest. Thanks for the reposts and sweet tags. This comic has a really lovely fan community.
iiiiiiiiiiit’s @natanweek! Life has been hectic so I don’t know how many submissions I can get out on time, but I know I have always wanted to draw characters as cocktails, and that seemed fitting with day 2′s theme
Summary: Natalie is very sick, and very old, and very mortal. Lucifer is very not.
Warning: Major character death (nothing violent but it still happens)
Words: 1096
Notes: My sister told me I didn’t know how to write something not happy so this exists for the sole reason of proving her wrong. Fun fact, the title is “death doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints (it takes and it takes and it takes)” but that looked way too long in the title spot. For the prompt ‘Hospital’. @natanweek
As naive as it had been, Lucifer had hoped that he was done being in hospitals. His girl was less active, so she wasn't prone to as many accidents. No more falling off of roofs, no more being kidnapped by rogue angels or demons. The price with being less active though, was age, and his girl was old by human standards. Her body was frailer and weaker than it had ever been, and she'd had this cough for so long. For too long, the doctor had said. The antibiotics weren't working, the doctor had said. She probably only has a few days left, the doctor had said. Lucifer had decided he didn't like this doctor.
Despite the situation, where they were, how sick she was, Natalie was trying so hard to lighten the mood. He often told her how annoying her optimism was, or how her jokes weren’t funny, and she would smile at him because she knew. She knew exactly how much of a liar he was, exactly how much he loved her jokes.
“Don’t worry, I can’t die. It’s like that saying. Not good enough to go to heaven, too annoying to go to hell. Satan would just kick me right back out.” She had that shine in her eyes, the one that told him she was waiting for him to roll his eyes, or scoff, or anything. He knew his earrings had that soft purple glow to them, giving him away no matter how well he managed to mask his face.
“You know that’s not how this works, Nat.”
She was quiet, for long enough he thought she might be falling asleep, and then, "What do you think, Luce? Do you think I'm going to Heaven or Hell?" Her voice was soft, her weariness showing so easily despite how hard she tried to hide it.
"Probably Hell." The thought tore at him, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it. She didn’t belong there, not with all those angry souls, the ones who would want to hurt her. She didn’t deserve to be tortured for the rest of eternity just because of him.
She made a face at him. "Michael said he fixed the soul thing and I'd go to Heaven."
"Then why'd you ask, kid?" He knew why.
"I was making conversation.” No, she was trying to prepare him for when she died, making him think about it so he wouldn’t be blindsided later. “Why'd you say Hell? Do you think Michael went back on his word?"
He snorted. "No, I think he went through with it. Then you married Satan. I think you damned your own soul."
She narrowed her eyes at him, contemplating something. "Worth it. I-" She was interrupted by a coughing fit, and he was horribly reminded of the pneumonia, of how a 90 year old woman isn't likely to survive pneumonia after having it for so long, how Natalie had had it for too long.
She stopped and looked at him. "Your ear rings are brighter."
He always hated how easily she could read him because of his earrings, and she had always loved it. She liked to tell him that he had emotion coming out of his ears. "No they're not."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm sick, not blind."
He clenched his jaw, looking out the window. Not at her. He couldn’t stand seeing that look in her eyes, not while they were talking about where her soul was going in the next couple days. "So what?"
"You're Satan. You'll figure out how to see me." And there it was again, that annoyingly persistent optimism.
"You know I can't do that. I can't go into Hell, it's inside me. I can't go into Heaven, I don't have wings. This is..."
"I know," she said softly. "I was just... I was hoping to make you feel better."
Some days, he really hated how optimistic she was. Today was one of those days.
On her last day she didn't wake much. When she did, she didn't speak. The coughing had gotten worse, so much worse, and he could hardly stand to be in the same room and listen to it. At the same time, he knew he couldn't leave her alone. She had died alone last time. He wouldn't let her die alone this time.
The last time she woke up, he somehow knew it would be the last time he saw her eyes, and he thinks she knew it too. She stared at him, looking almost calm, and he just studied the green, trying so hard to commit it to memory, and being so afraid that he would forget it in 50 years. He leaned forward, kissing her softly on the forehead. She wasn't awake long, her eyes closing with a deep, shuddering breath. The coughing got even worse, and he tried so hard not to cry. He wanted to wait, he wanted to be strong for her until the end, even if she wasn't awake to know it.
It seemed ironic, how he wasn't sure he'd remember what shade of green her eyes were, but he knew he'd never forget the sound of that machine telling him she was gone. Ironic in the worst way, the cruelest twist of fate. The beeps getting slower until they stopped, until it flat lined, until her heart wasn't beating anymore. He knew without a doubt that that sound would haunt him for the rest of his days.
He planned her funeral. He invited her friends, whatever was left of her family. He didn't go, not until after everyone else had left. He wouldn’t be able to handle the humans’ particular brand of pity and sympathy. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to talk to another human for a very long time.
As he went to her grave, his old man's face slowly melted away. His back straightened to his full height, the wrinkles on his face smoothed out, the angles of his face sharpened. Finally, his horns came out, glowing the same purple as his earrings. He looked like himself for the first time in maybe 50 years. Ever since he had noticed that his wife was aging, and he was not, and wouldn’t that look suspicious soon. He had matched her day by day, doing his best to make sure no one had any reason to question them.
He stared at the nameplate, and he finally allowed himself to cry.
pairing: natan
word count: 2247
summary: the coast was the beginning of the end, but natalie wants it to be the beginning of... well, the beginning.
notes: for day 5 of @natanweek, coast. suggestive themes.
(n.) the deep, distant stretch of the ocean that is still visible from the land; the foreseeable future.
Lucifer hates even the mention of it. The good memories attached to the coast do an abysmal job of overshadowing the bad ones. He can’t think of her dripping wet and pouting, of her spiteful determination to scale the cliffside, of her calling him her guardian angel, without recalling everything that followed.
And though she is alive and whole, those memories are the ones that haunt him.
Her body on the bed, blue lips and sunken eyes and skin that’s grown cold. The thought that he had failed, that she had trusted him and he had all but thrown her into Hell himself. The dull ache of the jagged scars on his back, a reminder of what he had given up to bring her back.
He feels the loss of her so acutely in his memories that sometimes it’s hard to remember that she’s here.
It’s why she’s not going to win this one.
“Absolutely not.”
She huffs, blowing her bangs out of her face. She had changed them again, cutting them until they fell straight across her forehead. She claims she likes them, and he knows she does. He also knows that they annoy her endlessly, because of the impatient way she brushes them out of her face every few minutes.
He knows that once they grow out, she’s not going to recut them.
“Why not?”
“Because I said so.” He returns his eyes to the book he’s reading, though he watches her get up out of his periphery. He crosses an ankle over his thigh and moves the book out of her reach, but he knows his attempts will go unrewarded.
She plucks the book out of his hands and climbs over his leg, until she’s seated in the crook of it.
“That’s not an answer,” she says, waving the book just out of his reach. “I have vacation days! I want to use them.”
“No one said you couldn’t use them.” He abandons the effort to reclaim the worn paperback and leans back. Natalie folds down the top of the page and drops it to the floor, satisfied that she’s won his attention.
“But you said—”
“I said no coast. We can go to the mountains, or to—”
Natalie throws her hands up, and he briefly entertains the idea of shifting until she topples off of him.
“I don’t want to go to the mountains. I want to go to the coast,” she repeats emphatically.
“I already took you to the coast,” he says, trying to keep the bite from his voice, but Natalie catches the edge. He sees the recognition in the way her eyes light up as she pieces together his reluctance.
Nearly six years by his side has made her an expert in all things Lucifer. He resents her for it.
“The last time didn’t end very well for either of us.”
“You don’t say,” he says, voice so thick with sarcasm that Natalie frowns at him. Her bangs fall into her eyes and she swipes at them.
“All I’m saying is that I — well, I got sick. And you—”
“I’m well aware.” She doesn’t flinch at the growl, but she doesn’t complete the thought either.
“Frankly, I think you’re being unreasonable, and a sourpuss to boot.”
Lucifer is shocked at the conviction with which she delivers the words, and even more so that anything she can say or do at this point can still manage to shock him.
“I’m being unreasonable? Did you just hear yourself?”
“Of course I did. I said it, didn’t I? No, don’t — just listen to me for a second, will you?”
Lucifer bites his tongue against everything he wants to say with a glare. Natalie shifts closer on his lap, out of the cradle his crossed leg makes, and he returns it to the floor. She takes one of his hands in hers, sweeping her thumb over his knuckles.
“Bad memories, I get it. The coast is where I got sick. And that led to me dying. And, I guess, led to me going to Hell, too.” He inhales sharply and glowers at her more intensely, but she meets his eyes and raises his hand, flattening his palm to her chest, just over her heart.
He feels the steady beat of it, and Natalie smiles.
“I’m here. Thanks to you, I’m here. And I don’t want to live the rest of my life running away from the bad memories. I want to make so many good memories that the bad memories seem like a bad dream from a long time ago.”
She pauses, curling her fingers around his, to see if her words have had any effect on him. He’s still glaring at her, but it’s not as fierce anymore, and her smile widens.
“I want to make them with you. The coast doesn’t have to be a scary place.”
“I’m not scared,” he says immediately, and it sounds petulant and childish to his own ears. Natalie laughs, throwing her head back. It’s loud and grating and Lucifer doesn’t think he could live without it.
When she calms down, she shimmies forward a little more, until she can wrap her arms around his neck and play with the hair at the nape of his neck. He doesn’t believe for a moment she doesn’t know exactly what she does to him.
She’s not 18 and naive anymore. She’s 23 and that mischievous little glint in her eyes is familiar, but there’s a wickedness to it now that only confirms his suspicions.
“Then you’ll take me to the coast?” she asks with perfect innocence, leaning in close. “Where we can make some new memories? Better ones?”
He hates the way her gaze drops to his lips. He hates the way she fits against him. He hates that she knows exactly how to get him to give in.
Most of all, he hates that he doesn’t really hate any of it.
“...I’ll think about it,” he finally says, as much as he’s willing to relent today. She squeals in his ear and he winces. Natalie drops a kiss on the tip of one point as an apology, before scrambling off of his lap to go make arrangements he knows he’ll have to redo later.
He sighs.
x
Natalie threads her fingers through his, pulling his arm tighter around her shoulders and pressing herself deeper into his side. He looks down at the top of her head, the dying sunlight casting her in pinks and oranges and yellows.
His chest tightens at the memory of what happened last time they were here. She had put her trust in him, had believed without question that he would save her from Hell, that he would protect her, that he would—
Natalie sighs, utterly content where she’s burrowed against him, pulling him out of his own head. He still wonders sometimes, how she did it — how she crawled under his skin and carved out a place for herself inside his bones without notice, not until it was too late to do anything about it.
“It’s even prettier than I remember,” she says, and he hums in agreement even though his eyes haven’t touched the horizon in quite a few minutes. He tracks the sun’s descent on her skin, the warmth of the sky bleeding into something cooler, darker.
She laughs, too loud and too sudden against the peace and quiet they’ve been enjoying, and Lucifer forces his features into a frown to hide the fact that he had been watching her like some kind of lovesick idiot.
“What is it?”
Shifting until she was upright beside him and releasing his hand, she turns to face him. His arm returns uselessly to his side, and he curls his fingers into a fist to resist the urge to pull her back into him.
“I was just thinking of the last time we were here. Of how much of a jerk you were,” she says, a cheeky grin tugging at the corners of her lips. He opens his mouth to remind her that he’s still a jerk, because he’s still the Devil, and if she needed the reminder he would be more than happy to provide it, but he doesn’t get the chance.
She scrambles up onto her knees, and shuffles forward until she’s settled between his legs.
“Well, okay.” Her voice drops a little conspiratorially, as if she were sharing a secret he hadn’t asked for. She props her arms against his upraised knees, and leans in closer. “I was thinking about how we were both such idiots, for so long. I’ve loved you since Oregon, you know,” she admits casually, as if it were an afterthought, as if it were common knowledge that she had loved him before she saw the worst parts of him and unwaveringly continued to do so afterwards.
Natalie continues on, though, oblivious to the state she’s left him in. “That’s six years, right? Six years that you’ve been such a big part of my life.” She sighs, wistfully, and looks over her shoulder at the darkening horizon. “We’ve made a lot of good memories, don’t you think?”
Lucifer isn’t sure if she’s expecting an answer or not, and he thinks it’s a dumb question, anyways. Of course they’ve made a lot of good memories. He stays silent, waiting for the rest of her rambling, because of course there’s more. This is Natalie. There is always more.
But she’s strangely quiet, turning in between his legs until she’s seated again, her back to his chest. They watch as the sky turns purple and the first of the stars begin to wake, winking into existence. She rests her head in the space between his neck and shoulder, and he wraps an arm around her.
And because he knows Natalie, more intimately than he’s ever known anyone, he’s not surprised when it turns out there is, in fact, more.
“I know you think this place is the beginning of where my life ended,” she says, and for once she seems mindful of her volume. He tenses, and she wraps her arm around his, looking up at him. “I promised you better memories, though, didn’t I? Lucifer?” He meets her eyes, and nods, though even he can tell it’s stiff.
Natalie smiles and it’s like he’s watching the sunset all over again.
“I don’t want you to think like that anymore.”
“Yeah,” he says, trying to force a scathing note of sarcasm into his voice but it comes out rough, “no problem. I’ll just stop.” She tilts her head at him, like he’s said something funny, but he doesn’t think he has.
“What I mean is, I don’t want this place to be the beginning of the end of my life anymore. I want it to be the beginning of the beginning of ours.”
He raises an eyebrow at her, because all of that sounds like nonsense to him. Natalie puffs her cheeks out, and even in the dark he can tell that she’s blushing. His other eyebrow joins the first in surprise. Natalie doesn’t do that often, too straightforward and sure of what she wants to be embarrassed by it.
She grabs his hand and takes a deep breath, and tries again.
“Marry me.”
Lucifer stares at her in utter incomprehension. He blinks, waiting for the rest, for the punchline, but Natalie just stares at him, looking both expectant and a touch nervous. She squeezes his fingers after a moment, searching his eyes.
“What?” he finally manages, and it sounds strangled to his own ears but he doesn’t have the necessary wits to care at the moment.
“The only future I can see for me is one that has you in it, Lucifer,” she says earnestly, and it feels like he’s fracturing from the inside out. “So… will you marry me?”
He searches her eyes, her face, wondering what the joke is, but there’s no joke. There’s just Natalie and her open expression and her hand in his.
“Lucifer?” she asks, hesitant after his long silence, raising up a little.
“And here I thought you were getting a little smarter,” he says at last, but Natalie doesn’t have the chance to voice her indignant complaint before he’s leaning down to steal her lips. She grins into the kiss, turning to wrap her arms around his neck.
“Is that a yes?” He pulls her closer to him in response, and she laughs, threading her fingers through his hair.
For the first time in years, he doesn’t feel the ache of her loss. He only feels her, warm and alive in his arms, kissing too eagerly and laughing too loudly.
When she pushes him flat on his back so she can straddle his waist, crowned in moonlight, her eyes gleaming like the stars, he can think only of how he wants to spend the rest of her life by her side.
Her smile turns mischievous, and he watches in stunned awe as she pulls her shirt up over her head, dropping it somewhere beside them. She takes his face in her hands and leans down, brushing their lips together.
“I promised you better memories, didn’t I?” she whispers cheekily, and he pulls her down against him with a groan.
He supposes the coast is not such a terrible place, after all.
A day late lol but whatever. I’m recovering from surgery, I think I’m doing p good.
Once again, same universe as Cower And Præy this time it’s a version of a scene that may appear in a future chapter. Not sure yet.
This time I think everything is fairly self explanatory
At this point in the story Natalie is trying to pretend she doesn’t have feelings for Lucifer, Luce on the other hand is uncomfortably aware that he’s got feelings for Natalie and he’s not happy about it lol
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sometimes after work the archival team liked to meet up for drinks and gossip. Well, not the entire archival team. Zoe and Lucifer were always notably absent. And Ipos and Sheila were showing up less and less since the attack on the archives. So the archival team meeting up for drinks was more like Natalie drinking alone, trying not to think about how her friend had died and had been replaced by a monster and she hadn't even noticed for weeks.
God, what kind of friend was she? What kind of person was she?
"Well, this is pathetic." The familiar voice had Natalie looking up from where she'd been staring into her drink.
Her ears hadn't been lying, for some reason Lucifer was there. The weight of the guilt that had been weighing her down lightened as her focus happily shifted to the Archivist.
"Hey, boss! What're you doing here?"
"Looking for you." He replied dryly.
"Awww!" Natalie grinned and leaned back in an attempt to be cute.
She almost fell off her chair. Maybe she'd drunk a little to much. Lucifer reached a hand out to steady her. Natalie felt her heart do something funny, which she ignored. Having fuzzy feelings for anyone let alone her boss right then was a bad idea. If she was even having feelings, she was probably just drunk or something.
Natalie also ignored that she'd felt similar fuzzy feelings while sober.
"Careful, kid. It would be inconvenient if you fell and gave yourself a concussion right now." He snapped.
"I'm not worried. You'll catch me." She grinned at him.
His expression did something funny before he glared at her and stood up, pulling her to his side to help her stand.
"Alright. You're going home." He declared.
Natalie decided to go with it. It was comfortable, being taken care of right then. It was nice.
She lost track of time and space for a bit, absorbed in how nice the human contact was. Trying to convince herself that there was no other reason she felt so comfortable being held by Lucifer.
Then they were sitting in the back of a car and Lucifer was no longer holding her. So she did the only logical thing and leaned onto his shoulder, wrapping her arms around his bicep.
"You're clingy when drunk, huh?" He sounded pissed but he made no move to get rid of her.
They stayed like that for a while, Natalie almost drifted off in the quiet and the calm, before Lucifer spoke.
"What happened....It wasn't your fault."
Natalie snorted.
"I lead her right to the archives, and I didn't even notice she was a monster. In what way is that not my fault?" She asked rhetorically.
"The NotThem's entire purpose is to trick people. There's no way to see through it's disguise unless you happen to be one of the people that slipped through the cracks of whatever memory changing bullshit it does. I didn't think anything was wrong at first either." Lucifer said it like it was an obvious fact.
Like it absolved Natalie of the deaths the NotThem caused.
She stayed silent. She didn't think there was a way to tell him that no, this was her fault. If she'd just been smarter none of this would've happened.
Lucifer sighed, but he didn't say anything else on the subject. Natalie counted herself lucky and enjoyed the quiet until the car pulled to a stop in front of an unfamiliar building.
Lucifer pulled her out of the car and started leading her inside. She went along with him, trusting him, but she had to ask.
"Where are we?"
"This is where I live. You're sleeping on my couch." He said simply.
Natalie accepted this answer with a small hum.
Truthfully, she was curious about what Lucifer's apartment looked like. He seemed to spend all his time in the archives after all.
He pulled her trough his door and let her fall onto a couch, not even sparing her a glance as he walked off to do something. Natalie took the chance to sit up and look around.
It was about as dusty and unlived-in as she had expected. There was a bookshelf, filled with books, a couch, a tv, an empty coffee table and that was about it for that room. There weren't any pictures on the walls or knick-knacks anywhere. Natalie felt a little sad. Lucifer deserved to have a life outside the archives.
In that moment she resolved to make him get out of the archives and have some fun once in a while. She drag him along to see movies or to hang out with her friends or...something. Ideas could wait until she was more sober.
Lucifer walked back into the room and shoved a cup of tea into her hands.
"Here. Drink this or don't, I don't care, then go to sleep."
"Thanks, Luce!" Natalie said brightly.
Lucifer's face did that weird thing again. This time he just turned and left her alone. Natalie shrugged and sipped at the tea.
Once she was finished she drifted off into sleep fairly easily. For the first time since she'd started working at the Magnus Institute she didn't have a single nightmare as she slept.
