Chapter Text
Chloe bursts through the bedroom door so fast she might well have given herself whiplash.
"Oh my God! Rory, are you okay?"
Nights where it was just the two of them in the house alone left Chloe particularly on edge. That was despite Rory's insistence that between her wings and Chloe's gun, they would be 'just fine'. Not that she didn't have a host of supernatural beings on speed dial should she need them.
Even so, the slightest whimper from any of her children was enough to bring Chloe Decker running. The sound hadn't quite been a scream, but it was the most anguished cry Chloe had heard come out of her youngest child in a long time.
"Mom! Mom, oh my God! You're you! You're not old."
To be fair, it wasn't the weirdest thing Chloe had ever heard uttered in her home but it was still pretty bizarre.
That said, after having to associate with alluring and ageless Celestials on a daily basis for the past decade, it was nice to hear the words ' not old' in reference to herself. Not exactly flattering, but as she was past 50, Chloe would take what she could get. Especially from her no-filter teenager.
"Thank you. I think." Chloe replied, ready to tease her youngest over the odd endearment. The tear stains streaking down Rory's face however stymied her amusement. "Baby, you're crying. What's got you so upset?"
Rory heaved in gulps of air, on the verge of hyperventilating. She furiously scrubbed away the remains of her tears, embarrassed by her reaction. She hadn't cried over a nightmare in years, let alone cried out for her mother. But the things Rory had seen, they had left her confused and heartbroken.
Rory stared up at her mother with wide, helpless eyes.
"It was so real, Mom. It felt like I was actually there."
Chloe immediately moved to sit on the bed, reaching out to hold her distraught child.
"It's okay Rory," Chloe whispered in their tight embrace. "It was just a bad dream. You wanna talk about it?"
Rory paused, her stubbornness and her heartache at war in her chest. Then with a tremulous nod the young angel pulled away from her mother's shoulder.
It took a moment for Rory to gather her words. Even then she couldn't fully grasp what she had experienced, all jumbled and liminal, as is the nature of dreaming.
"Mom, it was the worst nightmare; like the closest I could imagine to being in a Hell Loop," she tried to explain.
Chloe did her best not to flinch. Even after all these years it was a difficult subject. Mentions of Hell were pretty common when your youngest was the child of Satan. Chloe however still hadn't quite forgiven Maze for telling a much younger Rory all about Hell Loops and the demon's favourite methods of torture.
In said demon's defence, this was the first time Rory actually seemed to be upset by the concept.
Chloe gives Rory a gentle smile and tugs her back into a hug.
"Come here. You never have to worry about Hell or being trapped down there. I promise. We would never let that happen to you," Chloe tells her vehemently.
But Rory pulls away, shaking her head in earnest.
"No, I wasn't in Hell. I was in some kind of... time loop?" She frowns and scratches her head, thinking for a moment. "We had to let the same events happen over and over or Aunty Ella said the world would end..."
Rory's words trail off, still processing the convoluted patchwork of events.
"Oooookay... No more late night Sci-Fi-a-thons for you and Ella, huh?" Chloe jokes and gives Rory an encouraging shoulder bump.
Rory tries for a laugh, to fall back on the familiarity of familial teasing. It falls short however and Chloe can still hear a hollowness in Rory's snigger. So she slides further onto the bed instead.
"Come on, scooch." Once Chloe is properly settled, she holds Rory again and asks, "Now, tell me what happened in this loop?"
So Rory begins her tale, parsing out what details she truly remembers. Time Travel. Blades for wings. A younger Chloe Decker who is about to return to the LAPD and discovers she has a daughter with the Devil.
Chloe huffs in amusement. "Well yeah, going back to the LAPD and realising I was pregnant in the same month was pretty scary. Especially going back without my partner."
Then Rory explains how she managed to 'time travel' in the first place; a grudge she apparently had held onto for a lifetime and how she became so overwhelmed by grief and anger.
Chloe looked at her youngest, stricken and aghast.
"You really think your Aunty Linda would leave you to suffer like that?" Chloe shakes her head in disbelief. "Baby if you're ever struggling with emotions like that, you known you can talk to us at any time. Linda would help you in a heartbeat. She helped your Dad for years ; she would help you too. We're family."
Rory gives a weak nod of agreement. She knows that. She knows Aunty Linda loves her almost as much as she loves Charlie. That she may well be the best placed therapist in the Universe to help troubled angels.
But a phantom trauma still echoes in her chest.
Then Rory recalls the first stop she made in this time loop. A trip to Hell itself.
Chloe won't pretend Rory's description of the underworld isn't disturbing in its accuracy. She can only assume Maze has been waxing lyrical about her old home again.
Then the mention of Dan truly grips Chloe with grief. He was ever present in the Decker household. Their little family spoke of him frequently with love and laughter, always keeping Trixie's father a part of their daily lives.
Rory may have never met the man, but she knew all the stories, knew all the games and pranks Trixie had passed down from her father to her little sister. And Chloe could hear the heartbreak and guilt in Rory's words as she described marooning his soul on Earth.
"Baby, it's okay," Chloe reassures her by giving Rory another squeeze.
"Dan is fine. We all worked together to figure out his guilt and helped him reach Heaven." Chloe paused to think for a moment. "Remember Delilah? From our first case. Well while your dad was trying to figure out how to be God, he found her in Hell."
After realising Delilah no more belonged in Hell than Dan did, the pieces had begun to fall into place. Lee Garner had been the first to be accidentally redeemed, eventually leading to active and intentional healing of all the damned souls in Hell.
"That's when he realised he could help other souls in Hell; he's even trying to help her killer Jimmy Barnes. You don't have to worry about Dan being down there or here."
Again Rory is comforted by her mother's unwavering strength. She continues telling her story, the awkward efforts made by an absent father, intimate and tearful goodbyes, and the terror of being held hostage by a deranged mercenary.
And being kept in the dark about the promise that instigated a cruel but necessary separation.
"You really think I would be able to keep something like that from you? That your Uncle Amenadiel would lie to you your whole life? That seeing him with Charlie wouldn't make you curious as to why your own dad wasn't on Earth?" Chloe scoffed. For one thing, Amenadiel was a terrible liar. For another, Rory was far too tenacious to accept such flimsy explanations.
"Come on, Amenadiel spoils you almost as bad as your father." Rory grins at the thought. "Remember when you got upset that he wouldn't bring back the dinosaurs. You were so sad for days that he finally cracked and took you to a special room in the Silver City just so you could see them there."
"Yes, and I was most put out that I didn't get to join you that day," Lucifer exclaims as he comes sauntering into the room.
"Daddy!" Rory cries out and immediately leaps to tackle her father.
"'Daddy' is it today? I thought you were getting too old for that?" Lucifer snarks, but hugs Rory back just as tightly.
"We were apparently torn apart by a time loop?" Chloe hedges. The odds of such things being possible were alarmingly high when your life is surrounded by the Celestial. But it helped having a Devil on hand who could distinguish between fantasy and reality..
Lucifer drops Rory back on the bed next to Chloe and enthrones himself on the opposite side of their child.
"To be fair Detective," Lucifer explains with a frown, "that sounds an awful lot like a Bootstrap Paradox. Even Amenagod would be hard pressed to break one of those without making Time itself implode."
"So I really could be trapped in a time loop?" Rory exclaims in alarm.
Chloe gives her husband a glare over the top of Rory's head. Immediately realising his mistake he awkwardly coughs and pulls both ladies to his side.
"Yes, well, anything is technically possible… " Lucifer looks into his daughter's earnest eyes. "Now Aurora, think about it. Do you really believe Mazikeen of all demons would have any respect for 'Universe-collapsing-temporal-paradoxes?"
He pauses for effect, Rory hanging on his every word.
"Could you imagine what Maze would do to me -" the Devil gestures avidly at himself- "if she knew I'd left the love of my life whilst pregnant - with you , her very own protégé no less - with no explanation? Her wrath would put the Southern Widows incident to shame…"
Rory giggles at the faux-terror in Lucifer's expression, and Chloe can't help but role her eyes.
Even with her father's reassurances, the laughter in Rory's face quickly drops; her eyes sad and a little lost.
"What is it, child?" Lucifer and Chloe share a concerned look over the top of ebony curls.
"I saw Mommy die," Rory admits in a very small voice.
Lucifer freezes and Chloe chokes on a gasp. But after a moment to collect herself Chloe leans in to gently lift Rory's chin.
"Baby, I'm not going anywhere any time soon. I'm human." Her gaze flickers momentarily to Lucifer, his own eyes troubled but full of love. "I am going to die some day. All us humans will. But our family has a luxury most people never do."
Chloe sweeps an errant curl behind her daughter's ear and cups her hands around her face.
"I know there's an after. I know that no matter where I go, you can find me. And I have an even greater gift; two daughters who will love and cherish each other when I can't be here anymore."
Rory sniffs and gives a teary nod. Likewise Lucifer gives Chloe a gentle smile in understanding. The three of them huddle tightly together, soaking up the love and warmth they share.
Lucifer eventually shakes himself of the tumultuous emotions and regards his ladies beside him.
"Right." Lucifer clambers up from the bed. "Now that we've put that whole affair to bed, it's long past time we put you to bed young lady."
Rory and Chloe respond with identical eye roles. Who would have thought? The Devil enforcing bedtimes?
"And I certainly wish to put you to bed, my love." He grins salaciously as he offers Chloe a hand up from her seat.
"Ew." Is their daughter's immediate response. But she's smiling as she snuggles down into the sheets.
Chloe can't help placing a kiss to Rory's forehead, and stroking down her hair, before stepping away finally. Lucifer slides a hand to her elbow, leading them both towards the door. They're almost through the doorway before Lucifer pauses and turns back to look at Rory in contemplation.
"Though thinking about it, blades for wings does sound pretty cool. Are you sure you don't fancy giving those a try?"
Rory snorts a laugh from beneath the comforter. Chloe fights her own chortle as she drags her Devil out of their child's bedroom.