Work Text:
The crackle of the fireplace is loud in Trixie’s otherwise silent house. Her mom doesn’t usually start a fire, especially not when the weather is so warm, but Lucifer likes to keep it burning. Trixie has always wondered whether he likes fire—or just doesn’t like the dark. He’s had the chance to keep it going every evening for days now, since he’s been with them every night since her dad—
Trixie presses her lips together hard, holding back the tears that rise up so easily even after the hospital, the days of cards and flowers and visits, and the funeral. Her mom let her fall asleep on the couch tonight. Or at least pretend to fall asleep. Mom looked so tired, but Trixie knew she wouldn’t sleep until Trixie had stopped crying and gone to sleep herself. But sleep is hard since…since everything.
So she lays stiffly against the arm of the couch and keeps her eyes shut, breathing deeply until the spasm in her throat eases. Her mom’s arm is draped over her, along with a blanket she’d brought from her room. Her arm has been shaking gently for the past few minutes as she tries to cry silently. Lucifer is on her mom’s other side, holding onto her.
“We got them,” Lucifer whispers. “But it doesn’t make a bloody bit of difference.”
“It makes a difference to me,” her mom answers. Her voice has been wrong for days. Scratchy and breakable. Trixie hates it. She cracks an eye and focuses on breathing evenly when she sees the tears on her mom’s face. It’s hard to watch her cry without crying too.
“I don’t know what to do.” Lucifer’s voice comes out smaller than Trixie’s ever heard it. The firelight illuminates the tears in his eyes. She’s never seen Lucifer cry before. Until a few days ago she hadn’t seen most of the adults in her life cry. Now she has. Another thing she hates.
Her mom is quiet for a long time, but she settles against Lucifer’s shoulder. The arm settled over Trixie stops trembling.
“Just be here, Lucifer. That’s what I need.”
Lucifer nods slowly and presses a kiss to her mom’s forehead.
The quiet stretches. Trixie drifts in the thick warmth and flickering light of the fire until her mom’s breathing goes deep and slow. She feels the couch shift and her mom’s arm lift away as Lucifer stands up carefully. Trixie knows how tired Mom is because she doesn’t wake up when he moves her. Mom always wakes up when Trixie tries to slip into her bed.
Alone in the living room, Trixie opens her eyes and doesn’t fight the tears that immediately flow. At least her mom is resting. She’s glad Lucifer is helping to take care of Mom even if he’s forgotten about Trixie. But he always forgets about her.
She thinks back to confronting him in his penthouse. He’s always seemed nearly unreachable at the top of his skyscraper. But even when she’d kicked him and admitted forcefully that she was angry with him, he’d barely looked at her. Just took her back to her dad. Dad had asked her where her textbook was, and looked at her knowingly when she said it wasn’t at Lucifer’s after all. But he didn’t press, just smiled—
The tears keep flowing.
The floor creaks, and Trixie starts, closing her eyes again. Lucifer is coming back. She feels him kneel in front of her, adjusting her blanket. He reaches out, carefully, and Trixie remembers when Dad used to do this. Let her fall asleep on the couch and then carry her to bed. She’d wake up just enough to tell Mom goodnight, then fall asleep before he laid her down again. That was back when they were still one family. Back before she had two houses and one penthouse where she was barely welcome, before she’d been shopping for somber black dresses and sat silently through funerals.
Goodnight, Monkey, her dad’s voice whispers.
She pushes Lucifer’s hands away before he can lift her.
“I’m awake,” she informs him.
He’s giving her the same sad look he’s had since the hospital. She hates it, especially since it keeps her tears flowing.
“I can see that,” he says eventually. “Not a bad performance, all told. You had me fooled.”
Trixie sits up, her eyes aching with fatigue and tears. Lucifer looks like he’s sizing her up. At least the sadness is turning into his more usual confusion. Trixie doesn’t know why he acts like it’s difficult to talk to her. Mom says it’s great to talk to kids. And Trixie is barely a kid anymore anyway.
“I was going to take you to your Mum’s room,” Lucifer says. “I thought it might be more comfortable than the couch. But if you’d rather stay here…” There’s a question in his words. More than one, maybe. She doesn’t know why he can’t just ask, Are you okay?
She wants to be angry, and opens her mouth to say something like leave me alone, but the only thing that comes out is, “It feels wrong.”
If anything, Lucifer’s look of trepidation intensifies. But he still prompts, “What does?”
Trixie can’t stop her voice from breaking, but she doesn’t cry when she answers, “Daddy not being here.”
Lucifer looks like he might cry instead. His jaw ticks; he must be grinding his teeth. But his movements are controlled when he stands up and sits down next to her. He is silent for a long moment before he finally says, “You’re right to feel that way. Death is wrong. It’s always been wrong, from the very beginning.”
Lucifer always says weird, confusing things. But for once, it doesn’t seem quite like a joke. Trixie stares at him. “Then why…” she asks, not sure how to finish the sentence.
Then why did he die? Why did Charlotte? Why will Mom, one day?
Lucifer’s eyes are dull as he stares at the fire. He looks like he’s remembering something. The shadows are so deep around that one point of light. Trixie decides that he definitely doesn’t like the dark.
“Because the first people,” he says eventually, “Much like people today, made mistakes.”
Trixie knows the story of Adam and Eve. An apple they weren’t supposed to eat, and the curse that followed. There was a snake in that story too. One that, strangely enough, was named Lucifer if she remembers right. She wonders if Lucifer’s mom named him after the devil and if he’s angry with her about that. He always seems so serious when he mentions Bible stuff. He must really believe it, even though it seems to make him angry…and sad.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” she whispers.
“No,” Lucifer says, and tries to laugh at his own answer. But it comes out damp and cracked. “No, it doesn’t.” He swallows hard and tries to put on a smile. Trixie decides not to point out the fact that he misses by a mile. “Shall I take you to your Mum?”
“I don’t want you to be my dad,” she tells him quietly. He doesn’t need to carry her around or pretend to care about her feelings. She doesn’t know what she wants from him. Right now it’s hard to know anything except what she doesn’t want. She doesn’t want her dad to be gone. She doesn’t want to be here crying. She doesn’t want Lucifer to look so lost.
His smile, already a mile wide of the mark, plunges further into the wilderness as he absorbs her words. Trixie thought he would come back with a smart remark, a well thank Dad for that, but he looks like he’s wrapped up in thorn bushes and every which way he moves, he hurts.
That’s how Trixie feels, too. Maybe he understands better than she thought.
“Lucky for you,” he says, voice tight. “I’m not. Is that what you’re angry about, that I’ll try to replace…? I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t try. I’m not father material.”
Trixie frowns. She didn’t mean that Lucifer couldn’t be a dad, she just meant that’s not what she needs from him. She thinks about Lucifer’s dad, sitting so calmly at the train station. Looking lost and serene all at once.
“Your dad seemed nice,” she tries.
Lucifer’s expression is impossible to decode. Trixie thinks she sees sadness, pain, a hint of a smile, but not a totally happy one. “Fathers often do,” he says, which isn’t an answer at all.
“My dad was nice,” Trixie says, ignoring the tears that flow without her permission.
Lucifer’s smile softens and cracks. “I suppose he was.”
“I used to have a sign on my door when I was little. You and my dad were the only boys allowed in my room. Boys are pretty terrible, but dad was nice and you were funny.”
“Were?” Lucifer mutters, but he’s almost-smiling and doesn’t look so sad. He almost looks like he cares.
“You never came in, though,” Trixie continues, “You didn’t like me. I was little then. I didn’t know.”
It hurts more than she thought it would, admitting the truth. Or maybe everything just hurts right now. She wonders distantly if everything will hurt forever.
Lucifer looks at her like she’s slapped him. Anger and shock are fighting for control of his features, and he looks very funny. She’d laugh if she wasn’t so sad. And if she wasn’t so sorry for making him look that way.
“Is that what you think?” He finally manages to say, sounding strained…and a little angry. Not angry at her, exactly. She doesn’t know who he’s angry with. “Of course I liked you, you were honest and impressionable and willful.”
Trixie blinks. “Those are bad things.”
Lucifer snorts judgmentally. “They certainly are not.”
“I had that sign on my door because I thought we were friends. But it’s okay, I know better now.”
Lucifer shakes his head and grits out, “Then I suggest you un-know it.” He stands up and paces by the fireplace. “I didn’t realize you were so angry with me.”
Trixie raises her eyebrows. “I did tell you.”
Lucifer nods, his mouth a thin line. “I suppose you did. I’m not always the best listener. And unfortunately I’ve been… preoccupied.” He stares at nothing for a long time before he shakes himself and gives her a look that’s piercing and sad. “What else have I done? Tell me all the reasons you’re angry with me.”
“Why?” Trixie asks, bewildered.
“So I can make them right, of course. I’ve learned a lot of things in the past few years. I’ve even learned some things about children—“
“I’m not a child—“ Trixie huffs, and Lucifer looks like he’s going to ignore her interruption, but he pauses and nods.
“Yes, yes, you’re right, now let me finish. I’ve learned that children—young adults, dearie me,” he corrects when Trixie opens her mouth indignantly again, “—are the same as adults.”
Trixie pauses to think about that. “Really?”
“Yes,” Lucifer nods, insistent. “You’re still growing, and you haven’t lived long enough to have much sense, but you’re still…you. A person.”
“You’re a lot older than me and you don’t have much sense either,” Trixie points out, with her mildest dose of snark. Sometimes you’ve got to be a sniper and not a nuclear bomb, as Maze would say.
Lucifer sighs and shoves his hand in his pockets. “Well, thanks for that. Guilty as charged, I’m afraid. Is that why you’re angry with me?”
Trixie shakes her head slowly and Lucifer huffs.
“Why then, child?” He sees her flash of irritation and corrects hastily, “Young lady. Why?”
“Because my mom is sad. Now it’s because of…” The words stick in her throat and she swallows. “But even before, she was sad for so long. Because of you.” She can’t look at him as she says it. The words hurt on the way out; she can only imagine how much they’ll hurt on the way in. Lucifer makes a soft sound and she finally looks at him.
He’s gone still, silhouetted by the firelight. Sometimes in the right light he doesn’t look quite human. Trixie used to draw pictures of him as monsters and aliens and even angels, because it always seemed wrong to draw him as just a person. But the funny moment passes quickly and he breathes again, looking tired and small.
“You’re right,” he says quietly. “I had to go away for a long time, even though I didn’t want to. I told your mother about it, and I came back as quickly as I could. But I know she was sad. So was I. I never explained any of that to you, did I? I’m sorry.”
Trixie tries not to gape at him, but doesn’t quite succeed. You never say you’re sorry, she doesn’t say. “You’re never sad,” she says instead.
Lucifer huffs a bitter laugh. “I wish that were true. But there are many things you don’t know about me.” The fire is smoldering in the fireplace. Lucifer paces back across the room and folds himself onto the couch again.
Trixie’s anger is gone when she reaches for it. All that’s left is something deep and cold. “I didn’t know I could be this sad,” she admits softly.
Lucifer nods. The dying firelight glitters on the tears that have suddenly returned to his eyes. “My father is gone too.”
Trixie’s throat is tight when she whispers, “He died?”
Lucifer shakes his head, but says, “I’ll never see him again.”
“You’re sad about a lot of things,” Trixie realizes.
“Many, many things,” Lucifer confirms. His voice sounds scratchy and broken like her mom’s. She thinks of sitting with her mom until she slept, and how Lucifer had done the same. Then he’d come out again to take care of Trixie, too.
“You’re really my friend?” Trixie asks, studying his face.
Lucifer looks at her, keeping still under her evaluation, and nods. “Really.”
“Okay,” Trixie says, her voice bending but not breaking beneath the threat of tears. “Then I’m your friend, too.”
She leans over just enough to give him a hug. He freezes at first, but slowly wraps one arm and then the other around her shoulders. He should give more hugs, Trixie thinks. He’s pretty good at them.
“I’m sorry I was so mad at you,” she mumbles against his suit jacket.
“Some anger is justified,” Lucifer says. “And you should never apologize for that. But thank you for telling me about it.” His grip tightens and she feels him exhale before he speaks again. “You’ll see your father again in Heaven, if I have anything to say about it. I promise you.”
Trixie nods, not sure what to think about that. But it’s an idea that makes her feel better. She turns it over in her mind. “Will you be there too?”
Lucifer laughs in a way that’s not funny at all. It’s like tears trying to be a laugh instead. “I’ll be in Hell, dear child. But I’ll wave at you if it will make you feel better.”
Trixie frowns, confused about why he would joke about this. Or worse, be serious about it. “Mom will be sad again, if you’re not with us,” she insists. If he won’t listen to her, he’ll definitely listen to her mom.
His sad laugh is more muted this time. “No one is sad in heaven.”
Trixie leans back to fix him with what Maze calls a death glare. “I would be, if you weren’t there.” Before Lucifer can stop gaping at her, Trixie changes tactics. “Can I at least come visit you?”
“In Hell? Certainly not, Hell is no place for children.”
Trixie raises an eyebrow and turns up the death glare a few degrees.
“You stare like a bloody demon,” Lucifer grumbles, and sighs. “Very well, young woman, I suppose I could fly you back and forth, drop you at the Silver City’s door.”
Trixie smiles. “Thank you.”
She leans back against the couch and shuts her eyes. They feel so heavy all of a sudden. She feels Lucifer tuck the blanket up around her shoulders. She’s somewhere in the space between asleep and awake when she hears him speak. It sounds a little like, “No, Trixie. Thank you.”
Trixie dreams of light. It’s less an image than a feeling, warm and peaceful. She wakes up beside her mom with the sun bright through the windows.