Chapter 5

A/N: Big thanks for the favorites and follows and of course the reviews, Emrysa Morningstar, SPCLjmm, kimberlychytil and Foxyleo28.

Emrysa Morningstar: Since Malcom and also Charlotte remembered their time in Hell, Trixie will so, too (only that she will have good memories of that infernal realm). And yes, she will try to make the situation a tad better for her step-devil.

SPCLjmm: Dan is in Heaven with Charlotte in this point of time in the story, but Lucifer doesn't think it is his place to tell Trixie that her father had been initially been to Hell. Back then in 2020 after Dan died, Lucifer's situation had been even worse, because if she had asked him, he would have had to tell her the truth, that Dan was currently in Hell and that all his efforts to help him redeem his guilt were in vain (or that he was a ghost stuck between dimensions and unable to interact with anyone not Celestial).

I also corrected the spelling of the demon's name Belios in chapter 1. He will return later in the story.

X – X – X – X – X

After an ample breakfast including chocolate cake and Lucifer mulling over how to get to the bottom of Trixie's guilt, they had moved to the next room in Hell. His penthouse. They had watched his copy of 'Hot Tub High School' on his big screen – even a bit bigger than the real TV was in his penthouse in L.A. – and stuffed themselves with more snacks and cake.

While he had made himself another drink, Trixie had moved to his piano, pressing a key once in a while. "Don't tell me, you forgot everything I had taught you, Urchin?"

Trixie made a face and tried to remember the beginning of the one song he taught her when she had been little. The one she had made him play up and down all evening.

Sinking down next to her, he placed his whiskey onto the top of the instrument and began to play Frozen's 'Let it be'. Soon the teenager joined in with four fingers at most – earning some aghast comments from the Devil for it.

Lucifer reveled in being able to play the piano or any other instrument he would chose to. At least this little joy was granted to him now. Before, every sound emitted from one of his created instruments, not in a Hell Loop of a doomed soul, was distorted just like the light in the hallways had been. Just like the audio and video from DVDs or tapes had been blurred and askew. Hell had been asynchronous, distorted and warped in itself for so very long. Twisted and lost on itself without its true purpose. In hindsight, just like he had been himself before he found his Chloe. But now, after the renovation of his realm and the establishment of new rules to finally bring Hell to its originally destined purpose, everything was suddenly in consonance.

After finishing countless loops of this song and Trixie eventually having worked up her skill to three fingers on her right hand, yet still two on her left one, she decided to take a break and give Lucifer the opportunity to play something not from Disney. While he played a wonderful ballade she didn't know – most likely from some interpret long dead before her birth, she wandered the penthouse, noticing more pictures, those from the birthdays of Rory, Charlie and herself and a special corner holding her mother's photos. She'd moved to the balcony and looked down to the bustling city. She could swear she was at home and just visiting Lucifer after school.

When the melancholy of this view from his penthouse got too much for her too bear, she moved back inside, through the other glass door, the one leading to his bedroom.

She was about to walk through it and back to the main room, when a set of photos caught her eye, that was completely foreign to her. They showed events that could have never have occurred. Had he photo-shopped those? She approached them like mesmerized, not noticing that the music had stopped.

From the corner of his eyes, he had watched her approach his side of the bed – the right side being Chloe's - and the picture frames on his nightstand. "My treasures." Lucifer confessed with his eyes twinkling with unshed tears as he approached. She was the first one aside from her mother he let in onto his secret that he didn't stay completely away. As long as Rory didn't know that he was visiting his family on Earth, all would follow up the Time Loop.

The teenager eyed the photo of her Mom, tired and exhausted from giving birth, with Lucifer sitting next to her on the bed, holding his tiny and crying daughter proudly in the arms. His eyes huge in wonder, glistering with tears of happiness. "You were at Rory's birth?"

A fond yet somewhat pained smile adored the Devil's lips. "I arrived just in time. Maze had you occupied in the cafeteria and I spelled Eve at your Mum's bed."

On the second photo was Lucifer holding the tiny hand of his daughter, who took a wobbly step on her chubby little legs, his other hand hovering carefully next to her small body in case she would fall. The last picture showed the Devil feeding his tiny newborn daughter the bottle in Chloe's bedroom.

Lucifer smiled melancholic. "It had been easy to slip in during the nights and support Chloe with the newborn. We always locked the door in case you would come and try to help your mother with Rory." He met her gaze as she turned around to him. "Luckily for me, you never came." His feet moved back into the main room of his penthouse.

"Rory hardly cried at night." Trixie reasoned, or were her memories deceiving her? "She fell fast asleep, Mom had said."

"Far from." Lucifer chuckled and shook his head as he fetched a whiskey from his bar and then sank down in the chair next to his bed. "Most nights Rory had been awake and fussing. But her cries always immediately stopped when I carried her up and down your Mum's bedroom or when I sung to her. Or when I showed her my Devil's face." New tears glistered in his large dark orbs, so full of sadness and pain. "But the time of secret visits is gone." He swallowed a generous sip of his drink. "She is too old now and would remember."

Trixie's heart broke. All this time she had been so angry at him. He didn't deserve this. He was the Lord of Hell, captive in his own personal Hell. Yet again, a thought struck her. "We could have been a family for a little while." She felt her heart tear apart at the thought that he had been so close. They might have had two, maybe three years together.

"But I would have had to leave anyway. Only later." He had played those 'what ifs' for the past millennia. Searching loopholes. "Maybe your anger and hatred had then centered on Rory instead of me. And that wouldn't be fair to either of you. I couldn't bear if you would hate your sister." He knew so well how it felt to have his siblings turn their back on him after his fall and how refreshing and warming it was that he could mend his relationship with Amenadiel and maybe even Azrael.

"But hating you was okay?"

The Devil smiled at the past tense of her statement. Instead of answering her, that it was indeed better that she hated him instead of Rory, he took a sip of his drink, his eyes on the picture of his daughter's birth.

Her gaze travelled over to the other nightstand. There were two pictures she knew well, both of them also sitting on her own desk. Moving over to this side of the bed, she sunk down on the mattress, her fingers already grasping the larger of the two photos.

This was the only photo holding her entire extended family sans their two youngest additions. It was the first and last picture with all of them that also included their Devil. On the left stood Ella with her boyfriend, who was now her husband of almost two years. Next to them were Amenadiel and Linda, then the happy brides in the middle. Slightly leaning onto Eve was that strange young woman, Trixie had only ever seen at that wedding. Lucifer and her mother were the last in the picture on the far right, with Trixie herself standing in front of them. This had been taken only a few days or so before Lucifer vanished while she had been at the summer camp.

Suddenly Lucifer's earlier words came back to her. No, that can't be. Wide eyed she turned her head and stared at the Devil. "Who is this young woman?" She had never bothered to ask anyone before.

He didn't need to have a look at the picture to know, at whom she was pointing. He got to his feet and crossed the small distance to the bed and sat down next to her. "Rory."

Now Trixie was holding the picture closer, to get a better view onto the face, she had mostly already forgotten. "We had talked." She faced him again. "I had talked to my sister from the future?"

She desperately tried to remember the exact words. "She had been surprised that I said that I love you."

"You did?" He was amazed, although he had always known that the little Decker offspring had always adored and worshipped him. Practically from day one on. But that she was telling this to complete strangers, astonished him.

"No wonder she was surprised. The past few years I hardly talked about you." Of course was her sister surprised that Trixie had loved her Dad. She searched his eyes. "I had been so angry at you, but I didn't want to sadden Mom, so I didn't talk much about you. Especially not to Rory, who is longing to meet you."

Her gaze travelled back to the grown up face of her baby sister wishing she had talked longer to the young woman. It suddenly made sense. "I'll never tell her about our game nights." This stung, especially with her new memories of playing monopoly and cards. Both of them laughing together like when she had been little.

"You better not. She had been quiet jealous that you had those precious memories with me and she not." He would make up to this once the Time Loop has come to an end. Quality time only with Rory and when Chloe was also allowed to join them, then only with the three of them. That should pacify his daughter until her older sister would join them in afterlife. Maybe then, all four of them could spent some overdue time together. "Even if it had been only two times, well three times now."

Trixie now frowned up at him. "What are you talking about? We had almost weekly some game night."

"We just had met twice to play a board game." Lucifer argued bewildered, sure that his memory didn't deceive him.

"You are taking that literarily, don't you?" She asked with a sigh and a roll of her eyes. He was so intelligent and knew so much from history to all the languages in the world, but sometimes he was just such a dummy.

"Speak up, Urchin."

"Game nights weren't just about playing monopoly. It was every time you dropped by and we sang karaoke or watched a movie together or we played cards waiting for the sitter before you and Mom went on a date."

This explanation made sense. She labeled their quality time, as her mother had called it once, as game night. "If you value your sister loving you, you better do keep this to yourself until I had the chance to make good for some father-daughter time with her."

Trixie nodded with a sigh. "I'll have to remove that photo from my desk." Her sister must never see this, especially not when she was older and looking more like she did in the picture.

Lucifer placed the wedding photo back and lifted the second picture up. "What's the story behind this one? Amenadiel wasn't really forthcoming except that it was Rory's and Charlie's first flight lesson and Chloe had insisted that he gave this picture to me." Lucifer had spun up countless stories of why his tiny daughter stood with hanging white wings and pigtails crying on the top of Lux' bar counter, while God's son lay face forward on a mattress, a bunch of his grey feathers around his body. A banner saying 'First Flight' in colorful letters hung down the shelves behind the two tiny angels, covering the many liquor bottles.

Immediately Trixie giggled knowingly. "No wonder Amenadiel didn't want to tell you. At the end of the lesson he looked closely to tears himself." She snuggled closer into the Devil's side.

"This was taken at Lux."

"Yeah. Charlie was jumping on his bed and the couch flapping his wings all the time. Rory quickly imitated him and Mom and Dr. Linda were driven crazy by the two trying to fly in the small rooms." An amused smirk plastered her lips. "You really can't call that flying. It was more like a big jump from the couch. But the two were so proud every time they did one flap before their feet touched the ground."

Lucifer tried to picture his tiny angel jumping from the sofa to the armchair and back, spreading her wings while her mother hovered around her so she wouldn't fall onto the edge of the coffee table.

"I don't know who came up first with the idea to use Lux for a first flying lesson. The high ceiling and large room were just perfect." She pointed onto the mattress his nephew was laying at. "Maze, Eve and Ella had brought about ten inflatable beds, covering the entire floor in front of the bar and also a part on the dance floor beyond." A chuckle bubbled up at the fond memory. "The two had been so thrilled to be allowed to really fly. On the entire drive to Lux, Rory had had her wings out strapped into her seat." More chuckles escaped her. "Amenadiel had first lifted Charlie, then Rory onto the bar top." Now she laughed with full lungs. "Oh, you should have seen their little faces when they bent forward to look down the 'huge' abyss." Trixie made quotation marks into the air to highlight her hilarity.

"Rory immediately took a step back and wanted down, but Mom and Eve persuaded her to stay up there and just watch Charlie." Tears of laughter were pooling in her eyes now. "You could see that Charlie wasn't so enthusiastic anymore about jumping down, but he tried to be the brave example for Rory. Amenadiel instructed him to spread his wings and keep flapping them." She gasped for air, she didn't really need any more, between her laughing fit. "It took a few minutes, but then Charlie dared to stand on the edge. He jumped up, closed his eyes and did one flap of his wings before face planting into the mattress and losing a bunch of his feathers on the 3 feet fall." Trixie whipped a tear from her eyes. "As soon as he had crashed, Rory started to cry like it was the world's end."

"God's son shock molted and the Devil's daughter was afraid of a 3 feet high." Lucifer was now laughing himself, tears of hilarity pooling in his brown eyes. Oh, hopefully none of his siblings got wind of this. "Now I can see why my dear brother tried to withhold this story." With his index finger he carefully whipped the tears away, tightening his other arm around Trixie's shoulders affectionately. "I wish I had been there."

"I know." She leaned her head against his shoulder, her eyes up at his face. "How was your first flight?"

"Well..." The Lord of Hell looked a little sheepish. "At the end of the day, Mum had enough white, black and grey feathers to fill a pillow." At least his brothers hadn't been any better than him. Unfortunately Saraquael had been the first to get the hang of it, letting it her older brothers know at every opportunity for the next millennium – not that there had been the invention of time back in the beginning of, well, everything.

"Well, I guess my first flight yesterday was just as spectacular as the rest of my family's then."

Shaking his head half amused, he squeezed her upper arm. "You definitively are holding the record of disastrous, Urchin."

X – X – X – X – X

They'd moved back to the couch going through Lucifer's vast collection of DVDs and BlueRays he had made his brother deliver over the years. Even some of the action movies released after his departure had made it to his collection. Most of those he saved up for Daniel's visits, sharing those movies with someone equally enjoying them like he did.

Lucifer had been shocked that Trixie had never watched one of her grandma's outstanding movies from the late 80's. Knowing that Chloe wouldn't close this gigantic gap in the girl's education – he needed to make sure Rory also watched those ground-breaking movies at least once – he insisted that they would start watching the movie-series – ignoring the girl's whining that the movies weren't even in HD and had that strange format with the black bars at the sides.

The only thing Trixie could take pleasure in watching those badly made movies – there wasn't even one computer animated background and the colors looked a bit weird – was that it was hilarious to see her Nana as a young woman and that she was spending time with her favorite Devil. Suppressing a yawn, the brunette fetched another bite of her chocolate cake – Mom would be angry when she knew she had practically fed on cake, gummy bears, crackers, chips and different kind of chocolate bars the past two days. The greasy egg-sandwiches were the healthiest they had had. If she was a soul now with no worries about diabetes, heart attack or obesity then she should press home the advantage, shouldn't she? Especially when her step-father was practically God in this realm, able to produce anything. This brought a thought back to her. "You didn't answer my question."

Trying to remember what she referred to, a frown began to cease his forehead as he paused the movie. "I'm afraid, I don't know what you mean."

"Since when do you think of my as your step-daughter?" Facing him a mischievous smirk plastered her features. "There was a time when you would have run if anyone had only hinted at something like that."

"Well, there surely would have been discomfort at that thought on my part." This little Urchin just knew him so well. "But not because of you, generally the idea of fatherhood…" He surely had come a long way and the girl next to him had been without controversy essential to reduce his distaste of children in general. Well, he surely would never be too fond of the offspring of strangers, most would always stay misbehaved little demons to him, but Chloe's daughters were a part of her that he could only be wrapped around their little fingers and well, his nephew was quite fine for being his brother's, surely Linda's half of the genes made the boy as charming as he was.

"So?" Trixie prompted expectantly.

Thoughtfully Lucifer walked over to another set of photos, neatly perched up on the side of the bar counter. They all featured Trixie, sometimes with their family, sometimes with their friends. Her being dressed up in a breathtaking light blue dress for her first school ball with Eve, Maze and toddler Rory hovering in the background, her flashing next to a proudly grinning Maze her driver license into the camera, her first day of senior high school in front of her decorated locker with Chloe and little Rory on her side. This last one he picked up and walked over to the sofa.

"At first I had only the milestones of Rory in mind, I would miss. Her first steps, first words, first flight, all her firsts." He briefly looked up and met her dark eyes. His hurt palpable. "I knew you, since you were a small human with missing front teeth." A fond smile spread over his lips. "I had helped your mother prepare your birthday parties, I had been at that school science fair you took part in, I had been at the dinner to celebrate your first day in junior high school."

His smile turned wistfully. "A few millennia past by and I had held your twelve year old self in mind. When Amenadiel brought me this picture… I've many pictures of you leading up to this moment, seeing how you grew from a child to… well, a young woman, but this photo showed an important moment in your life I missed. And it hurt." At Daniel's visits in Hell they often went through the photo albums together, both men longing to be there with their family. Wishing they could see their daughters grow up and be a part of even the dull things like having lunch together.

In Silver City Dan had the opportunity to watch from the observation platform his beloved ones at Earth. But differently than most new arrivals at Heaven, he didn't. A few millennia went by, before he took a first peek. It was like being a ghost all over again. Just watching, no interacting. It hurt just too much. So he reduced his sneaking a peek at Trixie from afar drastically and conserved his knowledge for the shared heartbreak with the Devil over drinks every now and then. "I realized that there were more events to come, I'll miss out also in your life, Urchin."

His insecurity at the next words showed in his expressive eyes. "I had always assumed, after your father's death, that I would be the one to walk with you down the aisle, if you would have had me, that is."

"Of course." Tears stung in her own eyes. God, she hadn't cried that often in years. But as much as it hurt, it was freeing.

"The thought that I couldn't do that anymore, that I wouldn't even be at your wedding, or your graduation or even some boring school recitals again." Unshed tears glistered in his eyes. "It just stung the same as when I thought about the events in my own daughter's childhood I would miss." Moved by the Devil's words, she wrapped her arms around his neck, squeezing him gently. "At least I could give you your first driving lesson all those years ago." Both chuckled lightly at this memory.

His own arms moved around her back holding her tightly in an embrace. "You have to send me a picture of your graduation and your wedding and your own spawns. And everything else I'll miss, Trix." He whispered, his voice breaking, as he pressed a kiss to her temple.

"It's a promise."

X – X – X – X – X

A/N: I hope you liked this and my attempt for an explanation of the discrepancy of the game night.