Original summary from back when I thought this would be a one-shot: Lucifer's siblings help him adjust to his new circumstances ...or at least they think they're helping. Unfortunately, stupid runs in the family. Spoilers for season six.

As you might guess, I needed to process the ever-living heck about the writers' decisions vis a vis the finale. Here are the results.

.

.

.

"And that's what a parachute is for!" Jophiel finished to general surprised murmuring and scattered applause.

Lucifer sat with his palm in his hand. Somehow, even hell's staff meetings had never been this infernal. He checked his watch, forgetting for the millionth time that it would only ever read "August 5."

"Thank you for this report of your year on Earth, Brother," said Amenadiel. "I'm sure we've all gained—" he forced a smile "—valuable insight into how to relate to humans."

The murmuring was louder as the meeting broke up. Lucifer got up out of his chair, pacing beside Jophiel as he headed away from the throne.

"'Sup, Bro," Jophiel said with an upnod. "Hey, do you like that? It's a new greeting gesture. Cutting edge."

"Yes, Brother, I'm sure your mortal friends taught you all about the culture of the mid-1990s..." he leaned in and lowered his voice. "Now about that favor we talked about."

"Oh! Sure!" Jophiel patted down his robes and pulled out a patch of paper a few inches across. "Here you go!"

Lucifer exhaled heavily and took the photograph. He flipped it over and frowned.

"Brother," he said, glaring to the two fuzzy bumps of flesh silhouetted against a rather nice view of Lake Elsinore, "what is this?"

"Yeah, you said—" he put on a British accent "—if you're in L.A. and you're certain no one will see you, try to get a picture of your knees."

"Your niece, Jophiel!" snapped Lucifer. The photo fluttered to the ground as he grabbed his brother by the collar of his robes. "Why would I want an image of your unnecessary, unmanscaped pins? I asked you to bring me a picture of my daughter!"

"Ooooooooh," Jophiel trailed off. "That makes a lot more sense. Amenadiel's police lady's offspring, right? I can't believe Father never told us that new humans were that cute!"

"She's not Amenadiel's—" Lucifer cut himself off.

"Lucy!" boomed a voice.

Lucifer touched his ear. "Can't say I like the extra reverb you've taken on since getting top job, Brother," he said, letting go of Jophiel.

"Jophiel, would you give us a minute?"

"Archangel business," Jophiel nodded. "'Suuuuuuup."

"You're not even using that right!" Lucifer called as Joph trotted away.

Amenadiel folded his arms and sighed. "Walk with me, Brother."

They headed away from the throne. As always, the landscape shifted as they moved to whatever destination Amenadiel had in mind. All the surreal changeability of Hell with none of the malice, like one hand reaching up to meet another.

"Why do we even bother with these meetings, Amenadiel?" Lucifer asked. "Do you know how many years passed in Hell while we were hearing about our brother's unnecessary skydiving? Years I could have spent seeing to my patients."

"Hardly unnecessary," said Amenadiel. "And our brothers and sisters need to get used to seeing you up here again. "Running the universe is a team effort now, and they have to stop thinking of you as the opposition." He folded his arms. "But I'm here to tell you that Gabriel found out you've been swapping favors for pictures of Rory."

"By which you mean that every angel in creation knew about it ten minutes later," Lucifer followed. "What of it?"

"As you constantly point out, Lucifer, our siblings remain clueless about many of the finer points of blending with humans," said Amenadiel. "If any of them think they can get you in their debt by playing paparazzi, sooner or later one of them will make a mistake." He leveled his brother with a gaze. "And speaking of mistakes."

"D.C. was a near miss, not a mistake!" said Lucifer. "How was I supposed to know Chloe would take her daughters with her to a police reform conference? I thought Rory would be three thousand miles away."

"Trixie almost saw you at the Air and Space Museum, Lucy!"

"I have it on good authority she thinks she saw a Buzz Aldrin lookalike."

"What's next, Lucifer, hiding in a fichus plant?" He let out an exasperated breath.

Another angel with honey-colored wings flapped up to them from the side, "Greetings, Brothers," she said chipperly. "Samael, I heard you were looking for light-capture depictions of that city on the Ver River. If I do say so, I have some stunning shots of the Cathédrael Sainte-Marie de Cimiez—"

"'Niece' with an E, Zoraphon," said Lucifer.

"Ooooh," said the other angel. She turned the photo over in her hand. "Well I they're still really good. Can we—"

"Buzz off!"

Amenadiel sighed. "Our sister rather indirectly brings up what I wanted to talk to you about—aside from your ill-conceived stalking."

Lucifer straightened. "Even if I had slipped up, Rory is too young to remember anyway."

Amenadiel shook his head. "Charlie knew who I was the day he was born. Even before he could lift his head, he looked at me. He smiled—"

"Miss Lopez told me infants smile on reflex as an evolutionary trait."

"—and he knew in his young warrior's heart that I was his father—" Amenadiel said into the middle distance.

"It stops the adults throwing the new arrival out of the cave the first time it screams all night."

"—and he would carry that knowledge with him for the rest of his life."

Lucifer glowered. "He had gas, Brother."

"Human babies perhaps, but Charlie is half angel, and so is your daughter, Lucy. If you held her in your arms, even once, she would remember your love." He put a hand on Lucifer's shoulder. "And all your and Chloe's sacrifice would have been for nothing. No more trying to contact her when you think Rory won't find out."

"Chloe Decker is practically a public figure now. She has national recognition. What is Rory going to think if she flips through some tabloid and sees her mother cheerfully catching up with the man who's supposed to have gone missing before she was born?"

Lucifer glared back.

Amenadiel put a hand on her shoulder. "She'll feel as if her mother betrayed her." He looked into his brother's eyes. "The young woman we met had complete confidence in Chloe. It's why she listened when Chloe told her to give you a chance."

"So it's all part of our mysterious ways, Brother?" Lucifer waved in the direction of the throne. "Using our children like tools? When we made our plans for all this—" he waved in the direction of the throne "—I thought we were going to be better than Father."

"Not better," Amenadiel said immediately. "Different. Speaking of which..." he nodded as the scenery ahead of them shifted from white stone to gravel to spring turf. "I was hoping to convince you to spend more time up here, actually. For now, at least."

Lucifer blinked. "What, for more unnecessary team-building exercises?"

"No," Amenadiel exhaled as a set of hedges formed and then fell away beside them. "Some of our siblings need more preparation before visiting Earth than Jophiel did. They could use your expertise. You have more direct experience with humans than any of us."

Lucifer frowned. "The Silver City has hordes of actual humans. Couldn't you recruit a few of them to help our brothers learn to put on actual trousers one leg at a time?"

"In time, perhaps," said Amenadiel. "But as things stand, there are only a few humans who've had any success communicating with our siblings." He raised his hand as they entered a clearing next to a flowing stream.

"Okay, Iofiel," said a very familiar voice, "before you head to Earth, I think we need to make some changes."

"These are human clothes!" insisted a winged woman with sunny blond hair. "I copied them exactly." Beside her, another angel with thick braids like a Wagnerian opera singer nodded sternly.

"Yes, but you appear to have copied them from I'm going to guess medieval China?"

"Kazakhstan," the angel Iofiel said primly.

"Yes, and you said you wanted to visit—" The human flipped a page on clipboard. "Des Moines."

"Well that's almost the same, isn't it?"

"Uhhhh..."

Lucifer felt his mouth drop open. "You're asking Daniel for fashion advice? He wore leather in Los Angeles for Dad's sake!"

Daniel turned around. "Lucifer?" he asked. "I thought you couldn't come up here, man."

"Yes, the incineration-on-contact seems to have been a one time thi—" Lucifer lurched slightly as Daniel hugged him hard around the waist. He registered the look of disgust on Iofiel's face.

"You let that creature embrace you?" she asked.

"Yes," Dan and Lucifer answered at the same time.

"She was clearly speaking to me, Daniel."

"She complains about you nonstop!" he answered.

"Narc," said Iofiel, folding her arms.

"Oh now you'll remember your vocabulary lesson?" asked Daniel.

"Daniel," Amenadiel cut in, "I was hoping you could help me convince Lucifer to train some of his siblings for their trips to Earth."

Daniel shook his head, "Well, they could use it," he said. "But aren't there like, trillions of people stuck in Hell loops right now? Those things suck, man."

"Lucifer," the second angel raised her voice. "I heard you were looking for photographs of star anise, and on my last visit, I caught the plant just as it bloomed. Now what kind of favor do I get?"

"That's not what he meant, Sister," said the Iofiel.

Lucifer rubbed a hand over his eyes.

"We need to make the most of Lucifer's skills while we have access to them, Daniel," Amenadiel explained. "In a few years, he may have to stay in Hell full time."

"Excuse me?" asked Lucifer. "Not that I want to be distracted from my work, but why?"

Amenadiel scratched the back of his neck, a nearly smug smile forming on his face.

"He means Charlie followed Daddy to work the other day," said Daniel. Amenadiel nodded with a shit-eating grin.

"I didn't bring him," Amenadiel held up a hand. "My son found his way all on his own. But if he could show up in the Silver City at any time..."

Lucifer raised an eyebrow. "I suppose Rory could do the same thing. Wouldn't expect my offspring to follow too far behind yours."

"The adult Rory grabbed me out of my loop," said Dan. "She didn't exactly act like she'd never been to Hell before."

"Are you telling me I need to baby-proof the gates of damnation?" he exhaled sharply. "So not only do I not get to help raise my daughter, but if she comes to find me on her own, I, what? Turn her away?"

Amenadiel was silent. "Would you excuse us for a moment, Daniel? There's something else Lucifer needs to see."

Amenadiel drew Lucifer away. Dan went back to his clipboard. "So, Barbariel, you said you wanted to go to..." he riffled through the paper. "Cleveland?"

The world changed around them again, switching from meadow, to park, to city as they rounded each corner. Amenadiel spoke: "Brother, it's been a while since I pretended to be a psychiatrist, but I can't help but notice you keep saying the same word over and over." He paused in his stride. "Is there something you want to ask me?" he said.

Lucifer stared ahead, infuriatingly perfect flowers opening on the trees in time with his gaze.

"Red-violet blooms, just as I thought," Amenadiel noted. "You're full of doubt, Lucifer."

"I have not missed being psychoanalyzed by the topiary," muttered Lucifer.

"The fabric of Heaven just confirmed my suspicions, Brother. Now ask me what you came to ask."

"Fine. Is any of this necessary?"

"Is what necessary?" Amenadiel watched Lucifer's face.

"You always knew more about the nature of time than any angel, and since you took Father's throne you've become all-knowing. How does it really work?" said Lucifer. "Is any of this—my not being by the Detective's side as she makes the greatest accomplishments of her career, not being with my daughter as she grows up—is it making any difference?" His face turned with an intensity that Amenadiel hadn't seen since their mother had proposed they storm the gates of Heaven. "For all I know, I could go back to Los Angeles and still remember every revelation from Rory's visit. I could have my calling and my family," he exhaled hard. "So tell me, Brother, which is it? Was Rory right?" his voice took on a new tone at the end, as if just one fiber had broken.

"I don't know," Amenadiel answered with complete calm and absolute confidence.

Lucifer's face stiffened. "What did you insist I ask, then?!" he demanded.

"Before I lost my powers, I would have sworn to you that time travel was not possible," he said. "My niece is one of the universe's true miracles," he said in amazement. "And while I may be all-knowing, I cannot predict the decisions of any being with free will, not even my four-year-old son's. I don't know if you returning to Chloe would erase your insight. I don't know if you'd find your calling again some other way." He looked out to the landscape, which had coalesced into a river with a steeply sloping bank and clouds of mist rising over the water. "But I do know this," he pointed off to the right.

Two men had waded partway into the depths, fishing lines light as spiderwebs against the water.

"Do you recognize him?" Amenadiel nodded to the older man.

"Yes," Lucifer answered in amazement. "He was one of my patients. Roy." Lucifer marveled at the transformed man before him. Roy had been a low-level fixer on the streets of New Orleans.

"The other man is his son," said Amenadiel.

"Martin," Lucifer remembered out loud. "I saw his face in Roy's Hell loop many times."

"When Roy escaped the underworld, he was reunited with his family here," said Amenadiel. In the water, the older man turned around in his waders and waved. "Do you want to say hello?"

Lucifer shook his head.

The world shifted around them again. Lucifer noted with bitterness that Amenadiel's control over Heaven paralleled his own over Hell. He pointed through a cloud of softly humming cherry blossoms, where two wrinkled old women were building something out of flower petals and breaths of air.

"When Masako arrived, she reconnected with her old mentor Ishikimi," said Amenadiel. "The two of them invented a new art form."

One of the women touched the other on the arm to get her attention, then pointed across at Lucifer. The second woman touched her mouth as both waved, and the first blew a kiss.

Amenadiel guided Lucifer to the left, and they saw into a workshop with a thatched roof, charcoal forge and late-model soldering table. Two men and a woman, all with arms like gorillas, hovered over a circuit board.

"Your patient Ur-karad did not have living family when he was a mercenary in ancient Sumer—"

"I remember," said Lucifer.

"—but after he arrived he became quite close with his great great grandfather and one of his aunts."

Amenadiel gestured in another direction, where a short-bearded black man was sitting on an iridescent, snow-covered cliff, meditating.

"Marcellus mostly keeps to himself," he said. The human smiled, opened his eyes, and gave a nod.

Amenadiel turned back to Lucifer. "Tell me what you see, Brother."

Lucifer sighed. "You'll never top Father on mysterious ways, Amenadiel. You're trying to show me that sacrificing the happiness of one family has given it to other families, 'the needs of the many' as Miss Lopez would say. I'll admit, perhaps I did need to see the results of my work but—"

"Brother," interrupted Amenadiel, "what do you see?"

"I see Roy getting in some much-deserved fly fishing!" Lucifer looked back at the river. "I already knew I was helping them. I—" Lucifer stopped, staring intently at an ancient warrior-turned-tech, spraying up sparks with two beings who had once shared his blood and, for a second, he could see the foundations of Heaven, a trillion gossamer-thin spiderthreads beneath the stone, laid out in the perfect elegance of Father's handwriting. Or at least most of them were.

"I must admit," Amenadiel said quietly, "I was perturbed when none of our siblings could perceive what I saw." He looked back at Lucifer, "They can't feel it, at least not consciously, but the Silver City is changing, Lucifer."

Lucifer looked back at his brother as he lowered his voice. "Every human who arrives from Hell makes new connections," said Amenadiel, "with other humans, with Heaven itself," he nodded to Marcellus. "The firmament is growing stronger," he said.

Lucifer remembered the black rock of Hell, how every thousandth stone had a gleam of alloy. "Steel beneath the silver," he said.

Amenadiel nodded as he turned back the way they'd came. "I think it has to do with having existed in all three planes of existence," he said. "I hope it's why our siblings are drawn to Daniel. They know there's a strength in him they haven't seen before—the strength of surviving Hell."

Lucifer remembered a knife outside a yoga studio, "He may have been like that when I found him, Brother." Still, he looked over his shoulder as the lives of the redeemed faded back into Heaven's topology. Out of four sets of humans ...two had been occupied with building something.

"I don't know where this is going, Lucifer," said Amenadiel. "I don't know if this was part of Father's plan or something entirely new." He took a breath. "And I don't know if time travel means you would retain your daughter's insight no matter what you did next. I wish I could alleviate your doubts about the cost, Brother, but I can say with certainty that results may have value beyond measure. So when you are tempted," he put a hand on Lucifer's shoulder, "to risk it all by going to see Chloe," he said intently, "I want you to come here instead. Talk to Charlotte. Check on your patients. Go drinking with Jophiel. Everyone is depending on you."

Lucifer met his brother's eyes. "I'm only doing this for one person." He took another breath. "Rory. Nothing less could make me forego being part of a family."

"You are part of a family, Brother," Amenadiel insisted as they re-entered the meadow. "And more of them are on your side than you think."

As if on cue, there was a gentle flapping, and a blue-winged woman with short dreadlocks landed beside them, holding out a piece of paper. "Hi! Jophiel said you wanted pictures of—"

Lucifer closed his eyes and Daniel trotted up to see what was going on. "I swear, Temeluch, if that is a picture of your knees, or a city in France, or a—"

"No! It's Policeperson Chloe's hatchling!" she said, waving the photograph in the air. "That was what you actually wanted, right?"

Lucifer held out his hand and took the gift. His mouth fell open as he stared into a figure in colorful clothes, face framed by dark hair, frozen mid-gesture but unquestionably full of life. Older, changed, and very much longed for, her mother a blurred but welcome figure in the background. Lucifer took a deep breath.

"This," he said, "is actually the Detective's older daughter Trixie—"

"Oh, I'll just, uh..." Daniel said quickly, plucking the photo out of Lucifer's hands. He covered his mouth with his free hand. "She got so tall." He held up the picture to Iofiel and Barbariel. "It's like I keep telling you, Earth is where all the action is."

The two angels leaned toward the photograph. "Is that what they wear in Cleveland?" asked Iofiel.

Dan closed his eyes. "Maybe that's enough for today." The two angels looked at their sister and shrugged.

"Uh, sorry," murmured Daniel, looking up at Lucifer and then back down at the photo, as if he were worried it would disappear if he looked away.

"Nothing to apologize for," Lucifer said softly. "I was a father for three weeks, and it changed my life."

Daniel was still smiling into the photo. "You're a father for the rest of your life, Lucifer," he said without looking up. "Nothing's going to change that."

Lucifer was quiet for a long moment. "I should be getting back," he said. "I have work." He looked from Amenadiel to Daniel and back. "My love to Charlotte." There was a rush of wings, and he was gone.

Daniel looked up from his picture to watch him go. Then he met Amenadiel's eyes.

"How is he really?" he asked.

"It's as I feared," said the angel. "He's losing faith."

.

.

.

This story is my reaction to the series finale. Short version: I did not like it. It was sexist and undermined the message of the rest of the show, but it's the ending we got, and I'm going to work with it ...here. This story was originally supposed to be a one-shot, but I had a few other ideas and it took on a life of its own. I hope you like it.