Chapter Text
“It's going to be beautiful, isn't it? I just can't wait...”
“...to do more than just advise. I know it's not my place, but if they'll have me, I'd like to...”
“...wonder if it's really wise to simply have the trees there. Shouldn't we...”
“...give it all up? Are you sure? This is Paradise and safety and...”
“...it's inevitable, even if they won't admit it. They know what they did, even if they act like...”
“...it's not going to kill you. I know it's uncomfortable, terrifying, but just...”
“...understand, it wasn't for some sick, twisted fascination! They should be allowed to do wrong without these inane controls! Can't you...”
“...make this right. Give it time, Verchiel. Learn the very grace you embody, allow yourself humility instead of shame, and...”
“...know that you're not alone in this. For all our divine wisdom, we are just as fallible as the humans we molded, even if not all of us can...”
“...see that we've done nothing but wait? And for what? For you to throw aside a millennia already to your inane ambitions and pride...”
“...and yet you still refuse to call your siblings? Even after all this? They can't do this to you, to us, to our people! To our family!”
“Avow it! Avow it in Zadkiel's name, Sera. Avow it upon the Seat of Justice so that I can trust you'll never bring harm upon the ones born to the Rings.”
- - - - -
Lucifer startled awake with an aborted gasp, anxiety mounting to near-panic at how he was struggling to take in breath, awareness finally taking hold a mere instant before he tried to scream, realizing as consciousness took hold that he'd become painfully tangled in the covers of his bed. Forcing himself to relax, a gentle flow of magic unbound the twisted fabric that was almost noose-tight around his neck, and his gaze settled on the ceiling of his room, at once both alien and familiar to him. A deep breath in, a jagged breath out, and he felt his chest tighten with altogether too much emotion.
How long had it been since he'd last fallen into dreams – into his memories – like that? How many years had passed without any of it even crossing his mind, awake or asleep? How many decades, centuries, millennia had he let slip by without once thinking about what he was doing here?
Absently, more out of habit now than anything, his fingers shifted into practiced motions, each touching in turn to his thumb. It was a grounding exercise he'd overheard in passing from Charlie as she was talking with Vaggie about plans for future redemption therapy sessions – forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, pinky. Then reverse. Each fingertip tapping lightly against the pad of his thumb. Something-something about the focus on a small physical sensation; he'd not paid enough attention at the time, but the behavior had taken hold all the same.
It gave him something to focus on, certainly, or at least something that wasn't the yawning feeling in his chest, but as much as he wanted to tell himself that he'd not really given much thought to the past, to his memories, to why he was here...
He knew he was only lying to himself. He knew why all these old flickers of the past were dredging themselves up now.
It had been six weeks since they'd re-opened the Hazbin Hotel. Eight since they'd finished rebuilding. Just over nine weeks since the last extermination...
Sure, he was the King of Hell, but his heart still pumped ichor, his magic still filled the air with sacred light, and despite the nature of the domain he called home, he'd made the Rings as they were, in reflection with the Realms above – not as a perversion, but in respect for the domain he was still intrinsically connected to. The Seraphim of the First Realm still called him by his original name in derision, as if taunting him with the idea that the Heavenly Realms were a home he would never again be welcomed into, jeered at him in his weakest moments as if he wasn't still the Archangel upon the Seat of Divine Grace.
For all that his appearance screamed devil, demon, monster, it was a contrivance of his own design meant to make him fit in with this place rather than some infernal reflection of moral failing. His halo may have taken the form of the serpent he'd come to be associated with, but he was still an angel, still as much a part of Heaven as he was of Hell, and that meant that he felt it when a soul shifted between the two, when a soul ascended.
His daughter's plan had worked.
Granted, he'd felt so many souls flicker out – souls of both Hell and Heaven - their light snuffed by angelic steel, lost in this latest of so many countless, senseless massacres, and that said nothing for the sickening, unfamiliar twist low in his gut when Adam had died. Perhaps it was that more than anything that always brought that flicker of joy back down, buried it beneath shadows of doubt, twisted whispers that said it was all just a trick, that it meant nothing, that it was only one soul, that he had still failed...
His breath stuttered at that, and the rhythmic motion slipped just enough that the thumb of his left hand missed his finger, falling instead against the cool surface of his wedding band, his wife's voice coming to him through all the doubt and fear and uncertainty, clear as if she was in the room with him then. 'Even one is enough to prove them wrong,' he could hear her assure, and he smiled even as his breathing stuttered again, tears beading at the corners of his eyes before falling, tracing aimless lines along his temples before soaking into the pillow beneath his head.
By the divine, when did I forget how to keep holding on to hope?
Had it been after that first millennia and the verbal lashing Sera had given him, the admonition for his repeated failures, judgment clear in her tone for the fact that he'd yet to guide a single soul out of the pit? Or was it, some four millennia on and with Hell nearly overrun with fallen souls, that he'd partitioned what had once been a single, sprawling city into the Seven Rings, something that at once echoed the Ten Realms and yet fell short of their majesty? Had it been in the months after, when the Seraphim who'd joined him in Hell took on their titles and aspects as Malakhim, warping themselves to be reflections of human sin instead of divine virtue? Or had it happened when Lilith, in an effort to keep Charlie's boundless light and exuberance from being dampened by his growing depression, had taken her and left the castle, leaving him to drown further in his misery and disappointment?
Maybe it was the first time that he called his wife, only for the phone to keep ringing, for her to not pick up the call.
Maybe it had been the moment he realized he could feel the faintest threads of her power wending around Alastor – the one thing he thought constant was that he and his wife would never utilize soul contracts in the first place, but then to have one with him of all sinners?
Sitting up in bed and pulling the blanket up and over him, wrapping it like a protective shield around himself, he frowned at that last thought. By the time that the hotel and its oft-infuriating cervid caretaker had become a part of his life, he'd already categorically rewritten everything about why he was in Hell in the first place. As far as he knew, only he, Lilith, and the Malakhim still remembered the real reason he was down here. Why they were all down here. Why Hell even existed.
Why redemption was possible, even if it had taken so unbearably long for a single soul to finally be redeemed.
A small part of him felt terrible for having that lie extend so far that even Charlie believed it – he'd seen just how worn the spine was on the book in the library about his 'Fall' – and it only reaffirmed the guilt that dug into him at the thought of that book being all she had of him for so long, lost as he'd become to his repeated failings.
His attention turned then back to the ring on his left hand, thumb tracing over the cobalt band once more, and he let out a soft sound that was just as much annoyance as it was amusement as he shifted the shimmering metal around, making sure that the inlaid strip of meteorite stone was facing upwards. Leave it to the chaos inherent in the immutable laws of creation that the damnable thing always seemed to rotate of its own will around his finger.
They'd settled on cobalt because, even that far back in history, Lucifer knew full well the durability of the metal, alloy though it was. It also felt more appropriate, not wanting rings that matched the color of his blood – and Lilith's too, after a time – and silver would all too soon come to be associated with a banishment of evil, as a protective ward, something very purposefully not to be worn openly in Hell. It'd been his wife's idea for the inlaid meteorite, not for the representation of fallen stars, but for the knowledge that humanity would often put faith into the thought of wishing on those self-same stars. It was a wish for their future, for the thought that even that which descended could one day rise again, reforged anew with purpose and conviction.
How long had it been since he'd remembered even that?
Another heavy sigh, and he leaned over, grabbing his cell phone from the bedside table, flicking through the handful of messages – mostly Charlie's – and made a mental list of the things he'd have to take care of over the course of the day. One message, about halfway through, caught his attention, and he stopped to look it over. It'd come from Vaggie instead, a request for more group therapy resources, though she admitted (with an upset emoji face to boot) that she had no idea what to really ask for past that. Since they'd reopened, Charlie had been asking for human resources, for books and material from Earth to better help her with sinner redemption – she still hadn't been informed about Pentious – so that she was doing more than just coming up with ideas on her own.
It was certainly the smart choice. Therapists and psychology majors really didn't end up in Hell, and the ones who did weren't exactly the type that Lucifer trusted to ask for advice, given why they were here in the first place. Charlie, innocent and exuberant as she still was, had nearly made that mistake, wanting so much to offer whatever she could to sinners seeking something more than the existence they'd known until now. At least he'd caught on before anything had happened, and booted the sinner out with a warning to only come back when they were ready to work on themselves instead of victimizing those they should have been helping.
Lucifer did what he could within the limits of his agreement with Heaven, used his magic to simply create copies of books and coursework files from Earth for Charlie to reference, to learn from, to become as much of a therapist as she could without any real way to get the education she needed.
Some part of him wondered if, once communication was reopened with Heaven, he'd be able to convince them to send a couple human souls down – the Sacred Embassy was still neutral ground as far as he was aware – so that Charlie, and perhaps other sinners interested, could get an honest lesson in how this whole therapy thing was supposed to work in practice.
He responded to Vaggie's message with a thumbs-up, and to all of Charlie's with a little green checkmark to let her know he's seen the messages, though he did take a moment to magic up a pen and paper to actually list out what she'd requested. He knew the phone came with some sort of notebook of its own, but he certainly hadn't bothered to figure out what all the little images and icons that littered the screen were, especially when he knew three of the ones there had been deleted. Multiple times. With that done, he moved to set the phone and the list back on the table, though he stopped short of laying back down as his attention shifted to the book that had been sharing space with his phone for a few days now. Festooned as it was with an absolute rainbow of paper markers – that humans had gone for the straightforward name of 'sticky note' amused him to no end – he knew he should tell Charlie that he was reading his own copies of some of the books she'd requested, and yet...
It felt too personal, or like he was distracting her from her mission with his own worries.
Then again, wasn't all that negativity part of why this book was so marked up on the inside as well? Underlined sections, highlighted phrases, notes in the margins, half-completed 'inner work' assignments, all because he was as sick of sitting in this misery as he was unsure of how to climb out of it?
Letting out another tired breath, he pushed himself up from the bed, a casual touch of his magic shifting him from his duck-covered sleepwear into his normal outfit, though he forewent the hat and jacket for the time being as he moved out onto the balcony of his room. He leaned into the railing, one arm over the other, as his gaze passed over Pentagram City, nothing really holding his attention as he took in all of what he could see.
He knew that calling the Ring of Pride a 'city' would have been enough to have any well-meaning soul asking why he didn't call it a district or a province for its true size. Even back at the start of all this, he'd insisted upon the 'city' moniker to give all the residents a sense of community, of fellowship, a feeling that even in this place, they weren't really alone. He'd seen the idea take in a few situations – absentee as he'd been, he still knew about places like Cannibal Town – but knew there was still no real sense of what he'd wanted here.
Not yet, at any rate.
Another brush of his thumb, more meaningfully this time, across the ring he wore, and a faint smile teased at one corner of his mouth.
Redemption was possible. Is possible. Surely, there were going to be souls that would never make that climb, but the fact that there were going to be some sinner souls down here for good didn't outweigh the truth that most of them would have a pathway out once they were ready to accept it. Once they learned to be more than their sins, when their will became stronger than temptation, when they finally found it within themselves to right the scales of their own souls.
The slow wandering of his gaze eventually came back around to the hotel, and he considered the room on the opposite side of the hotel from his own. The radio station was empty for the moment, the airwaves as silent as one could expect – the broadcasts from the Vees' tower never seemed to stop, their transmissions always a low hum in the background when Lucifer bothered to pay attention – and as much as he knew he needed to work on his own issues, to be the Aspect of Humility in more than just name alone, he knew that his mind wouldn't truly settle until he could at least start to piece together Lilith's decision to place the Radio Demon in their midst, to send him to aid their daughter.