Chapter Text
Above Lucifer’s head burned the flames of Askyrod, and in his chest, his heart beat so loudly and resonantly that he could feel it syncing into the rhythm of creation around him. This was it. It had been what he’d wanted… Sort of.
What he’d never wanted knelt in front of him. The Host of Archangels, including his weaselly little twin, collected, motionless, and awaiting his orders. His eyes darted over to Chloe, who smiled on him so brightly that his nerves began to melt away…
Until one of the Host whispered, “What happens now?”
Lucifer really had no idea. But the buzz of questions slowly began to grow, and to his horror, he began to realize that some of them were being drawn out of his siblings just by his presence.
“Shhh!” Michael hissed at Gabriel. His eyes, however, didn’t lift from the ground.
Apparently, the rest of the Host had heard because they all quieted at once. Great.
“Right then… Siblings. Fight’s over,” Lucifer said with what he hoped was a definitive nod.
“Yeah, so,” Jophiel said. “Whaddaya want us to do?”
“Well, uh…” Lucifer looked to Amenadiel who shrugged.
“You’re gonna take care of us, right?” Gabriel looked up at him with wide eyes. She started to rise, and Michael grabbed for her, but she was already stepping up to Lucifer. “Some of us are hurt, and… and Michael said…”
“Gabe,” Michael warned under his breath.
“You’ll bring back Remi, right?” Gabriel inched closer toward Lucifer, out of Michael’s fingers. “And Uri?”
“Uriel?” Amenadiel echoed. “Gabe, he died years ago.”
“Yeah, but… Dad brought people back after the Rebellion. Remember?” She flailed her hands in front of her. “He just… Poofed them back!”
“I don’t know how to,” Lucifer said.
“Yet!” Chloe interjected. “You know, there’s always a learning curve with a new job.”
Michael made a noise deep in his throat. Gabriel did the same, but hers was higher and more distressed.
“But… you? Michael said—” She looked back to Michael again. “—he’d bring them back as soon as he ascended? Very first thing! Right away!”
“I literally cannot do that for you now, Gabe,” Michael hissed. He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not asking you. I’m…” Gabriel lowered herself to her knees. “I’m asking God. Please? Bring them back?”
The voices stared to buzz again.
“Calm down!” Lucifer put his hands up. “I never said I wouldn’t.”
Michael pressed his hands together for a moment, and then gripped his knee tightly and gritted his teeth as he rose and spun around to face the others. “Don’t question God, kids!”
“But Remi?” Gabriel said. “And Uri has been gone forever…”
Before any of them could answer, a gust of wind knocked Chloe back, and Lucifer fumbled the blade, dropping it as he caught her.
“Easy there,” he murmured. She smiled up at him.
In front of them, Raphael stood with his thick, black hair swept back so high that Lucifer was a little proud one of his brothers had figured out hair gel. His wings, black as night with russet-tipped feathers, remained out as he looked around him in confusion, and around him in the wind fluttered… a lab coat.
What?
“Bit confused?” Raphael looked to Michael, then to Lucifer, and then to Michael again. His pointer fingers went back and forth between them.
“You should kneel,” Michael advised.
Raphael snorted. “Errrr… Nope. It wouldn’t matter which one of you wore the crown.” He cocked his head to the side at Lucifer. “Really, though?”
“Yes, really!” Lucifer snapped.
“Bugger.” Raphael shook his head and then leaned forward, beaming. “Is this Chloe? I’ve heard so much about you. You look so smart and serious! Are you sure you wanna be with this arseh—"
“Hey, ADHD Angel!” Michael said. “We just had a battle. God wants you to go do your job.”
“Oh! Fav!” Raphael rubbed his hands together and then gave Chloe a perky, little wave and spun around to bound off to tend to the wounded Host.
“Well, he doesn’t change, does he?” Lucifer said. “What’s with the coat?”
“He moonlights on Earth as a doctor sometimes,” Amenadiel explained.
Gabriel took a few steps back, brow furrowing as Maze and Eve joined their side. She looked to Michael once more and finally caught her eye.
“Learning curve or not…” Michael glared at her. “It’s important to have clear lines of communication and a unified front.” His eyes shot pure venom to Lucifer. “What would you like our messenger Angel to tell the rest of the Silver City?”
“We could start with the truth. Since Godifer is so keen on that,” Gabriel said, looking at Lucifer doubtfully.
“Yeah, let’s not say anything that will cause a civil war, huh?” Michael scolded. “Especially while our godling doesn’t know how to bring us back.”
“It’s not fair,” Gabriel muttered.
Lucifer’s heart sank. It had been a long time since he’d disappointed his sibling like this. It hadn’t even occurred to him that becoming a deity wouldn’t automatically give him knowhow to use the power he could feel surging just out of his grasp.
“Can’t you just tell him? I know it’s not fair, but…” Gabriel’s hands came together as she asked Michael.
“Dad doesn’t exactly talk in words in the Silver City,” Michael objected. He shrugged and looked at Lucifer exhaustedly. “Maybe you could… I dunno.” He made a picking motion with his left hand. “Ploink it outta my head?”
Lucifer put his hands on his hips. Of course, Michael wouldn’t even try to help. “I don’t know how to Ploink any more than I know how to Poof.”
Michael pushed his lower lip up and exhaled slowly through his nose. “Maybe we keep that one out of the big company message. Keep it short. He won. I lost. We’re moving forward.”
The concept of Michael having to step up to get things under control was particularly galling. Lucifer nodded to Gabriel.
“Keep it short. We’ll talk to them in the Silver City later when things have calmed down,” he said.
Gabriel’s eyes drifted to Michael once again, and he snapped, “Don’t look at ME, look at GOD.”
“Fine.” She huffed. “I’ll be back.”
With that, Gabriel shot up into the sky. Michael cast a glance over his shoulder at others, who were gathering in small groups. He drew in another deep, slow breath.
“Chloe,” Lucifer said. “I have a lot of work to do, and I’m going to have to go back up to the Silver City… You won’t be able to—Not yet, I mean—”
“Yeah, I get it.” Chloe bowed her head into his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Not all of us can go into the Silver City and come back. I’ll go with Maze and Eve back to Linda’s place. Trixie’s there.”
Lucifer drew in a deep breath. They’d done it. They’d won. And yet, now everything was really just getting started.
* * *
All around them, the towers of the Silver City glowed. Endless windows flickered, signaling inhabitants inside, going about their days in an endless haze of boring happiness. Lucifer hadn’t ever believed he’d walk these streets again, breathe in that cool, crisp air that refreshed and energized with every breath, or see the glistening specs of light that seemed to perpetually float through the air. The Silver City didn’t have weather, per se, but the floating lights looked like it was always in the first few moments of a winter’s first snow.
Hell had weather. Always bad, and it only changed when Lucifer’s mood worsened.
“It’s bigger,” Lucifer muttered.
Amenadiel touched his shoulder gently. “You’ve been gone a long time, brother.”
“Gabe and Sara should be waiting for us in Dad’s Citadel,” Raphael said. Then, “Well. Your Citadel. I wonder what it’ll look like now that it’s yours? I thought when it was Michael’s, it would end up a huge bloody library—”
Michael cleared his throat and looked pointedly at Raphael.
“I like libraries.” Raphael shrugged. “I’d hang out there with you. Have some calming tea.”
Lucifer stopped as they came upon the Citadel. The entrance appeared a third of the way up, and the tower itself was impossibly tall. Behind him, Zadkiel stood at attention with the others. They were waiting for Lucifer’s next move. His next word.
And around them, other angels were starting to gather, slowly. Lucifer turned toward the sea of faces, another group of siblings watching him with uncertain eyes. Not relieved. Not hopeful. Scared. His siblings were all scared for what would happen next. Glancing at Michael accusingly, Lucifer wanted more than anything to blame their fear on his twin, but…
Michael didn’t create their fears. He must be feeling them, though, like a thousand pinpricks all over his body. The last time Michael had told him about feeling the fears of his siblings in the Silver City… Well. It was a realm largely without fear. There was no disguising it when it was there.
“Let’s get up there,” Lucifer said.
Amenadiel cast a glance around them and nodded. He unfurled his wings, as did Zadkiel and Raphael. Michael took a step back and shook his head.
“No problem,” he drawled. “I’ll just wait down here.”
Oh, right. He’d cut off Michael’s wings.
“Grab ‘im,” Lucifer instructed Amenadiel, who, before Michael could complain, scooped him up and launched into the air.
Seconds later, all of them were on the balcony overlooking the City. The arched doors before them were closed, and small part of Lucifer whispered cloyingly inside him that he couldn’t open that door and go inside. He didn’t belong there. Not now, not ever.
But he’d come here to the Silver City when he’d been most unwelcome, and he’d done it for her. He’d died for her. Lucifer didn’t know if that made him worthy of her, or of Godhood, but something had lifted from his shoulders. How bad could it be, if he took Dad’s throne and it didn’t want him?
“You are God. Just open the damn thing,” Michael snapped.
Lucifer turned to meet his eye, just as Zadkiel grabbed Michael’s bad shoulder and shoved him to his knees. Michael let out a tense, “T’ch!” sound, but made no real complaint.
“Watch your tone, usurper,” Zadkiel said.
Amenadiel grabbed Zadkiel’s arm by the wrist and stepped between them. “Knock it off. The battle is over.”
“Precisely. And if anyone’s usurped the throne, that would be me,” Lucifer added as glibly as he could manage.
“Either way, you need to open that door right now because we have more and more of the Host watching us,” Michael said. He hadn’t risen.
Raphael turned to give their siblings a cheerful wave. “Hullo!”
Michael scowled at him, but Raphael refused to stop beaming, and then, he stepped in front of Lucifer and opened the door for him.
“After you, oh Holy Father,” Raphael teased.
“Ugh.” Lucifer wrinkled his nose. “Please, don’t.”
Stepping into the throne room, it was at once completely familiar and entirely alien. It was Lux. White and bright and gilded. The booth where he normally granted favors had been raised from the floor, a literal seat of power. It was all too beautiful. The mirrors just as they should be but the shining and sparkling of everything around them. A man could go blind.
“Dammit.” Raphael laughed. “I lost!”
“What?” Lucifer looked at him. Gabriel had settled next to Raphael and grinned up at him smugly.
“She bet me that your throne room would be your bar. I’m so disappointed.” Raphael shook his head.
“Ha!” Gabriel pointed at him.
“Not that I’m out the money, by the by. She’s owed me twice that much for ages.” Raphael shrugged and put his hands in his coat pockets. “Just disappointed you’re not more creative.”
Lucifer chuckled. He had missed them. Dearly. And it had torn him up to pretend that he hadn’t. Here Raphael was, there Healer, trying to make everything okay.
“Tell him what you thought it would be!” Gabriel demanded.
“A bathhouse, obviously!”
“Yes, well. One hopes there’s a hot tub upstairs.” Lucifer strolled over to the bar and leaned back against it. “Is Rae Rae coming back?”
“I doubt it.” Saraqael appeared by Zadkiel, adjusting her latest gauzy scarf. “A woman’s work is never done.”
“Some people’s work is never done,” Michael said sharply. “Others have been on vacation since the Renaissance.”
“What do we do with him?” Zadkiel demanded of Lucifer.
Lucifer shrugged. “Keep an eye on him. Make sure he isn’t fomenting unrest.”
“I’m not the one who led a Rebellion.” Michael shook his head. “You should’ve just killed me on the battlefield. It was strategically idiotic not to.”
“Please don’t talk about dying when Lucifer can’t bring you back!” Gabriel complained.
“I know you deadheads can’t feel what’s going on out there,” Michael shot back, “but our siblings are terrified. Lucifer ran the world’s laziest campaign for God and won. They don’t know what he plans to do or how this is going to go.”
Saraqael reached behind the bar and poured herself a drink. “Pretty much why I voted against you.” She snorted. “Love. Yes. Love’s going to keep the universe running.”
“It could,” Lucifer protested.
Saraqael pinched her fingers together and narrowed her eyes. “It functionally can not.”
“Love is a good thing!” Zadkiel argued.
“It is an exquisite thing, but it isn’t a substitute for the detailed work of holding together creation,” Saraqael informed him, pursing her lips.
“I mean it’s not like Lucifer even ran on love everyone, or love thyself,” Michael said dryly as he eased himself into a chair at one of the tables. “As far as they know, you love your girlfriend, and the rest of us can hang.”
Amenadiel rounded on Michael, staring him down. “This is why we cannot let him leave this our sight.”
“I still agree with Michael that you should have killed him,” Zadkiel said.
Michael clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes. “I am not saying anything they aren’t already thinking!”
“All-right!” Lucifer boomed. “Dearie me, what an assorted box of malcontents we have here.”
“No one likes change.” Michael drew circles on the table with his finger. “At least, change they can’t control.”
“True. Dad sprang this all on us so very quickly,” Saraqael said. “No matter what, our siblings would be unnerved. Granted, they would be less unnerved if Lucifer weren’t the one in charge now…”
“Some of us undoubtedly knew sooner than others,” Amenadiel added, side-eyeing Michael.
“I mean, I guess,” Raphael said with a shrug. He took his own seat in a booth and sprawled out. “Uriel noticed Dad slipping decades ago.”
“When you’re looking for patterns, you’ll find patterns.” Michael rubbed his forehead. “When did he even tell you about that?”
“Oh, hm. Awhile back?” Raphael rested his head back against the booth cushion and stroked his neatly trimmed black beard. “Before he told you, anyway. He told me to keep it from you and Gabby because she’d tell everybody and you’d freak out.”
“I did not freak out! I handled it just fine!”
“You told him, though,” Raphael said.
“What, I’m going to keep details like that from him? Do you run around on Earth letting your patients wonder what’s wrong with them?”
“Hold on.” Lucifer raised a hand and unnervingly, all of his siblings looked to him. “Let’s not go down this road. Cards on the table, because even now, I don’t aim to lie to any of you, but Amenadiel and I had assumed that Michael convinced Dad he was losing his marbles.”
Michael’s face went blank as he studied the both of them. Then, his lips twisted. “How do you know I didn’t? Maybe I convinced him that he was going senile, and then Uri noticed, and then Uriel told me and Raph? You’d better keep on your toes, Godifer, or I might gaslight you into retirement, too.”
Gabriel hopped onto the bar. “You guys are too much.”
“I’d planned to keep on my toes around you regardless,” Lucifer said. “But I wouldn’t discount the idea that Dad decided to act loopy just to set you lot into a tailspin.”
Oh, that quieted them.
Lucifer strolled into the middle of the pack. “We don’t know what Dad was up to. Not for sure. Or what he planned, or what manipulations he made to get us here. But now he’s retired, so it’s not like it matters.” He looked at Amenadiel. “Nor do mistakes we’ve all made while we were trying to what we thought he wanted.”
“Well, I mean…” Amenadiel’s hand flipped back and forth like a big pancake.
“And I’ve definitely made my own…” Lucifer paused to smirk. “Don’t all go rushing to disagree with me on that one.”
“Current errors include murdering Remiel,” Zadkiel said. “Are we going to overlook that?”
“Michael was going to fix it!” Gabriel smacked her palms on the bar.
Lucifer turned to her. “I will try, Gabe.”
Her lips slid into a fretful pout.
“First things first, Luci,” Amenadiel said. “I believe you need to plan an address to the entire Host.”
“Right. Of course.” Lucifer put his hands on his hips and began to pace.
Michael began to rub his temples.
“I mean, they need reassurance, don’t they? And uh…”
“A plan,” Michael said pointedly.
Raphael and Gabriel looked to one another, then the two of them looked to Zadkiel, and Saraqael sighed.
“Perhaps he needs a debriefing on the ongoings of the Silver City first,” Saraqael suggested.
“Sure. And while we do that, the rest of the Host can go ahead and get themselves in a tizzy that Heaven has been conquered by the Devil,” Michael said sharply. “The rest can wait. Let him get his gift of gab on and charm the pants off them before they all melt down.”
Lucifer turned to Michael and crossed his arms. “It’s a lot? You can feel it?”
Michael rolled his eyes.
“What’s the worst of it?” Lucifer drew closer. “The Devil running Heaven bit?”
“I don’t know.” Michael paused, likely because he did pride himself so on being more adept with his power than any of his siblings. Michael sighed, pushed himself up from the table, and then went to the door. He drew in a deep breath and licked his lips. He opened the door and looked out.
For several moments, he said nothing. Lucifer was amazed at the quiet behind him. The higher ranking Angels being quiet, just for this once. Then, it dawned on him that he’d initiated an order, and their former boss was in the middle of trying to accomplish it.
“Some of it’s the devil thing. More of it is the rebel bit. There’s a few out there convinced that you got rid of Dad somehow so you could take over.” Michael sighed. “And a good chunk of them don’t think you know what you’re doing. Someone must have told them that part.”
He looked back at Gabriel.
“Look, I just told them what happened. I didn’t say he refused, just that he, um, getting used to things,” Gabriel said.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, and… Fuck.” Michael rolled his shoulders back, touching his right shoulder and wincing.
“Mikey?” Raphael came to his feet and started toward Michael.
“No,” Michael said firmly, even before Raphael raised his hands. He turned to Lucifer. “There’s a lot out there. But the fastest thing you can do to get us on the right track is convince them that you aren’t going to start smiting everyone who didn’t want you in this position.”
“He’s not smitten me yet,” Saraqael breezed.
“Or me,” Raphael said, rubbing his hands together. “So, what? We all head on out there and calm the masses.”
“Not a bad plan.” Lucifer gave them all a tight smile. “C’mon, then. Let’s put on our best smiles.”
Flanked by his siblings, Lucifer emerged from the throne room to see the numbers below had multiplied. He couldn’t speak to the nature of their fears, but he could sense immediately how much they desired answers and security.
He strolled out to the railing and gripped it in his hands.
“I know that the past few months involved more change than you’ve known in eons. I can’t promise there won’t be more, and I can’t promise you’ll like all of them,” Lucifer began, looking around at them. “Frankly, for a good part of my life, I never imagined I’d be the one in this position, and I did everything in my power to fight against it happening. And yet… Here we are.”
Lucifer drew in a deep breath, ready to begin the most important part.
“Defiler!” someone shrieked.
“Murderer!”
“Baa-aaaa-aaa!”
“Finally got what you wanted?!”
“Get out of our home!”
Oh, Hell.