Chapter Text
—
A flash. Impact. Collision.
A flash. Bright orange. Suffocation.
A flash. Despair. Determination.
The images before his eyes were always vague and fleeting, and yet, they always seemed to resonate with something inside of him. He didn’t fully know what any of it meant, but somehow, he also knew that they were significant. The flashes didn’t make much sense to him, but he just could not shake the feeling that he should have known about them on some sort of fundamental level. The sensation felt like a physical manifestation, pressing against him like walls of phantom aches and weighted determination closing in upon him.
In this perpetually drifting state of his, all he knew was that he should know what everything meant, but yet, he did not. He did not know what it all meant, but somehow, he knew that it was important.
He watched on, trying to make sense of the scenes in front of him. The images were indistinct, never fully forming, never fully becoming tangible to him. They were shapeless, riddled with vagueness and teasing at the edges of his consciousness as they played on – a mise en scene of an unknown story trying to weave him a tale. Every hushed word spoken filtered brokenly through his mind, and every muted sentence was another unknown mystery to him as he meandered through this unknown space. Every brief flash of image was another clue for something he should know, but he did not.
Because he did not know what it all meant, but all he knew was that it was important.
The flashes were fleeting. They always were, as they drifted close to him, tantalisingly close and allowing him to brush his fingers against them before swiftly dissipating like wisps of smoke, filling him with an indiscernible sensation of foreign sadness. They’d surround him with their promise of more, before they’d vanish without a trace, leaving him with naught but a distant feeling of
a flash. Impact. Collision.
A flash. Bright orange. Suffocation.
A flash. Despair. Determination.
He could hear the muffled words again. They murmured in the background distantly. Somewhere in the scene, a gavel sounded, its reverberating echo a clear declaration of judgement for whatever it was judging. An unknown promise weaved through him, bitter and sweet and filled with melancholy. All these sensations made so much sense to him, and yet…none of them did.
For he did not know what it all meant, but all he knew was that it was important.
—
When Lucifer stirred awake, it was to an all-too-familiar sensation of fatigue clinging to him and the beginning signs of a telltale migraine taking root within his temples.
He couldn’t help the slightly pained groan that escaped his lips as he gracelessly flopped onto his front, burying his head into his pillow in an attempt to stave off the inevitable headache that was no doubt going to hurt like a bitch in a while. As he did so, he felt the remnants of his strange dream fading into the recesses of his subconsciousness, distant and already forgotten by his mind as he futilely tried to chase after its receding tendrils.
God , how many times has it happened already? How many times had Lucifer already awoken to this exact situation over the course of the past month? To the echoes of a dream shrouded in mystery that weighed insistently on his mind, trying to tell him something he did not know no matter how hard he tried to cast his memory for a trail? He’d lost count by now. All he knew was that these dreams had definitely become a nightly occurrence haunting him incessantly in the recent days.
…Well, that, and nightmares, he supposed morosely. Because, unfortunately for him, his nightmares didn’t come with a stop button, which, in his humble and correct opinion, was really stupid and uncalled for of his mind. Why couldn’t it just stick to one thing at a time, anyway? Why did it have to make him twice as miserable?
But, ah well. He supposed that it was rather well-established that his mind sucked. This meant that in addition to the newfound, strange dreams that had been plaguing him for the past month or so, he was also still feeling the burn of celestial flames searing down his back every other night. Or, as his subconsciousness had taken a liking to revisiting recently, witnessing the final argument he’d ever had with Lilith before she’d walked out from his life. Or if he was extra unlucky, he’d be witnessing the ten thousand different ways he might have not reached Charlie in time during Extermination Day, which always ended with him screaming her name as she fell to her death.
He’d…even gotten one or two regarding Michael and Gabriel that were surprisingly not connected to the Fall, though Lucifer might not really call that one a nightmare. Did revisiting an old memory of his estranged brothers’ quiet disappointment and anger while he’d been incarcerated within Heaven’s holding cells count as a nightmare? Did remembering the crushing sense of self-loathing that came with the interaction count as a nightmare?
Was it really a nightmare if he would wake up on those nights plagued by the thoughts of what-could-have-beens, rather than being seized by intense terror that made him unable to breathe?
He didn’t know.
What he did want to know, however, was why he had to be the one bearing the brunt of all these dreams.
Was it really so hard to dream about…he didn’t know, anything other than pain and despair and indiscernible flashes of sadness? What would it take for him to have mindless, normal dreams that didn’t ruin his already less-than-stellar circadian rhythm? Seriously – he got that he was the Devil, yes, and was the ‘most evil being in all of Creation’, but even the fucking Devil needed sleep, which was getting harder and harder to do by the day because his mind just didn’t want to shut up.
And the strangest part about these newfound dreams? Call him crazy, perhaps, but he was hesitant to even classify them as dreams. He tried to refer to the flashes as dreams because of a lack of better terms, but in truth, they never actually felt like dreams.
Dreams were memories, after all, replayed by one’s mind while they rested in a series of phantasmagorical moving images that served to remind them of things that had already happened, whether that be for better or for worse. But if Lucifer had to describe what little he remembered of those flashes that he’d borne witness to, he’d say that they would feel…like he was living through someone else’s memories. Someone else’s memories that he should know of, but didn’t, for one reason or another.
It was strange. It was all too strange, and he’s quite past the point of wanting answers because he desperately needed to know what was going on with him. However, thinking about anything right now only seemed to make his headache steadily rise past the bar of ‘moderately annoying’ and quickly approach the territory of ‘astoundingly ferocious stabbing that made him want to curl up and die’. He suppressed the urge to groan again, and instead channelled his tired irritation into a glare as he glared daggers at the dark ceiling of his bedroom.
“Fuck dreams.” Lucifer muttered sullenly to himself, trying and failing to quiet the raucous thoughts that rampaged through his head.
When that declaration did absolutely nothing to make him feel better, he let out another resigned sigh, before turning back onto his side in order to stare blankly at the pair of rubber ducks that sat ever-silently on his nightstand, hoping that they could provide him with some sort of much-needed mental relief.
“...What do you think, hm, Crowley, Aziraphale?” Lucifer found the question slipping out from his mouth before he could really give it much thought. “Do you think I’m going crazy here?”
As usual, both rubber ducks only stared back at him silently, never making a sound as they carried on with their lives in all of their Rubber Duckiness.
Seriously , the Crowley duck seemed to say dryly, why do you keep insisting on talking to us? We're literally just rubber ducks. You should talk to actual people and get help, man.
Be nice, the Aziraphale duck seemed to chastise, I don’t think anyone is going crazy here.
You can’t think , the Crowley duck replied, you’re just a duck.
But so are you! The Aziraphale duck’s reply was nothing short of affronted, most likely from being referred to as ‘just a duck’.
Classic Crowley and Aziraphale, he supposed wryly, and left them to their debate.
Instead, Lucifer found his gaze drifting past the arguing pair on the nightstand as he idly wondered after the time. Eventually, it landed on the little duckie clock that sat just a little away from Crowley and Aziraphale, and he squinted blearily at it, trying to get a read from his vantage point. Unfortunately, trying to get a read on the digital numbers proved to be much harder than he’d anticipated when the red glare of the words felt like they were trying to stab his eyes with its intensity.
“ Ow .” Lucifer hissed sharply, but tried again nonetheless. It took a while, but he was eventually able to focus his swimming vision onto the irritatingly-bright words on the clock. His migraine pulsed sharply in response, and he pushed through the throbbing sensation with nothing but sheer stubbornness until the numbers finally blurred into readable focus.
3am.
Lucifer flopped back onto his back with a resigned sigh, letting his eyes travel back to the ceiling to offer it some much-needed respite from the harsh, red glare that had been searing into them as he let his mind drift.
Of course it was 3am. It was always 3am, wasn’t it, when he woke up from his strange flash dreams? Why did he think that this time would be any different, anyway? It’s basically become his new wake-up time at this point, and truthfully, he should probably be a little more concerned about that fact, right? It probably couldn’t be a coincidence that he’d always wake up around this time whenever the dream flashes hit.
…Come to think of it, didn’t these dreams start…around the time Michael and Gabriel finished the heavenly inspection of the hotel? It’s been a month since he started having these dreams, hasn’t it? Probably around two nights after the inspection had ended, if Lucifer’s sleep-addled brain wasn’t misremembering dates at the moment. And it has been a month since the inspection ended. It couldn’t have been a coincidence, could it, to have the dates lined up this perfectly?
Probably, right?
The realisation only seemed to make the questions churn harder in his mind, which in turn made his migraine flare up even more, which in turn made Lucifer decide to drop the line of thinking and save it for when his head wasn’t trying to kill him. His current position also seemed to not be doing his headache any favours, and Lucifer knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep away his headache, either. He probably wouldn’t be sleeping for the next few hours. Again. Because unfortunately for him once more, he’d tried and failed the endeavour of ‘attempting to go back to sleep’ too many times before to even begin hoping that it would work anymore.
With a heavy sigh, Lucifer forced himself to sit up. Accomplishing this was no easy feat with the way every jostle on his part only served to make his migraine flare painfully, but eventually, he was able to struggle into a sitting position with his back against the smooth wood of his headboard, and felt his mind idling to the things that he could realistically do at 3am without waking any of the other hotel residents up.
Hmm…what to do? Perhaps this was his excuse to finally get started on that swimming pool project that he’d been putting off for months now? There had always been something better to do whenever he wanted to start on it, after all, but there was no time to start like the present, right?
Or maybe…he could just take his mind off by starting a new batch of rubber duckie experiments? Those always helped with late nights, though Lucifer doubted he would be able to get much experimentation done with how out-of-sorts his mind was feeling right now. Which meant that the swimming pool blueprint activity was, unfortunately, also off the table for the moment.
…Perhaps he could go and bother Alastor? Lucifer briefly debated with himself whether it would be worth it to try to sneak into the radio demon’s tower just for shits and giggles and to piss the guy off. Sure, he’d run the risk of dismembered arms if he were any other sinner soul, but that’s where being the most powerful being in Hell came in handy, after all. He’d be fine.
It would be entertaining, even, and maybe he’d get to pull some mindless banter out of Alastor to forget about stupid dreams and sadness and – oh, God. When had he started seeing their banter as stress relief as wel l ? Wasn’t the whole ‘I’ll annoy you to get my mind off my own problems’ an Alastor thing? When had he started reciprocating the thought?
The situation was probably more dire than he had thought if he was starting to adopt Alastor’s way of thinking, of all the people in this God-forsaken hellhole. What, was he going to start wearing red next? Perhaps find a radio stand and start speaking with a radio host accent or something? Greetings to you, my dear subjects of Hell! Welcome to another episode of, Insert Witty Radio Show Title Here!
The thought was, frankly, supremely horrifying. Lucifer quickly banished it from his mind with a shudder.
Before he could give more thought about the merits of trespassing into Alastor’s room, however, it seemed as though the universe had decided to make a decision for him after all, in the form of a flurry of quick knocks that suddenly sounded out against his bedroom door.
Lucifer felt himself tense, levelling a suspicious glare at his bedroom door as he tried to make sense of the sudden turn of events.
Now – knocks against his door were already an uncommon occurrence. The most common guest his room had ever received was Charlie, who usually came in sporadically either because she needed his help with something, or because she’d had another nightmare and needed someone to play Uno with her until she forgot about it. But Charlie never knocked before she entered, because he’d told her to just invite herself over whenever she needed, so whoever was at the door couldn’t possibly be his daughter.
Lucifer somehow doubted that it could be any of the other hotel guests, either. Neither Angel nor Vaggie visited his room much, and even when they did, they’d never bother with excessive knocking, which – damn , were still sounding out right now. It couldn’t be either Husk or Alastor either simply because neither of them had bothered entering his room through conventional methods before.
He would never forget the heart attack he’d had when he’d woken up one day to see Husk casually knocking against his window and waiting to be let in in order to share a late afternoon drink together. Or the time Alastor had needed him for something, and had simply melted out of the shadows by his dresser and stood there watching him for a good ten minutes before he’d even noticed he was there. Weirdo.
But, in any case – as he’d said, knocks against his door were already an uncommon occurrence. But knocks of unknown origin on his door in the middle of the night…
Well. It could only mean one of two things, actually:
One, Lucifer had officially lost his marbles. He’s hearing things from his own imagination, and his sanity had finally snapped after a good ten thousand years, or;
Two, by some dumb stroke of luck, Lucifer was not crazy, and for some reason that was unfathomable to him, there was actually someone he might or might not know, who could, for all he knew, be an infiltrator, knocking on his bedroom door at 3 in the morning.
…He didn’t really know which of the two options he’d rather. But it seemed like the knocks weren’t about to let up anytime soon, and he supposed that he should do something about it before the possible-intruder woke the whole hotel up with their incessant and rude late-night knocking.
Pushing aside his headache was something that Lucifer was inherently familiar with. He’d done it about a thousand times before this, and shoving it aside was a relatively task now. With a careful flick of his wrist, Lucifer crossed his room surreptitiously, making sure to keep a firm grasp over the innate angelic power that always resided within him, just in case he’d need it when the door eventually swung open. His mind raced over the possible enemies that he could have made in the past, wondering which one in their right mind would be trying to confront him in his room now .
Had they hurt anyone else? Had they tried going after Charlie? Had they targeted any of his other friends? Or were they only here for him?
The thoughts rushed upon him, unbridled with their intensity. His heart hammered insistently against his chest as every nerve within him lit up at the prospect of imminent danger. With a careful hand, Lucifer reached out, feeling the cool metal of his door handle register itself against his warming palm. Whoever it was, he was going to make sure that–
“Lucifer? Are you in there?”
… What?
“Lucifer?” The voice was unmistakable this time as he strained his ears to catch it, no matter how muffled it sounded through the wood of his door and with its hushed quality. “Luuuucifer? Lucifer!”
Lucifer recoiled sharply in surprise. As if a switch had been flipped, the hum of power gathering at his fingertips died away as thought they’d never been there. The slight red sheen that had unknowingly fell over his eyes cleared away, and about a million questions surged in to replace his previous, fight-ready stance even as some of his apprehension fell away at the voice that had just rang out.
There was no way in Hell…
The hiss of his name once more was what finally prompted him into action. Stiffly, almost mechanically so, Lucifer felt his hand fully grasp the handle, before yanking it open unceremoniously at one go to reveal a very familiar figure standing behind it.
“...Hi,” said the voice of one unmistakeable Gabriel Morningstar, who was currently shifting awkwardly from foot to foot by his bedroom door, “Look – I know this is… very unexpected, but, like, um. Can we come in?”
For a moment, all Lucifer could do was stare.
“Oh, my God,” he murmured to himself in a daze, feeling a hand raise to run through his hair with an almost-hysterical edge to it, “oh, my God, I’ve actually lost my mind.”
He took a slight step back, almost stumbling over his feet as he felt his gaze scanning Gabriel’s figure in disbelief, a slightly high-pitched laugh bursting from between his lips. “I’m either dreaming, or I lost my mind. Or both. Oh, God. I’m actually going crazy. I–”
“I can assure you I’m very real.” Gabriel cut in insistently, his voice still pitched in a whisper. As he spoke, his eyes darted sideways almost furtively, and Lucifer noted for the first time how tense his estranged brother seemed to be at the moment. “Can we please come in? I promise we have a good reason to be here.”
The words filtered through Lucifer’s ears slowly. The mad rush of thoughts pounding against his ears then made comprehension rather slow, so he could really only register one word that stood out to him amidst the countless other tumultuous questions currently stampeding through his mind at the moment.
“...We?” Lucifer felt, rather than heard himself ask. “Who the hell is we ?”
“Michael’s here with me.” Gabriel replied. He turned his gaze slightly to the side, and Lucifer followed the eldest seraph’s eyes to find the Virtue of Temperance standing a slight distance away by the corridor’s end window. His body was angled slightly towards the glass panel, and if Lucifer didn’t know better, he’d assume that Michael seemed to be on a lookout for something. A similar tension that he’d seen on Gabriel lined his other estranged brother’s frame, but it was the slight restlessness that seemed to be surrounding the elder’s frame that really made him do a double take in surprise.
Michael was rarely, if ever, anything other than composed. Lucifer could count with his hands the number of times he’d seen his perhaps-brother lose his composure in front of others over the course of him knowing the latter. But as he observed Michael from where he stood, he could quite clearly see the way he wrung his hands almost nervously, with his eyes occasionally flicking in the direction beyond the window.
As he caught Michael’s gaze, the elder graced him with a slight nod and a barely-perceptible smile before abandoning his post by the window to drift closer, giving Lucifer a better look on just how rigidly he seemed to be carrying himself. There was definitely a tension that had been absent from him when he’d last seen him a month ago after the Heavenly inspection had ended.
Weirder, and weirder. He wondered if his restlessness had anything to do with the two of them showing up unannounced in the hotel at such an hour. He wondered if this had anything to do with Heaven.
Before Lucifer could put more thought into his observations, however, Gabriel’s voice unceremoniously yanked his attention back to their current situation at hand.
“Soooo, err.” The eldest Morningstar repeated hesitantly once more. “May we come in?”
For the briefest moment, Lucifer wondered what would happen if he said no. Would they just leave? Portal themselves back to Heaven, or insist on coming in anyway? The lack of the usual, metallic tang of divinity in the air did suggest that they might not have used a Heaven-issued portal for travel, which immediately sent another wave of questions rattling through Lucifer’s head.
“...Yeah, sure.” Lucifer opened the door wider, and shrugged lopsidedly. “If this is a dream, I give it props for creativity, at least.”
There would have been a time when he wouldn’t even have dreamed of entertaining the notion of either Gabriel or Michael stepping into his room. His room was a shield for him, after all, meant to wall him away from prying eyes and hurtful reminders of the past. And for the longest time, both his estranged brothers had been just that. He could still remember quite clearly, after all, memories from over a month ago how he’d panicked when Gabriel had joked about entering his room.
But things have changed since then. More truths had been revealed, and even though he was still quite certain that there were things his estranged brothers were hiding from him, he at least knew that neither of them meant any harm to him.
As such, Lucifer only found himself casting a hesitant glance towards the mess that was his room as they entered. If either of his estranged brothers had noticed the numerous scrolls and knickknacks that were scattered all over his floor at the moment, however, they thankfully made no comment on it.
“We’re not apparitions .” Gabriel huffed as he sidled through the door together with Michael, though he could detect a slight undercurrent of tension riddling the seraph’s otherwise-light tone.
“And that’s exactly what an apparition would say.” Lucifer replied dryly, before closing the door behind him. All at once, his room plunged back into total darkness, and he winced slightly at his lack of foresight. “Oops. Hang on, lemme just –”
With a wave of his hand, the lights in his room blinked on. In an instant, everything was bathed in a soft, yellow-orange light, revealing Gabriel and Michael in full for the first time since he’d seen them a few minutes ago. Lucifer took the opportunity to give both of them a quick once-over, and slowly realised that there was most definitely something the matter with them the more he glanced at them.
Physically, he could see that they looked just about fine. Their appearance was as groomed to perfection as always, with not a single hair out of place from Gabriel’s flashy pompadour or a single wrinkle visible on Michael’s ornate tailcoat, as expected of two of the Heavenly Council’s longest-serving Virtues. Lucifer also noted that Gabriel had even managed to snag a shiny new necklace from somewhere that he’d never seen him wear before, which was new. When had Gabriel gotten into necklaces, anyway? He’d certainly made no mention of that during their previous phone calls before.
But their image of put-togetherness started to come apart quite easily the more Lucifer studied them. The tension riddling their frames, for one, was rather hard to ignore. The uneasiness that he’d not noticed before that was coming off of them in droves was quite the obvious giveaway as well, for two. And for three, the strange pallidness in their complexion that he’d definitely not seen before didn’t really bode for good news, either.
In short – his estranged brothers looked stressed, and that was probably putting it lightly. Uneasy, too, as evidenced by Gabriel’s restless finger tapping and Michael’s barely perceptible, minute fidgeting that would have been otherwise unnoticeable to someone who didn’t know where to look.
With a sigh, Lucifer leaned against the wooden door. He might as well get the conversation going, he supposed wryly. The questions weren't going to ask themselves, after all.
“So.” He sighed, glancing at both his estranged siblings as he tried to find the right words to convey his question. His mind felt infinitely heavy and his thoughts delayed, no doubt suffering from the accumulation of disturbed rests from the entire month as well as that night.
His migraine was starting to come back as well, he realised sullenly, now that his body knew that there wasn’t any danger. Joy. That was exactly what he needed at the moment, wasn’t it. “This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with the Council, right? Or Heaven? The inspection results, or something? Sera? Him ? What exactly is going on right now?”
For a long moment, neither Michael nor Gabriel seemed keen to reply to his question.
Instead, they shared a weighted glance with each other, meaningful and furtive in a way that Lucifer couldn’t quite possibly hope to understand. Not anymore, at least, not when the only thing he could decipher from their look was that they were most likely having a silent conversation with each other about something he didn’t quite know, either.
…Perhaps he could have, once upon a time ten thousand years ago, but not now. Definitely not now, when he hadn’t so much as shared a glance with either of them for that same amount of time as well.
A strange surge of sourness rose up within him suddenly at the thought, the intensity of which surprised even Lucifer himself. It settled unpleasantly within his chest, tangling with the fatigue and the confusion already bubbling within him to become something else entirely. Something that twinged painfully in his chest, that lamented at how much things had changed in such an unfathomable amount of time that no amount of willing second chances could possibly hope to fix. The feeling was sharp, stirring up an almost irrational bout of irritation that seized every fibre of his being, leaving him helpless with its intensity.
“Guys?” Lucifer’s voice came out much sharper than he’d intended it to when he spoke again, crossing his arms in annoyance as he regarded them impatiently. “Seriously, what the hell’s going on? What’s with the sudden secrecy, anyway? You can’t just – show up here in the middle of the night and not give me an explanation, y’know?”
His two estranged siblings merely shared one more glance with each other. The gesture only further stoked the simmering flames burning within him at the moment, and Lucifer was just about ready to snap at them again, when Gabriel finally let out a sigh.
“I’m – we…can’t really say what’s going on. Not right now.” The eldest seraph said, voice quiet and tense. “It’s…well. For the best, I guess.”
What kind of answer was that ?
“What do you mean, it’s for the best ?” Lucifer demanded, disbelief dripping from his voice. Perhaps it was simply the time of night messing with his brain, but the evasiveness of the reply was rubbing him the wrong way. He couldn’t really keep the traces of frustration out of his tone even if he tried to right now, not when the sour feeling was still gripping onto him relentlessly and the twinging in his head was steadily starting to amplify once more. The time of night and the bone-deep tiredness wrapping around him didn’t really do his mood any favours, either. “What kind of answer is that ?”
Gabriel’s tone was at least regretful as he sighed. “I know this isn’t the answer you want to hear, and I’m really sorry about that. It’s…um. If it’s any reassurance, it’s not about the Council. Not really, anyway.”
“‘Not really anyway?’” Lucifer frowned. Nothing that Gabriel was saying made any sense to him whatsoever. “So it does have something to do with the Council?”
“No!” The reply was quick – a little too quick for him to truly believe it. But the Virtue of Diligence continued on nonetheless. “It has nothing to do with Heaven at all, alright? Please just trust me. We’re just here to give you something. That’s all.”
“We can’t actually be here for that much longer.” Michael supplemented quietly. Lucifer didn’t miss the way he shot a fleeting, almost furtive glance towards his bedroom door as the briefest flash of apprehension shot through his eyes. “But we must ensure that the package is passed to you. I hope you can understand our reasoning for dropping in so unannounced.”
“...Wait.” Lucifer frowned at the response, feeling some of the all-encompassing frustration roiling within him melt away into something more akin to confusion as he turned Michael’s words over within his mind. “Wait, what package? What context am I missing here? Why do I specifically have to be the one to receive it? What’s wrong exactly?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Gabriel reassured with a shake of his head a little too quickly, though the tightness in his voice was unmistakable. “It’s…just. We just need to pass you a package. Everything’s fine, alright? Nothing’s wrong. Trust us on this.”
Something in Gabriel’s tone loosened the tension plaguing Lucifer’s mind. Without even realising it, he felt himself relaxing slightly at the sureness of his words. The sudden, compelling reassurance that trickled through his veins was surprisingly soothing, easing away the frustration prickling at his skin with a cooling touch that reiterated the idea that he was, perhaps, overreacting in the situation.
With a heavy sigh, Lucifer felt some of the tension in his body drain. He slumped against his bedroom door, infinitely tired all of a sudden, and brought a hand up to press between his eyebrows in resignation.
“Fine.” He acquiesced reluctantly. “ Fine . Where’s this package of yours right now?”
To Lucifer’s surprise, his words seemed to have the opposite intended effect on Gabriel. Instead of looking appeased by him dropping the subject, his estranged brother somehow looked more distraught than he did before. As he watched on in confusion, the seraph took the smallest step backwards, which was – weird, to say the least. Had he said something wrong?
“What?” He demanded. “What is it?”
“I– nothing.” Another quick denial from Gabriel. “It’s nothing. Um. Really, just –”
Michael sighed, and placed a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder briefly. With a start, the eldest Mornngstar’s mouth clicked shut, and crossed his arms somewhat nervously over his chest.
Without so much as another word, Michael flicked his wrist, and a bag seemed to manifest itself from thin air, having no doubt been summoned from the subspace that Michael and Gabriel used to store important items. With careful hands, Michael passed it over to Lucifer, who couldn’t help but lean forward in interest as he received the baggage.
From what he could tell, it seemed to be some sort of duffel bag with handles, and a quick feel of the material revealed that it was definitely too coarse to be standard Celestial silk. It was highly probable, then, that the bag was a model that had been sourced from Earth, which meant that it had probably been a gift from Azrael to Michael and Gabriel, or something along those lines, assuming Azrael still held his mentality from ten thousand years ago that ‘Earth sucked so much less than Heaven’.
“A duffel bag.” Lucifer said dryly, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. “Honestly, I’d have thought this to be more of Azrael’s or Uriel’s thing, not yours. Since when did you fancy yourself with Earthen collectibles?”
“We’d…been a little pressed on time.” Michael replied with another drawn-out sigh, running a hand through his hair in an uncharacteristic show of restlessness. “Just…keep this safe, alright? Please don’t let anyone get their hands on this. Don’t lose it. Don’t forget about it.”
Lucifer couldn’t help but to frown at the mysterious package in his hands. That was…a surprising amount of rules for something this unassuming. Though he did suppose that whatever it was that required both Gabriel and Michael to personally pass it to him in the middle of the night without informing anyone else beforehand, it was probably the furthest thing from being unimportant, anyway.
“You didn’t kill anyone and stuff them into this, did you?” He joked half-heartedly, poking at the thing with a finger and frowning at the lack of resistance. “What even is in here, anyway? It’s kinda empty.”
Without really meaning to, Lucifer found his hand drifting towards the cool metal of the bag’s zipper. Surely a quick peep wouldn’t hurt anyone, right? He was curious, and he was supposed to safekeep the bag, anyway, so he might as well see what it was that he was supposed to be looking after —
“ Don’t open it right now .” Gabriel’s panicked voice cut sharply through his curiosity like a knife through butter. The command was so sudden that Lucifer found his fingers jerking slightly in its sudden haste to recoil from its initial course of action. A slow feeling of guilt trickled through his being, and he got the distinct impression that he shouldn’t have thought about doing that in the first place.
“…Oh.” He replied meekly, with a slow blink, and retracted his hand sheepishly. “Oh, alright then. Sorry about that.”
Once more, instead of looking comforted by his answer, Gabriel only half-turned away in response. A quiet, sharp intake of air and an agitated hand running through his hair that almost immediately ruined its meticulous style gave away just how distressed his estranged brother was, even if Lucifer had virtually no clue on why he was distressed.
“I…sorry.” Gabriel stuttered, before turning to Michael with what seemed to be a panicked glance. The urgent desperation was clear in his tone as he addressed his brother. “I think we need to go.”
“Wait, what?” Lucifer asked in disbelief, shooting an incredulous glance at both his estranged brothers. “What do you mean, go ? You literally just got here five minutes ago, didn’t you?”
On his part, Michael seemed to perfectly understand whatever it was that was making his brother this deeply distraught. With a small frown, the Virtue of Temperance placed a hand on the other’s shoulder again, before turning back to Lucifer with a small ‘ let me handle this, alright?’ directed towards Gabriel. The look on Michael’s face told him everything he needed to know.
“Let me guess.” He said with dry resignation. “‘Don’t worry about it’? Did I get that right?”
“...I hope you understand.” Michael replied apologetically, in lieu of an agreement. “I’m truly sorry for the lack of information right now, but…it’s really for the best. Things will be fine. Just hold onto the bag, okay? I promise we will explain more next time.”
“ Riiiight .” Lucifer replied dubiously with a frown, even as his hands tightened on the bag. “And I’m assuming that –”
“Brother, we really need to go .” Gabriel’s voice was even more urgent this time when he addressed the other seraph once more. “We’re going to be late if we don’t go now .”
Michael tensed momentarily at the words, before straightening upwards with yet another sigh. His estranged brothers seemed to be doing that a lot that night. Sighing, and withholding information, that was. He didn’t even want to bother with asking about being late or going places or whatever anymore.
“...Right, of course,” Lucifer heard the seraph mutter, before he turned back towards him with an uncertain look on his face. A brief flash of conflict flitted through his expression, as though he was debating with himself over something, before Michael was pulling back again with a slight shake of his head.
Perhaps it was the late hour messing with him, but all Lucifer could do was blink owlishly at the strange gesture. Why were they acting so weirdly that night, anyway? And this was after Lucifer discounted the fact that they’d showed up at the hotel unannounced at such a time. Before he could so much as open his mouth to question the strangeness of Michael’s actions, however, he’d already retreated back to Gabriel’s side.
“Take care.” Michael gave him a small nod. “Don’t forget the bag.”
“Just, um.” Gabriel’s voice was oddly tight and slightly hesitant. As he spoke, a strange-looking stone was miracled into existence with a simple flick of his fingers. It pulsed with a faint, golden shimmer, from what he could see, and seemed to be covered in…runes? Lucifer found himself squinting slightly, trying to get a better look at it as it started to glow slightly.
He barely heard the rest of Gabriel’s sentence. “Don’t…don’t tell anyone we’ve been here, alright?”
All at once, the suspicion surged back into Lucifer full force. He tore his eyes away from the strange stone, once again fixing them onto his estranged brothers sceptically. “Wait, what the hell does that mean?” He questioned incredulously. “What do you mean by ‘ don’t tell anyone we’ve been here’ ? Who the hell did you piss off?!”
“...We’ll explain when we see you again.” Michael’s words were slightly rushed now. “Which will be soon. Hopefully.”
Before Lucifer could fully process the seraph’s words, the stone within Gabriel’s hand flared to life. In an instant, his room was engulfed by a bright beam of golden light that looked rather similar to the kind of portal magic he was familiar with. He felt his free arm shoot up instinctively to cover his eyes from the sharp glare, even as the peculiarity of Michael’s words slowly made itself known in his mind.
Which will be soon. Hopefully.
Lucifer’s eyes widened as the words fully hit him.
“Wait!” He scrambled forward suddenly, fuelled as he was by a sudden burst of fervent confusion even as the light continued to flare brightly from the stone in Gabriel’s hand. He felt himself recoil slightly from its intensity as he called after them. “ Wait , what do you mean by that?! What do you mean by hopeful–”
If it were even possible, the golden flare somehow managed to glow even brighter, cutting off anything else that he might have to say. For a long moment, his room remained as such – bathed by the bright brilliance of light, its shine stronger than anything that Lucifer had seen before.
And then, as suddenly as it started up, it stopped. The bright glow died away almost instantly, and by the time it finally dimmed back to his room’s normal light intensity, every trace of Gabriel and Michael were gone, as if they had never been there in the first place.
“ – ly ?” Lucifer finished uselessly to an empty room.
With a dazed blink, his gaze slowly drifted downwards until they rested upon the only piece of evidence in his hands that suggested that the whole encounter hadn’t been a wild fever dream conjured by his mind.
The small, almost-hysterical laugh that escaped his lips was almost completely unprompted. Lucifer didn’t know when he’d moved, but he felt himself stumble slightly, and suddenly, he was seated by the workbench of his room, staring blankly at the unassuming duffel bag in his hands as they rested on the table’s surface. The whirlwind of thoughts that washed over him then was like a tidal wave – tumultuous, yet utterly incomprehensible. He couldn’t even begin trying to properly process the events that had just occurred even if he wanted to.
All Lucifer could focus on was a singular question – one that had been running through his mind since the very moment he’d heard the knocks on his door, that now continued to ring against his ears relentlessly, drowning out all else until it was the only thing he could hear in his mind.
Just what the hell was going on?