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It’s not so much that Ella is mad , so much as that she’s so incredibly disappointed. She had trusted Ray-Ray, really, and they had even set ground rules, but seeing the -- girl? Woman? Ghost? -- familiar figure in her lab again out of the blue hurts.
“Ray-Ray,” Ella hisses, and instinctively peeks over her shoulder. The new lab is super nice and really decked out, but the glass walls? They’re really messing her up now. The entire precinct can watch her break down behind glass walls like an animal in the zoo.
Ray-Ray raises her hands at her, palms down, mouth twisted into a grimace. “I know, I know! I’m not supposed to be here again, but I needed to talk to you.”
The severity in which she says it flicks a switch in Ella’s mind. For all that Ray-Ray has been a being of chaos in Ella’s life, she’s never seen her so serious.
Ella can’t help herself; she wraps her arms around her waist and steps closer, shoulders hunched, worried. “You okay? Is something wrong?”
“It’s fine,” Ray-Ray assures her, but her eyes keep darting to the door. “Ella--”
“Miss Lopez!” Lucifer’s cheery call makes her whip around to face him, standing at the door with a bright look in his eyes. Oh God. Did he see ? Did he hear her talking to Ray-Ray? Was he going to tell everyone?
There must be a look on her face, because he raises an eyebrow and shuts the door behind him. “Come now, Miss Lopez. Are you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Ray-Ray snorts, and Ella fights everything in her to just wave her away. She plasters on the best smile she can, and waves her hands. Just act normal, see what he wants, and get back to Ray-Ray. “Hey, buddy! What’s up? What, uh...what’s happening?”
He tilts his head and smiles, hands tucked behind him as he steps towards the windows. “If you’re busy I can come back later, but I was hoping to speak with you about something. It’s important,” he adds, and begins shutting the blinds.
Ella turns to Ray-Ray, and sees her also following Lucifer’s slow trajectory around the lab, hiding them away from the rest of the world. In a way, she’s relieved; Lucifer is such a method actor that he’d probably just roll with it if she told him the truth. But on the other hand, what if he’s not? What if that’s the last straw and he walks out and announces to the world that Ella Lopez is certified cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs? She’ll have to move back home and she can’t do that again, living with her brothers and having to deal with them--
“Miss Lopez?” Lucifer’s face is inches from hers, brow furrowed and he looks worried! Concerned! Over her!
“I”m fine!” She wheezes, and takes a giant step back, accidentally putting herself right next to Ray-Ray. “I’m fine, totally, just… okay!” She smiles stiffly and rocks on her heels and clenches her fists behind her hard enough to hurt.
Lucifer leans on her work table, nodding at her with that look still firmly in place. “Of course you are.”
“It’s gonna be okay,” Ray-Ray says beside her.
Ella chances a glance at Ray-Ray, trying to be as casual as possible, and feels her heart stutter when Ray-Ray moves around her to stand next to Lucifer, sliding her glasses off with a sigh.
“What um...what did you want?” Ella says, and hugs herself again because something is not right, and her brain is in overdrive and sluggish all at once.
“Well, the same thing we all want, Miss Lopez.” Lucifer sits on the table, accidentally facing Ray-Ray and it’s almost -- almost, because he can’t possibly see her too, that’s just not possible -- it’s almost like he’s facing her on purpose, his eyes tracking the air where Ray-Ray would be.
“I hate this,” Ray-Ray mumbles, and she scrubs at her face aggressively. Ella totally sympathizes; if she wasn’t sure her makeup would smudge all over she’d totally be doing the same thing.
“Yes, and who’s fault is that?” Lucifer’s tone is sharp and a little rude, and Ella jumps in surprise.
“I-I didn’t say anything,” she says, a little meekly, and hopes she didn’t actually word vomit what she was thinking. It’s happened before, but she’d gotten a hold of that ages ago.
“It wasn’t at you, I assure you.” Lucifer says, and still he stares directly at Ray-Ray,
Ray-Ray, for her part, squirms and fusses with her glasses and looks away, then looks back at Ella, then directly at Lucifer with a scowl. “Now? Now now?”
“And wait until later and have you disappear again?” Lucifer rolls his eyes at Ray-Ray and turns a blinding smile on Ella. “So, Miss Lopez, I understand my sister’s been bothering you for quite some time now. I apologize on her behalf.”
Ray-Ray rushes into a flurry of motion, whacking Lucifer’s arms while he smirks, that terrible smug older brother look that automatically activates Ella’s fight instinct. It takes her a second to focus into the scene, realize that Ray-Ray’s talking to him and touching him and interacting with another person that isn’t her.
“You can see her too?” Ella croaks, and that freezes Ray-Ray in mid-smack.
Lucifer moves Ray-Ray’s hands away from him and twists her arms behind her in a loose kind of pin. “I can, unfortunately.”
“Lu,” Ray-Ray warns, and wiggles her arms. Lucifer lets go and shrugs. “I was gonna tell her before you showed up.”
“Now we can tell her together.”
The way they talk to each other is familiar, a cold feeling washing over Ella from the top of her head to her toes. They know each other. Obviously Ray-Ray wasn’t around all the time when Ella was growing up, but she’d never mentioned anyone else. For all that it made Ella’s life a living hell, she thought that she was special. The only one.
Now Lucifer’s here, tugging on Ray-Ray’s hair and sweater and making rude comments the way her brothers would before and she just…
“Ella?”
Something soft and silky presses into her face, and Ella startles, looking up. Lucifer and Ray-Ray are crowding above her, and the coldness of the tile floor is sinking into her legs.
Lucifer presses his pocket square into her face again, awkward but well-intentioned. “Are you alright, Miss Lopez?”
“Yeah...I think so…” She takes the pocket square and dabs at the corners of her eyes, marveling in a detached sort of way that she’s crying at all. It’d be silly to cry over something like this, right?
Ray-Ray holds a hand out and helps Ella back to her feet, and Lucifer nudges a stool over for her to sit properly, and it’s so real that Ella’s brain is struggling to keep up.
“This is why I wanted to wait,” Ray-Ray hisses at Lucifer, and crosses her arms. “It’s hard to explain as it is and you wanted to ambush her!”
“This isn’t an ambush.” Lucifer leans back against the counter again and presses the pocket square back into Ella’s hands when she tries to give it back. “Keep it, I have plenty.”
“Why didn’t you say you could see ghosts too?”
For a second, Ray-Ray and Lucifer both seem taken aback, before a little bemused smile appears on Lucifer’s face as he turns to face the ghost. “Oh, right, you had mentioned that, hadn’t you?”
Ray-Ray shrugs helplessly. “I panicked.”
“She’s not a ghost, Miss Lopez,” Lucifer places a hand over Ray-Ray’s entire face, Ray-Ray sputtering as she tries to slip under it. “She’s an angel.”
The implications rattle in Ella’s skull as she tries to process, fingers buried deep into the pocket square. “Like...a guardian angel?”
“Not exactly. I mean! I am an angel,” Ray-Ray confesses. “And I really am your friend, I just have a different job.”
Lucifer grabs onto Ray-Ray’s shoulders and shakes her at Ella. “Miss Lopez, meet Azrael, the angel of death, and my favorite sister.”
Ray-Ray spreads her fingers out, making little jazz hands at Ella, the silence stretching a beat too long. “Surprise…?”
“An angel.” It had never really crossed Ella’s mind before; she was young when she first met Ray-Ray, and she had no reason to not believe her when she said she was a ghost. But then, if she was an angel and she was looking out for Ella, then obviously she was a guardian angel of some sort, right? Otherwise why would she even bother?
“Because you’re my friend!” Ray-Ray says, suddenly surging into Ella’s personal bubble with an earnestness that took her aback. “That’s why I kept coming back.”
“Azrael has never had the most tact when interacting with humans,” Lucifer muses, giving them both that smug, knife-cat smirk that makes Ella brace for shenanigans. “Imagine my surprise when I find out she’s been popping down to Earth to play with one.”
“We’re friends, Lucifer,” Ray-Ray insists, crossing her arms and staring him down. “I told you.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t!” Lucifer responds in the same tone, standing up to tower over them both.
Ella sits on the stool, worrying at the pocket square, and tries to process.
“So… Ray-Ray… is an angel. Who is Lucifer’s sister.” She says slowly, eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance. “Lucifer, the method actor, has a sister who is a ghost? Who is an angel.”
Ray-Ray makes a sound not unlike a deflating balloon, wringing her hands. “Sort of? Not exactly? You’re getting there though.”
“She’s not a ghost at all, Miss Lopez. She is, and always has been, an angel.” Lucifer nods and thumps Ray-Ray’s back solidly. Ray-Ray rolls her eyes, but nods in agreement.
“But she’s your sister.” It also didn’t explain how he could see her, unless Ray-Ray was letting herself be seen by others? In which case, could she always do that and just chose not to? Why not? Why let all that time pass with people thinking Ella was--
Lucifer snaps his fingers in front of Ella, making her jump. “We lost you for a moment there.”
“Sorry…” Ella laughs weakly, but her grip on the pocket square is vicious. “She’s your sister.”
“Yes.”
“But she’s an angel.”
“Again, yes.”
“But you’re not.”
Lucifer makes a face. “Not anymore, I suppose, but that’s not really my fault now, is it?” He snaps, looking up at the ceiling. Ella and Ray-Ray mirror him, staring at the tiles above.
Things are starting to shift in Ella’s mind, bits and pieces of conversation sliding into place like a puzzle, but it’s such a ludicrous idea that it’s just not computing.
Lucifer watches her expectantly, almost thrumming on the spot. Ray-Ray watches him , and rolls her eyes goodnaturedly when Ella catches her eye. Brothers , she seems to say.
It clicks into place, and it’s a lot less shocking than Ella figures it would have been. Duh, of course it all makes sense now, almost Too Much Sense.
Ella turns to stare at Lucifer. “You’re an angel.”
Ray-Ray and Lucifer freeze for a long moment with very different expressions. Ray-Ray seems to glow, a big smile slowly creeping on her face, while Lucifer’s face seems to fall, almost offended.
“Miss Lopez,” he says in a gravely wounded voice. “I am no such thing.”
“You went to church with me,” Ella reminds him, and grins at the delight on Ray-Ray’s face. “You’re like, the nicest dude when you don’t pretend you’re some big scary monster.”
“I am though!” Lucifer puffs up, gesturing at himself aggressively. “I’m the Devil, Miss Lopez, we’ve gone over this!”
“But you’re not a bad person. Angel? Person,” Ella shrugs, sitting back. “The stories always said you were the most beautiful angel of all.”
“He is.” Ray-Ray smiles wistfully at Lucifer, shrugging at the betrayed look he turns her way. “His wings are beautiful.”
“Were! Were beautiful, not anymore, because they’re gone now, thank you.” He huffs and spins on his heel, marching towards the door. “I didn’t come here to be slandered, Miss Lopez!”
“Wait!” Ella slips of the stool and reaches for him, stopping once he turns back to face them. “Wait...why did you come?”
Lucifer raises an eyebrow, eyes darting to Ray-Ray before meeting Ella’s again. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Nothing is obvious right now, Lucifer. My brain’s going a mile a minute.” Ella feels Ray-Ray squeeze her shoulder lightly, but she doesn’t look away.
She’s facing down the Devil, and she feels safer than she ever has before.
He scrunches his shoulders slightly and looks away first, peeking out the blinds. “Oh, look at that, the detective is calling for me, I really must be going now--”
“Lucifer.” How her voice is so steady after the rollercoaster of emotions is beyond her, but Ray-Ray’s touch is warm and reassuring.
He rolls his eyes, and grabs the door, turning back to squint at her over his shoulder. “Because we’re friends, Miss Lopez. Obviously .”
Lucifer slips out the door quickly, like the devil was on his tail. Ella laughs, exhausted emotionally but warm, and lets Ray-Ray ease her back towards the stool.
“Should I call for help?” Ray-Ray asks, tone wary when Ella continues to giggle.
“No...probably not…” Ella wipes her eyes, rubbing at the smears of eyeliner on her fingers, and sighs. “But you and I have a lot to talk about tonight.”
“You’re letting me stay?” There’s a hopeful glint in Ray-Ray’s eyes, and despite their ups and downs, Ella is relieved. It’s reassuring to have someone watching over you, much more so when they’re divinely inclined.
“Duh, of course I’m letting you stay.” Ella wipes her hands on her shirt, and pats her cheeks to get herself together. “Who else is gonna give me the lowdown on how angels work? Do you have wings? Does Lucifer have horns and a tail? Is Amenadiel your brother too?”
Ray-Ray’s laughter echoes in the lab, and despite the curiosity burning in her, Ella can’t help but laugh too.