Chapter Text
Lucifer appeared on his throne and looked out over his hated kingdom stewing about everything he’d had to leave behind. He knew that the demons would feel his return and gather at the base of the spire and he had until then to decide how to make an example of those who stood against him. If only he could keep his heart from breaking for long enough. He, more than most, knew that to show weakness here was to invite death, king or not.
It took about an hour before he could sense all of the demons gathered and he flew down to the lower throne. The one where he could interact with them instead of looking over the entire kingdom. “Everyone who went to Earth step forward, now,” he said coldly in a tone that invited no argument. He noticed that a dozen of them stepped forward but he knew there were more than that and it wouldn’t be too difficult to find out who. “If I have to hunt you down later, I swear you /will/ regret it,” he hissed. That got the rest of them moving.
Once he had all of the rulebreakers gathered, he called for Dromos and Squee to come to the front. “My lord,” they both intoned as the kneeled before him, hoping to gain some measure of forgiveness.
Lucifer wasn’t in a forgiving mood though. These imbeciles had ruined his life. Taken everything that ever mattered to him. He reached down and grabbed each of them by their throat, lifting them high in the air and cutting off their breath. He glared hatefully at them before turning and flinging them at the wall on either side of the throne and the chains did their job and trapped them there. “You two will know nothing but pain for the rest of eternity. You will be made an example of until you are begging for death, but even that will be denied you.” He turned to look at the rest who had followed them. He wasn’t sure how many of them thought they were doing his will, or if they were an active part of the rebellion, but he didn’t care right now. “The rest of you…I will be merciful. You are banished to the wastelands for the rest of eternity, never to return.” He waved his hand and they disappeared, most of them with masks of horror on their faces.
Even demons lived in terror of the wastelands. Lucifer doubted many of them would survive for long, but at least they would get the release of death, unlike the two leaders. “Let this be a lesson to anyone else who thinks to disobey,” he glared over the rest of them before calling two at random and giving them the chance to torture the betrayers and dismissed the rest of them. He would rotate them out daily so that everyone would get a turn. For the first time, he desired to join in, but the thought of what Chloe would think stopped him. He had never felt more alone in his life. Not only had he gotten a taste of real life before it was snatched away, but he didn’t even have his trusted Mazikeen by his side anymore. He had left her on Earth with instructions to watch over the detective and her offspring.
After a few years, he’d grown bored with the torture of the two demons. Really he’d grown bored after a few days of their screaming and begging, but it took a few years before he simply couldn’t take it anymore and returned to the upper throne and just stayed there. He popped down to check on his captives every couple years. Just to make sure the demons were keeping up the torture and that they were appropriately broken, but otherwise, he kept to himself. He knew that the demons would have noticed his isolation. They would have noticed that he wasn’t having the mass orgies or even sleeping with any of them, but he didn’t care. It could be considered weakness or it could be considered coldness. He knew that with the example he had made, and was still making of the traitors, they wouldn’t dare to think it a weakness.
It would be a few decades, by hell time, before something changed his routine. He was sitting there lost in his despair when he felt something tingle as it crossed the boundary into his realm. Human souls never did that, so he turned his attention to it in curiosity only to take off in desperate flight as he realized that it was a living human child. He knew that it would set off a feeding frenzy among the demons, and he had to stop it. He had no idea how a living child would have gotten here, but he couldn’t allow it to be destroyed.
Lucifer flew as fast as he could towards where he could sense it, and heard the screams long before he got there. He burst into his demonic form and called for the pile of demons to stop and they all froze. “Let me through,” he ordered, his demonic voice echoing through the area and the demons immediately made a path, happy to allow their king to have his turn with the thing.
When Lucifer made it through, he couldn’t help the gasp that escaped, not only at the state of the child, but her identity. Everything else flew from his mind as he knelt next to her and reached out a hand to her. “Urchin…how did you get here?...Why?” he asked softly as he took in all of her injuries, not noticing the murmurs starting from the demons or the two demons that had been slashed to death laying beside her.
“Lucifer!” she exclaimed with a smile through her pain as he picked her up into his red and burned arms. “I knew you would save me,” she said so matter-of-factly that it threatened to break his heart into pieces as she turned her face into his demonic chest and passed out with a smile on her face. He was struck dumb at the fact that she didn’t shy away from his current form in the slightest, and hadn’t even completely processed that yet when his danger sense went off and he lashed out with a wing, knocking one of the demons far away as their blade went clattering to the stone ground.
That drew his attention back to the crowd. “You are…helping it?” One of them asked disgustedly.
“You /are/ weak,” another said as though confirming a suspicion.
Before Lucifer could even respond, he was fighting off the entire crowd, but with the child trapped in his arms, there wasn’t much fighting he could do, so he just flew away. He reappeared in his bedroom and threw out his powers to seal the doors. It wouldn’t hold for more than a few hours, but that should be all he needed urgently. He placed the child on the bed and looked to her injuries, realizing that he wouldn’t be able to leave with her anytime soon. Injuries received in hell could not heal in other planes. Only celestials were immune to that fact, which meant that he would have to either keep her here until she healed, or take her back to be crippled, disfigured, and in pain for the rest of her life. That was no contest. As much as he hated the idea of being on the run in hell, caring for an injured child, there was no other choice. At least not one that he could ever live with.
He set to doing what he could for her injuries now. He grabbed for some of his clothes from the closet and started tearing them into strips to bandage the wounds that were bleeding, but first he took one of his silk shirts and began to clean off the blood and ash so that he could see what he was doing. He broke off pieces of the furniture to make splints and set her broken bones, using more strips of his shirts to tie them in place. Once he had done everything he could for her he began to pace, trying to figure out his next move. He was sure that most, if not all, of the demons would be hunting him by now. He had just proven himself to be a weak ruler and they were out for blood. It was possible that there were some whose loyalty to him was stronger, like Mazikeen, but he didn’t know who and it wasn’t safe to even try to find out. Not while he had the urchin with him, completely dependent on him for survival. Lucifer could feel the demons beating down at his wards, and knew it wouldn’t be long before they got through and went back over to get the child just as she opened her eyes.