Author’s note: This story is based on episode 3x11, “City of Angels?” In my story, I reimagine a couple of scenes near the end of that episode and fill in many “missing scenes.”
Summary: Amenadiel honors the deal. Lucifer then embarks on a Heavenly mission. He seeks a lost treasure, relives The Rebellion (as Samael), loses his wings, and, unexpectedly, he loses more. But Mazikeen is at his side, so everything’s all right, yeah?
First, a bit of a reminder about “City of Angels.” In this flashback episode, Amenadiel asks for Luci’s help, and Luci agrees, in exchange for “a blank check.” Here, Luci is about to fill in the blank. My story begins immediately after Lucifer says, “As a wise woman once said to me, if you really want to rebel, move to LA.”
Muscled shoulders squared, stubborn neck thrust forward, face as harsh as Judgment Day, his brother replied, “You’re coming back to Hell with me. There’s no discussion.”
Amidst the gutted carcass of Rico’s MMA Fight Arena—the ripped wall posters of blood-lusting combatants, the eyeless glares of overhead lights, the stripped fight pit—Amenadiel stood toe-to-toe with him. His brother wore not his silvery gray robes of Heaven but the Earth clothes—royal purple shirt, khaki slacks—that Lucifer had picked out so Amenadiel would fit in with the humans, so the two of them could more easily track down Amenadiel’s stolen Divine necklace. Which they had. Because Lucifer’s cunning plan had worked. Because Lucifer had ferreted out suspects. Because Lucifer had arranged Amenadiel’s MMA match. Because Lucifer had trained Amenadiel to disguise his angelic strength and fight like a human.
Amenadiel, the ingrate.
“Yes.” Lucifer hissed the word. A smile, as taut and thin as a wire, pulled his lips tight to his teeth. “You see, this is where it gets interesting. We made a deal, didn’t we? For a favor to be named later. Later is now, Brother.”
Call him evil, would Amenadiel? Well, suffering the slur would be worth it. Worth every bruise, every gash, every bone-rattling and brain-battering blow Amenadiel had inflicted on him after he’d slipped himself into Amenadiel’s match.
At first, he’d planned to make Amenadiel pay for the slur by defeating The Firstborn in a fair fight:
The ref rang the bell. The house erupting in cheers, jeers, hoots and halloos, Lucifer fired off a left, a right, a left, bloodying Amenadiel’s slandering mouth. A kick to Amenadiel’s gut hurled big bro against the fight-cage wire. Lucifer cornered him. A right, another right, a knee strike. The house roared. Yet, Amenadiel refused to fight back. Lucifer’s gloved hands gripped Amenadiel’s head, pressed him to the cage. Lucifer laughed, a sound as cold and comfortless as the tomb that’d encased his heart at his brother’s words.
He thrust his face close, laced his voice with a swagger. “I’ll make sure I tell everyone in Heaven and Hell how the undefeated warrior lost to his loser, evil, little brother.”
Amenadiel shook under his grip, Amenadiel’s very atoms raging, craving to rupture their bonds, fly apart, destroy all of Creation.
Lucifer leaned in closer, flicked his gaze up and down Amenadiel. “Not so tough after all, are you, eh?” He plunged the verbal knife: “Daddy’s boy!”
That did the trick.
Amenadiel’s fists slammed into Lucifer’s ribs. He struck. And struck. And struck again and again, overpowering Lucifer, nearly taking his damned head off. Lucifer’s punches whiffed past. Amenadiel’s blows connected. Cut lip. Cut nose. Cut eyes. An uppercut to Lucifer’s chin flung him against the cage, blood geysering from his mouth, cage links rattling. Lucifer crumpled to the mat, sweat-soaked, blood-soaked, the screams for Amenadiel pummeling his soul. But with one kind of victory lost, another presented itself:
Go ahead, Brother! Beat me senseless! Show all the world you’re not the holier-than-thou Angel you hold yourself to be!
Amenadiel clamped his hand around Lucifer’s throat, Amenadiel’s face a snarled knot of anger and righteousness. “I am better than you.”
Amenadiel pulled him to his feet in a stranglehold. Lucifer’s heart bolted, his lungs grabbing for air that’d ceased to exist. Did God’s Mightiest intend to prove his moral superiority by choking the life out of the Devil? Not exactly the triumph Lucifer sought, but—
Amenadiel had snatched this victory away from him too. Let him go, threw the fight per the original plan, got back the Dad-given necklace.
The Dad-given, silver necklace that Amenadiel now proudly peacocked, his royal purple shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest to display the length of his dangly rod.
Not that Lucifer begrudged Amenadiel his pretty trinket. On the contrary—
The Firstborn jerked back a pace. As if he could sense that a trap baited with his necklace lay camouflaged at his feet.
Yes, Brother, and the trap is about to bite your ankles. “My ask is quite simple.”
An ask. Not, unfortunately, a demand. If Amenadiel hadn’t been a Celestial, Lucifer might’ve flashed his Devil Eyes, might’ve studded his voice with the Hellish subsonic rumbles that hurled his demons to the Underworld’s ashy ground. But an Angel of God would not be cowed. An Angel of God would be enraged. An Angel of God might call upon other Angels of God, or even upon Dad Himself, to help him make the Devil suffer for his insolence. Make him suffer in ways Lucifer didn’t want to imagine.
No, all he could do was state his request. Forcefully. Adding in a smidge of Infernal reverberation, a brief jolt through Amenadiel’s nervous system—just enough to transmit a shake to Amenadiel’s bones, a rattle to his teeth, a tingle to his fingertips. Give a Devil that much.
The Hell energy pulsed through Lucifer’s chest.
“Leave—”
Above him, the five hundred accent lightbulbs flared as bright as doomed souls streaking towards Hell.
“Me—”
Half the lights sputtered out, crackling, spitting; in the semi-dark, flickering emergency lights burst on, fragmenting their faces into Hell-red blotches and Hell-black shadows.
“Be.”
Another quarter of the lights exploded, razor-sharp slivers slashing through the air and clawing for their throats. Falling just short.
Amenadiel’s left eyelid, the one Lucifer had blackened, twitched. Amenadiel’s tongue took a quick swipe at his lower lip. But God’s Mightiest—a.k.a. God’s Most Obstinate—probably blamed the creepshow on faulty wiring.
“You know I can’t do that.”
Trap sprung. Finally, finally, after all these eons, would he now get the chance to freely explore all his wants? Excitement coursed through Lucifer’s blood, thrummed through his arteries and veins—a thrum low-pitched, primitive, delicious. “Isn’t it a sin for an Angel to break a vow?”
Amenadiel stilled, as though a fist had closed over his warrior’s heart and stopped its beating. But had Amenadiel unleashed a secret power too? For a sudden sadness seemed to drop from the sky, like a net. Wrapping itself around them. Whisking them away. To another place, another time, long before The Fall, when they were young, giggling Angels playing Truth or Dare. Amenadiel eternally chose Truth; Samael forever chose Dare.
“Oh, Luci, Luci, think. Father will be furious. And you will suffer His Wrath.”
Ah, Brother. Been there. Done that. Bought the damned T-shirt. “Then He knows where to find me.”
Amenadiel reached for him—
And Lucifer nearly sprang backward, nearly unfurled his wings, nearly whipped forward the ax-sharp primary feathers, despite Angel No-No Number #2: Thou Shalt Not Deploy Thy Wings Against Thy Sibling. He would not be snatched away to Hell! Not without putting up a feather-to-feather fight. No matter if Amenadiel sliced him into a pile of bloody flesh and quills.
But Amenadiel merely clasped his shoulder—
From out of nowhere, a warmth poured through Lucifer’s heart like a flash flood of liquid…Heaven? No. No. Merely his body’s bewildered reaction to Amenadiel’s touching him in, in kinship?
Amenadiel strode from the room, and Lucifer, his heart still riding on the strange, frolicking waves of golden bliss, leaned his hands on the railing overlooking the fight pit.
Touch. Until this moment, he’d felt no brotherly or sisterly touch in all the eons since his Fall. No Hell-doomed human soul ever wanted to touch him, of course. No demon, except one, dared touch him with familiarity, for he was their king—not a friend, not a compatriot. Mazikeen, the exception—and the first creature to light the torch of his sexual urges—had taught him sexual touches, and he’d invented more of his own to reciprocate. What delicious wickedness those skills had tempted him into! During his brief visits to Earth, humans craved his sexual touches, craved giving him such touches in return. Win-win! Though, if they unexpectedly gave him the other kind of touch, the, the friendly type—a quick hug-with-a-smile, a passing pat on the shoulder—he found himself recoiling. Perhaps he didn’t trust those touches. Sex touches, deal handshakes, those he trusted: quid pro quo.
And was that it? He was choosing Earth for the sake of sex touches, for the sake of the momentary thrill of the deal, for the sake of other fleeting delights? But what else could there be? What did humans actually have to offer him, powerful, Immortal Being that he was?
What else did he want?
Lucifer moseyed over to the looted bar. He rummaged for a tumbler. He poured himself two amber fingers from a lonely bottle.
Maybe…their acceptance. He always told them straight out he was the Devil, and they never rejected him. Of course, they, the fun ones, never believed him. Why did they not? This is me, he wanted to cry at those moments. This is what the Devil is really like! But Amenadiel would always crash his party and whisk him back to Hell before he’d ever had the time to convince any of them. Not unless he flashed his Devil Face. Which would stir up…what? Genetic memories implanted in their brains by Dad? Primitive fears of the boogeyman? And then, toodle-oo, fun times.
But nevermore.
Lucifer sipped a kiss of the whisky’s smoky sweetness. Floor-to-ceiling poles dotted the fight gallery, and, tumbler in hand, he twirled his way from pole to pole like in a Maypole Dance—from stripper tables to ringside lounge to under the neon sign proclaiming, Girls! Girls! Girls! The stench of fighters’ sweat and stale perfume still soured the air, but this place belonged to him now. Here, he’d build his new kingdom—
Lucifer slunk his gaze Heavenward, a smile nipping at the corners of his lips. Yes, my new kingdom: The Kingdom of Devil on Earth. I will call my kingdom “Lux,” and I will fill it with my Light. I will fill it with swirling bodies and alcohol and endless flirtations. I will fill it with—
He twirled his way from pole to pole into the sunken fight pit, trashed now, half-shorn of its cage wire, its supporting posts all cockeyed. The fight pit, where Amenadiel had dropped to his knees and submitted to him, falsely, and the cheers of the MMA crowd had crashed on Lucifer’s ears like jangled chords. But now, Triumph, always an elusive lover twisting out of his embrace, swaggered in, planted her feet, and sounded her melodious horn.
No, not a horn, but a—
Yes! The fight pit, the perfect spot for a—
“This place could use a piano!” he told the dust motes swirling in the half-shadowed, half-red room. “My celestial piano!” And he twirled in place—
I will fill my kingdom with my laughter.
And laughter sprang out of his soul. Laughter that bent him in two, his arms wrapped around his middle, his body flopped against the cage wire. Laughter that left him gasping and wiping his eyes. Laughter that divided his life into Before the Birth of Lux and After the Birth of Lux. Laughter bright and merry and infused with a joy he hadn’t known in—
Well, ever.