Hello, again! Thank you so much for the follows, faves and feedback! Gotta love Lucifans! You guys are awesome!

SirCalvin - since Lucifer is so proper and we were seeing things from his POV, I figured he'd think of Trixie as "Beatrice" (it was actually ariaadagio's suggestion, and it made so much sense. :-)

Please be warned that, while there is nothing explicit, the story touches upon the issue of child abuse.

As always, a huge thanks to ariaadagio and BelenP for their help and support as betas.

I hope you enjoy the chapters! :-)

You're Deflecting

"Bloody call keeps going straight to voicemail." Lucifer frowned at his phone.

Trixie wasn't sure whether to be relieved or concerned. Part of her was hoping her mom would pick up. That way, she'd have no choice but to talk to Lucifer, and maybe they'd make up. Sometimes things got complicated, and people didn't get back together, like Mommy and Daddy. She wasn't even sure why they had separated, although they had both insisted to a comical degree that their split hadn't been her fault. The separation was something she had learned to accept early on. Nana had said that Trixie was "wise beyond her years." The truth was she just wanted Mommy and Daddy to be happy.

Daddy had seemed happy with Charlotte. Now he was sad all the time, and Trixie didn't know how to cheer him up. Charlotte had been a nice lady. Trixie was going to miss her. She supposed Mommy missed Marcus, too. He hadn't been as fun as Lucifer, but Mommy had almost married him, so Trixie had jumped on the Marcus bandwagon to please her. Still, there'd been something about him that had made Trixie a little uncomfortable. She sometimes wondered if Mommy had been able to see that side of him as well. The fake side of Marcus.

Now, Mommy didn't talk about Marcus at all. She didn't talk about Lucifer, either. She was really good at disguising her feelings, but she was clearly struggling. There had been a couple of times Trixie had caught Mommy deep in thought, clutching the necklace Lucifer had given her for her birthday.

Of course, kids could pretend, too. Trixie suspected coming to Lucifer's penthouse might not have been the wisest idea, but at least it had spared her an evening of play-acting of her own.

"Maybe she ran out of battery," she suggested.

Lucifer appeared skeptical.

"Yes, perhaps," he muttered. "Remind me to tell your mum that she ought to change that boring voicemail greeting. That's the fifth time in a row I almost fall asleep listening to it."

"Maybe, she just didn't hear the phone," Trixie offered, hope burning. "It could be in her purse."

"Okay, let me try Daniel," Lucifer said with a grimace. The reluctance in his tone was so obvious one might have thought he had accepted a dare to jump out the window without a parachute.

Trixie pouted, realizing the chances of Mommy and Lucifer speaking again were rapidly evaporating.

"Daniel, I have your—" Lucifer stopped speaking mid-sentence and let out a guttural growl. "Voicemail. Bloody hell!" He tapped his thumb on his knee a few times and, in the silence, Trixie could almost hear the wheels churning inside his head. "Do you know Penelope's number?"

"No," Trixie muttered. "Sorry."

"Are you lying to me, child?"

Trixie's cheeks and ears flamed. She lowered her gaze and licked her lips several times.

"Please, don't call Nana," she mumbled.

Lucifer regarded her for several long seconds without saying a word. With a little luck, he wouldn't press her on the matter. Had this conversation been with Mommy or Daddy, they would have asked her a gazillion questions by now. Lucifer, on the other hand, only nodded with a barely audible "very well," and let the issue slide. Trixie relaxed.

He sighed. "Let me try your mum one more time."

Once again, the call went straight to voicemail. He dialed her home number twice more. Those calls also went straight to voicemail.

"Bloody Hell!" Lucifer repeated. "Could she be at the station?"

"I don't know." Trixie shrugged. "It's late."

Lucifer tried Chloe's cell phone for the seventh time. Nothing.

"Okay, let me try the station anyway," he said. "It appears that your progenitors—"

The phone buzzed with an incoming call as Lucifer was getting ready to dial.

He let out a dry chuckle.

"Daniel!" Lucifer answered, chortling. "So nice of you to finally return my call. I hope I'm not interrupting a riveting night of pretending to drive across town whilst sitting on a chair not even America's Worst Hoarders would claim as their own."

"Shut up, man!" came the panicked reply. "Is Trixie with you?"

"Funny you should ask!" Lucifer smiled at Trixie. "It so happens your tiny dependent turned up at my place almost an hour ago. I'm no expert, but isn't it customary for parents to keep better track of their offspring?"

"Let me talk to my daughter, please." Dan's desperation came loud and clear through the small speaker.

Lucifer was more than eager to hand the phone over to Trixie, who took it with a heavy sigh.

Crap!

She was in so much trouble…

"Hi, Daddy."

"Hey, Monkey. Are you okay?"

Trixie had expected Daddy to be angry. Maybe not nearly as mad as Mommy, but enough for her to lose Internet privileges for at least a week. She had been bracing herself for their combined wrath, in fact. But all she picked up from his shaken voice was relief. When Daddy told her how worried they'd all been, her fear turned into guilt. So, the moment Mommy's voice came through the phone, Trixie could barely hold back tears.

"Trixie!"

Mommy's voice was strained.

"I'm okay, Mommy," Trixie said weakly. "I'm at Lucifer's."

"I know, Baby," Chloe said, half laughing, half sobbing. "Did Lucifer… did he pick you up from school?"

Trixie shook her head. "No. I came here on my own."

There was a brief silence on the line.

"Okay," Mommy said.

Trixie pictured Mommy nodding her head, like she did every time she tried to keep calm during complex situations, or when she tried not to lose her temper. She must be struggling to hold it together just as much as Trixie was, which made Trixie sink a little deeper into that turbulent pool of regret.

Just try not to cry.

"I'm going to pick you up," Mommy told her. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes, okay?"

"Okay," Trixie mumbled.

Returning her mommy's, "I love you," Trixie hung up the phone and placed it onto the coffee table.

"I'm in huge trouble, aren't I?"

Lucifer leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. "Well, it depends," he said. "Did you have a good reason for running away?"

"I didn't run away," Trixie said defensively. "I came here!"

"You know what I mean, and you're deflecting."

"What does 'deflecting' mean?"

"It means you want to talk about anything else other than why you came here. And under normal circumstances, I wouldn't much care. But your mum is on the way here, swearing up a storm, and I'd very much like to know the reason why I'm about to be a target by association."

Trixie picked up the fork and pushed around the last remnants of cake crumbs left on the plate.

"Why are you and Mommy fighting?"

Lucifer seemed taken aback by the question. He blinked a couple of times, gaze darkening.

"Well, this conversation just took a sharp turn," he said, voice low. "What makes you think your mother and I are fighting?"

"You don't come over anymore, or call, or text. Mommy always changes the subject when your name comes up. And I heard her telling Maze that she needs time to 'get over it'. And now Maze is gone." Too many recent changes to cope with. Trixie wanted things to go back to the way they were, before the "almost wedding", before Mommy looked so sad and tired all the time. "What happened? What did you do that was so bad?"

Trixie had never seen this other side of Lucifer. The side that wasn't chipper, and snarky, and flamboyant. She couldn't exactly read him, but he looked gloomy when he shifted his gaze toward the night sky.

"Well played, Urchin," Lucifer praised, his focus back on her. "But if I open up to you, you'll need to do the same. Deal?"

Trixie nodded, agreeing to his terms. Lucifer seemed to ponder, almost as if regretting his own proposal, but too proud to back out now. The silence stretched into long, wavering seconds.

"A long time ago, I rebelled against my father," Lucifer began quietly. "I challenged everything he stood for, divided the family and forsook half my siblings to Hell for eternity. As a result, I became a monster. A few weeks ago, your mum finally got to see that side of me. It's quite… terrifying to humans."

His words lingered between them, but they made no sense. He wasn't a monster. Why would he claim to be one?

"I have nightmares sometimes," Trixie told him. "About bad people coming into our house and killing Mommy because she's a cop. Then... they find Daddy and kill him too. I spend the rest of the dream running away until I wake up. It's hard to breathe, and my chest hurts when that happens. So, to stop being scared, I think about how the Devil is Mommy's best friend. How he's more powerful than anyone in the Bible. Well, except maybe God." Lucifer clenched his jaw, but did not interrupt her. "You'd never let those bad guys hurt us. That helps me fall back asleep."

Trixie had meant for her confession to be uplifting, to let him know he wasn't a monster—not to her. She did not expect the sorrow that seemed to suddenly weigh him down. Lucifer broke eye contact. There was a faint glint in his eyes, but it vanished so quickly, Trixie thought she might have imagined his initial reaction. His trademarked grin returned, but it shone dimmer than she was used to.

"I'm not omnipotent, Child. Nor am I invulnerable, as it turns out. But you can rest assured that I will always do everything within my power to keep you and your mother safe."

Trixie frowned. "What's 'omnipotent?'"

"Dearie me!" he quipped, a half grin curling his lips. "Don't they teach you any vocabulary in school? It means 'all powerful,' which I'm not."

"But you saved Mommy's life when she got sick and the doctors told Daddy there was nothing they could do."

"Trust me, if I were omnipotent, she wouldn't have been sick in the first place."

Trixie exhaled a wistful sigh. "I wish you were 'omnipotent!'"

"Nobody ought to be all-powerful, Child," Lucifer said. "There is a fine line between will and manipulation."

"Isn't God all-powerful?"

Lucifer's expression turned grim. "Precisely."

Trixie thought it prudent to drop the subject. She could detect a hint of hostility in his voice that she wasn't particularly keen on exploring.

"So, was it a nightmare that brought you here?" Lucifer asked.

Trixie let out all the air in her lungs through a drawn out sigh. Her grimace did little to prevent the inevitable.

"A deal is a deal, Urchin," Lucifer said, raising an eyebrow. "Now it's your turn to spill the beans."

She wanted to tell him. She really did. But the words just wouldn't come out, as if her brain and her mouth were not on speaking terms, and she was caught in the middle of their fight.

"I…" she stammered.

When she got stuck, Lucifer urged her on. "Come on. Out with it!"

"It's just…" Trixie winced, her heart lodged in her throat. "I don't like spending time with Nana and her new boyfriend."

She stared into his eyes, which were unusually warm and unusually gentle. He was someone she could trust. Nodding in silence, Lucifer offered her a reassuring smile.

Whatever else Trixie was about to share got interrupted by the sound of the elevator. The doors opened, and Mommy walked into the penthouse looking pale and gaunt. Eyes wide, her gaze fell on Trixie and then travelled to her partner.

Lucifer stood up slowly, his expression unreadable.

"Detective."

[To Be Continued…]