A/N this takes place post season six.
"like so many unfortunate events in life, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so."
Lemony Snicket
Chapter 1:
Routine is but a fleeting comfort to the condemned. Or more accurately a comfort of existence as a whole that was beneficial to those damned among them.
Not only was this something easily observed over many eons in Hell but it was researched based by humanities scientists.
In fact there were multiple studies from human researchers that found that routine helps those confined hold a heightened sense of autonomy and control. And that this sense of autonomy and control decreases behaviors that otherwise may arise from confining sentient beings.
Most specifically the confined beings wish to escape the control of its captor.
Lucifer first learned this in one of his many early extensions to earth, and took it with him when Amenideal forced him back. He used the knowledge to his advantage. Having hell loops for those in the upper levels has static hell loops, while those contained in lower levels get to experience more variety.
As Hell's healer he placed his office behind Mr. Said Out Bitch's door.
It was a reminder to him of the first soul he healed. The first clue to unlocking the door of his own proverbial cage.
The inside is a perfect replica of Dr. Linda's office. The first place he learned that he had the choice to unlock the cage. The first place where he stopped being angry with his place in the world and in history and started to try to come to terms with it.
The room and what it means to him, both on earth and here were reflected in the small details that were met to a tea.
Complete with a precious few momentos of his life in LA and his biggest accomplishments surrounding his milenia of healing.
The room is high enough that in the human hell loops that it runs off of a routine schedule. His patients change, ebbing and flowing as they each find peace.
But the routine is in stone.
This routine is why he thinks very little of the knock that sounds at his door. Informing the young mother who sits on his couch, grappling with the guilt of something she was powerless to control, that it was the pastries.
Standing up and walking to the door gave the woman a chance to breathe through her tears. He was not an empathetic being by design, but he was good at torture. And pulling all parent related guilts into his office was the perfect way to punish himself for making the deal that would see him abandoning his own spawn. His own urchin. His own daughter.
Something that he promised he never would do.
Even if it was said spawn that requested it.
He opened the door happily to greet Ithaca
and give both himself and his patient a moment to breathe. But what he saw instead knocked any breath he had out of his lungs.
For there in front of him stood his detective. Her hair is a bit shorter than he had ever seen it before, falling only just past her shoulders, and the shade a bit darker than when he saw her last, sitting at the piano downstairs in Lux. Her face was pale and distraught. An equal measure of fear and guilt behind her wondrous blue eyes.
He felt his knees hit the floor as he reached out to grab at her too long coat.
"Detective" he wheezed, breathing still beyond him.
In the coming days he will not truly remember what happened next. Only that somehow his patient was sent away and he was placed on the couch, head pulled down between his knees as Chloe's voice washed over him.
Words were lost on him as the math pounded in his head.
Eight earth years.
He had only been here eight earth years which meant….
Breathing in hell had always been a slightly laborious task, with the ash and the pressure both hindering his lungs. But currently it was impossible.
Eight earth years.
It wasn't long enough.
It wasn't long enough.
He felt an artificial sense of calm take over him. Amenideal, his mind supplied as his consciousness slowly slipped away.
His last thought before he gave into the god induced sleep was that something was terribly wrong.