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Chloe sat on Lucifer’s couch, tired and aching, relieved that they were all still there, but still worried, still not knowing how things could end. She watched Lucifer and Rory talking, watched her little family, her heart so full it felt like it could burst, the cold anxiety in the pit of her stomach the only thing stopping her from feeling the happiness she should at seeing them together.
She took an unsteady breath as she listened to Rory tell Lucifer, “Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t change a thing. You said you wanted to be there when I needed you the most. You were. You saved me.”
Lucifer pulled Rory into his embrace, and she rested her head on his shoulder, and Chloe felt like her heart was cracking in two.
A sound like thunder crackled across the room, and a light grew, bright and white, forming tendrils around Rory as Lucifer stepped back in shock.
“What’s happening?”
“I’m going back.”
“No,” exclaimed Lucifer.
Chloe pushed herself up off the couch. “Rory, no….”
“Just … give me your word,” Rory said to Lucifer. “Give me your word that you won’t change anything. That you won’t change me.”
“Rory, no!” he protested, his voice cracking. “I—I’ll miss your childhood. I’ll miss your life.”
“That’s just it,” she said, her own voice unsteady. “That’s it. It’s just a blip in our eternal existence. I get that now.”
“Please,” murmured Lucifer.
Rory kept talking, her tone pleading, as if begging him to hear and understand. “I … I was so angry before, but I’m not … not angry anymore.”
“No,” said Lucifer. “No. Please don’t go. Please don’t do this.”
“I’m sorry. It has to be this way, Dad.”
“No, don’t.”
“So please. Please, promise me….”
“No, I can’t. Don’t make me do this, please,” he implored. “Please.”
“I know you can’t lie. So please, promise me,” she continued, increasingly insistent.
“I … I can’t….”
“Give me your word.”
The light around her was swirling, thickening, and she looked from Lucifer to Chloe and back again pleadingly as they stared back at her in desperation.
Lucifer took a deep breath, looking as if his heart was breaking, and Chloe knew he was going to say it, going to make the impossible promise their daughter was asking of him.
Suddenly, there was a booming, cracking sound, and the spiraling streams of light froze.
For a moment, Lucifer, Chloe, and Rory also froze, before turning to see Amenadiel, dressed in white robes, striding in from the balcony.
“Brother!” exclaimed Lucifer. “What’s happened?”
“Be at peace, brother,” Amenadiel responded, his voice resonant in a way it hadn’t been before. He encompassed them all in his gesture, opening his hands wide. “This doesn’t need to happen.”
“What—what do you mean?” asked Chloe, her breath catching, voice still thick with unshed tears.
“I can break the loop,” said Amenadiel.
“But … but how?” asked Rory, turning a tearful, pleading face to her uncle. “Doesn’t this have to happen for … everything? Don’t I have to go through … all that … to come to this?”
Amenadiel reached out a hand, and she took it. “What needed to happen has happened,” he said. “It doesn’t need to happen again.”
“But if this is a time loop,” protested Lucifer, his tone halfway between desperate and hopeful, “I don’t see how we can break it and still come to the same point.”
Amenadiel grinned. “This is where me being God comes in handy,” he said. “Not to mention previously being the archangel in charge of time.”
“Truly?” Chloe asked. “We can break the loop?”
Rory, still haloed in a frozen stream of light, was clutching his hand. “Can we?” she echoed.
“I can,” said Amenadiel. “I can separate out this strand of history, put it in its own isolated reality, if you will. No one but us even need remember its existence.”
Chloe put a hand to her still flat belly, reached out to take Rory’s other hand. “Does that mean Lucifer doesn’t have to leave us?” she asked, blinking back tears. “And Rory never has to feel abandoned?”
“We can truly be a family?” Lucifer asked, staring at Rory longingly, his own eyes clearly wet.
“Yes,” said Amenadiel.
Chloe couldn’t help it. She burst into tears, flinging one arm around Rory and the other around Lucifer, squeezing them all into a chaotic hug with Amenadiel.
By the time they untangled from each other, all of them were laughing and crying at the same time, but there was a sense of peace that Chloe felt encompassed the whole group. A kind of peace that she hadn’t felt in a long time. She smiled at Amenadiel before looking from Lucifer to Rory and back again, finding an echo in their eyes of her own overwhelming relief and giddiness.
Lucifer, now with his arms around Rory and Chloe, looked at his brother. “I do have to go back to Hell,” he said, voice serious, determined.
“Yes,” acknowledged Amenadiel. “But you don’t have to stay there all the time—not when you’ll be needed on Earth to help your family. It can be your ‘day job’, in a sense, though days are different in Hell, so it’ll be more like a years job….”
Chloe laughed. It felt good to laugh, even if it did still have echoes of hysteria. “How will he know what time to come home?” she asked. “Is there some kind of Earth-time/Hell-time watch he can wear?”
Lucifer looked at her, his mouth twisting into an amused smirk. “I’ve never had one before, but we could probably work one out,” he said. “Although it might be equally as effective for you to just pray to me when you need me.”
“I can do that?” she asked.
“You can.” He squeezed her shoulder, aligning her body closer to his before turning his attention back to Amenadiel. “But Hell is going to need a lot of work, brother. Can we really afford for me to miss hundreds of years here and there on a regular basis?”
Amenadiel smiled again. “You know what we were discussing, about the other angels helping out?”
“You mean … have some of them help me? In Hell? But … would they really be willing to do that?”
“I know some of them might think it ‘beneath’ them,” Amenadiel said, and he smiled when Lucifer snickered, “But there are others who would be happy to help. Like Zadkiel, who already offered.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. I also talked to Azrael about it, and she gladly accepted.”
Lucifer blinked. “But how would she even have time?”
“For her ‘regular job’, I’ve given her her own team. She’ll be the lieutenant of Death, if you will. Off active duty. Retired when the others are ready. She’s been the Angel of Death for too long, and it’s worn on her.”
“But she’d volunteer for Hell?”
“To help some of the souls she ferried down there? Yes. She very much wants to do that. And to help you, Lucifer, and spend more time with you. She’s missed you greatly.”
“As I have her.”
“And there are others. Raziel, Koriel. You won’t have to do it alone, Luci.”
“I … I….” He broke off, shaking his head, clearly overwhelmed.
“The details can be worked out,” said Amenadiel. “You’re in charge. You know what to do. I have faith in you, and so do they.”
“That’s wonderful, Amenadiel,” said Chloe. “Thank you.”
He smiled at her, then looked to Rory. “We need to send you back to your own time now, I’m afraid,” he said. “But there is something you need to decide, first.”
Rory’s hand reached out for Chloe's again, clenched, holding so tight that Chloe had to hold back a grimace. “What is it, Uncle A?”
“Do you want to remember this, when you get back? You need not. I can let you have only your happy childhood, with your full family, father and all. You do not need to hold onto the pain.”
Rory took in a shaky breath. “I … no. I want to remember. I want to have both, if I can, so I can know—at least when I get to this point—how much the happy memories are worth, and how much everyone had to go through to get them. I don’t want to lose what I just found.” She looked to Lucifer, then back to Amenadiel. “I don’t want to lose the knowing … the meaning … the understanding….” She trailed off. “If that makes sense?”
“Yes,” said Amenadiel. “It does. If you were human, I think I would recommend against it, but as an angel, you’ll be able to handle suddenly having two sets of memories, two alternate lives up until that point.” He turned his gaze back to Chloe. “You will have what now lies ahead, but if the need ever arises later for you to ‘remember’ parts or aspects of that other life, for Rory’s sake, you will have that capacity.”
“Thank you, Amenadiel,” Chloe choked out, her own grip on Rory’s hand now nearly as strong as her daughter’s, and her other arm squeezing Lucifer so tightly he probably would have protested if he were human. She let go of both just long enough to throw her arms around Amenadiel and squeeze him just as hard before stepping back to reclaim her other angels.
Amenadiel smiled reassuringly at Rory. “Are you ready to go back?”
“Or forward?” added Lucifer.
Chloe rolled her eyes at him, an expression mimicked perfectly by Rory.
“As ready as I’m gonna be, I think, Uncle A.”
“All right. Just to warn you, things will be different than when you left.”
Rory looked surprised for a moment, but then her expression cleared. “You mean because we’re changing the future.”
“Indeed.”
“For the better?”
“Definitely.”
Rory took a deep breath, squeezed her parents’ hands, and stepped back toward the still-suspended portal of light.
Beside Chloe, Lucifer made an involuntary motion as if to go after her, his hand reaching out.
“See you soon, Dad,” said Rory. “Mom.” She swallowed, not trying to hide the tears streaming down her face. “I love you. I love you both.”
“I love you.” Chloe’s words doubled as Lucifer said them at the same time.
Rory smiled.
“I’ll see you on the other side,” said Amenadiel.
Lucifer blew her a kiss.
Chloe just stared, blinking back more tears, as the light resumed its swirling motion.
The glow brightened as Rory faded. Right before she disappeared into the increasingly dazzling luminescence, she winked. “I’ll try to avoid doing that thing when I’m seventeen. But if I still do it, I’m sorry in advance!”
With a flash and a dizzying motion, the light swirled into an ever-decreasing spiral until it vanished into nothing, leaving only the after-images seared into Chloe’s eyes.
“Rory…,” she murmured, reaching out to the dancing spots in her vision, all that was left of her beautiful, vibrant girl.
“She’ll be fine,” said Amenadiel, bringing Chloe’s attention back to those remaining in the room. He reached out, his hand hovering over Chloe’s belly. She felt a warmth, an almost tickling sensation. “We will all make sure of it.”
“Yes, we will,” said Lucifer.
“Yes,” said Chloe.
It felt like a vow between all of them and the universe, and Chloe knew that, whatever strange things life had still to bring for them, they would keep that vow.
She put her hand on her belly, and Lucifer put his on top of hers.
“We’re going to do everything we can, Rory, to give you the best life possible,” she said.
“And we already love you more than we can say,” said Lucifer.
Amenadiel nodded at them, took a step back, and disappeared.
Lucifer looked down at their hands, then back up to meet Chloe’s eyes. “I was ready to leave,” he said. “Ready to promise to not see you again until … until….” He choked on the last words.
She reached up to cup his cheek. “Shh,” she soothed. “You don’t have to anymore. We don’t have to say goodbye. We can be here, together. Do this together. Welcome Rory to the world and witness all of her firsts. Together.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Together.”
She nodded. “Always.”
“Partners ‘til the end.”
She smiled. “Partners ‘til the end.”