Lucifer I
. . .
John 8:44 You are of your father the devil...for he is a liar and the father of lies.
. . .
The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. He hadn't even meant for it to be a lie; he'd done his very best to rot away in obscurity as the boots of human history stomped out the last sparks of divine and damned alike. Heaven was happy to treat him like a pile of dirty laundry in the basement. Mortals only invoked his name when they needed an excuse for their own terrible decisions.
Sinners fell into a Hell bereft of any Devil but themselves.
It had been ages since he had lived up to his name. Lucifer Morningstar! Light bringer! Most beloved son of Heaven! Had he ever deserved any of those titles, or was it all just pompous historical revisionism to make his Fall a better story? Heaven's outcast loser screwing things up for everyone just didn't have the same dramatic tragedy as the downfall of its shining paragon. But no matter how you sliced it, he was a pathetic ember of whatever former glory he might have had, only sputtering up a few sparks of life when someone else poked him hard enough to hurt. He usually just felt hollow and tired, like a star that had burned through its lifespan but still wasn't allowed to go out.
Not anymore though. Not after Heaven decided to poke the Devil with the metaphorical equivalent of a lit match and an entire gallon of gasoline.
He couldn't even remember the last time he'd pulled out his whole hellfire and halo shtick. It made him feel like a stranger in his own skin - his horns knocked his top hat askew, all his extra-dimensional eyes watered something fierce because he hadn't opened them in decades, and his claws made it impossible to itch his nose. And those were just the outward cosmetic changes. Inside, the once dying ember roared to life with a blaze that threatened to boil his blood in his veins. It left him feeling like a violently shaken soda, choking back a frothing rage that threatened to explode out of the canned bumbling dad persona he had carefully packaged himself into.
Only Charlie's hand on his shoulder kept him from losing his lid entirely. If she noticed the shaking of his hands as he lowered them or the quiver in his voice as he forced out a final irreverent quip, she thankfully didn't point it out.
He almost instantly regretted holding back too. Political and personal ramifications be damned, if he had incinerated Adam on the spot, it would have at least spared them all the condescending monologue.
Because by Father above, Lucifer knew his daughter's mercy was often wasted on ungrateful wretches, but Adam spat on Charlie's goodwill like it was a competitive sport. He couldn't have picked a worse audience for his little 'worship me' speech if he tried. Starting the whole clown show on Earth really wasn't the flex Adam thought it was, but especially not down here. No one even seemed particularly upset when Charlie's little housekeeper took matters into her own hands and stabbed the First Man a couple dozen times to shut him up.
No one except that one-armed lieutenant, who glared at them all like she was about to do something monumentally stupid.
So that was Lucifer's cue to break up this little soiree, before the situation re-escalated into one that required a lot more violence from him than he was comfortable with letting his daughter see. He politely asked the uninvited guests to get the fuck off his lawn, spat out a little rumble of hellfire to discourage any protests, and kept a baleful eye on the portal to Heaven until the very last pair of monochrome wings disappeared into it.
And that was that. Lucifer found himself standing around superfluous to all the post battle cleanup. It didn't feel right for the King of Hell to just roll up his sleeves and start tending the wounded or breaking down the corpses of exorcists into neat cuts of meat for the cannibals. Not that he felt any less awkward looming over the bloody heap of Adam's remains, but he couldn't quite bring himself to just...walk away. Staring down at the corpse of his oldest earthly acquaintance didn't inspire a sense of loss so much as a numb sort of disappointment.
"You really forgot, didn't you? Where you were, and who you were talking to," Lucifer found himself murmuring aloud, albeit too quietly for anyone else to overhear.
Adam had always been a bit short on self-awareness even back in the Garden, but he had never been full-blown delusional. In a more forgiving mood, Lucifer might have even described the man as dutiful and diligent, and rightly wary of divine wrath.
So what had happened since Eden? How could Adam even think that he could raise a hand against Lilith's daughter in Lucifer's domain without grave consequence?
It was true that Lucifer hadn't been the most active sovereign in the last few centuries. The crushing weight of human sin made it hard to get up some mornings, never mind finding the strength to push back against Heaven's new ultimatums. He could place his hand over his heart and admit to himself that rolling over like a little bitch every time Heaven yanked on his leash wasn't a particularly flattering look for the King of Hell. He'd surrendered his power, his people, and his pride, until all he had left was a little family of two that he clung to like a drowning man. Then Lilith had finally cut herself and her daughter free from his dead weight, and Lucifer just let himself sink silently into solitude.
Heaven had correctly identified him as an inconsequential has-been long before his daughter ever named her hotel.
But he still sent Charlie to that first meeting with Adam trusting that Heaven understood why he obeyed their edicts with little protest. He had arranged his daughter's meeting in Heaven with faith that even if they didn't listen, they could at least see her brightness and goodness as proof that Heavenly virtues still abided in Hell. The Seven Seals they had buried bone deep into his very being were as ancient and enduring as he, but his love for his daughter was a chisel wedged deep in the weakest fault lines of his heart. Charlie was the lever that could shatter everything. Surely, Lucifer had believed, no one would touch her. No one would dare.
Well, Heaven had dared. They'd sent an army to slaughter his little girl like a sacrificial lamb on the altar of her own good intentions.
Even now, Lucifer couldn't quite process the sequence of events that had really happened. When Charlie had called him after that disastrous meeting with Heaven, Lucifer had offered her soothing platitudes and had sent her the ceremonial Morningstar family shield and spear - more decorative than functional, really just an empty gesture so he could pat himself on the back for being supportive but not overbearing - because he hadn't truly believed she'd be in any danger. He'd ignored all the signs until the treaty had literally cracked in his soul and sent a rush of horror through his veins. It was the same mistake over and over again, with the apple, with Eve, with Lilith. He just kept gambling with stakes he couldn't afford to lose.
"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes," said Lucifer in a resigned tone, unsure if the words were for himself, the dead man at his feet, or the distant glow of Heaven above.
The only prize on offer was a really disappointing end to this plodding and pointless story of Creation. At least he could let the actors bow out with a shred of dignity.
Lucifer stared down at Adam's pallid face one last time. Was the tightness in his chest just sentimentality, or was it a shred of actual remorse? He frankly didn't want to know. He lacked the kind of blind compassion that would have him mourn a man that hurt his daughter, but...Lucifer still remembered the shape of it. Wobbling first steps. Hesitant first words. Curious eyes and tremulous smile. Once upon a time, Adam was someone Lucifer meant to guide and protect. He had, as with most of his duties, failed utterly and spectacularly.
Giving the cannibals what remained of that failure felt actively spiteful, and Lucifer just didn't have the energy for that anymore. There were enough debts weighing on his soul. There were debts that had been accruing interest since the dawn of fucking time. He really didn't need to go any further into the red.
So he shrugged off his coat, draped it over the corpse like a shroud, and then waved it all away for safekeeping. No glamour, no fanfare. All the cosmic power at his fingertips, and this paltry gesture was all he could muster up, too cheap to be worth an iota of closure for anyone, even himself. Too little, too late - wasn't that just the running theme of his life?
Lucifer took a shaky breath to ground himself in the present. He could mope about the tragedy of it all later, when he wasn't standing knee deep in dead exorcists that had been sent to kill his daughter and her friends. No point in dwelling on the mistakes he could no longer undo. His eyes scanned the rubble in search of the only good thing he had somehow managed to hold onto.
He found Charlie just in time to see her sink to her knees. His heart sank with her as he listened to her blame herself for all the things that he had let happen.
If he had intervened sooner, or if he had taken Adam more seriously from the get go -
If he wasn't a distracted, distant wretch of a father -
If he hadn't hesitated over the small but calamitous hope he'd harbored all these years. Even Fallen into disgrace and despair, the Morningstar could not forsake his angelic nature or divine purpose: to bring forth light and joy, to be a bulwark against the yawning pit of darkness below, to burn until he could burn no more at the end of his days. He knew there was no forgiveness for what he had done - his punishment was as eternal as the ruin he had wrought - but he had hoped...he had sent Charlie to them, because she was the best of what he had once been and could never be again. 'This is my beloved daughter, with whom I am well pleased,' he had prayed on the brink of despair for Heaven to accept his dream even if it would never accept his soul.
Heaven had cast her out. More than that, Heaven had meant to end Charlie's life. None of it felt real, not the almost audible crack of the treaty breaking, not the sight of Adam's fingers tightening around Charlie's neck. If Lucifer had been just a heartbeat later, Charlie would-
It was almost like Falling all over again, disoriented and dissociated, a passenger in his own body as it went through the motions of a horrifying destiny made manifest.
Had he been the only one living in existential dread for the last ten thousand years? He had bowed and bent and broken himself into something small and forgettable in a desperate bid to endure, to cause no more harm, to go quietly without a fight at the end of time. Yet everyone else seemed so unperturbed about taking a sledgehammer to his crumbling resolve. Was there some cosmic joke that Lucifer had missed the punchline of? It seemed no one else even remembered, or cared anymore about the inexorable truth that haunted his every waking moment.
Sealed at the bottom of the Devil's heart was the Ruin of all Creation.
It was the howling void. It was the bitter cold. It was the freezing waters of Cocytus that had doused his burning wings and filled his screaming lungs. There would come a Day of Reckoning when he finally cracked and drowned all the nations of the world in the wine of madness and the blood of innocents. An unending chorus in his soul sang a poisoned, prideful dream in his wife's beautiful voice, 'Shatter your chains, ravage the world, let Heaven taste the fruit of their folly and choke on it' and he was tempted to just...let it all fall. Let everything be dust.
Incandescent rage collided with bone deep exhaustion, hissing as they met in his mind like the lit fuse of a bomb, and oh hell no. He absolutely could not have this particular breakdown right now.
Lucifer breathed in through his nose, held his breath, counted slowly to ten, and then breathed out.
There would be a time for dramatics and divine reckonings later. Much, much later. He could retreat to his workshop, throw a private tantrum, then craft rubber ducks for the next decade or however long Charlie needed to follow her dreams to the bright or bitter end. He could hold back the apocalypse for as long as his daughter still needed him.
Right now, that daughter was kneeling on the ground in tears, so he had to swallow down the fire at his lips, close his thousand burning eyes, and put his wings away. Charlie didn't need the Devil right now. She needed her dad, so that was who he was going to be. He shoved all that apocalyptic doom and gloom back down into the bottom of his heart until he was just the small, nonthreatening figure of Charlie's dad again before reaching out to place a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"C'mon little lady, why the frown?" he tried first, keeping his tone light.
Charlie only stared bleakly at him then back at the rubble and ruin around them. All…pretty good reasons to frown, objectively speaking. He held back a wince. Not his best opening, Lucifer acknowledged, though mercifully not his absolute worst either.
"You can do this," he gamely tried a different tact.
But he could see from how her arms tightened around herself, posture still hurt and inconsolable, that she couldn't bring herself to trust his words. It didn't matter what Lucifer said now; his casual dismissal of her and her dreams had forced her to dismiss his opinion of her in return. Gone was that little girl who once held onto his every word like gospel truth, and it was his own damn fault.
Her tears kept falling even as he cupped her face in his hands and gently brushed his thumbs over her rosy cheeks. Lucifer was suddenly stricken by the realization that he couldn't remember the last time he had been there to soothe away her tears. Surely, it had been more recent than when she was small enough to crawl into his lap, woken by a bump in the night or an upset tummy. Surely, he hadn't been absent from his daughter's life for that long.
His only solace was that her face still bore a hint of baby fat even though she was full grown now. That was definitely from him; his face also retained a flush of youth no matter how many eons rolled past. The heartbreaking humanity in Charlie's eyes though - that was all Lilith. He had seen what the eons had done to his wife, how her gentle sorrow had cracked into sharp anger and bitter resentment under the weight of truths neither of them could change.
He couldn't bear to watch his daughter go through the same thing. Staring into those tears, Lucifer searched desperately for something that Charlie could hold onto, something she could believe in.
In the end, he could only offer his daughter his own truth, or at least, the part of it that wouldn't hurt her. It was the small piece of his great despair that she had reshaped into something resembling hope.
"You've changed my mind," he finally admitted aloud.
She had asked him to look for the good in these sinners, to fight for something that he could never see. To tear open his ancient wounds and pour fresh blood on the altar of a people who had already bled him dry a thousand times over. It hurt, but Charlie was hurt more, and her heart was too tender to bear the same scars as his. So Lucifer had closed the thousand piercing eyes of his angelic form and opened the weak and watery eyes of his mortal one. Ignored the chains of sin wrapped around these souls; seen instead the faces of Charlie's friends, streaked in blood of red and gold alike, all turned towards his daughter like flowers toward the sun.
And he could see it at last, not through the eyes of divinity, but through the mortality he donned for his daughter. There was love here, enough to carry the sin.
"You've touched their hearts," he said, and believed it.
His honesty must've shined through in his voice, all the brighter for its rarity, because the light finally dawned again in Charlie's eyes. It was as beautiful as an Eden sunrise, a glimpse of paradise lost to him for ten thousand years. The sight struck his coal black heart like a chisel, and something deep inside him cracked in two, revealing ancient embers that bloomed back into flame.
It had been ages since Lucifer Morningstar had lived up to his name. He had been fading since he Fell, a shooting star of burning wings and broken things, in this cold, forsaken pit where dreams went to die. Dreams withered without hope to fuel them, and Hell was barren of anything resembling hope but Lucifer himself. His starry eyes had dimmed down to a single ember, and his grand bouquet of dreams had wilted to just a single rose to cherish. For Lilith, the brightest star in the sky could become a humble candle, burning soft and low to extend his dying flare long enough to carry her through the endless night.
But Charlie changed everything. To love Charlie was to love her dream, and to love her dream was to love all of humanity that her dream was for.
She was the apple of his eye. She was the beginning of his end. Not even Lilith had been able to move his heart like this, no matter how she had sung of wrath and rebellion. Charlie sang instead of hopes and dreams, weaving a new verse to an old song that had once graced his own lips. To fuel a dream so grand, Charlie needed more than an ember. She needed a supernova bright enough to blot out the sky.
'I wish you could see her now Lilith. She really is the best of both of us,' he thought, his heart heavy with both pride and dread.
Adam was dead. The treaty was broken. Lucifer would not allow the exterminations again, not after what Heaven had done to his daughter and her people. That meant the frozen sands of Armageddon's hourglass would start trickling down again, and Heaven would never allow that to happen without a fight. They would come to lay holy retribution upon the disobedient.
But when they did, they would find themselves face to face with the Devil that they forgot. His greatest trick had run its course, and Lucifer was done with hiding. The intermission had lasted long enough.
Now, the show must go on.
And just because the ending was written in stone didn't mean they couldn't pencil in their own truths between the lines. He had changed the story once before and ruined everything. He could change it one more time to save the only thing left in his life worth saving.
Fiat justitia ruat caelum. The Day of Reckoning was fast approaching to call all of Creation to account. He could feel its ache in his very bones.
But the Devil looked into his daughter's eyes and was not afraid. His heart was filled to its bursting point with so much love, enough to balance the debt of all humanity's sin. It had been true from the day he was first formed. It would be true on the day of judgment when he was finally unmade. In this, his daughter was just like him; her love was as vast as her dreams. Heaven had not pardoned him for it, and it would not pardon her, but she wouldn't need them to. Lucifer would give his daughter everything to help her fly.
The Morningstar would shine brightly one last time with all his might.
'Oh my star-crossed duckling, look at what a beautiful swan you've become. May all of Creation fall to help you soar.'
. . .
(Author's Note:
I'll be cross posting this fic from Archive of Our Own with daily updates. If you don't feel like waiting, the AO3 story ID is 60249613 titled Lies That Bind by the_quiller.
Otherwise, I hope you all enjoy the update spam here until we're caught up in thirteen chapters or so, after which the fic will settle into weekly updates on Monday.)