Chapter Text
Mosul, Nineveh Governorate, Iraq
When Walter came to, the world was still shaking off the echoes of chaos, dust settling like lazy snowfall over the marble floors of the bunker.
Standing over him was a man draped in the Daesh black, but the silhouette was all wrong. Too tall. Too broad. Skin the shade of midnight, unmarred by sun or starvation. The scarf covering his head only made the contrast sharper.
“Hmm… hi,” Walter greeted, voice rough with sleep and disorientation.
Amenadiel, towering, composed, offered a small nod, his calm presence utterly unbothered by the circumstances.
“Oh. Hi there,” he replied, like they were meeting in a café rather than the ruins of a warzone.
“American,” the man said, voice calmer than it ought to be.
Maze clicked her tongue, crouching beside Walter, knives glinting in the dusty light. “Well, well, sleeping beauty finally wakes. You nap easier under artillery fire?”
Walter blinked, groaning as he sat up. “You get used to it.”
Maze grinned. “Sure. Or you die of exhaustion.”
Lucifer strolled over with the easy grace of a man completely at odds with their surroundings, raising a brow as he gestured toward the looming figure.
“Walter Sherman, meet my brother, Amenadiel.”
Walter squinted. “Brothers in arms?”
Lucifer flashed a sharp smile. “I guess you could also say… but no, ‘brothers’ brothers.”
Walter looked between them, incredulous as he stretched. “Right. He’s African-American, you’re British. That math doesn’t check out.”
Lucifer shrugged, utterly unbothered. “Oh, it checks out. Same mother, same father. Divine genetics, very modern. It makes sense, don’t overthink it.”
Walter exhaled slowly. “God, then? And I suppose ‘Goddess’?”
“Yes, yes, although they’re off gallivanting in another universe and I’m the new God-in-waiting,” Lucifer waved a languid hand, entirely unimpressed with the concept. “We’ll unpack my celestial family tree later. Right now, we’ve got a Booth to rescue.”
That was when Rafiq emerged from the tunnel, silent as desert wind. “This way,” he said, gesturing toward the front exit that led to a narrow path snaking through the battered garden.
Walter and Maze had started to move, instinctively falling in step until both celestial brothers raised a hand in unison, halting them without a word.
Lucifer met Walter’s eye, a faint glint of amusement curling at the edge of his mouth. “No,” he said, voice calm but final. “The immortals got this.”
He turned to Maze, voice dry. “Maze, why don’t you and your little gambling buddy check on Sîwar’s sisters?”
“Fine, less work for me.” Maze’s eyes gleamed with predatory delight, already turning toward the Finder with a sharp, feral grin. “New bet?”
Walter raised his eyebrows in concession. “I mean, they think they are immortal, who am I to oppose. The sisters?”
Maze’s grin widened. “I’m gonna win.”
Walter huffed, shaking his head. “Not a chance.”
Lucifer let out a long-suffering sigh, already walking. “Amenadiel, shall we? Rafiki, we got this. Why don’t you assist them in their jaunt?”
The brothers moved off, breaking away from the group. As they turned around a ruined wall, the second no one was watching, they launched skyward, wings unfurling in near-silent precision, disappearing into the night.
They flew low, between the red traces of flying bullets, skimming the ruined skyline of Mosul until the gutted outline of a church rose beneath them.
Without hesitation, they dove, crashing through the shattered stained glass of the chapel, landing with bone-crushing force atop two unsuspecting fighters. The men barely had time to shout before they were out cold amidst the debris.
They folded their wings, moving like wraiths through the crumbling stone.
Down in the crypt, two more fighters waited, rifles raised.
They opened fire.
Bullets tore through the air, shredding empty space as Lucifer and Amenadiel strode forward unflinching, the rounds glancing off their celestial forms like water off stone.
The gunfire faltered.
A heartbeat later, both men were unconscious, collapsed in the dust after the brothers launched them towards the ancient wall making a dent.
Lucifer dusted off his jacket. “Unbelievable. These savages have no respect for ancient architecture.”
Amenadiel allowed himself the faintest of smiles. “Shall we?”
And down into the dark they went.
Lucifer ducked beneath a shattered archway, casting a sidelong grin at Amenadiel, his eyes ablaze with that old, reckless energy and his hellish fire.
Without so much as a glance, he swept a hand lazily through the air. The oil torches lining the passageway sputtered to life in his wake, flames blooming obediently as they had in old times.
“Tell me, brother,” Lucifer said, arms wide as though welcoming the mayhem itself, “don’t you miss this? The chaos. The danger. The smell of gun oil and poor decisions?” His tone dripped with mischief.
Amenadiel didn’t even break stride. “Considering we fought a celestial war for the throne of Heaven not that long ago? No. I don’t. And I’m a beat cop now—I smell poor decisions daily. It gets tiresome.” He cast a long-suffering glance sideways.
Lucifer clicked his tongue, wistful. “Well, I shall certainly miss all this… when I’m God.”
Amenadiel huffed, eyes still forward, tone as dry as Sinai sand. “Yes, about that. When exactly do you plan on becoming God? Our siblings are waiting—the garlands are hung, the choir’s tuned, and yet… no deity.”
He paused, letting it settle.
“And you wouldn’t even have to miss the smell, either. You could make the whole world reek of poor decisions by divine fiat.”
He gave Lucifer a pointed look.
“But please… don’t. With omninasal perception, I doubt the smell would be optional for you.”
Lucifer muttered under his breath as they moved. “How is that more fun than this?”
Their banter cut short as they stepped into a broken headquarters where three fighters sat cross-legged, playing cards on a crate. The second they noticed the intruders, they scrambled for their weapons.
Too slow.
Lucifer and Amenadiel moved as one. Two of the fighters were plucked off their feet and hurled through the air like ragdolls, landing with a groan and a clatter of rifles.
The third froze. Barely more than a child, no older than seventeen. Wide-eyed. Hands shaking. The battered old AK-47 rattled in his grip as he shouted threats in thick, rural Mosul dialect. All bravado and fear tangled into one.
Lucifer stepped forward, slow, deliberate. Wings unfurling behind him with a low, menacing rustle like thunder rolling deep in the bones of the earth.
“You don’t belong with them my child,” Lucifer said—calm, absolute, his Moslawi dialect flawless, but carried on a voice that echoed with something far older. “DAESH is not Allah-sanctioned.”
His gaze did not waver. “This path ends in ruin, child. Leave now… go back to your parents and never return.”
The boy’s eyes went impossibly wide. The sight of the wings cut through whatever bravado he had left. The boy dropped his weapon, bolted crying and praying, like the devil himself was on his heels — which, in fairness, wasn’t far from the truth.
Behind Lucifer, Amenadiel groaned quietly, dragging a heavy hand down his face. “Honestly, brother…” he muttered under his breath.
“Yes, yes… thou shall not reveal divinity and all that.” Lucifer was already folding his wings back with a satisfied smile. “I felt that this was more merciful than showing him my devil face.”
Deeper in they went, down twisting steps, stone slick with old damp, until they reached the crypt.
And there, chained to the wall, bruised, gaunt but defiant, was Seeley Booth.
Lucifer raised a brow. “My my, Agent Seeley Booth... I didn’t peg you for the type to be dozing on the mission.”
Booth lifted his head, fighting through the haze — pain, exhaustion… and whatever hellish mirages the Djinn had left clawing at the edges of his mind. A ghost of a smirk tugged at his battered face.
“If it isn’t my favourite guardian angel… and guardian devil.”
Amenadiel strode forward, slow and steady, voice low, almost pitying. “It seems we’ve been slacking on the job.”
Lucifer followed, hands in his pockets, shaking his head with theatrical disappointment. But his eyes softened, the scolding wrapped in rare tenderness.
“Boothy,” he sighed, voice pitched somewhere between pity, fondness and reproach, “you really do have to stop making this a habit.”
They barely had time to step forward before a voice coiled out of the shadows, dry, rasping, ancient.
“What a touching family reunion. But allow me to intervene. The Nephilim isss mine.”
Smoke bled from the cracks in the ancient stone, slow at first, like a whisper rising from the depths. It curled and twisted in languid coils filling the space between the celestial brothers and the human, folding upon itself like something half-asleep and half-aware. The air grew heavy, the darkness thickened.
And from the dark smoke, shape began to take hold—drawn, summoned, pulled from the very marrow of shadow. It emerged tall, shifting, insubstantial. Eyes burning gold like twin suns half hidden in a storm.
And then, in the blink of an eye, the crypt was gone.
They stood in the middle of a vast desert, endless and otherworldly. The ground beneath them shimmered with pale sand.
The sun in Azar’s mirage did not behave as it should. It hung too high, too still—burning gold without warmth, like a shiny coin hammered into the sky. More like a moon than like a sun, casting no shadows, only a relentless brightness that never moved, never faded, never warmed.
The horizon stretched wide, washed in the ethereal blue light of a false dawn and stars shimmered at the same time in different parts of the sky. Not twinkling with night’s promise, but sharp and fixed, like holes punched through heaven’s veil.
And in the centre of it all, untouched, immovable, stood the immaterial figure.
Azar al-Malik.
Smoke for a body. Fire for a heart. A relic of forgotten wars and old gods.
Lucifer stepped forward, utterly unbothered, voice smooth as silk and twice as sharp. “Azar al-Malik,” he drawled. “It’s been quite a long time.”
In a beat, a faint, insufferable devilish smile materialised in Lucifer’s face, “Terribly sorry we forgot to visit.”