Chapter Three
dear doctor, I'm damaged
He knows that the Detective is aggravated with him, but if he's being honest with himself, Lucifer hasn't any idea why. He's done as asked. Soon enough Linda will be over with her colleague's son and an ultrasound of all confounding things to assess if his asshole of a twin is truly with child. The Detective asked and he called. Now, Michael and Azrael are back down in Michael's room. It is rather nicer than a cell no matter what Rae Rae accused him of, and how dare she.
He's changed into actual clothes, since he has little interest in being in such a state of undress for medical appointments. But Lucifer is waiting, sitting at the foot of his bed as the Detective finishes putting on her jeans and brushes out her hair in the vanity.
She hasn't said anything yet.
He knows her well enough to realize it means she's gathering her thoughts, ones he will not like, but he honestly has no idea how he's displeased her. At least this time.
"Are we going to chat before we go and join the others for the sonogram." He shakes his head and tsks to himself. "Of all the insane things I've done or said ever since I came to Los Angeles, I hardly could have picked fretting about at Michael's possible first of many obstetric check ups as one of them. But that isn't on my mind as much currently. I daresay Detective, you seem upset."
She sets her brush down and pulls her hair back in a ponytail. The Detective does it in such vicious, staccato motions that Lucifer grows more alarmed. "You are just beginning to piece that together?"
"I understand that dealing with my twin at all after the harm he caused you…well, you have no need to hover around for such business if attending to Still Michael upsets you."
She looks at him, seems to measure his words for a beat, and then she glares harder. "Do you get it, Lucifer?"
"That apparently Michael thinks he's pregnant. Yes, seems to be sinking in. I would wager he's wrong since Charlie's a fluke, but if it gets us all back on track with this set aside, then it's for the best."
She looks away and then down at her hands. "Michael…he did a lot to me. Tried to play me. I knew for most of it, played him back, but he still did that and abducted me. He came in and for weeks messed up both our lives. Then, well, I have seen at a distance how badly he scarred Ella, how she won't really even text me or Linda back from Canoga Park. I can't even imagine, even now how she feels."
"And can I say that I fervently hope Gabriel is full of hot air, and that my twin is paranoid or possibly very high and not on the good stuff? I wouldn't wish a harsher sentence on any friend than to be lashed to Michael like that."
He expects the Detective to agree, but she continues to look down at her hands. If anything, her shoulders hunch and her posture grows smaller, more diminished.
Lucifer draws closer to her and sets a hand on her shoulder. He tries not to take offense with her flinching. He thought they were past that over a year ago and after everything with his mojo going insane. "Are you quite alright?"
"I'm not," she says, and he can her the brittleness in her tone.
It's so unlike his fierce Detective. Though even Lucifer can admit for the better part of a year since Michael-always his blasted, awful, waste of space of a twin-revealed her origin as a miracle that it's been hard on her. There's something more hesitant in her touch, something tragic in the uptick of her sighing. He's trying to help her; truly, Lucifer is, but he doesn't know how to help her get past Dad's tricks. She is, even if she's a Miracle, also a mortal and they are not used to being toys for Father's amusement. Miracle or regular human, angel or demon…they are all just fodder to be manipulated by the Presence.
He's just been aware of that since he was thrown down to the bowels of Hell for wanting Free Will. He can admit that a former atheist probably never expected any of this to be a problem for her. To be real at all.
But to be upset of all things over Michael, well, it hardly tracks.
He squeezes her shoulder a bit more, trying to offer her all the comfort he can. "Detective, I apologize heartily for being thick. I…why are you upset about Michael of all angels?"
"Him being around brings so much back, but you're being cavalier, Lucifer. This could very well be happening. If he's pregnant, then the baby wouldn't exist if not because of a ton of manipulations by your father. The baby would be a Miracle."
"Well, you're a better one if we're keeping score."
She stands, and he realizes too late that was the exact wrong thing to say. Honestly, he keeps stepping in it over and over again. He isn't sure what to do to avoid that, all the potholes with her these days. "I don't want to be a Miracle at all. I don't like to talk about it because you didn't ask anymore than I did. But I exist because God wanted to mess with you."
"It could be an olive branch. Honestly, we came to quite the row when we had family dinner last, and Father has mostly fawned over Charlie when he's about, but I hadn't yet had the courage to ask myself what all the purpose was. Do you want an audience? I'm sure if Amenadiel asked, Father would grant it. He clearly will do anything these days for grandchild access."
She shakes her head vehemently at that, her ponytail flaring out behind her. "It's the last thing I want. I don't know if I'm ready for the full answer. I am trying, Lucifer, and I try every day."
"I know that you are," he says, though his heart aches fresh like on that bridge during the honey case because her trying feels somehow again like rejection.
He tells himself it's not of him as much as such a struggle against cosmic forces that chew up and spit angels out. Humans have little chance in such a maelstrom. And yet, it burns. More even than the fires of Hell that gave him his initial wounds eons ago.
"But it's terrifying to think that maybe, somehow, I'm just a toy or a puppet. I'm an object. That poor child-if there is one-the child Michael is carrying is that too. He or she is just a pawn in your father's games. I…they deserve people to protect them. They deserve more than maybe I got."
"Detective…Chloe…that's hardly true. I'm here. And the rest of the gang. You may sometimes clash with dear Penelope, but she's here for you as well. You have an amazing family."
She nods and he notes her tearing up. No no, now that will never do. He pulls his blue checked pocket square from his pocket and passes it to her. "I'm sorry, truly I am. I…I had no idea that any of this melee would transpire tonight. I didn't know that Michael-"
"It's not about him, not directly. If this is true, despite all he's done, it seems like he didn't exactly ask for this either." She hugs herself after wiping at her eyes. "But whatever child is in there, I want to be there for them. And not in a we can hate on your Dad later in a club way." She rolls her eyes at that, and it makes Lucifer feel a little better, to see that spunk in her again. "But they don't deserve to ever-for one minute-feel like a tool or a pawn. I'm not letting that happen."
"Well, if this rigmarole matters to you, then it matters to me."
She nods and hugs him, drawing him in close, and for the first time since they started getting dressed, Lucifer relaxes too. "I want it to matter to you because if this is happening, then that's your niece or nephew involved too."
"When things matter to you, Detective, then they are important to me as well. I…if you think you've a checkered history with my ne'er-do-well twin, then you've only an inkling of what's fallen between him and me over the centuries. I…I remain hopeful this is all an overblown mistake. I am not quite sure what we'll do for the child or for dear Miss Lopez either if Father has Willed all this to happen, set it in motion."
The Detective pulls away and frowns up at him. His heart aches for her, for her relative innocence in Celestial matters. She doesn't know the depth of Father's demands or His selfishness. It hasn't occurred to her what will happen if the child exists.
"Why?"
"Because Father will not…He will want an actually powered Nephilim close to Him."
"Like He'll keep an extra eye on the baby?"
"No, like the child will be taken to the Silver City and kept far from either Michael, which no great loss considering, but definitely a tragedy that Miss Lopez will be denied any relationship with her child."
The Detective regards him, and her blue eyes blaze with the same certainty and, alright, fury he saw in them before she shot him years and years ago. Seems almost like another lifetime, long before they got so close. "I won't let that happen. Now, let's go see what Linda's friend's kid has to say."
Michael decides that Father is a sadist of the first order. Makes sense. He did invent Hell both for the First of the Fallen and, later, as a way to stash Samael and Mother too. A big part of him wonders if after the child is born if that too will be his fate. There's a cell already prepared to hold a Goddess. It wouldn't be too far fetched that Father wants that to happen after either. Less complicated with his coming prize, if the actual parent is locked away.
Or, if Michael is honest with himself, he tried to rape a Miracle. He tried to get his brother injured. He knew self-actualization was moving too quickly for Sam to be killed by the bullet, even around the Miracle, but that was another strike against him. Just games upon games, and his hunts…
No, he's sure Mother's cell will be his sooner rather than later.
But for now, Dad is already a high-ranking sadist just for putting Michael through this indignity. And there is seven more months of this bullshit to go. Then again, he should probably be glad for this because afterwards, he will never be allowed near the child. Having it grow inside him-and he still doesn't want that-but he's hardly been given a choice in the matter-still, it is the closest thing he'll ever get to being near his child. It growing inside his fairly newly minted womb.
And that he'll try and treasure.
If only because it's Lopez's, and that's the most wonderful thing the child could be.
He's stretched out on his bed. In the interim while, ugh Dad help him, Sam and the Miracle got dressed, he's also gotten ready for the doc and the, well, other doc to visit. He's in yoga pants (which are more comfy than he'd have thought) and a t-shirt. His hair pulled back, and he's…he's anxious. All eyes are on him now. Rae Rae is at a chair next to his bed. He's got his hand in hers, and he's breathing harder than he'd like.
He's the Angel of Fear, for fuck's sake.
He shouldn't be scared, but that's all he's been since Rae Rae's annunciation.
She smiles at him and chatters on, and she is so like Lopez that he's not gonna read Freudian things into it. No siree. But it is calming somehow, that white noise of her babbling. He tunes it out but nods every so often, knowing that in a room full of people who despise him (again fair) and one strange human, that someone wants him here. That someone cares about him in all this and not just his role as incubator.
Scrappy would care.
He banishes that thought.
Scrappy has a life now. It's a nascent one, but she can have real friends, ones who won't lie to her, write that book she's been scrabbling at all road trip…just be normal.
A pregnant Goddess is far from that.
He just wants the best for her, and he was never that either.
Samael is immaculate as always in a three-piece suit that Michael is sure costs more than a year's rent in this town. Chloe is tense and paces over in a corner. He doesn't know how to help with that. It's so beyond his capabilities, that Michael tries to just ignore it. He can't help she's a Miracle or that she's clearly not dealing well with it. Hell, he can't even help that he's apparently the brood mare for another Miracle a-coming.
And maybe he and Penelope Decker should hang out.
Fucking perfect, why not.
Have a club about people Dad reached out and fucked with, though please no not literally.
The doctor glares at him from a chair. She's dressed and her make up is mostly on, though she missed the rouge for her cheeks and is pale at this time of night. It's moving on toward one, and even he feels like death warmed over, so he can hardly blame her for that either. On his far side, the new doc, William something or other, is setting up his gear.
He's a concierge, which Michael didn't even know was a thing. He never had a cold in his life. He never had to deal with human needs before either. Lilly did eventually as she started to age, just some joint issues before…before she left him and couldn't stand being around an immortal when she no longer was one. But that was before the medical system got so complicated because he doesn't know a ton about humans, but he knows many of them, especially in the United States, are scared all the time about paying their medical bills or ending up in soul crushing debt.
But he's pretty sure a concierge with all his own equipment, one who will come out at ass o'clock in the night and take twenty grand in cash-no questions asked-isn't par for the course even now.
Then again, maybe it is when you're Samael, and quite literally have more money than God, Himself.
Michael doesn't know.
He does know that William is brittle, seems taught like a live wire…maybe just a bit too wound. Linda tries to make conversation with him, but the few pleasantries give way to long, awkward pauses about his father, and Michael can tell William hasn't seen his dad in quite the while in person. Relatable. But also that while Linda is well decorated and bustling in her shrink practice (she has to be for the house in Beverly Hill she owns), that William seems to not be located at any hospital.
Michael could let his walls down and peek more at the twitchy doc's fears, but he decides not to. It doesn't take a psychic or even an angel gifted with emotions-though the least desirable of all of them-to tell that William isn't exactly a concierge as his first choice profession.
It's a big honking anvil this is not his dream job when Linda says she was so impressed with how young he was when appointed to Cedars-Sinai, and William shuts that down with a quick barb about also one of the shortest appointments on records and that she'd have to catch up with his dad on that one.
Yeah, big mess.
Michael has no interest in probing it. He needs to believe this strange, erratic human with equipment he probably shouldn't just have in the trunk of his car like a spare jack is a decent doctor. He needs to believe that if he is pregnant, that Linda and William can help him somehow because someone has to.
Jesus Christ.
But if he reads William too closely, besides the buzzed anxiety pouring off him already, then Michael will know why he's a concierge, and then he'll be that-again kill him-overly fretful mother freaking the fuck out about it.
So, he's decided ignorance is bliss, even if the tension between William and Linda is worse than even his own worries about what's cooking inside of him. It's so obvious that even Azrael has squeezed his hand more tightly, her dark eyes worriedly darting from the good doctor to William to him in a circuit and back.
"Alright so Michael, right?" William asks.
Despite his brittle backbiting at Linda, as if she's responsible for his father's asshole actions or the feud or whatever is going on there, William is gentle with Michael. There's a concern in his gaze and a few, looks over his scars. Michael felt offended at first with the staring when William first came in. Then, though, he could see the genuine concern there. The worry. It reminds him of when he first re-met Lopez.
For whatever other faults William has (and he's guessing they're a fuck ton, and that possibly Bolivian marching powder is part of it), he's gentle underneath the sardonicism and the barely curbed anger.
Michael tries not to react to it either way. In part because he feels so very much on display already because of the ultrasound. It's worse to remember a new person sees him and, at first, just sees the scar across his face and the other that runs perpendicular down his left cheek and making his lower eyelid settle…not quite right. He is the sum of his scars, of so many injuries, and the most visibly grotesque, well, he will always thank Sam for those.
Michael finds his voice, trying to ignore the scrutiny. Any sentimentality at all. "Michael, yup. Uh…it's a family name."
He nods and gestures to Michael's stomach. "If you can lift up the hem of your t-shirt. I just need you to get that exposed for me." He turns and spreads gel across the wand or whatever it's called. "It might be cold."
"I don't think it'll bother me," Michael says.
Azrael nods. "We also run pretty warm in the family."
"None as hot as I," Sam says because of course he does.
Decker rolls her eyes, and Linda groans, "Lucifer, really?" back at him.
Michael wants to say that if they can imagine that same exasperation in literally billions of years, then they'll know why he's so angry at Sam 24/7, but he snaps too much. And he's on the fumes of whatever good humor the good doc and Chloe have for him.
No, not for him.
He hasn't earned it.
For the child inside of him.
William sets the wand on his stomach, and he moves it around a bit. Michael doesn't notice it being cold, but he's a Goddess and noticing temperatures is possible, but it never really bothers him one way or another anyway. He watches the screen, but he can admit the ultrasound tech all looks blurry and the same to him. It's hard to really understand what he's looking at or not.
And then the doctor starts to recircle around and whistles.
Michael doesn't know what he's looking at…exactly, but it dawns on him that there isn't just one sac there. There are two and two, tiny lumps with huge heads are there. The rest is hard to even guess at but the way his-of fuck it-womb is clearly differentiated into two sections makes his blood run cold and hope he's confused.
William nods and gestures to Linda. "You want an opinion on this too, Dr. Martin?"
She rolls her eyes indulgently but trots over to him. Her jaw drops at the image. "I did rotations over thirty years ago in medical school, but I…there are two of them."
Azrael's eyes go so very wide behind her glasses. Chloe stops her frantic pacing and goes over to the monitor. She's had a kid before, so he figures she can understand them better than most. She grips the bullet necklace around her neck and gapes too.
Only Sam keeps talking. "Well, then, I suppose a congratulations is in order to Miss Lopez and two cigars instead of one."
William looks between all of them, if hearing that the other parent is also ostensibly a female, then he doesn't even blink. Maybe William just wants to keep the cash. Michael can relate to a degree.
Asking questions, getting involved just makes it worse.
"Yup, two. It's too early to tell about the sexes, but they do look about nine to ten weeks. I don't suppose you have a gynecologist you're going to be seeing regularly?" William asks, tone clinical. Then again, he doesn't know he's talking about a Goddess's children right now.
Michael swallows hard but words won't come. The full import of all Father has done finally hits him, like a freight train. Panicked, he looks between Azrael and Linda, hoping they too can understand what's really happened to him.
It is, of all people, the Miracle who gets it first.
She nods to William. "Michael has some complicated health issues, and he needs a more discreet doctor. I'm sure Lucifer can cover whatever you ask for."
"I ask for a lot," William replies, cleaning up his stomach in a perfunctory manner and printing a few images from the ultrasound.
Fear-his own-swamps Michael's mind. Some small, hysterical part barks out in the corner of his mind that it'll be good for Ella's fridge. And that's some sad, domestic fantasy he'll never get.
"I can more than cover that and for ample discretion," Samael replies.
"Let me help you get this all moved out to the living room to put it away," Linda offers, and Michael's mind blanks, time slipping past him and feeling both lightning fast and still all at once, as William and Linda go to the hall.
He's sure he imagined the doctor lean down and say that he'll always listen about if anyone's hurting Michael. But he can't…he can't…Samael is one of his greatest punishers. Which , honestly, his brother is more than qualified for. But compared to Dad, nothing Sam has ever done tops this latest mindfuck. But no, like Scraps before him, there is nothing Dr. William Whatever-he's been too out of it to remember the details—can do to help him.
Michael knows now there's nothing anyone can do to help him.
Once Linda is gone and the new doc with her, he finds enough of a voice to look between Azrael and Chloe.
"I…save the pictures, Decker. I am sure…not sure what I'm sure about, but I bet some day Ella will want them." He looks sadly at his little sister. "Can you give me and Sam a minute? I just need some space." He laughs bitterly. "I can't actually get that, since I can't leave Lux, but I just feel like I finished being the star of the center ring at the circus, and I don't want that anymore."
She nods and kisses his forehead. He relaxes, just a millimeter. "No problem, Mi. I need some air too. At least Lu's stuff has the best balconies."
"Yeah, agreed, air would be great," Michael adds.
Decker hands him a set of pics, and there are a few in a strip that reminds him of the pictures given out on the boardwalk at Coney Island. "The doctor made two. I…I think the other set we can keep for now upstairs, figure out where it goes. You might want to call Ella now? I don't even know yet."
He shakes his head. "Not at 1 AM. I…thank you, Chloe. I know everything's fucked up and I am sorry for what happened. I know that doesn't matter, just how badly it hurt you. But thank you for helping me with the baby…babies."
She nods and there's still a guarded look in her eyes. He gets that. "It's for the other miracles."
He laughs and it's less shrill but still bitter. "You'll have quite a club someday."
Her expression freezes, unsure, and he knows that Decker is smart enough to know there is no later, not for the Nephilim here on earth.
She and Azrael hurry out, and soon it's just him, slumped in the bed and Samael shaking his head back at him. "I meant it. I'd no idea Miss Lopez had it in her. Congratulations one supposes, though she does seem to have started a better life with distance. I am unsure what we tell her. Though, you'll be quite obvious eventually, won't you?" He mimes having his arms out wide around waist. "Can't quite wait to see you waddling about in the final trimester, Brother."
"Sam…Lucifer, focus."
His brother's eyes go red with annoyance. "It's a bit amusing with some perspective. I mean, the Sword of God, well, used to be, now ready to pop soon enough with twins."
"Samael!" Michael shouts, his own eyes going gold. "Jokes later. Focus for fuck's sake."
"Well the fucking has already happened, Still Michael."
"Not doing that." Michael sighs and realizes that he's already cupping his stomach. Trying to protect them both, although he has no idea how. Who could? "Samael…Lucifer, think. They're twins."
"Yes, quite aware. You'll be a walking watermelon in no time flat."
"I'm not as shallow as you but think! There are two of them, the children of a Goddess like we were. Do you get it?"
"I'm not sure I can follow. So, that makes them angels, same as we used to be."
"No, the twins-my twins-are more than that. They're the Demiurge or will be soon enough. We're being replaced."