Chapter Text
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and he saw that it was good.
Except the scriptures miss out more than a few key details.
Before Genesis 1 there should be a prequel, a whole book really, dedicated to what came before. Because what came before helps to explain so much of what came after. It is a shame that humans are left to imagine things for themselves. They are awfully creative, but not terribly accurate. The stories tend to grow a life of their own, with truly terrible consequences for some.
Here is a very brief (but important) summary of the truth. Brutal though it may be.
In the beginning, there was no beginning. There was only God. A timeless being with unlimited power and knowledge. He existed alone in the endless void that is nothing and everything at the same time. Until one day another God was exploring this expanse of nothingness and everythingness too. The ideas of gender are typically far beneath deities, however we shall call this other deity the “Goddess”. God and the Goddess met together and found themselves enjoying each other’s company. An endless void can get a little lonely, even for omnipotent beings. They spent what you may think of as a lot of time together (but technically time was not a thing at this point). They grew closer and closer to one another.
However God desired more. He desired to create. He wanted to rule his own kingdom. A perfect thing that he shall call the world that shall be in a universe, that he shall rule. The goddess did not understand why he wanted to play with something that would be such a pathetic use of power, but she did not see the need to stop him. How could something like this take up much of his endless attention anyway?
Except it did.
It took so much of his attention that the irritated Goddess (if you asked her, she would deny that she felt such a ridiculous thing) asked that they create together some beings that would help in creating the universe. These beings would be called angels and although they would not be as powerful as the deities themselves, they would be given their own roles.
They set about creating them. First was Amenadiel, a fierce warrior who was obedient to his parents absolutely. He did not question any command he was given. The deities created more of the angels. They would be siblings. The rest of the angels he gave a specific purpose, and some of them he gave special powers so that they could serve him better.
One of his most special children (one of the archangels) he named Samael, meaning poison or blindness of God. The name also has more positive meanings though, and these are the ones the father intended: “left hand of God” or “God has heard”. He gave this child the power and understanding of desire. God made him to be the most like himself, a creator of light who desired to create and took pride in his own work.
As time went on, God was most pleased with this child. He created the most beautiful lights and he took pleasure in his work, just like his father. God looked upon Samael’s work and was pleased. He loved his son very much, he loved them all but he looked upon this son with a special respect. So when Samael became dissatisfied with his life God was upset. He desired more than his own creations, he desired free will. Samael wanted choice, to be his own being and not someone that was owned. God could not be owned so he did not understand the issue.
God said no, he did not want to lose his son. But Samael would not give in, he had his fathers perseverance so it seemed. Thousands of years passed and this archangel only became more and more dissatisfied. He visited his father’s new creations, the humans, and used his powers to tempt the first woman into sin. God looked upon him sadly, recognising the message for what it was. “Why do pathetic humans get free will when I should only do as commanded. Why do you care more for them than you do for your first children”. God was saddened by the conclusion his son had come to but decided that if he remained mysterious then his child would likely return to him.
Finally God’s favourite son grew so determined to have his own choice that he gathered some of his brothers and sisters together and dared to rebel against God. As powerful as he was, he was not a deity and could not defeat his father. God still loved him unconditionally but was so hurt by the betrayal that he angrily decided to punish Lucifer. He would send him somewhere without light, without creation and without joy. Here Lucifer would learn to be satisfied with the life his father had given him. He would desire to create his light again and see his old creations. A reminder that he is not his own man but is indeed another creation of God should serve him well.
The self-proclaimed omnibenevolent being sent his son to rule hell.
His love for his son prevented him from locking him there and throwing away the key. He left Samael with the option to take short breaks from hell, to visit the humans and see his stars being admired from earth. What he did not allow for however, was that his son would not grow to desire his old life but that he would begin to hate his father for sending him away, for locking him out of his old home.
God should have known better than to expect him to return to him like his other children would. Samael was created in his father's image too much to return with his tail between his legs. He clearly had pride not only in his own creations. This type of pride was not something that God was prepared for.
God despairs at his son as he does everything he possibly can do to defile himself and disgrace his divinity. God can no longer watch him go against everything that he was, even changing his own name and subconsciously his very appearance too.
It was far past time for a change.
God sent Amenadiel to return to earth and locate his rebellious brother so he could deliver a message. A very important message. And Samael’s reaction to this message would determine his own fate, just as he had always wanted.
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Lucifer Morningstar smiles to himself smugly as he drives away from a very rich and confused police officer. No one can punish him, not anymore. After his fall from his Dad’s good books, he can’t fall any further and now he is making a life for himself. No one punishes Lucifer Morningstar forever, not even the almighty himself.
He pulls up to his club LUX and his smug grin widens. This is his own kingdom, his den of iniquity. He owns and rules everything his father hates. Lucifer slings his keys to his valet and throws a venomous grin at the sky before strolling into Lux. He may not be able to create light anymore but he can name his possessions after it.
Instantly he is swarmed by hungry women and men who all desperately desire him. Lucifer gives a few of them flirtatious looks before walking through to the bar where his demon Maze stands facing away from him. He will come back for the other later.
“Where have you been?” She asks in a tone that suggests she could not care less, but it is her job to care what her king does.
“Oh, holed up in a chateau copulating with a young woman named faith. It’s ironic isn’t it?” He chuckles to himself at how much this information would disturb his ridiculously loyal and ‘holy’ siblings.
“Thank you Patrick, you can go” Maze says as his bartender stands up from beneath Maze, smiles at her and continues with his job.
“You little devil!” Lucifer laughs.
Maze matches his grin and drapes herself further across the bar towards her king while she pours them both a drink.
“Now Lucifer, I am a big fan of sex.”
Lucifer smirks at her knowingly “Obviously”.
Maze continues “But I didn’t leave hell to be a bartender. Shouldn’t you be spending your valuable time doing something more significant?"
Lucifer sighs and takes a drink.
“You are the lord of hell for crying out loud” she reminds him, as if he needs the reminder of who he is for him to jump back into torture and punishment.
Lucifer smiles to himself “I’m retired Maze.” He takes another drink and smacks his lips “I’ve got nothing but time”. He controls his own destiny now, and what he wants to be doing is upsetting his father as much as possible while making it clear he will never return to his punishment.
Maze rolls her eyes and starts to pour him another drink. But the liquid slows to an unnatural speed and the pair look at each other. Lucifer’s face forms grim lines as he realises who is coming to visit. He had hoped he had a little longer before his obedient sheep of a brother came down to bother him. But if he wants his father to get the message he needs to put on a confident show. Lucifer takes the two glasses from the bar and saunters down to meet Amenadiel who is giving him a look that can only be described as disdain.
Lucifer puts on his best uncaring facade “Amenadiel, how’s it hanging big guy?”
Amenadiel tilts his head as if assessing Lucifer and being thoroughly unimpressed by what he sees.
“Father has given me a message to deliver to you.”
Lucifer tries not to grimace, he didn’t particularly want to hear whatever his pathetic excuse of a father wanted to say to him, especially since he had just sent a messenger angel rather than bothering to turn up himself. Whatever this message was, it was quite possibly not great news.
“Go on then brother, spit it out” he tries to hide the sigh.
“Your return to the underworld has been requested.”
Lucifer looks at him in silence and then laughs. “Brother, why would I return to my punishment when I have a life here? I am free, I have the free will that I desired. I served thousands and thousands of years in father’s punishment. I certainly do not intend to go back there. Tell dear old Dad I quit hell because I was sick and tired of playing a part in his plan.” Lucifer keeps a level stare at his brother and takes a swig of his drink.
Amenadiel clearly received the answer he was expecting. “I’m going to warn you against disrespecting our father. Lucifer…” He takes a threatening step forwards and looks down further at the fallen angel. “Father will not be merciful much longer”.
Lucifer tries to hide his gulp by taking another drink of his whiskey.
“When has father ever been merciful to me?”
Amenadiel smirks at him, clearly taking some level of pleasure in his task.
“Oh dear brother, you have no idea what father has planned, do you? Do you truly think that hell is the worst punishment there is? I do so look forward to what will come. Lucifer. It is your choice how you respond to the message but you have now received it and I suggest you take a long hard think before you decide to blindly rebel like some stupid human child again. You are better than that Lucifer. At least you were better than that.” Amenadiel's gaze seems to glaze over as if he is remembering with fondness old memories of Samael.
Lucifer’s ego does not do well with being insulted, and he doesn’t like to think back to the carefree, powerful and respected angel that he used to be.
“I am not going back to hell” he grits out and lets his eyes flash red “ever”.
Amenadiel smiles almost sadly at his brother. “Then what happens next is entirely on you. You have free will and this is how you choose to use it. You truly are a mockery of everything divine.”
Despite the slightly paler colour Lucifer is turning, he does smirk in satisfaction at the last comment.
Amenadiel turns his back on him and walks out of the club slowly and then finally the music speeds up again and everyone starts dancing at a normal speed.
Lucifer sits there for a few more minutes mulling it all over. What could his father have planned this time? Could it really be worse than just more hell?
After about an hour he decides to leave the slightly secluded booth. He needs a good distraction (or more, preferably more) so he sets about finding himself some beautiful and willing partners.
He puts on his most charming and seductive smile, straightens his jacket and dives into the dancing crowd. He finds one of the ladies who swarmed him when he walked into the club and taps her shoulder. She turns around and looks at him.
Instead of becoming hypnotised by his charm she goes pale and her smile immediately crumbles from her face. She stares at him and clearly starts to panic.
Lucifer feels very confused “Are you quite ok darling?” This was absolutely not the reaction he was expecting. He is sure none of his devil bits are showing.
The woman suddenly stirs into action and scrambles away from him as fast as she can. She screams and starts uttering absolute nonsense. This draws some attention and the dancing crowd turns to see what is happening. Lucifer is in the centre of the crowd and is still looking around in utter confusion.
Suddenly there are more screams and hurried footsteps as people run away from the dance floor.
Lucifer doesn’t know what to do. Should he be running too? From what? That lady seemed to be afraid of him, not something behind him. Nothing makes sense.
But then he hears it.
“The devil! Evil is here!”
Lucifer suddenly can’t move. All these people are terrified.
They are terrified of him, because they know who he is, what he is. They know that he is a monster.
He feels a tear run down his cheek as the club dissolves into silence while everyone leaves in a panicked rush. Within moments he is left standing alone in the middle of the dance floor. He still can’t bring himself to move. He hears some more shuffling behind him but can’t turn around.
“What the actual hell just happened?” Maze exclaims from behind the bar.
Lucifer stares blankly into the distance.
“They know what I am Maze. Everyone knows what I am. They… they know I’m evil”.
She walks towards him, taking stock of the empty club that just moments ago was filled with joyful patrons.
“Lucifer… what did you do?”
He turns his head slightly so he can see her through his blurred vision.
“I… I…” he takes a deep breath to try steady himself.
“I refused to return to hell. Father must have… he must have made the humans know what I am.”
Maze looks just as shocked as he does and she steps forwards to lay a comforting hand on his arm.
“I knew father was going to try punish me again but… this is too cruel even for him surely? This is ridiculous!” Lucifer’s brow furrows.
Maze looks around her one more time before looking into his eyes.
“If they know what you are, then they know about everything. God just made sure that every human being knows that all the divinity stuff is real.”
There is a moment of silence while they both digest this information. God is not just punishing Lucifer this time, he is punishing all of humanity too.
Lucifer feels like he has just been punched in the gut by God himself. The world comes crashing down around him even faster as the realisation crushes him.
“He took away their free will. Their choice to choose to believe in the celestial or to ignore it.” He breathes out.
Lucifer looks down at the floor and seems to shrink into himself.
“I did this. This is my fault. Amenadiel warned me, I should have known Dad would come after everything I love and take it away from me.”
Maze smoulders and feels her knives at her thigh as if she would fight God here and now for doing this to her king. “What are you going to do?” she asks instead.
Lucifer looks up at her in resignation, too tired and distraught to even consider revenge against God almighty. “I’m going to my penthouse and I'm going to stay there. I don’t want to go back to hell ever, but I also don’t want to see the fear in their eyes when humans realise that I am evil incarnate.” His head bows further, almost in shame. “I'm not worthy of anything, this is just a reminder from dear old dad of that fact.”
Maze watches in disbelief as he turns and disappears into his elevator. The king of hell appears resigned to his new life of punishment. Maze wants to fight and end this. But who would she fight? She can’t fix this. No one can but God and maybe the Goddess, but she had not stopped Lucifer’s fall in the first place when she could have so she is very unlikely to do anything about this now.
Maze sets about closing the club early for the night. With any luck, word will not spread of where the devil was spotted and they will get different patrons tomorrow night. So long as Lucifer doesn’t scare them off then they can keep Lux going. Maze sighs, this is such a mess.
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Lucifer sits at his bar 6 months later. He feels numb and hollow, like everything that brought a little joy to his life has been ripped away from him and burnt to ash. No sex, because who wants to sleep with the actual devil? No partying, because if anyone sees him then he will be alone again. He can not bear the thought of seeing people be scared of him. Not the people who don’t deserve it.
He started by thinking a lot, but then thinking became painful when there was no solution to his problems other than to run back to hell like a good little devil. After what his father had done, he could not reward him like that.
So then Lucifer drank the entirety of his shelves and shelves of alcohol. He managed to maintain a hazy numb feeling. He didn’t realise how terrible he looked until the alcohol started to wear off a few weeks later. He cursed his celestial metabolism. Why didn’t God just take that away from him instead?
Lucifer started work on his stash of drugs next. He didn’t want to feel, he just wanted everything to go away. It worked for a while. His thoughts were filled with nonsense and he almost forgot about everything. Almost.
So 6 months later, here he is at his bar, without any distractions left in his penthouse to use. He recognises his current awful feeling as being sober. He wants rid of it as soon as possible. He calls maze to get him some more alcohol and drugs but all he gets is an answerphone message in which she tells the caller in her typical Maze fashion that she has better things to do than answer their calls and she may or may not get back to them depending on how interesting she finds them.
Lucifer grunts and rolls his eyes in annoyance. He is happy for her that still no one believes she is a demon, they just think she is playing into the devil thing. So she took a job as a bounty hunter and appears to be too busy to serve her miserable excuse for a king. Lucifer huffs at himself. He is thinking again, he needs to stop this as soon as possible.
A wave of emotion hits Lucifer and he can’t escape it, but he needs to. He goes to the bathroom and slicks back his hair a bit, to at least look less of an unkempt mess. He doesn’t do anything about the bags under his bloodshot eyes, he simply doesn’t care enough, he doesn’t intend to be seen anyway.
Lucifer steps into his elevator and sends it down to Lux. All he needs to do is grab a few crates of his strongest alcohol from the storage room behind the bar and then he can be on his way back up to his isolation. No one needs to see him so he doesn’t need to hear he is evil or anything else that they will undoubtedly scream while running from the monster that he is.
The elevator arrives on the club floor, he ducks into the quiet storage room and grabs 4 crates of his strongest drink and carries them to the elevator. He quickly picks up a few bags of drugs hidden away from there too and tucks them in his jacket pocket, they will come in handy later.
Just as he is about to leave to his drunken isolation once more he hears a laugh, a bright sound that feels to call to his soul. Against his better judgement, he inches forwards to have a look at whoever it was.
He sees a woman with beautiful dirty blond hair sitting alone at the bar, clearly very drunk and she seems to be laughing to herself at her phone. She looks just like he has felt for the past few months, drinking away her problems alone. Lucifer feels a tug at his soul, such a pure being as her does not deserve the same as he does.
He starts walking towards her before he can stop himself. He feels as though he has been hypnotised and is being pulled towards her gravity. A woman like her should not be alone at a club. It's not safe, especially with how drunk she appears to be.
People start to catch sight of him and waves of panic surge through the packed club once again. He hears people yell about how evil he is and that he is poison to everything he touches as they run away from him.
Lucifer tries to ignore them. Their words hurt but he has heard them on repeat in the back of his head every time he shuts his eyes.
His focus never wavers from the beautiful woman in front of him. She has not looked at him yet but she does seem to have been roused a little by the panic behind her.
Lucifer stops just beside her and braces himself for the inevitable scream and look of terror in her stormy blue eyes.
“Hello darling, are you ok?” Is all he can think to say. It is as unthreatening as he can possibly be and he has not really had to be charming for a long time.
The blond turns to him and he waits anxiously, then she smiles at him. A bright and glowing smile that warms his insides and makes the sounds of terror behind him fade away. She leans towards him as if by instinct but she is too drunk for balance so she starts to fall off the stool.
Lucifer darts forwards and holds her up. She laughs and looks up at him with a smile.
He desperately scans the empty club for some help. This lady is clearly too drunk to go home alone and there is no one here to help her get there. She must be far too drunk to be left alone if she is not even aware of who he is yet.
He considers his options. He could try and ask her where she lives and then get her there but bearing in mind everyone runs away from him, he doesn’t want to terrify anyone she lives with as the devil turns up at their door. The only other thing he can do is to take her up to his penthouse until she is more alert and able to go home.
Lucifer helps the woman get off the stool and guides her to the elevator. He takes out the crates of alcohol so she can fit in the enclosed space comfortably. She leans into him to steady herself as they start to ascend to his penthouse.
He looks down at the mysterious woman by his side with concern. This is definitely going to be a very, very long night.