Chapter Text
♫
”Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day…”
While she sang quietly, Charlie’s pale fingers traced circles on the woodgrain as she stared out at Hell from the comfort of her balcony. Oh what a pretty picture she made. Idle princess, sitting in her tower, singing her little songs and feeling sorry for herself and the blood on her hands when there was so much work to do. How predictable.
It had been a week since the party and she had barely moved beyond her bedroom, turning it into her personal depression nest with occasional snuggly, supportive girlfriend to break up the monotony of marathons of cute movies on Hellflix where things ended in love and friendship and zero bloodshed. Activities had been delegated down to the senior guests and Vaggie to keep things moving, the whole thing capable of running like clockwork without her input, so long as she greased the wheels a little bit. She could do exactly as her dad had for years- rule with power and fear behind her and never do a single thing, just coast on by with reputation alone.
She crushed her eyes closed and thunked her head against the balustrade with a groan. “This is so dumb,” she whined. She and Vaggie had talked this out and Vaggie was right- there was a difference in killing to protect and killing just because you could.
It just felt like… a sacrifice somehow, like she’d lost a war she had been fighting her entire life right at the cusp of a victory. No matter who gave her a pep talk about it, the pervasive wrongness wouldn’t subside.
And yet pep talks would continue until morale improved- she’d taught this hotel too well.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Charlie jolted suddenly, whipping around to find herself nearly nose to nose with her father- or as close to his nose as she could get with their height difference. She hadn’t heard him arrive, which meant he’d either used a portal or she was more in her head than she thought- she hadn’t even heard the door to her bedroom open, much less the knock that would have come before.
“Whoa! Sorry! Gotta put a bell on me, I guess!” He wheezed, anxiously, adjusting his bowtie as the two of them drifted apart to separate sides of the balcony to give each other space and avoid hitting each other with their catastrophic flailing.
“No, it’s- it’s fine, Dad.” Charlie swallowed and adjusted her own messy pajamas. Fuck, she wished she’d put on actual clothes to wallow. When was the last time she wore a vest? Oh right, the party. Ugh.
Lucifer shook his head, palms up in a placating gesture. “It’s not. It’s really not. I shouldn’t- just because I can pop in and out of places at will doesn’t mean I should. It’s, uh, it’s a work in progress. You know me and boundaries. I'm either eighty feet back or right up here.” He held his hand a centimeter from his face, peered out at her between splayed fingers, and then aborted the gesture to slide his fingers behind his head to rub at the back of his neck. Despite everything, Charlie softened. He really was trying his hardest.
Realizing this was going to get circular with two anxious people constantly apologizing for who was in the wrong- the person who was so in her own head that she missed a knock on the door or the person who couldn’t stop being an extremely powerful angel long enough to realize that not every closed door was just an invitation to try harder to get in- they fell into a silence that Lucifer broke first.
“How you holdin’ up?”
She blew a raspberry.
“Yeah, I… figured that.” He coughed into his fist. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much. I’ve, uh, had some fires to put out- not related to you, sweetie! I promise! Like I talked to Bee and she is Capital-P pissed about Baal. She actually asked me if I could resurrect him so she could kill him herself.” Another wheezy laugh, cut off abruptly. “…I couldn’t, but I absolutely would have.”
She declined to say that it wouldn’t make her feel better- if that was even the intent. It was hard to tell whether he would have done it to make Bee happy or her. Turning away, she collapsed on the balustrade again. “You’re fine, Dad. I’ve been… Kinda avoiding everyone lately. I know Mom wants to talk about it, buuuut…” She grimaced.
“Yeah, your mom has way, way less issue with murder than we do- you do. I… I’ve slipped a lot.” He sighed and joined her at the balustrade. “I’ve slipped a lot,” he repeated, with more emphasis. “And I know it scares you because you-”
“Don’t.” Charlie buried her face in her hands. “Please don’t bring up prom. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.”
Yes, her father’s dark side had terrified her and what little she saw of him had always forced her to reconcile the terrifying force of nature with the person who believed so strongly in dreams that were worth fighting for, but the real crux of it was what it said about her. Fucking Hellsa Von Eldritch dumping imp blood on her head because she didn’t want her dating her brother and the resulting chaos it caused- well, let’s just say some possessor demon going to Earth sometime later, possessing a writer just to pen some fucked up narrative about the event was not the worst part of that evening or even the most lingering scar of it.
Ever since she’d been so careful about her temper, desperate to come off as sweet and kind, so no one remembered her as the ballistic Antichrist who blew up her own prom. No one actually died, but they had come close- too close. So close that now it took an act of Heaven to get her to raise her voice or show her horns.
And yet it was getting easier and easier to let her anger out. Things were too unfair and miserable, people were coming at her in ways that made it impossible to not fight back- what was she supposed to do but let herself become just as monstrous? To snap at them to back down and show her some fucking respect and not hate her for something that wasn’t harming anything but the status quo- which sucked, by the by.
“Why do I have to hurt people to protect what I care about?” She finally asked, voice so soft she didn’t believe it was even audible until her father responded.
“Charlie…” Lucifer sighed and slumped bodily over the rail, so boneless it was a miracle he didn’t slide over the edge like a released slinky. “I’ve… never been good at defending what I care about. I try to avoid conflict where I can because I just know that fighting will make it worse.”
He ran a hand through his hair again, face twisted in a mask of grief. Charlie reached over to touch his shoulder and flinched when the simple gesture made him crumble. “Like… like the exterminations. I didn’t want that, but I didn’t know what else to do, because the last time I made an argument for something, they banished me. And I didn’t want them to hurt Lilith or the Sins. And I knew they would, because how dare I be happy here when I'm supposed to be being punished. How dare I ask for anything? So what did I do? I folded like a cheap card table! Like always!”
Another pause, another wheezy, desperate laugh. Charlie escalated the gentle shoulder touch into a full embrace. He leaned against her, breathing through the onset of panic and letting it fall away, as if realizing that this wasn’t about him and he needed to be a rock for her, instead of letting her simply comfort him. “But you don’t deserve that fear. Whatever comes out of this, if anything bad even does ‘cause wow I do not see any of the Goetia fucking around with you after like, I mean yowza. You killed that guy good..”
He paused again to collect his thoughts and grab her hand as she began to pull back and withdraw into herself, too cognizant of the blood on her hands to want to linger on the memory. “I know you’ll handle it better than I did, kiddo. No matter what. You’ve done so much already.” He thumbed her cheek with his free hand. “Honestly… Watching you is inspiring. It’s like… I dunno. It makes your old man realize that when someone fucks with what you love, you give ‘em the ol’ one-two punch. KA-POW.” He stepped back onto his left foot and did a little mock punch in the air and they both broke into giggles, despite the somber air of the moment. “There’s that smile.”
“I just… dunno what’s gonna happen.” She looked towards the gates of Heaven, fighting not to scowl and losing that battle so quickly it almost caused her pain. “Like Heaven has shut us out entirely! What’s that about? How am I supposed to be redeeming Sinners when Heaven is just AWOL? And in another six months it’ll be Extermination Day again! What if it starts up again even though Adam’s dead? What if-“
She was spiraling and Lucifer, apparently being accustomed to spirals, gently pulled her hands away from where she was starting to tear at her hair and gently shushed her. “Hey, hey. We’ll worry about that if it happens. Heaven’s not gonna stay quiet forever. They’ve got opinions on everything. Just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s still important to you, right?”
She gave a feeble nod. “More than anything.”
Even if the Exterminations never happened again, her people deserved to get into Heaven if they wanted to, especially if Heaven’s rigid system was unfairly stacked against them, in the first place. Things had to change… and that was where the problem lay. No matter how much she wanted to believe otherwise, change didn’t happen without conflict.
Lucifer tapped her on the nose. “Why don’t you take a walk, puddin’ pop? Get out of the Hotel for awhile. Auntie Bel says that even if it seems stupid, it’s actually really good for you and sometimes she knows what she’s talking about.”
She had to fight not to roll her eyes and lost that fight too. “She always knows what she’s talking about.”
“Then I guess you should listen to her, eh?” He gave her a nudge in the side with his elbow and she snorted in laughter again.
“Okay, okay.”
It was a beautiful morning, after all. It wasn’t right to waste such a rare time in Hell on being pouty up in her room in her pajamas.
✖
The boardroom had become a haunt for private meetings that didn’t need to be done right in the middle of the parlor in front of Heaven and everyone, though Vaggie felt particularly ill at ease that she was using it this time to avoid Charlie finally walking downstairs at the wrong time and spoiling her own surprise, rather than the usual staff meetings about projects or guest problems. That this meeting was for her benefit and not a discussion of some kind of intervention about her isolation only softened the blow slightly.
Most of the hotel’s residents were crammed inside, reminding her a little too much of the events of the last week. The dry erase board behind her still boasted half-erased ‘mystery board’ notes, which only served to remind her how little time had passed. It also served as a reminder of why they were here.
Vaggie paced at the head of the table back and forth, tapping a pointer against her back to keep her hands from fidgeting. “Okay, so Charlie’s been down since the party and since then the hotel’s been getting a lot of attention.”
“Which is bad… somehow?” Angel piped up, leaning back in his chair with his cell phone balanced on his chest fluff as he scrolled mindlessly through a feed. Alastor, sitting across from him, looked five seconds away from grabbing it and shattering it. That he didn’t was because his eyes were entirely on her, which she hated more than she hated having to replace another broken phone.
Pentious scoffed. “I don’t understand why her highness isss ssso upset! Isn’t this what she wanted?”
Of course they didn’t get it. They didn’t know Charlie- not like she did. They didn’t know how hard she had to work every day to keep herself as quirky and bubbly as she always was. It didn’t come naturally to her, not the way she’d like it to, no matter how effortless it looked. There was an entire legacy of darkness burning away inside of her, brought out to the light in moments of dire stress. Her killing Baal was the least of what she could do. “Not like this. She never wanted to gain attention by putting her foot on people’s necks.”
Angel placed his phone facedown on the table with a sigh, ready to give the matter his full attention. “Yeah, but… it works. So what’s the big deal?”
“She just wants to stay true to herself.” At least the version of herself that she wanted to be. Charlie brought out the best in everyone, even if sometimes she fumbled the ball a bit in her overzealous puppydog enthusiasm. She believed it was impossible to do that if she wasn’t one hundred percent the best version of herself at all times.
Alastor chortled. “Haha! Well! Compromise is key, isn’t it? And if it sees her dream realized, she might as well accept that to become a true leader, a little blood has to be shed.”
Vaggie glowered. “I thought you wanted to see this place fail?”
“Oh don’t worry about me, my dear.” Alastor did a casual little wrist flick. “I’m sure I can find an advantage no matter what happens here.”
“Not helpful, but okay.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, sucked in a breath, and then exhaled. “Look, I just think Charlie needs to see the good she’s been doing. She’s fixating on the fact that someone tried to undermine the hotel and she had to get righteously pissed to put an end to it. We love her, don’t we?”
No one said anything, which wasn’t a no, but rather the resigned yes of a group of people who were incredibly awkward or repressed about their emotions. If they felt nothing for Charlie at all, they would have said so. Not saying dick was damning. She shot them all a victorious little smirk, glad that her girlfriend had gotten under the skin of these fuckers.
“So what d’you want us to do, Vags?” Husk asked, chin in his hand, expression bored to the point of near-faceplanting.
“We’re going to show her.” The groans were immediate, protests lost in the din of too many voices whining about having to express their emotions in ways that were anathema to whatever the fuck they had going on. It was getting easier for some of them to deal with therapy, but God (or whoever wanted the honor) forbid they actually admit they cared about each other. They were good at grand gestures like sieging an Overlord’s territory to rescue each other or making elaborate and stupid sacrifices and murdering- they were shit at just being normal about their emotions. “Seriously, it’s not fucking hard. Just come up with something to let Charlie know how you feel about her.”
The or else was implied and shut up a lot of the protesting. Before anyone- specifically Alastor- could make some pithy remark or protest now that silence had returned, the door to the boardroom opened and in strolled Lucifer, looking far more confident than he usually did.
“Guess who got Charlie out of the hotel~” He sing-songed, his baritone voice swaying into its lowest register. “And I gave her good advice! Two for two on good parenting today!” He waved his hands like he was expecting applause or praise. Vaggie gave him tiny golf claps of encouragement, while Alastor played a laugh track on his microphone.
“I didn’t realize we were expecting to praise you for the bare minimum!” He chortled as the canned laughter faded out. “Truly, you make such a spectacle out of mediocrity. Precisely what one could expect out of the Sin of Pride!”
“Why you-“ Lucifer started, before Vaggie cut in, quickly.
“Later. You two can break out the fucking rulers later. It’s Charlie time now. We’ve got maybe a few hours if she doesn’t get distracted and we can’t count on that.” She clapped her hands. “Now get going. Let’s show her what she means to us.”
With dissatisfied grumbling, occasionally paired with ideas being bandied back and forth, the meeting broke, leaving Vaggie to collapse against the wall with no one but Lucifer remaining with her. An awkward silence fell between them- despite everything, they still had moments where they weren’t sure what to say to each other, which would make her feel shitty if he didn’t have those kinds of moments with everyone. The whole ‘fallen angel’ thing was less of a mutual barrier to casual interaction than their own personally tailored social failings.
“Soooo…” Lucifer waved his hand, trying to prompt some sort of conversation.
Vaggie screwed up her face, already not following. Lucifer existed so much in his own head that sometimes it felt like he was expecting answers to questions he never asked. “I’m glad you got her out of the hotel?”
“What? Oh! No- I mean thanks, I’m, uh, glad I did too.” He pulled his hat off of his head and fiddled with the brim. “That wasn’t- I mean, it-“ He stopped, exhaled, and then started again, returning the hat to its proper place. “What are you thinking of doing to show Charlie how much she means to you?”
Her cheeks turned an embarrassed olive-yellow. Truth be told she had an idea, an idea that she’d been sitting on for ages, an idea that she’d even thought about using the party as an opportunity to indulge right up until the murder happened and there obviously wasn’t a right moment. Truth be told, she’d had this particular idea percolating in her head for… well, a couple months now. It was a miracle that Charlie hadn’t accidentally uncovered that little velvet box stuffed into a sock and buried in the back of the dresser, especially since she’d stuffed more socks into it to make it look like a vibrator than what it very obviously was. Not that Charlie would be offended if she had a vibrator, but she might be curious about what kind she had and… well. Yeah.
She still wasn’t sure if it was the right time. “I… I dunno. I have a pretty different standard for showing my love than most people?” She pushed a lock of her hair behind her ears, awkwardly.
“Do I need to put something together? A little romantic evening after the rest of the love fest has concluded?” He wagged his eyebrows, but there was a desperation behind his eyes that said please make use of me. It was an angel thing, completely impossible to remove, as if some part of their being would always be committed to serving. She and Lucifer could circle around each other like ducks trying to figure out who was supposed to help who and no amount of higher ranking would make Lucifer be the one to give an order he didn’t want to give. He’d rather have Vaggie direct him, while Vaggie would rather die than tell him what to do. One more social failing that kept them from spending too much time with each other.
But at least he was less intimidating than Lilith. Vaggie still wasn’t sure what to do with her- barely anyone did. The Queen of Hell was both exactly like her daughter and everything Charlie didn’t want to be and that disconnect made her difficult to interact with for most people. She left that shit to Alastor and Vox and Velvette, who had a better handle on the Queen when Lucifer and Charlie weren’t around.
“You… you don’t have to do that,” Vaggie stammered, holding up her hands like she was warding off his encroaching manic episode. On top of not wanting the King of Hell and an actual seraph doing her dirty work for her, Lucifer getting involved in anything tended to operate at 110% capacity and if she told him what she was angling for, he would get so excited that whatever came up with would likely involve a Tunnel of Love in the basement and a full orchestra and, like, all the trimmings of something that was far too much for what Vaggie was going for. “You should focus on what you’re going to do for her.”
Lucifer blanched, which was impressive given his skin was already paper-white. Evidently there actually was a shade lighter than that. He tugged on his collar. “Right. Riiiiight. I’ll, uh… Have to get with Lily. See if she wants to do some good old-fashioned Mom-and-Dad… Thing.”
His uncertainty gave her pause. Six months and a lot of work had put the Morningstars somewhere on the same page, but it was a page torn out of a book- no matter how hard you tried to stick it back in, it always stuck out awkwardly, reminding you that something had been damaged. Even with the reveal of her past as an Exorcist having been mostly shoved underneath the rug because so much else happened after, she felt similarly about it, like it was just sitting there in the storybook of her and Charlie’s life, proving something was out of place.
Maybe that was why you shouldn’t paint your romance as a storybook, then. It might give her pause, but it also gave her hope.
She shifted her feet awkwardly. “Is there… I mean, uh… Do you want a suggestion?”
She started to turn an even bolder shade of olive and buried her face in her hands. Fuck. “That’s stupid. You’re a billion years older than me. You know better about this shit than I do.”
Lucifer laughed. “Sweetie, no… No, I don’t.” He reached out, hesitated, and then carefully laid a hand on her shoulder, as if somewhere between that bone-crushing hug he’d first given her when they met and the multitude of more sincere conversations they’d had, he’d learned to make sure his presence and attention were allowed before barreling in on the assumption that as King, he could do as he pleased. “I’ve known Charlie her entire life almost and I don’t feel I know half as much as you do about her. That’s… That’s entirely on me, mind.”
“I mean Eve did some of it.” Vaggie bristled a bit. She likely was still a larval angel, barely grafted out of grace and Adam’s needs, when Eve had made her claim on the Morningstar family in the disguise of a devoted nanny, but the protective part of her couldn’t shake a vision of her with her baby spear coming down to tear her apart. It was for the best that the past couldn’t be changed. Eve would have splattered her.
Lucifer made a grim expression and pulled away. “Yeah, well, Bel says I need to take responsibility for the parts that were me. It’d be easy to blame it all on her, but…” He made a wishy-washy gesture with his hand. “I’m doing my best.”
“You’re doing great,” she insisted, because he was. Everyone could see it. He cared about Sinners when he used to dismiss them. He put himself at risk and almost died to prove a point to Heaven about Charlie’s dream. He and Lilith were making up and well on their way to being better rulers in Hell, following Charlie’s example, instead of steamrolling on their own way. Hell, they were slumming it here instead of staying in their castle in Avernus and having stayed at that fucking castle, herself, Vaggie still couldn’t believe that one. “Just, uh… don’t overdo it? With the whole caviar fountains and champagne mountains or whatever the fuck you conjure up. Just still being here is enough for Charlie. I promise.”
Lucifer wibbled- first his bottom lip, and then his eyes, all big and watery. He forgot the whole propriety thing and gathered her up in his arms for another hug. “Thanks, Vaggie.”
She hugged him back, relaxing into it, laughing a little that he actually did know her name and the random pet names and affectations that were slightly like her name but not quite weren't just him struggling to remember it. At least, no matter how this… thing she was afraid to even think about came about, she was already a part of the Morningstar family. It would be really embarrassing if she proposed and still had to win over the parents. “You’re welcome.”