Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Isn't she precious?"

A very exhausted archangel woman presented her little bundle of joy to the others in the room. An adorable infant cooed from inside the blanket as she pulled it back, with honey blond hair and light blue eyes that sparkled like diamonds.

“She’s fuckin’ adorable, Raph,” Adam replied as he tickled the baby’s chin, making her giggle. “Hell, she’s perfect because you made her.”

Raphael smiled warmly at him, then sighed sadly. “I wish she didn’t have to go to Earth,” she lamented as she took the infant back and held her close. “She’s absolutely adorable, and I wish she could stay.”

Adam shrugged. “Eh, ya win some, ya lose a few hundred,” he said sadly as their daughter began to flicker and fade. “Looks like they found a compatible mother for her.”

“Well, if she’s leaving, then we need to figure out our blessing and make her guardians!” Raphael began to panic and summoned a gatekeeper out of said panic, a small gold rabbit with pixie wings and a gold halo like crystal.

Adam chuckled. “Looks like this bunny needs a predator,” he joked, focusing his own magic to create a counterpart gatekeeper for the child. A white sabertooth tiger cub with eyes of sapphire and a similar golden halo. “I’m choosin’ intelligence for my blessing, hopin’ she can ace her schooling with no effort. What about you?”

Raphael smiled. “I’ve thought about this for so long. Open-mindfulness,” she answered, and the two pressed their fingers against the infant’s forehead to officially confer their blessings. The infant giggled and sneezed in response, snuggled up to the living plushies that now lay in her lap, and vanished to her mortal mother.

Once she was gone, Adam started tearing up, forced to resort to wiping his tears on his robe sleeves. “C’mon, honeybee, make good choices and come back to us…” he cheered quietly.

“We’ll see you soon, sweetheart,” Raphael added.

***

A few months had passed in Heaven since Nectarine Firetail Marshmallow Vallilly had been born. (The two middle names were father’s idea.) But a month in Heaven equaled a year on Earth, and Nectar was currently about five years old and tinkering with a robotics project for school.

“Come on, almost done…!” Nectar strained before getting the final screw in place and flipping the activation switch on her critter. “You can do this, Purrsley!”

For a few short moments, nothing happened. Then, the robotic cat laying on the table in front of her blinked open golden LED eyes, stood up on all fours, and stretched itself to life. Nectar squealed in delight and clapped her hands, watching as her robotic companion jumped off the table and began to nuzzle against her and purr. “Yes! It works, it actually works!” she cheered as she gently stroked the robo-kitty’s back. “That assignment is as good as aced!”

The next day, it was go time. “Alright, class, time to present your robotics projects!” the teacher announced as everyone pulled out what they were working on. Most of the students had the standard projects on hand–potato clocks and such–but when Nectar’s turn finally came up, she brought an animal-sized box up to the front of the room.

Nectar cleared her throat. “What’s the one thing that children ask for on their birthday or Christmas?” she asked rhetorically, then didn’t wait for an answer before she spoke up again. “A puppy or a kitty!”

Her classmates began to murmur amongst themselves. They had to admit she had a great point, most of them couldn’t count the number of times they’d written “a puppy” on their wish list to Santa.

Nectar spoke again. “But kids don’t like it when their pets make messes, or when their pets die,” she continued, “which is why for my robotics project, I’m presenting the first prototype of my solution to this problem: Purrsley!”

She pulled her robotic cat out of the box and put it on the table in front of her, then spoke in her native tongue of Nerd. “Voice authentication: leave sleep mode. Assign new instructions,” Nectar stated. “Purrsley, jump onto Judy’s desk.”

For a single heartstopping moment, nothing happened. Then Purrsley blinked his LED eyes open, located Judy’s desk up front, and jumped on top of it nimbly and with ease. He snuggled up against her hand, leaning into the petting.

“Oh my gosh, he’s soft! He’s soft like an actual kitty!” Judy exclaimed as she pet Purrsley behind the ear.

This got all the kids’ attention, and soon they were all crowded around Judy’s desk to pet Purrsley.

“Now, now, students! Take turns!” the teacher cried as she tried to settle the kids down.

“How’s it gonna eat and drink, NERD?” challenged the school bully and Nectar’s supposed “friend” Mason from the back, which made Nectar blanche.

“W-Well, uh, he doesn’t actually need to eat or drink,” Nectar confirmed. “So that’s gonna save you money on cat food! And he won’t make a mess since he’s a robot, so you won’t have to clean up after him!”

Mason laughed like a gremlin. “What a joke! She’s trying to be smart, but her cat is lame!”

Now all the students were laughing at Nectar and Purrsley, culminating in Judy shoving the robot off her desk so he landed hard on the floor and broke.

“PURRSLEY! NO!” Nectar screamed in horror, running over to scoop up the parts and hopefully repair him. Judy laughed at Nectar and pointed accusingly at her.

“Nerd Girl, Nerd Girl! The biggest dork in the wo-orld!” she chanted, and soon everyone was chanting the same thing, causing Nectar to put her stuff in her bag and run outside sobbing as soon as the bell rang.

Outside, the person waiting for Nectar wasn’t her father or her mother, but instead her babysitter Mia, who opened her arms for a hug as soon as she saw the tears streaming down Nectar’s face.

“Hey, orange blossom!” Mia called, perking Nectar up a bit in an instant. Mia was one of only two people that Nectar allowed to call that; the other one was her father.

“MISS MIA!” Nectar squealed in delight and ran over to hug her, then the two did their little dance. A bit of jumping from foot to foot, a small bit of peekaboo, some pattycake motions and a playful booty shake. “Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake! Clap your hands and do a little shake!”

Nectar giggled as Mia playfully pulled the little one into her arms. “What happened today, orange blossom? Why were you crying?” Mia asked.

“My classmates didn’t like my robot kitty idea! They thought it was stupid and weird!” Nectar complained with a childish pout and harrumph. “Now everyone thinks I’m a weirdo!”

“Well, people probably thought that these guys were weirdos, too,” Mia said, pointing to the old timey pictures of all the best scientists that Nectar had put in the front of her binder, “but that never stopped them.”

Nectar wiped the new tears from her eyes. She didn’t even know she’d started crying again. “Really…?” she asked in a small voice.

“Really,” Mia confirmed, gently grabbing Nectar’s hands in her own. Mia then perked up and started rummaging through her bag. “Look, I was saving this for your birthday, but…here.”

From within her shoulder bag, Mia procured a blueprint that she had been working on for a while. When Nectar read it over, she discovered that it was meant to be for a hoverboard.

“Whoa, actual hoverboard blueprints! This is gonna be so cool to make!” Nectar cheered as she rolled it up. “It’s gonna be perfect!”

“Believe me when I say that the world needs your originality, orange blossom,” Mia assured her, ruffling Nectar’s golden hair with her hand. “And if the people around you can’t see that, then they really don’t deserve to be your friends.”

Nectar giggled. “Now come on, let’s go home.”

***

A few years after this, everything went south for Nectar all at once. There’s too much of it to explain right away, so to give you the Cliff Notes version: Mia died, Nectar’s mother got very abusive towards Nectar for no reason, Nectar was promoted to big sister, her father went to war and died in combat during it never to come back home, her older sister Melissa was killed in a bus crash en route to her college campus, and their mother had mysteriously vanished after this point. (Nectar had a feeling it was a clear case of her mother having favorite child syndrome, but she decided not to mention that to Honey.)

This, of course, left Nectar to raise Honey all alone almost from birth, and she herself was only eleven. Nectar didn’t know the logistics of a big sister filing for custody of her much younger sister, but she figured she should try at least. At least the butlers were still around; Nectar had to admit they lightened the workload considerably.

One day, not long after her mother vanished, Nectar lay in the window in the family room watching the sun rise behind the mountains. It was a spectacle of such transcendent beauty that it made her forget her newfound stress for a moment, and she allowed her eyes to slip shut…until a fierce knocking at the front door startled her out of her daze.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

Nectar flinched, her eyes shot open, and she answered the door to find nothing there but two small, limp packages. She picked one up and read the note that came attached to it. “ Hey, Vallilly! Look what I found in Mia’s old bag after she died! Look familiar? –Jessica ”

Nectar groaned and unwrapped the two packages, revealing two plushies that looked handmade. One of them was a white sabertooth tiger with blue button eyes; the other was a gold rabbit with green button eyes. Both of them have collars with tags reading “ IF FOUND, RETURN TO NECTAR VALLILLY. ” She allowed a chuckle to escape her lips and brought the plushies inside.

“What was at the door, Nectarine?” one of the butlers asked her as she hugged the plushies close to her chest.

“Just…I’m thinking of it as a late birthday gift from my late babysitter,” Nectar answered with a smile. She showed off the plushies. “Icicle the tiger and Flopsy the rabbit!”

Icicle and Flopsy would end up staying with Nectar through thick and thin. All throughout middle school, she had them tucked away in her messenger bag as lucky charms during exams. On her first day of high school, she met a good friend, Jackie, after they had fallen out and Jackie had returned them. When Nectar filed for a court case to apply for full legal custody of her younger sister, Icicle and Flopsy stayed with Honey to keep her calm until Nectar inevitably won. (Due in no small part to Jackie’s assistance as well.) And when Nectar faced off against Mason one final time and was forced to shoot his leg to cripple his escape so the police could catch him, she kept those plushies in her arms as the bee stings finally ended her life.

When Nectar finally opened her eyes again, she was surprised to find herself laying on something that was exceptionally soft. She groaned and pushed herself up onto one elbow, grabbing her head and shutting her eyes tight. The sudden brightness compared to her eyes being swollen shut mere minutes ago was…striking, to say the least. “Ngh…! Ow, ow, fuck, that stings…” Nectar complained through the pain.

“Hiya!” came a cheery voice from somewhere in front of her, startling Nectar out of her pained daze. She bolted to her feet and looked up at the person who spoke, a toothpick of a man with blond hair, feathery white wings, and a shimmering gold halo. “Can I get your name, please?”

“Oh. Uh, Nectar. Nectar Vallilly,” Nectar answered, her eyes darting every which way but his own. “Um, quick question, where am I?”

The angel didn’t answer right away, just ran his finger down the enormous ledger on the podium in front of him until it stopped somewhere. “Aha, here we are! It says you died of anaphylactic shock from a bunch of bee stings, is that right?”

Nectar blinked. “How would you know about that? Who are you?!” she cried, panic beginning to overtake her slightly.

“Saint Peter!” called an authoritative, yet familiar, voice from beyond the golden gates standing before her. It seemed to belong to a woman roughly Nectar’s height, with a grey minidress and black stretchpants, white boots, and white gloves. She had extremely fair skin, so pale that Nectar would have thought it was white if she didn’t know better, an uneven silver bob, and gold eyes that seemed to strike Nectar’s very soul. Curiously, the woman also had wings on her back and a halo over her head, though these ones bore a black and white coloration compared to the other angel’s white.  “We’ll take it from here.”

‘ We? ’ Nectar thought as the very-clearly-an-angel walked out of the gates to see her. From behind her came another angel, this one wearing a white robe and black gloves that surprisingly complimented their golden wings and halo very well. They also had a black mask on their head with a golden LED face, reminding Nectar of the robotic cat she had made for school way back in kindergarten.

“Ya sure this is the right kid, Lute?” the golden-winged angel asked. Their voice sounded masculine–really, their figure should’ve given his gender away–but Nectar knew that just because someone sounded male didn’t mean they were. She had died in 2021, plenty of MTF people she’d met had never thought about pitching their voices up or losing weight.

The other angel–Lute, apparently–nodded. “This has to be her,” she confirmed, though Nectar heard a twinge of unease in her voice. “But I do know one way to figure it out for sure.”

Nectar nervously stepped back when Lute approached her, trembling so violently that her teeth were chattering like crazy. She squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for an impact…and was instead met by a very familiar song.

“Sunshine, sunshine, ladybugs awake! Clap your hands—”

Nectar couldn’t help but hold out her hands at that part, finishing the chant breathlessly in sync with Lute. “And do a little shake…!” Nectar looked up at Lute, and now that she was closer, Nectar realized why her voice sounded so familiar. “Miss Mia!” she cried, throwing her arms around Lute and hugging her tight. “I thought I’d never see you again!”

Lute hugged her back and held her at arm’s length. “You thought I wouldn’t find you when you got up here?” she challenged with a smug smirk. “Bullshit. How could I abandon the orange blossom I loved sitting for the most?”

“Uh, Lute? Forgettin’ someone?” Lute’s ally asked, waving his arm importantly.

“Oh, right! Sorry, sir, I completely forgot!” she admitted, rubbing the back of her neck and flying back to her original position. “Nectar, I’m sure you know this already, but you actually have two sets of parents. Your birth parents…and your soul parents. If you make it to Heaven, you remember your soul parents.”

Nectar looked at the other angel, who seemed to be hesitating despite now being right next to her. For a moment, Nectar didn’t see why she was supposed to care…but then the angel took his mask off, and an audible gasp escaped Nectar’s throat.

The angel looked relatively normal–scruffy brown hair, gold eyes, a noticeable tan–but at the same time, Nectar recognized him. “You… I know you! You gave me a tiger that looked like Icicle!” she recalled, causing the angel to sigh in visible relief.

“Oh, they did find ya. That’s great to hear, I was kinda pissed when your mom wouldn’t let ya get any toys ever,” he said, and scowled for a moment at the mere mention of Elizabeth Vallilly before regaining his composure. “Yeah, that’s one of your gatekeepers. If ya have an archangel for a soul parent, ya get one. But you’re lucky, honeybee, you got two.”

“Two? My soul mother is an archangel as well?” Nectar asked, putting two and two together, to which the angel nodded.

“I can’t be a replacement for your dad, and I don’t want to replace your bitchy ass mom, but I’m here now,” the angel said, hugging Nectar back as she ran up and threw herself into his arms.

“Adam, you haven’t even introduced yourself yet!” Peter whispered harshly, though still loud enough for Nectar to hear and giggle.

“Like the first man, Adam? We learned about you in Bible study and Sunday school,” Nectar admitted through her giggles, making Adam sigh.

“Eeyup. Ya got the original dick as your soul father!” Adam proclaimed confidently, spinning around and striking a pose. Nectar, Lute, and Peter all busted up laughing at this, and as she stood there surrounded by new and old loved ones, she felt one thought crossing her mind:

‘ Maybe being dead won’t be so bad after all. ’

Chapter Text

Several thousand years ago, there lived an organization of powerful cosmic beings called the archangels who resided in Heaven. The archangels presided over the balance of the world they had created, possessing supernatural cosmic abilities that they used to expand the world to their liking. Among these archangels was a young man named Michael, a warrior who worked alongside God and his fellow archangels to protect Heaven from various threats. But one day, five hundred years ago, Michael hid himself away suddenly and refused to come back out for months.

“What on earth is wrong with Michael?” asked one archangel in passing as Raphael, the archangel representing healing and God’s mercy. “Shouldn’t he have been at the last archangel summons?”

“It certainly is weird…” agreed a second archangel. “It’s like he’s trying to hide from us…”

Raphael furrowed her brow at what she was hearing and decided to go check on Michael herself. She knocked on his door with a frown tugging at her lips. “Michael? Are you okay there?” she asked rhetorically, though she had a feeling she knew what the answer would be already: silence.

However, to her surprise, Michael actually did respond, though he didn’t sound quite the same as she was used to. “Raphael! I’m so glad you’re here, I-I could use some help!” he pleaded, his voice sounded audibly pained…and feminine.

Raphael blinked, one eye and then the other. “Michael, I’ll help you, but what happened to you?” she asked, slipping into his room and shutting the door behind her.

“Tell another soul about this, and I swear I’ll have your soul shattered in an instant,” Michael promised darkly as Raphael finally saw what she was dealing with.

Michael was very clearly female, nine months pregnant, and in labor.

Raphael blinked again. “How did this happen?!” she cried in surprise.

“Does that matter right now?!” Michael screamed, very clearly pained and trying to speak through the contractions. “I’ll explain after this little terror is out of my body!”

Raphael shook her head. “Right, right! Just try your best to relax, I’ll get to work!”

After a 12-hour and very agonizing process (A/N: that I will not be describing because I like having an AO3 account), Michael was finally freed from his pain and free to return to his normal form. He exhaled heavily, keeping his eyes shut as Raphael cleaned and swaddled the infant he had somehow gotten himself saddled with. “I…will never, and I mean NEVER…belittle a woman again…!” Michael managed to get out through the pain. “That was agonizing!”

“Yes, well.” Raphael gently handed Michael a baby girl swaddled up in pink blankets. “Now you know how Gabriel and I feel whenever we sire a soul child.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Michael grumbled as his newborn daughter blinked open golden eyes with a cute yawn. Michael chuckled. “Now I see what mothers mean when they say it’s worth it…little Raya. My ray of sunshine.”

Raphael giggled. “That’s a perfect name,” she agreed, then her look turned serious. “Okay, I held up my end of the bargain, so start talking. How did this happen?”

Michael frowned at her. “Always the pushy one, aren’t you?” he muttered as he allowed Raya to play with his fingers. “Fucking Azrael dragged me to a party and managed to convince me to get drunk off my ass enough to change to female. Some male reincarnated soul was there, he managed to drag me away, and…well, you know the rest.”

Raya cooed cutely and began to nom on her toes as Raphael sighed heavily. “A reincarnated soul, you say?” she repeated thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Eve around anywhere recently?”

Michael shook his head. “That’s who managed to bang me,” he admitted with a blush on his face. “I’m not sure why she’s stuck reincarnating, but it means the Eve we have up here right now is a fake.”

“But why haven’t we told anyone about it?” Raphael asked, pacing back and forth in the room. “If the Eve we know right now isn’t the real Eve, then she should be banished from Heaven, no?” She curses in Spanish. “No puedo creer… We must call a meeting among the archangels at once!”

“Raphael, if we banish the fake Eve from Heaven, we may never find the real Eve again,” Michael argued as he tightened his grip on Raya protectively. Raya giggled and clapped her hands against Michael’s cheeks. “Our fake Eve might be the only way we could get her back.”

Raphael cursed in Spanish again, though this time Michael couldn’t make heads or tails of what she said. “This is horrible,” she grumbled as she continued to pace. “Perhaps we should watch what the fake Eve does for now and act accordingly once we have more concrete information.”

Michael nodded and staggered to his feet, prompting Raphael to run over and help steady him. “I agree. In the meantime, I’ll need help watching Raya since I can’t keep an eye on her all the time. I’m a working father, not a doting mother.”

Raphael nodded and gently rubbed Raya’s head, making her giggle yet again. “Don’t worry, brother, we’ll keep Raya safe,” she assured him, grabbing his hand with her free one.

***

A few hundred years passed, and Raya had just decided to go through reincarnation to live a life on Earth for the first time. She was currently hugging the little seraphim angel of joy, Emily, tightly as she prepared to vanish through the reincarnation portal.

“But I don’t want you to goooooo!” Emily cried through her sobs.

“Don’t worry, Emmy, I’ll come back to Heaven as soon as I die!” Raya promised. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!”

That got a broken giggle out of the little seraphim, and she hid her mouth behind her hands. “Okay, Raya!” she laughed and hugged her friend one last time. “Bye-bye!”

Raya looked into the portal, took a deep breath, tightened her grip on her gatekeeper partner Pura, and stepped through the portal to her new life.

A life that, tragically, would be cut short almost instantly.

Down in Hell, Lucifer was taking his young daughter on a walk through a park and giving her a piggyback ride as they traveled. Charlie was having the time of her life, giggling delightedly and holding onto her father’s head from both sides. “Hold on tight, Char-Char, you don’t wanna fall~!” he said playfully, keeping his grip on her ankles so she wouldn’t fall.

Charlie giggled like a madwoman, squealing in delight more and more the faster Lucifer ran…until they heard the sound of sobbing coming from the middle of the park, causing Lucifer to stop dead in his tracks. “Huh?” He looked around a bit, trying to zero in on where he heard the crying coming from. “Where’s that sound coming from?”

“Aw, no fair! Why’d you stop, daddy?” Charlie complained as Lucifer gently put her on the ground, prompting the little nephilim to start stamping her little foot in frustration.

“I hear crying,” Lucifer said quickly, which promptly shut Charlie up as her mouth fell into the shape of a perfect “O”. She started focusing on the crying too, eventually running in a specific direction to make her way to the center of the park. Lucifer followed, eventually gasping in horror at what awaited them.

Laying in the middle of the park square, buck naked aside from a thin sheet covering her body, was a baby girl with a tuft of red and black hair and deer ears the same color flicking away on top of her head. Her hand was clasped tightly around a gold and white key, and she was screaming in pain as she sobbed her eyes out.

“Oh my gosh, daddy, it’s a baby!” Charlie cried in shock, gently picking the baby up and awkwardly holding her so she was supporting her head. “What is she doing here?!”

“Babies aren’t supposed to arrive in Hell, Char-Char,” Lucifer pondered, gently tapping a finger to the infant’s forehead. In an instant, a collection of glowing golden chains appeared around her body, causing Lucifer to recoil in shock. “She…she’s a hellbound angel!”

“A what?” Charlie asked.

“She was supposed to go to Heaven but died before she was born!” Lucifer explained in shock, gently taking the baby from Charlie’s arms and cradling her close. “Babies who aren’t baptized go to Hell automatically, and it’s not fair, but…”

Charlie began to cry, and this only made the infant start sobbing hard yet again, causing Lucifer to curse under his breath in another language. “Hey, hey, it’s okay, girls! I’m here, daddy’s here!” he said, gently rocking the infant with one hand and rubbing Charlie’s head with the other. Charlie sniffled and hiccuped as the infant settled down, settling her hands on Lucifer’s blush and giggling cutely.

“Are-Are we gonna keep her, daddy?” Charlie asked through her sniffles, wiping the tears from her eyes as Lucifer adjusted his grip on the infant.

“Well, we can’t just leave her here,” he answered, making Charlie’s entire face light up. Lucifer chuckled and kissed the infant’s forehead. “Welcome to the family, Roma.”