Chapter 4
A/N: Big thanks for the favorites and the reviews, Guest, MiloU and Emrysa Morningstar.
Sorry for the long wait, but I wasn't satisfied with the chapter as it was, so I reworked some passages.
I try to give some explanation of why we had so few Lucifer/Trixie moments since S5B and especially S6.
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After tiding up their half-finished game – it didn't make much sense to finish it with one player missing – they had resumed their original plan of a trip to the beach. They had walked down the shore, Trixie barefoot savoring the feeling of the sand underneath her skin. The swoosh of the waves, the cries of seagulls, the salty smell. It felt so real. This was so amazing. She felt like being in L.A.. Like she was still alive.
She sat down at the shoreline, her feet stretched forward, so the waves would rinse through her toes and her hands were buried in the warm and soft sand next to her as Lucifer eventually slipped out of his Italian shoes.
"Uh well." He huffed and sank down next to her, his Prada trousers rolled up to his knees. Both of them were uncharacteristically silent on their walk down to this spot. Both their minds heavy. Lucifer's shoulder touched lightly Trixie's as he gathered enough courage to ask the question, which had been building the past day, dreading the answer. "Do you regret that I'm in your life? That I brought only heartbreak for your family?"
"No." The teenager replied without a moment of hesitation. She immediately felt his astonished gaze on her. "Because of you, I have a big family." Trixie tore her eyes away from the ocean and faced him with a genuine smile, which dispelled his doubts about her telling the truth. "Because of you, I have a little sister now, I have Charlie, a cousin of sorts, Dr. Linda and Amenadiel are kinda my aunt and uncle, and I have Maze and Eve and Ella." Her smile grew at the thought of the many people she loved and who loved her back. Who she could trust and turn to. "I wouldn't know anyone of them without you."
It dawned on the Devil that the girl was indeed right. Chloe didn't have had one real friend before she had met him, much less someone she could trust in troubled situations.
Trixie grew grave, her eyes travelling back to the water. "Without you and your protection, Mom might be already long dead and I would only have my Dad and no one else. Or I lost also him and then there were only my grandparents left. No one else to care for me."
New silence wrapped around them and both starred onto the waves in front of them. "Mom went back to the LAPD." Trixie said almost absent minded.
"I know."
She didn't have to pretend in front of the Devil. She never had to when it came to her feelings. "It's dangerous."
Her words took him back so awfully many years, to when she had been so small to only reach his hip. To a time when she had revealed her fear about losing her parents to their job. "As far as I know from Rory, your Mum won't die due to her job."
"I still don't have to like it."
"No, you don't." The child had been so relieved shortly after her father's death, when Chloe had disclosed to her, that she had resigned her job as a detective. It ached him, that his absence in their lives had brought this fear back to the girl and most likely also to his own daughter once she would be old enough to grasp the dangers of her mother's occupation.
They listened to the sound of the surf crashing and breaking upon the shore, engulfing their feet in the foam of the waves. "Why were you so distant after my Dad's death?" Her hands were drawing in the dry sand next to her absently.
"I wasn-" He was about to argue, when he tried to remember the few direct interactions with the girl after Daniel had passed away. It surprised him that he came up with so few in comparison to before. The years before, when he and Chloe hadn't been a couple, he had spent much more time with the Spawn. He had dropped by most mornings or afternoons. Watching her endless loops of Disney movies with her, telling her the answers to her homework – much to Chloe's ire – or coloring her drawings with her. Or they made deals. The little Urchin had been a hard negotiator. And she knew how to find loopholes even as a sticky handed small human, who didn't even reach his belly-button.
But after Chloe and he had been together and Dan was in Hell, even their evenings spent together watching a movie or singing karaoke twice a week had turned to weekly at best. He had tried to juggle his relationship with Chloe, helping Daniel overcome his guilt in Hell and coming to terms with his new position as God. And soon after, Rory had turned up and disclosed who she really was to him. Them.
There had been one question the Devil had dreaded the little girl would ask him after her father had passed away. One question she would ask him and only him, because she knew he wouldn't lie. Couldn't lie. One question he wasn't sure if she would ask at all. Neither he, nor Chloe had ever been sure at that time, how much the child indeed believed. But if she had believed, yet held her doubts about his brother's words at the funeral, then she would ask. And he would have had to tell her the truth. The sad truth that her father was stuck in Hell, with the Devil himself being his friend, yet unable to help him ascent to Heaven. He had dreaded to have to tell her back then and he still dreaded to do so now. She shouldn't know. At least it should not be his place to tell her.
But was this the only reason?
"Was it because of the trust I broke?" She didn't dare to look up from her doodle of a star in the sand.
"No." This he was sure of. Tentatively he placed his arm around the teenager's shoulders. "There was a lot going on at the time. Celestial stuff. And when Rory arrived, your Mum and I were busy figuring out what had happened to me. Would happen to me. We figured that the only reason why I would leave you all in the future was because I was murdered and ceased to exist." Lucifer saw her frown as she eventually faced him. "Well, that was the working-theory of your Mum and me. My first suspect as my killer had been none other than Rory." Now Trixie was staring up at him like he had grown a second head. "Your sister hadn't been easy when she arrived in the past. Full of rage and hatred for me. Seems like she comes after me with pubertal riot." This coaxed a few giggles from Trixie and he smirked at the memory.
"Was it really just Rory? When did she arrive in the past? Right after Dad's funeral?" Accusation was in her voice. "Or even before? Because the weeks before my Dad died you were already rare."
He squeezed her shoulder gently. "I didn't mean to." Maybe it was time to tell her some of the truth. "You remember when my Father visited Earth." She nodded and stayed silent. "He told us that he would retire and so my twin-brother Michael and I were running for being the new God."
"You have a twin brother?" She asked baffled. That God retired wasn't such a surprise since Amenadiel was now God. But Lucifer had wanted to become God, too?
Interesting that this information got her attention, the God-part not. "Yes and he is currently scrubbing the hallways of Hell." Now she had that disbelieving glare her mother so often held at some of his stories before she believed him being the actual Devil.
"Anyway, this did occupy a lot of my time and afterwards…" He trailed of. Why hadn't he been there for the Urchin? He had tried to make her feel better. This had been one of the reasons; his new reason to become God. He had tried to help Daniel come to terms with his guilt. Tried to not make him feel like he was supposed to be in Hell. Because in Lucifer's eyes he wasn't. And that wasn't because of the little girl crying her eyes out, but because Daniel had been, still is his friend and didn't deserve to be in Hell. "I didn't want to take your Father's place." The words were out before he could grasp their meaning.
Their gazes locked. "You were the most important to your father, you still are." He remembered his first visits where the other man had always asked about his daughter. "Even in… afterlife your Dad missed you terribly." He watched her wipe tears away. "I didn't want to make him feel that I took his place in your life." While he was suffering in Hell.
Her teary gaze searched for his eyes. "My Dad will always be my Dad. But I had needed my friend. The one who always knew how to cheer me up." A sob escaped her at the last words and it tore at the Devil's heart.
Pulling her closer into his side, he pressed a kiss onto her top of the head. "I'm sorry, Trixie."
It felt so freeing, so overwhelming that he was hugging her and showing real affection. Lucifer had stopped a few years ago to be terrified of her hugs – that's when it got boring to assault him with embraces. But the most affection he had showed her, was ruffling her hair or patting her head. Maybe a proud or reassuring hand to the shoulder. Which she knew was a huge overcoming of his aversion to children on his part.
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Their conversations had been exhausting for both of them. Aside for there was no day and night at Hell and angels and demons needed hardly any sleep at all, both felt after these first 24 hours, that they needed a break. When they returned to the apartment, Trixie was about to crawl into her bed with her street clothes on, but suddenly a pink pj-set appeared at the foot of her blanket. With a smile she turned to the man standing in her doorway. "Thank you, Lucifer." He returned her smile as the room abruptly turned darker. Her eyes swapped over to the window and the setting sun in this simulation, he controlled. In Hell, the Devil was God.
"I'll be upstairs. Good night, Urchin." Slowly he slid the sliding door shut.
"Good night, Lucifer."
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A/N: I'm still not really satisfied with this chapter; I hope you still liked it.