Chapter Text
“Alright people,” Luz began, steepling her fingers infront of her face as she stared at the assembled friends and family she had gathered for this most monumental of tasks. “I have brought you all together for one single purpose…”
She pointed at Willow and nodded firmly. “Amity got first dibs so will you be her maid of honor?” Willow smiled and nodded gratefully.
Luz then pointed at Gus and her eyes went hard. “Decorations and party planning.” Gus grinned and started summoning illusory clones to begin taking note after note.
And finally she pointed at Hunter, her expression so severe that it had the former soldier of the Emperor’s Coven shivering to attention. “And finally… ringbearer.”
Hunter blinked at her. “Isn’t that for little kids?”
“Yes,” Luz said while fighting off the smirk that tried to grow on her lips. “So you’re perfect for the role-” Hunter flipped her off and she finally began cackling like a witch out of a human realm film. “No, King is going to bear the rings but… will you be my Best Man?”
“I don’t know what that means but sure.” Hunter said with a thumbs up.
She shook her head and grinned. “This wedding is going to be great!”
Amity, her sweet potato of a fiance, was currently back at her dad’s place ‘wrapping up loose ends’ alongside Vaggie the fallen couch surfer which meant that her soon-to-be wife forever and ever was currently burning the corkboards covered in proposal plans in a massive bonfire.
It was too late, though: Emira had already sent her pictures.
The fact that Amity had been that obsessed with making the proposal perfect was… it made her heart happy and made her want to sing. Now, granted, she didn’t actually sing since randomly singing in public was kind of weird-
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In the depths of Hell…
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Charlie Morningstar, currently helping Sir Pentious get to truly know everyone again after his time as a spy for Vox ended in him being fired, felt horribly insulted and didn’t know why.
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-But it was okay, because she marched to the tune of her own drums most days. So Luz had been humming showtunes under her breath all morning, so what? She was happier than ever before, sue her!
So while Amity pretended like she could prevent her from learning about the corkboards, she had gathered all her friends and family members together to plan out the most important event in her entire life… her own wedding to Amity.
The entire Hexsquad (save Amity) Eda, Raine, King, and finally her own mom were all present in a simple little cafe in Bonesborough. Raine had somehow convinced their subordinates to give them the day off work ruling the Isles while Eda had just left a sticky note on her door telling the professors to deal with everything themselves.
King, adorable little pre-teen Titan that still was adorably small to her, sat and laughed as she explained what his role in things was going to be. He may have grown a few inches and looked more like a pre-teen than a toddler now… but he was going to always be her little goober of a chosen baby brother.
She hugged him close and looked at the assembled future members of her and Amity’s wedding party: Eda was currently furiously reading a book on earth human weddings, her mismatched eyes taking in as much as possible with an expression of complete focus. Raine, meanwhile, was in deep discussion with Gus about providing musical accompaniment for the venue while Gus and his illusory clones fire off ideas for music at a rapid pace. Willow looks happy as she explains what being a Best Man is to Hunter, who begins to tear up slightly… and her mom…
Her mom just looks happy. Camila has a watery smile on her face as she looks about the table and just seems to sigh in pure contentment. “You okay, mom?” Luz asks curiously.
“I’m just so happy for you, mija.” Her mom says with a shake of her head. “This… this is all I ever wanted for you.”
Now she feels like crying, great. “It took awhile but… yeah. I’m happy as can be right now.” She says while wiping her eyes as stealthily as she could, though from the still teary eyed smile on her mom’s face, she failed. “I…”
She then just decided to go for it and hug her mom. “I love you, mama.”
Camila sniffled and hugged her back. Mother and daughter held one another for a moment and just existed.
“Wanna see Eda freak out?” She asked once she pulled away, to which Camila raised an eyebrow. “Hey, Eda?” Luz asked as innocently as she could. “Will you walk me down the aisle?”
Silence followed as Camila gasped happily and both of them looked to see the one armed wild witch just staring in open shock… before her face screwed up with tears.
Much crying ensued.
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Camila left her daughter and her daughter’s other mother in all but blood as both teacher and apprentice hugged one another and sobbed happily. She… had cried all the happy tears she could have already today, any more and she was sure that she was going to be dehydrated.
She just took in the sight of Bonesborough, the renaissance-esque town with a spooky bent going about their day without a care in the world anymore. All the troubles of before were done: No evil emperor’s, no possessed Titans, no apocalyptic hellscapes… it was all just peaceful as could be.
She shook her head as her mind replayed the moment she had been thinking of all this time: She had told Lucifer she thought she loved him… and he responded in kind that he loved her back. It might have been while his brother, the Archangel Michael, was staring down them both but still!
She smiled and twirled a strand of hair around her finger happily as she thought it over and over. She… he made her happy. So utterly happy: He was goofy, and a dork, and was obsessed with her, and treasured her, and fell to pieces whenever she dressed up, and just sent her the funniest images of rubber ducks-
Yep, she had fallen hard. It was… it was just so nice to know that he felt the same way.
She was sure she would have to talk to Luz about that soon, about… potentially going steady with, well, the King of Hell but that would be for another day as today was all about her daughter’s happiness.
Here she was dating a fallen angel, planning her magic wielding daughter’s wedding to a witch from another world entirely while her found family took up positions in the wedding party. Her life was weird…
And she wouldn’t have it any other way.
She leaned against a lamppost and just sighed in bliss… before a thought wormed its way into her mind.
Lucifer- kindly, dorkish, and utterly sappy goofball that he was- was… well, all the comments he had made about hating his job and hating all the people he worked with save for his six friends suddenly made a lot of sense in her mind but…
He just seemed… miserable whenever he talked about his life outside of his daughter and friends. He just seemed utterly unhappy outside of… well, a chosen few things. She hadn’t been to a church in a long time but she remembered enough to remember that Hell was supposed to be the eternal punishment and that he technically deserved it… and yet, well, she loved him.
That, unfortunately for the cosmic balance of the universe, meant that she wanted him to be happy. Camila sighed as she realized that she was going to have to talk to him and help him try to work through ten thousand years of trauma and horror. She loved the goofy man and thus was going to help him, she had already decided it and thus she was going to go through with it.
The problem was, other than talking to him and being a shoulder to lean on, Camila could not for the life of her figure out a way to go forward with it.
She ran a hand through her hair and wondered how to help her boyfriend…
**********
“So they… what, come down once a year and just kill everything they come across?” Her sister, Emira, asked her with a worried frown as the bonfire raged on the Blight Manor front lawn.
Amity nodded as she mulled over potential dresses in her mind’s eye. “Yep, they call it the Extermination.”
Emira and Edric just kept staring. “And… These are the beings that humans revere as paragons of goodness and justice?” Edric asked in a strained voice.
Too busy considering why humans insisted on having wedding gowns be pure white when lilac and purple were better colors, her one-eyed friend Vaggie took up speaking. “I mean, considering that Michael seemed genuinely confused about the whole thing and got angrier and angrier the more I talked, I don’t think many in the High Council knew about the whole ‘kill all sinners forever’ thing that was going on.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just trying to wrap my head around everything- how does someone hide a war from everyone for almost two millennia?” Emira asked, sounding shocked and appalled.
In truth, Amity was curious about the same thing even though she was currently forming mannequins out of abomination muck and forming various styles of dress on them. This was her preparation for the most important day of her life, however, so she left answering questions to the expert.
Vaggie sat on the grass, clad in casual clothing of a simple red t-shirt and black jeans as the one-eyed fallen angel hummed to herself and rubbed her chin. “I’ve wondered the same thing, you know?” Vaggie said, picking a few embers out of her long gray hair. “Like, Adam’s been in charge for Him knows how long and yet Michael didn’t know.” The one-eyed fallen angel grimaced and shook her head. “Also, this place still feels too damn weird for my liking.”
“And yet here you sit, the first angel of Heaven to ever set foot on the Boiling Isles.” Amity said aloud as she formed yet another dress pattern out of the purplish muck. “How does it feel to bravely tread where nobody has tread before?”
Vaggie blinked at her and she shook her head. “It’s a quote from Cosmis Frontier-”
“Oh, Charlie loves those books.” Vaggie said with a tender smile on her face. “Had Razzle and Dazzle go up to the Earth and find a big box full of the complete anthology to bring back to her, she read through them all in less than a week.” Vaggie coughed into a fist and blushed a bit, her cheeks going gold. “She certainly rocked the cosplay, to be honest.”
Amity paused in her abomination magic and turned to look at Vaggie. “Your girlfriend read the books entirely and yet you don’t even know the last bit of the opening paragraph for every book?”
“In my defense, I was never really into science fiction.” Vaggie said with a shrug. “Give me a good spy thriller and I’m happy as can be-”
“Can we go back to the fact that apparently these angel guys have been waging a war of extermination for almost two thousand years and nobody knew!?” Emira shouted, looking frazzled.
Vaggie blinked, her eye widening. “Ah, right… well, I don’t know.” The fallen angel turned couch surfer said with a shrug even as the twins looked furiously disappointed at not having something concrete. “I have a theory or two but in truth unless you ask Adam himself, you’ll never really get the truth.” Vaggie paused, cocked her head to the side, and nodded. “And even then, whether he’ll tell you the actual truth is another matter entirely.”
She paused as she let her mind wander, her abomination mannequin turning into a dancing pair of herself and Luz all in purple. “What is your theory, then?” She asked curiously as she turned to Vaggie again.
The fallen angel shrugged. “I think it has to do with the fact that Adam has someone high up in the ranks helping to hide the evidence from the wider heavenly host.” The one-eyed woman said. “Who it is, I don’t know, but they have to be high up in the High Council for even Michael to not know about it till I told him.”
“That’s not good,” Edric said before pausing for a moment. “I think, anyway. I don’t actually know anything about how Heaven works and at this point I think I’m good.”
“Heaven… other than that it’s literal paradise.” Vaggie said with a frown on her face. “I- I miss it a lot, certainly miss my family but… well, it’s been a few years so they probably think I’m dead.” the fallen angel finished up with a shrug.
“Wait, didn’t you talk to your family while you were an, uh, exorcist?” Amity asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Nope.” The one-eyed woman said as she leaned back on the grass and relaxed. “Wasn’t allowed to talk about anything related to our job for fear of upsetting the civilians-” Vaggie paused, muttered the words over a few times, and then sighed so bone-wearily that she sounded despairing. “And now I know another way Adam hid everything, neat.”
“That’s just the Emperor’s Coven.” Edric said and when everyone turned to him, he anxiously rubbed the back of his head and chuckled. “I mean, doesn’t that sound exactly like the Emperor’s Coven?
Vaggie said nothing, having gone back to staring at the pale orange and pinkish sky in absolute wonderment. “A world untouched by God…” The fallen angel muttered to herself before shaking her head. “Thanks for bringing me with you all to this place, it’s…” Vaggie smiled gently, looking truly grateful. “It’s nice having friends of my own, you know?”
Amity paused, the bonfire dying down slightly, and turned to smile at her otherworldly friend. “Don’t mention it…” She paused as an idea popped into her head as she turned Edric’s words over and over in her mind. “Actually, do you want to go somewhere with me really quick?” She asked the fallen angel.
**********
The conference room was full of witches all gathered in a circle, nursing cups of tea or eating biscuits as they stared at the only one speaking. “... Knew it was wrong, but he was the voice of the Titan!” A three eyed witch said angrily, waving her cup of tea through the air. “He asked for my palisman and, well, who was I to deny him!?”
“This is a safe place, Verana.” The medical witch next to her said, nodding sagely as Verana visibly calmed down. “You are amongst friends and former covenmates. The Emperor is dead, he can’t hurt anyone anymore.”
It was a bi-weekly gathering of former members of the Emperor’s Coven, a massive therapy circle for them all to vent about the stresses of working for a genocidal tyrant and talk through the grief and frustration that came from realizing that your whole life and purpose was a lie made by a con-artist to try and kill everyone ever.
Lilith Clawthorne found it soothing and relaxing, which was great since she had helped found this little shindig afterall. She had once been the head of the Emperor’s Coven and thus she had decided to give back slightly.
It was… it was nice to know that the guilt that ate her up sometimes, that consumed her many days, wasn’t her burden to bear alone. Many former members of the coven were in the same boat as she was and it was nice to just be amongst friends and former comrades in this kind of setting.
Everyone knew, everyone knew damn well what they were all meeting about and yet… and yet once within the walls of the former coven building turned meeting hall, nothing else mattered but what you personally brought to the table.
Or, to be specific, the circle of chairs.
She had helped set up similar therapy circles for every one of the covens and was proud of how she had managed to help out so many people, it almost made up for everything.
Verana, former member of the Emperor’s Coven who had helped brand many wild witches over her time, was currently ranting about how furious she was that Belos (or Philip Wittebane) had stolen and most likely eaten her palisman when the doors to their little therapy circle building opened and in walked-
She blinked at the sight of Amity Blight, her former pupil and current protege, leading a gray-skinned woman with one eye and whitish-gray hair in that she had never seen before in her life. This was odd since the only people who wanted to come here were former coven members entirely.
“Don’t mind me, just dropping off someone I think could benefit from all of this.” Amity said, situating the dark gray-skinned woman into a chair before ducking out of the room entirely.
The one-eyed woman stared, every last former coven scout in the room stared back. “Uhh…” The woman said smartly.
“Don’t worry, this is a safe space.” Lilith said with what she hoped was a kind smile. “Even if you don’t want to share what role you played in the coven system, if Amity brought you here then it was for a good reason.”
“I honestly don’t know what made her bring me here to be honest.” The one-eyed woman said. “I mean, she’s kind of my only friend outside of my girlfriend’s friend group… or at least we know each other, so I guess I trust her but still-”
“This place is for former members of the Emperor’s Coven to talk about their experiences, their losses, and their grief and anger over how they had been treated by the Emperor.” The medical witch said with a raised eyebrow. “And… I’m sorry, but are you a former member of the Emperor’s Coven?”
“Not really, no.” The woman said and there was a general ripple of confusion going about the room at her presence. “I just only found out the Boiling Isles were a thing about a few days ago so… yeah.”
Now everyone was openly confused at what she was doing not only here, but on the Isles itself.
The woman sighed and rubbed at her eye in agitation. “I don’t- I don’t know what a coven is but Amity told me to speak from the heart about all that I’m afraid about in my life so I might as well start talking.”
“Ma’am, I can recommend you some more generalized-” The medical witch began.
“I’m afraid that I will never be worthy of my girlfriend’s love because I’m a horrible monster with the blood of thousands on her hands, all because I believed the lies of a psychotic monster and his pet murderer.” The woman said and the medical witch closed their mouth with an audible click of teeth as every set of eyes in the room rocketed towards her. “I was a monster, serving an even bigger monster, for years and years doing horrible things because I was told that it was all in service to a higher cause.”
Frowns began to form on the faces of the former coven members, distant gazes and furious tears beginning to form as they lost themselves in memories.
“He told me- he told me it was all in service to God, to Heaven, to protecting everyone back home like my family and so I did everything without question for years and years.” The gray-haired woman said grumpily, looking displeased at speaking. “Then he asked me to do something unspeakable and so I said no and was hurt pretty damn badly at that. Cast aside like yesterday’s trash without an eye or without wings.” The woman laughed darkly, shaking her head as she gingerly rubbed the eyepatch over her left eye.
Now Lilith just looked into the distance, her mismatched eyes misty as she remembered Belos telling her he wasn’t going to heal Edalyn and to destroy the staff her sister had carved with dad…
The woman shook her head. “I just… I want to be worthy of her, worthy of Charlie, but how can I do that when the woman she fell for is a lie I told to hide the truth of things: That I’m a hideous monster who deserves nothing but scorn and hatred for all that I’ve done to her and her people?”
The one-eyed woman shook her head and chuckled ruefully, long hair going back and forth. “I’m sorry, this was a mistake. I don’t know why Amity recommended this because I may have just ruined it-” The woman was rambling now, getting up out of her chair.
“Wait.”
Lilith found out she had spoken up before she could even register it happened, standing up and looking at the gray-haired woman with what she hoped was welcoming comfort. “This… I think you’re exactly where you’re meant to be. We all have stories like that if you’d like to stay and hear us out?”
The one-eyed woman smiled gently and nodded as she got back in her seat.
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Meanwhile, deep in the outer reaches of the universe…
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A comet colored in crayon stars, suns, and moons traveled through the heavens. It was a nice enough comet, decently sized, and it was the closest to being a vehicle that The Collector would ever truly know.
He had grown a few inches but otherwise was still the same Archivist that he had always been: his hair was fluffier, he had tiny baby wings on his back now, and his limbs had to be stretched on a daily basis but he was still just a former angel of the High Holy.
The Collector paused, currently thinking hard, before smiling as a stray thought struck him: He hadn’t seen King or the others in a few… was it years since the incident with Luz’s memories? Time was such a tricky thing to beings like him and his siblings but right now he wanted to see his friends.
And thus did the Collector turn the comet around and begin flying back towards the Demon Realm at top speeds… the better one, not the one that all his siblings were mad that their boss had been saddled with.