Lucifer stared at his father in shock. He couldn't speak, nor could he move. He was shell-shocked. Not only was he staring at his father for the first time in eons, but the bastard had his child. And he was a child. Actually, a baby would be more accurate, as he didn't even look a year old at the moment. And Lucifer was fairly certain the child was Jack. Despite the fact that he was much, much younger than the teenage looking boy Lucifer had left, he looked exactly like his son.
The other inhabitants of the Bunker were rendered just as speechless as Lucifer was. No one had any idea how to react to what had apparently happened while they were gone.
Lucifer didn't know how long her stood there with a stupefied expression on his face, but eventually, his brain caught up with him, and one fact remained clear to him. His child was in the arms of his father, and he would be damned if he let that continue for even a single moment longer. "Give him to me!"
Michael grabbed his brother's arm as he went to approach their father. "Samael, don't!"
"Michael, get off me!" Lucifer demanded before glaring at his father. "Give me my child, now!"
Jack began to cry in Chuck's arms as tensions began to rise.
"Son, calm down. You're upsetting him," Chuck said as he stood up with the boy.
"Then hand him over," Gabriel said through gritted teeth.
"Very well," Chuck said before stepping forward.
Michael stood cautiously by his brother's side, ready to intervene if his father tried anything.
As soon as his son was in reaching distance, Lucifer snatched him from his father's arms.
Michael immediately pushed them both behind him and stood in front of them protectively.
"Chuck, what the hell did you do?" Dean asked. He had just barely recovered from the shock that the kid they left behind was now an infant.
Lucifer, meanwhile, cradled his child in his arms while looking over him. "Jack?"
"I don't understand. What's wrong?" Mary asked. Everyone else seemed to know something she didn't. She didn't know who that man, chuck, was, or why there was so much concern over the baby.
"What's wrong is this asshole just did something to Lucifer's kid," Maze said with an intense glare at short man, who clearly was more powerful than he looked.
"But he looks fine. He looks like a healthy nine-month-old," Mary said.
"The problem is that when we left, he looked no younger than fifteen. It's a long story, Mom," Sam said.
Lucifer glared at his father, his eyes shining red. "What have you done to my child?!"
"Relax, Samael. Your child is fine," Chuck said in an attempt to appease him. It had the opposite result.
"You call this fine?!" Lucifer asked angrily.
"You turned the kid into a baby," Dean said in disbelief. It was rare for him to agree with Lucifer about anything, but he got the dude's anger. The kid was most definitely not fine.
"No, he was already a baby. A nine-month-old is an infant even by human standards," Chuck said.
Jack started to cry again.
Sam walked over to Lucifer. "Lucifer, let me take him. You're really angry right now, and I don't think you want to upset him."
Lucifer looked at Sam and hesitated. It wasn't that he didn't trust Sam. He trusted the human as much as his own brothers. Sam had essentially looked after Jack by himself for months. But the last time Lucifer left his son in someone else's care… well, this happened.
"I'm not gonna let anything happen to him," Sam promised.
Reluctantly, Lucifer handed his now baby son over to Sam, who immediately brought him upstairs to the second layer of the library. That way he was still close enough to Lucifer, but hopefully far enough away that Jack wouldn't be too upset.
With his son far away from the fighting, Lucifer advanced on his father, or at least he tried. He found Michael's arms surrounding him after just a couple of steps. "You bastard! Why would you do this?!"
"Because it was what he wanted," Chuck said calmly.
"Come on, Chuck. I'm pretty sure he didn't want to be turned into a baby. You basically killed him," Dean said.
"Hey, you mind not making this more dramatic than it already is?" Amenadiel asked while glaring at the hunter. This situation was already more than tense. They didn't need to make it worse by blowing an already bad situation out of proportion.
"He wanted it," Chuck said before taking Jack's letter out of his pocket. "He wrote this for you, Samael."
Lucifer shrugged Michael off of him and snatched the letter out of his father's hand.
"Rowena can back me up as well," Chuck said.
Rowena winced when all eyes met hers. She was content to be completely forgotten as all attention was on God. "He did seem to want it, and he seemed to appreciate the possible consequences."
"Why? Why would he want that?" Castiel asked.
"Why would anybody want that?" Maze asked.
"He was a baby in the body of a teenager. He didn't feel like he belonged, and he wasn't wrong," Chuck said before turning to his son. "Samael, you must have noticed. You know I'm telling you the truth. Jack didn't feel like he fit in this world as he was, and he wasn't wrong. His circumstances were strange, even for a Nephilim."
"So, you took it upon yourself to fix the situation. You decided out of the goodness of your heart to give him what he wanted more than anything. I don't buy that. What are you expecting in return, Father?" Michael demanded to know.
"Woah! This is God?!" Mary asked in disbelief.
Dean nodded.
"Michael, I know you don't think much of me. I can't even say you're wrong for that. I've made many mistakes," Chuck said.
Gabriel snorted. "Yeah, mistakes. Trying to murder your kid is apparently a mistake these days."
"Yes, and this is another one. Fix it, now!" Lucifer demanded.
"No," Chuck said in a firm tone. "You're too angry to see it right now, but this is what is best for Jack."
Lucifer advanced forward and punched his father in the face. "Who are you to decide what is best for my son?!"
Michael grabbed his brother and pulled him behind him once again. The last thing they needed was to anger their father too much. Michael hated the man, but he knew what he could do to his brother. He knew what he'd originally planned to do.
"Relax, Michael. It's not like I don't know I deserved it. And I'm not gonna hurt your brother, so you can stop shielding him," Chuck said.
"I will never stop protecting him from you!" Michael said with a sneer.
"Look, I know that none of you trusts me all that much, and I don't blame you. You have good reasons to hate me," Chuck said.
"Why did you want to kill Lucifer?" Amenadiel asked.
"I didn't want to, son. I thought I had no choice. I didn't think there was anything that could save him. I thought killing him was the most merciful thing I could do for him," Chuck answered.
Lucifer snorted. "Merciful? You'd call anything that you did mercy?"
"You were out of control," he said.
"Whose fault is that?!" Lucifer asked angrily.
"I'm not disputing the fact that it was my fault. I thought you'd be able to handle the Mark for Amara's prison. I was devastatingly wrong," Chuck said sadly.
"Indeed. And the kicker is that you forgave her. After all of it, you let her go in the end! Oh, and not even just that. You had the nerve to tell that bloody abomination that you were sorry for what you did to me! To me!" Lucifer said furiously.
"I told it what I had to to get it to help us with Amara."
"Hold on a second," Dean interrupted. "You knew the whole time that that thing was not Lucifer. Why the hell didn't you share that information? Why did you pretend it was your son?"
"I just answered that. I did what was necessary to get help in stopping Amara," Chuck said.
"Why not just ask the real thing?" Dean asked.
"I wasn't willing to risk his life. I didn't care about a being that never should've existed in the first place. It was expendable. My son was not," Chuck said strongly.
"Yes, now you say that," Lucifer said with a bitter laugh.
"Samael…"
"Stop calling me that!" he ordered.
"What I said to that abomination, I meant. I am sorry, son. I never dreamed of how badly it end when I gave you that mark, and when the worst happened, I didn't think there was any possible way that you could come back from it. In my eyes, the Mark was killing you. It was killing everything that made you who you were, and when it was done, the Mark would be all that was left. I couldn't bare to see that, so I decided it would be more humane to end it quickly," Chuck explained.
Lucifer looked away. He didn't know what to say. He got the apology he'd been waiting thousands of years for, but it wasn't what he was hoping for. He was still really angry. Part of that was, of course, because of what his father had just done with his son, but it was also because his father's explanation just wasn't good enough, and it wasn't prompt enough.
"And you didn't try to come up with another way?" Michael asked.
"Of course, I did, but there wasn't one, at least not one I could think of," Chuck said.
"Well, it seems I'm smarter than you are then, Father," Lucifer said.
Chuck smiled. "It seems so."
"If you're expecting us to forgive you, keep dreaming. You destroyed our lives," Michael said.
"I don't expect forgiveness from any of you. I just wanted you to understand what happened, and that I am sorry," Chuck said.
"Yeah? How about leaving Mike and me to be tortured? You sorry for that?" Gabriel asked angrily.
"Gabriel, as horrible as what you went through was, it brought you to where you are now. It gave you a chance to find happiness. Do you think you would've made it back to Sam if anything was different?" Chuck asked.
Gabriel just stared at him. There wasn't much he could say. He didn't know what would've happened if things had been different, but he didn't want to think of an outcome where he didn't have Sam.
"As for you, Michael, no option was going to end well for you. You were out of control too, and I know it wasn't your fault, but you'd lost touch with reality. I let things play out as a way containing you," Chuck explained.
"What now?" Amenadiel asked.
"Now, I think it's time for me to go home. Any of you are welcome to come back whenever you want, and I do mean any of you," Chuck said while looking at Samael.
"You're out of your mind if you think that will happen," Lucifer said.
"I don't expect it right now," Chuck said.
"What about my son?" Lucifer asked.
"Jack will grow up the way he was meant to. The way he wants to. He'll have the chance to experience life like every other child does. It's what he wanted. I won't undo it. I've also made his Grace dormant until he's grown. This way he really has the chance to be normal. Of course, that means he's susceptible all human weaknesses. Now, I've provided you with everything you need to take care of him until you go home," Chuck said.
"I should hope so. It's the least you can do," Gabriel muttered.
"One more thing, Samael…"
"My name is Lucifer," he immediately interrupted.
"What I showed you when I brought you back after the Malcolm Graham incident…"
"Yes, I know. You want me to sent Mother back to Hell," Lucifer interrupted again. He was less inclined to do that now. His mother didn't actually abandon him. She'd urged for him to be sent back to Hell to save his life. Of course, he did still worry she'd be out to get him after he'd left her there to be tortured.
"No, that was just a warning. I wanted you to know she'd escaped. What you decide to do is up to you, but you should be careful around her," Chuck warned.
"If that's not what you want for saving me, what do you want?" Lucifer asked.
"I don't want anything. I saved you because you asked me too. That's all. I know you don't believe me, but I love all of you. Goodbye, boys," he said before disappearing.