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City of London, December 26th, 2029 A.D. 5:30 AM.
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Beelzebub had indulged in sleep before, but it certainly wasn’t a common habit. Demons and Angels don’t usually get tired, just like they don’t usually get hungry or thirsty. However, demons and angels also don’t usually do what Beelzebub had just done.
Despite being tired beyond belief, Beelzebub couldn’t bring themself to look away from what was currently sleeping in their arms; a creature whose existence should be impossible.
The baby was absolutely teeming with bright, new, untamed energy to a greater extent than any human newborn ever was, like a precious stone that had just been freed from the earth and hadn’t yet been molded and cut into perfect shape. Well… Not that she wasn’t already perfect, that is.
Beelzebub, a supposed creature of hatred and evil, had grown this little creature partially inside their own being for the last nine months. Not just their human corporation either, a look at their true form on the astral plane showed that a piece of their very essence had been ripped out and turned into the impossible child. It wasn’t just them, either. Gabriel had complained of feeling lightheaded and tired around the time of conception, and a look at his true form would show that a piece of him had also gone missing. However, Beelzebub definitely had the harder job of actually giving the creature life and a homemade corporation, and it was taking its toll on them.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” Gabriel asked from the doorway.
“Too tired to szzzzzleep.” Beelzebub muttered.
“That makes no sense.” Gabriel said in reply, earning a glare from Beelzebub. He quickly shut his mouth and went to their side with the mug he was holding.
“In celebration.” He held out the cup of coffee.
“Black with six sugars, just the way you like it.”
“Oh you are an Angel.” Beelzebub said, almost reaching for the mug before they remembered how difficult it would be to balance both the beverage and the extremely fragile creature sleeping in their arms.
“Juszzzzt put it on the nightszzzztand.” Gabriel set it down on the nightstand before sitting down next to Beelzebub.
“How long has she been sleeping?”
“Half an hour. She woke up to feed and then went back to szzzzleep.” Beelzebub said, running shaky fingers over the newborn’s thin hair.
“She opened her eyeszzzz for a moment.”
“What color?”
“Lilac.” Gabriel gave a little fist pump of excitement in the air.
“Don’t get cocky. She szzzztill lookszzzz like me.”
That much was true. The baby’s skin was a few shades lighter than Beelzebub’s, but she bore an eerie resemblance to the Prince of hell. The little hair she had was black, her eyelashes were already thick, and her lips were the same curved shape. The Demon, internally, was lording it over Gabriel. After all, they’d done the hard part and they didn’t do all that just for the kid to come out looking exactly like Gabriel.
“We still have to decide on a name for her.” Gabriel said.
“You’ve got your liszzzzt?”
“I do. You?”
“On my phone.” Beelzebub grabbed their phone from the nightstand and pulled up their notes app while Gabriel snapped his fingers and summoned a file to his hands.
“You put it in a file?” Beelzebub raised an eyebrow in judgement.
“I was being professional about it.”
“Gabriel. It’szzz a fucking baby’szzz name.”
“So? You put it in your phone.”
“That iszzzz not the szzzzame and you know it.”
“Whatever. You want to start and we’ll go back and forth?”
“Fine.” Beelzebub said before pulling up the document.
“Hecate.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’s too dark sounding.”
“Are you going to szzzay that to all the nameszzzz I picked?”
“It depends.”
“What have you got?”
“Mary.”
“Oh hell no. Naamah.”
“Eve.”
“Tempting, but no. Carmilla.”
“Lailah.”
“Lilith.”
“Prudence.”
“Do You want our kid to get bullied?”
“She’s a supernatural entity! She won’t get bullied!”
“Agrat.”
“Danielle.”
They were both running low now, but there was one more name left on each list.
“Jordan.” They both said in unison, looking in surprise at each other and then back at the newborn, who did seem to look very much like a Jordan.
“I guesszzzzz that szzzzzettleszzzzz it.”
“I… guess it does.” The newly named Jordan yawned and scrunched her body a little before settling back down. Beelzebub, for the second time that morning, felt something wet running down their cheeks.
“Bee?”
“I don’t know what’szzzz going on. My corporation…”
Gabriel vaguely remembered Crowley saying something about hormonal imbalances after birth, but he hadn’t been paying that much attention to anything that didn’t concern the newborn. It wasn’t like all that human drabble would affect angels or demons… right?
“My heard iszzzz all weird… I juszzzzt…”
“You what?”
“I have to protect her, but I don’t feel like I can. I’m too weak.”
Beelzebub’s aura did feel slightly weaker than usual, but that was no surprise. After all, Jordan had come from both their human corporation and their true celestial form. Having any part of oneself ripped out would make anyone weaker, and even with their immense power, Beelzebub was no exception.
“Protect her from who?”
“Heaven… Hell… Everyone. Fuck, Gabriel, they’re going to find out eventually. We can’t hide her forever and…” Gabriel put a comforting arm around Beelzebub’s shoulders.
“It’s going to be okay, Bee. I promise. Nobody’s going to find her now, not until she’s old enough to defend herself.”
“That’szzzzz NOT helping!”
“Hey, Bee, look at me.” Beelzebub looked at Gabriel.
“You’re not doing this alone. I promise, I won’t let anything happen to either one of you.”
The sun was beginning to break over the horizon by this point, visible through the large windows of the penthouse bedroom.
“I’ll take the kid for a bit. You rest, okay?”
Beelzebub nodded, too tired to argue for once, and carefully handed off Jordan to her father and placed an uncharacteristically tender kiss against the infant’s forehead before settling into the blankets and pillows that surrounded them. In true demonic fashion, they were asleep within two minutes, leaving Gabriel alone with Jordan.
The sun was a bright red, and it painted the clouds and sky an equally bright red. Gabriel recalled that Michael had once told him that a red sunrise heralded an incoming storm, and he looked down at Jordan. The light fell on her face and she opened her eyes to take it in. Sure enough, Gabriel saw his own eyes staring back at him. Bright violet eyes, intelligent eyes like Beelzebub’s, inquisitively taking in the world around her. Gabriel propped up Jordan in his arms so she could see the sun paint the sky scarlet.
The storm that would follow was eleven years off.