Chapter Text
Millennia ago, when God and Goddess were still flush with happiness, they decided that they wanted a family, and soon after, the first angels were born. The angels brought great joy to their parents, and they quickly became as instrumental to creation as their parents themselves. As the children grew, they naturally grouped together based on personalities, interests, and skills. The most powerful among them became known as archangels, and the archangels became nigh inseparable.
The man who eventually became Lucifer Morningstar was one such archangel—headstrong and passionate, but unerringly patient with his younger siblings and devoted to his duties.
It was the other archangels who first noticed when Samael, the brightest and most curious among them, began to rumble about change. It was Raphael who tried to keep the peace when the disagreements between their father and brother began. It was Tzaphkiel who, when things started to sour between Father and Samael, reassured the fledglings that their father would never punish Sam too harshly. It was Jophiel and Raguel who were the last to choose sides when everything fell apart.
It was the archangels who were closest by during the final battle, when their beloved brother fell.
It was they who saw their father cry for the first time.
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Sometimes, Gabriel missed his brother so much, it hurt.
It should have helped—being there, in his brother's club, his presence masked by the cacophony of light and sound, ensconced in the press of human bodies—but it only widened the crack in Gabriel's soul.
Samael, now Lucifer, was just up in his penthouse, and yet the two of them might as well have been separated by the cosmos, for all the good it would do them. Any second now, his brother would enter the club, looking calm, confident, and free. He would laugh and smile at the humans around him, while Gabriel, unnoticed, would flutter around the edges of the room like a moth too frightened to reach toward the flame and hope that, just once, his brother would glance his way. Lucifer, the Morningstar, was both too close and too far for Gabriel to reach.
Gabe had been to Lux many times before—mostly out of curiosity, but also (he'd sometimes admit to himself) as a most exquisite form of self-torture. Humans liked to say that hell was the absence of God, but for Gabriel, he'd willingly walk into hell if only his brother was there to greet him.
Looking back, Gabriel couldn’t say when their mother had first started whispering in his brother's ear, but Gabriel suspected that it must have been almost from the beginning. Samael had always been curious, it was true, but the love that his father and brother had felt for each other was easy for everyone to see. Somehow, the hardest part of Sam's fall—for Gabriel, anyway—was never knowing why she targeted his favorite brother.
The change was gradual, so incremental that none of them noticed until their parents were fighting about Samael in full view of everyone. That should have been a warning sign, but even after the first few spats, Gabriel had been certain that everything would still work out. After all, Samael's grievances weren't so unreasonable, Michael loved his twin more than anyone, and everyone knew that Sam was Father’s favorite.
And then Mother intervened, and everything went to, well...
Gabe could still remember the way the gasp froze in his throat as Samael fell, the way they all stood by even as every cell in Gabriel's body urged him to hurry, catch him! It didn’t matter that everyone else seemed just as shocked as him—they all failed so utterly in that moment that Gabriel was still ashamed to think of it. As time went by, some of his younger siblings convinced themselves that Sam’s fall was Father’s will, but Gabriel had seen their Father’s face that day, and he had seen shock, heartache, and regret.
Any rage that their father might have felt had washed away with his tears, but the damage had already been done, and the chasm between Heaven and Hell only grew wider with time. The best Gabe could do now was watch from afar and pray that Michael was right about the changes on the horizon.
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It was an open secret in heaven that the archangels occasionally liked to go to earth to check on Lucifer. They never said as much—not to Father, or their other siblings, or even each other—but everyone knew that whenever one of them had business among the humans, they would make a point of flying by Los Angeles during the trip.
Some of the younger ones—the same ones that thought that Father was happy that Samael fell—thought that they checked on Lucifer out of a sense of duty, or to ensure that the Devil (a term that was never uttered in their father's earshot) was kept in check. But the older ones all remembered how Michael had stormed around for weeks when his brother had barred the gates of Hell and refused to see any of them, and it was obvious to everyone that trips to earth among the archangels had risen sharply since Lucifer's arrival.
Even then, only Raziel, keeper of secrets, knew just how poorly Michael had taken the loss of his twin. Only Raziel knew that Michael's rage in the light turned to muffled weeping in the dark, or how it was after Father had pulled Michael into his office for a private conversation that his most steadfast brother once again shone with purpose.
And that purpose, Raziel knew, had nothing to do with Michael hurting his brother.
For Raziel, who loved his fallen brother as surely as Michael, there was a great and terrible choice. Unlike his other siblings, who were stopped at the gates, Zee knew of a hidden path that could take him directly to Sam, if he dared use it.
He longed to take it.
But Samael was hurt, and angry, and afraid, and even though Raziel could take any abuse his brother doled out, he would rather save his brother the guilt of lashing out over Raziel's own peace of mind.
Instead, Zee tasked himself with learning as much about Hell as he possibly could, first from the demons he occasionally encountered, and then, after Luci banished demons from earth, from secondhand knowledge from other pantheons.
It was Tyr of the Norse who told him that Luci let their fallen siblings roam freely between earth and below—a show of the free will they had believed in and fought for so fiercely—and that one of his fallen sisters, if he was so inclined to visit, was currently having a grand time cavorting with Edward IV of York. After a rousing cross-continent search, Raziel managed only a short conversation with an understandably skittish sister and returned home disappointed.
In the centuries that followed, Raziel found himself crossing paths with his fallen brothers and sisters more and more—at first, warily, but eventually warmly, as his siblings realized he meant them no harm. He found himself looking forward to these chance meetings that often ended in good food, tales of travels, and gossip about their beloved Morningstar.
And if Raziel decided to shield any siblings who might visit earth from Heaven's sight in return for this information, Father certainly wasn't going to mention it.
After all, if he couldn't protect Lucifer directly, the least Raziel could do was guard his brother's secrets.
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Ariel almost Fell once.
Well, technically, she did fall, but it wasn't her fault, and how exactly did one Fall, anyway? Was it leaving Heaven? Entering Hell? Preferring chocolate chip ice cream to manna? Electric guitars to harps? She knew that Father had mellowed out considerably since Mother had gone, but he'd also made no move to reconcile with Lucifer in the intervening centuries, so no one was quite sure of the rules anymore, much as they liked to pretend otherwise.
The official story was that Ariel slipped, dislocated her wing, and then found herself at Lucifer's, where he poked and prodded at her until she made it safely back Upstairs. The unofficial story (and the one that Ariel told Michael and the others as soon as they were alone) was that big brother Luci saved her from becoming an angel pancake and let her follow him around for a week.
(The story around Hell was a bit different. Their mostly unembellished, surprisingly accurate version involved some tiny angel girl following the King around, picking fights with some of the nastier residents and leaking blood and glitter all over the place until Lucifer got tired of it and personally escorted her to the gates. The blood was no problem, but the glitter…)
The thing was, Ariel wasn't even sure how she had ended up in Hell. All she knew was that she had been arguing with one of her stupider brothers about how Lucifer deserved to be forgiven like everyone else (and sure, Ariel hadn't become an archangel until after Lucifer had left, but once an archangel, always an archangel and all that), but Ariel hadn't expected the idiot to push her, or for her wings to seize, or for her to fall far enough to crash through the roof of her brother's palace and land in his arms. It should have been embarrassing, or traumatizing, but Ariel could feel the way Lucifer's arms flexed to slow her descent, and then tightened protectively while Ariel caught her breath.
Ari didn't know how long she lay there in her brother's arms, but it was long enough to feel his lightbringer powers seep into her cells like a warm blanket on a cold night, and it was wonderful.
Ariel might have laid there forever, but then Lucifer seemed to realize just what he'd done, and he set her down and stepped away so fast it almost made her dizzy.
That was fine, because Ariel knew the truth, now. As long as she stuck with Lucifer, she'd be safe. He wouldn't let anything happen to her.
It was going to be great, getting to know her brother better. She told him as much, and then kindly pretended not to notice when he squawked in outrage and then ranted for the next ten minutes about how awful and terrible he was.
Ari called on every but of charm she had and smiled winningly at her long-lost big brother. "So, how about a tour?"
(And he gave her one, albeit reluctantly, at least until the glitter started giving some of the demons heart palpitations.)
Ariel had thought she'd like Lucifer before, but now she knew for certain.
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"You can't let Decker go on this trip with Lucifer."
Ella swung around, narrowly avoiding hitting her head on the machine in front of her.
The angel of death stepped from the shadow of the room, a hesitant smile on her face.
"Rae Rae," she hissed, not registering her friend's words, "not at work!" If the Lieutenant saw her having a conversation with an empty room, she'd have to see a shrink for sure.
Normally, Azrael would have been sorry about bothering Ella, but this was important. "You can't let Chloe go with Lucifer on his trip. It's too dangerous."
Ella scoffed. "Chloe's a homicide detective, and Lucifer is, you know," she flicked her eyes downward, "what do you mean it's too dangerous?"
Before Azrael had a chance to respond, however, Ella froze, and her eyes widened. "Oh. Are you telling me this as you, or are you telling me as you? Oh my gosh, is Chloe going to die?"
"No," the angel hastened to explain. "It's not her we're worried about."
"Lucifer's going to die?" And somehow, just that phrase coming out of her best friend's mouth made Azrael cringe.
"No!" she yelled, startling both of them. "No," softer this time, "there's a plan, already in motion, that we can't stop, but—" Azrael didn't know if Lucifer had told Ella about him being vulnerable around Chloe, so she certainly wasn't going to mention it, "and it's not great for Lu, but we can help a little if we're sneaky about it."
Ella's eyes narrowed. "Who's we?"
"You know. Me, and Amenadiel, and the archangels—"
"The archangels, as in St. Michael the Archangel? I thought they hated each other."
Azrael actually looked hurt. "There's been some anger and questionable decisions, sure, but you know better than to trust everything you read about that stuff." And yes, Ella did know that, but it was still surprising to hear.
"Of course, I'll help, but what does this have to do with me? Or Chloe?"
"Chloe can't go with Lu for reasons," she said in a way that told Ella these were hush-hush heaven things she wasn't supposed to know about, "but if he sees Mike or Gabe or even Raph he'll probably freak out, so I was thinking maybe you could go with him?"
"What?"
"You two had fun when you went to Las Vegas, right? And I know my brother likes you—"
Ella loved Rae Rae, she did, and Lucifer too, but that was totally beside the point. "What am I supposed to do what a bunch of archangels can't do? If Lucifer's in trouble, shouldn't you take it to the Big Guy or something?" Ella paused, then paled. "This isn't a rebellion, is it? You're not going to get into trouble for this, are you?"
"Dad hasn't said anything," Azrael waved the concern away, "which means he doesn't care. He hates this whole devil thing as much as the rest of us, even if he won't come out and say so. But some of our younger brothers are a bit...excitable, so it's best to keep this under wraps for as long as we can. And you won't be alone. Mike and the others will be close by," she promised, "just not close enough for Lu to sense them."
"I don't know…"
"You'll mostly be there for emotional support, and you're great at that!"
Ella sighed. She was going to regret this, she just knew it.