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Chapter Text

They’d decided to take another twins’ trip for their legal birthday, much to Chloe’s chagrin, as she’d wanted to torment Lucifer with a proper birthday party. Michael had come up with the idea for the long weekend, and Lucifer quickly agreed to a trip to Michael’s house on Catalina. They left Chloe and the girls, including nearly seven-month-old Aurora, at home with the nanny and hopped on over to the island on the ferry.

That evening, after a dinner that concluded with a very low-key sharing of a slice of cake, the two of them convened in the living room overlooking the well-lit harbor with darkness beyond. In the distance, the lit coast of mainland California was visible in the clear night. Lucifer was playing jazz on the piano as Michael simply laid on the couch and stared at the ceiling.

‘How old are we now?’ asked Michael.

‘About thirteen-point-eight billion years old,’ Lucifer replied without missing a beat. ‘But I guess in human years, it’s another year at around thirty-five.’

‘How long have we looked like, well, us?’

Lucifer’s playing slowed some. ‘I don’t know, the whole of that time? All of that time? We were simply created.’

‘I’ve mostly been on Earth for nearly thirty years now,’ Michael said. ‘Med school, residency, internship, fellowship, employment in three different healthcare systems in three different states. I’ve had to move from place to place and change the dates on my degrees and other paperwork because humans age, but I don’t.’

‘What are you getting at?’ Lucifer asked, still playing slowly.

‘You’re running up on a decade in Los Angeles,’ Michael said, still looking at the ceiling. ‘How much longer do you think you can hang around before people start to ask questions?’

‘Considering the amount of plastic surgery performed in this area, likely a good chunk more.’

‘Chloe’s going to age without you,’ Michael said, seemingly getting to the real point. ‘She’ll age and eventually die while we still look thirty-five.’

Lucifer suddenly slammed his fists on the keys. ‘I’m aware!’

Michael didn’t move. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Continent jump every five or so years until she dies. We can probably get in a good forty years,’ Lucifer replied, outing himself as having been pondering this for awhile. ‘Aurora will likely stop aging at the same age we have, so she’ll have to begin wandering at some point as well.’

‘Won’t people eventually start to question the age gap between you and Chloe?’

Lucifer snorted. ‘Wealthy women keeping younger men is a time-honored tradition.’

‘And when she dies?’

Lucifer was quiet for a solid thirty seconds. ‘Then I’ll have no reason to be on Earth anymore.’

‘You’ll return to Hell?’

‘As long as she’s there,’ he replied. ‘At least I won’t have to take my psych meds anymore, yeah?’

‘What about Aurora?’ Michael asked.

‘She’ll be an adult who can make her own decisions about her eternal life, if that’s what she ends up having,’ Lucifer responded. ‘It would be spiffy if Dad would have given us a solid answer on that topic before He fell dormant.’

There was a long gap wherein Lucifer stood and walked to the couch, lifting Michael’s legs and sitting down, placing them in his lap.

‘What about you?’

‘I had plans before you attempted,’ he said, then held up a hand when Lucifer opened his mouth to protest. ‘Everything changed because after being separated for over three hundred thousand years, I finally got you back. I never thought that would happen.’

‘What were your plans?’

‘To just run out my time around Los Angeles as one last hurrah then return to Heaven after faking my death,’ he replied. ‘Maybe pop back after a few hundred years to repeat myself. I’ve grown fond of being a physician.’

‘I don’t see why those plans have to change.’

‘You idiot,’ Michael said with a laugh. ‘I don’t want to lose you again. I’m not going to literally flitter away to Heaven while you’re still roaming around down here.’

‘Oh,’ Lucifer murmured. ‘Well, um…’

‘And this is when you tell me to sit and spin.’

‘No,’ Lucifer said forcefully. ‘What I was going to say was that I plan to stay here in Southern California until we send Trixie off to university, then we can immigrate after that.’

‘Where’s the first place you were planning?’ he asked. ‘London? Paris?’

‘Abu Dhabi,’ replied Lucifer confidently.

Michael lifted his head a bit to look at his brother. ‘That’s most certainly a choice.’

‘Heavily populated, wealthy, large but not tight-knit expat community, largely English-speaking for Chloe and I suppose you now.’

‘I speak Arabic.’

‘Wait, what?’

‘I speak Arabic,’ Michael repeated. ‘Arabic and Spanish. I have large patient populations who speak both and would prefer speaking in their languages to them instead of using interpreters.’

‘That’s certainly a more innocent reason to learn languages than mine.’

‘You did what you had to do,’ Michael replied as he laid his head back down. ‘So how much longer do we have?’

‘Eight years. Do you think we can pull that off?’

‘Yeah,’ Michael responded with a nod. ‘So, prepare for a 2027 departure to the Middle East with you, me, Chloe, and Aurora.’

‘Yes, Fall 2027, unless Trix graduates early.’

Michael paused. ‘Have you even discussed this with Chloe?’

‘Absolutely not,’ Lucifer replied quickly. ‘We still have an infant, I’m not particularly ready to casually discuss her mortality at the moment.’

‘Any idea where you want to go after Abu Dhabi?’

‘Helsinki,’ he replied. ‘The culture isn’t one that encourages tight social networks. After that, perhaps a sojourne to South America, maybe go to our pretend birthplace of Hong Kong. See how cultures shift and what makes sense. At some point, allow Chloe to take the reins so she can enjoy the end of her life wherever she wants to be.’

‘You’ve really thought this through,’ Michael said.

‘Aurora gifts me with many sleepless nights to ponder the future with the help of Google.’

‘Guess I’ll need to start looking into what one does to transfer a medical license to the United Arab Emirates. What do you plan to do career-wise?’

He shrugged. ‘Be a CFO or the like.’

‘A nightclub owner turned… corporate financial officer?’

‘The doctorate in economics from Stanford will be a bit of help.’

Michael sat up straight. ‘The what?’

‘You’re not the only celestial child with the ability to collect doctorates.’

Michael raised his eyebrows. ‘You have others?’

Lucifer shook his head. ‘Dad no, nerd. Singular doctorate. Business is only a master’s. Being well-versed in world economics has been of great use to me in the wealth department. I’ll just spend the next several years working on my resume, then we’ll be golden.’

Chapter Text

Dropping Beatrice Espinoza-Morningstar – both Morningstars questioned her sanity at choosing such a long hyphenate – at Bennington College had been wholly uneventful. Enamored by Lucifer’s omnilingualism over the previous eleven years of her life, she’d fallen into love with sociolinguistics and gained fluency in three human languages — Spanish, Mandarin, and Tagalog — with his assistance and many summers at Concordia. Although it wasn’t something she could write on an application, she and Aurora were also completely fluent in Lilim at that point, and the three Lilim speakers in the house definitely used it as a secret language both at home and in public – there was absolutely no way they’d accidentally run into another Lilim speaker with Maze being the only other native speaker present on Earth at that point. As promised to Lucifer, she maintained over a 4.0 in high school, so she was given carte blanche when it came to college choices. She went expensive with the small college in Vermont.

Lucifer for one applauded the choice solely on the fact that ‘The Lottery’ by Shirley Jackson was based in the town. He thought it was absolutely the most hilarious thing that the stepdaughter of the Devil would now be living in a place literarily known for lapidation, a perennial favorite for Biblical punishment. One of the first things he did upon parking was to pluck a piece of gravel from the car park and flick it at the back of Trix’s head before calling her a Princess of Hell, a title that could be bestowed upon her with some legitimacy. She immediately flipped around and gave him the double bird.

While Michael and Lucifer helped Trix move into her dorm, Chloe and Aurora played on the commons’ lawn. The twins got the normal whispers about their incredible identicalness, and a couple of people in the commons room at her dorm, Perkins, openly proclaimed the twins to be ‘extremely fuckable,’ an admittance likely related to Lucifer’s mojo which was in full effect while he relatively innocently questioned the people who would be closest to his precious stepdaughter. Trix informed her schoolmates that they were being ‘fucking disgusting’ because they were talking about her stepdad and uncle. There was a single beat of silence before a guy Lucifer happened to be looking at professed in great detail his desire to absolutely ravage Lucifer despite being straight, to which Lucifer vocalized a soft, slightly disbelieving ‘oh’ before putting his hands on his hips.

‘Well, in my youth, I was referred to as The Skillet because I can turn any straight man,’ Lucifer responded smoothly, and there was a mix of gasping and laughing. ‘I am firmly pansexual, but I’m afraid I moved onto an AMAB and AFAB monogamy with Trix’s mum a bit back, however, so you’re out of luck, young man.’

‘Pater!’ Trix said with almost infinitely high levels of exasperation.

‘Oh my God,’ was said by a couple of people amidst the stunned laughter.

Lucifer and Michael moved in unison, each holding a hand up before speaking at the same time. ‘Don’t bring Him into this.’

After more fawning and lusting from underclassmen during which Trix was mortified by Lucifer announcing he’d once slept with ninety-two people in eight weeks during a ‘dry spell,’ the brothers were finally broken free by force by Trix. As they crossed campus, Lucifer explained very calmly that as her father, it was his responsibility to embarrass her as much as possible but also reminded her that literally everything he said was true. This did not help. They met with Chloe and Aurora then moved to the car where they said their goodbyes. When they were about to leave, Trix walked from the car when Lucifer rolled the window down and called her back.

‘Listen carefully, my dear,’ he said, reaching out to put his hand on her shoulder. ‘I didn’t have a proper chance to teach you weed-smoking technique even if you’ve watched me many a time, as you’re merely seventeen, so my recommendation is for you to begin with a bowl or edibles. You’ll simply waste weed if you attempt a joint without some experience behind you.’

‘Lucifer!’ Chloe said from the back seat next to Aurora, slapping his shoulder.

‘Well, she can certainly smoke with someone more skilled at the rolling of joints, if that’s what you’re concerned about,’ he said with a shrug, and Chloe growled with feigned annoyance. ‘And please be picky about your weed, my dear. Focus on quality. Oh, and cocaine is my Dad’s way of telling you that you have too much money. While that’s true for me, it’s not true for you at this moment despite your delightful trust fund, so kindly steer clear.’

‘Got it, Pater,’ she said, leaning in the open window to hug him. ‘I love you so, so much.’

‘That’s my girl,’ he replied. ‘Daniel for the holidays, field work term with us in the UAE, yes?’

She nodded with a wide smile before running back toward her dorm where she would most certainly be popular whether she wanted it or not.

Within a few hours, they were on a train winding along the Hudson. Aurora was by the window on her tablet, and Michael sat beside her reviewing some immigration documentation on his own. Lucifer was looking pensively out his window while Chloe sat beside him, watching him closely. He rubbed her thigh lightly and fondly. Eleven years had passed since she interrogated him at the piano in the center of Lux, and he hadn’t aged a single day. The glasses had only appeared eight years prior, and he did have significant scars from TEN and his suicide attempt with a smattering of scars from other wounds he’d acquired at work up until they retired from the force a month prior, but everything else was the same. She was constantly comparing her appearance to his own, bemoaning every sunspot, crow’s foot, and wrinkle. The year before, she’d even had to have Mohs surgery for a basal cell on her forehead, something his skin would never see.

He was completely unbothered by any of this.

‘Oh, did you want the window?’ he asked suddenly as he saw her in the window and turned. ‘Happy to switch in more ways than one.’

‘Just admiring you,’ she replied before he leaned in and whispered into her ear.

‘You know, Etihad first class has private rooms with beds,’ he said softly then nibbled her ear as he stroked his hand higher on her thigh, his fingers sliding under the hem of her dress. ‘Could be something novel for us, and we’d have a whole thirteen hours to enjoy it.’

She exhaled shakily as he brushed down the inside of her upper thigh.

He chuckled softly before dropping his face to kiss her jawline. Goosebumps spread quickly up her arms, and she flushed, heat rising on her face. Moving his lips upward, he kissed her deeply while tugging her hair with one hand and lacing the other around her waist. Letting go of her hair, he dropped his hand to her shoulder and was sliding it down to her breast when Michael loudly cleared his throat.

‘We’re in public,’ he said flatly.

Lucifer quickly turned away from Chloe, and she could see him grinning in the reflection. She took a few moments to gather herself.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t understand what?’ he said, turning to look at her with a raised eyebrow.

‘You could literally have any person you wanted. You’re an ideal specimen, you and your brother both. Instead, he seeks out no one—‘

‘—which is a crime against humanity, I know. What a waste,’ he said, laying his hand on her thigh again.

‘Why are you still with me?’ she said desperately. ‘Our apparent age difference—‘

‘—is like maybe eleven human years,’ he interrupted. ‘A blip.’

‘A big one compared to a human lifespan,’ she replied. ‘And the gap grows every day.’

He looked at her sternly before taking her left hand and holding it in front of her face. ‘Do you see that ring? When I promised you eternity, I meant that, not some flimsy time-limited human pledge.’

He adjusted their hands so his wedding band was visible.

‘I’ll never remove this, not even if or when I return to Hell. No matter the gap — age, location, whatever — I am yours, and you are mine, eternally,’ he said quietly before turning to look out the window again, hand once again returning to her thigh with soft pianist fingers brushing the sensitive skin. ‘Nothing will ever change between us even though we’re different categories of being. I wish you’d stop worrying, though I know that’s a lot to ask.’

Looking at his serious face in the reflection, she smiled.

At JFK, they went to the Etihad lounge. Lucifer dozed off with Aurora in his lap, and she leaned back against his chest while examining her British passport under which she was traveling, though she held an unused American one as well.

‘Mummy, you have Daddy’s passport, right?’ she asked, her voice a precious mix of Chloe’s American accent and Lucifer’s British since the moment she began to speak. She often code-switched depending on which parent she was speaking to, especially over the last couple of years as she spent hours learning Arabic and Lilim with Lucifer.

‘I do, Rory,’ Michael said, pulling two British passports from his bag, golden visas from the UAE tucked inside of them. He’d applied for British citizenship shortly after his discussion with Lucifer about moving eight years before and had been traveling on the stronger British Michael Adrian Demiurgos passport since it was issued. Lucifer hadn’t bothered with an American one. ‘Don’t worry, your Daddy won’t get left here.’

At check-in, Lucifer and Michael inadvertently presented each other’s passports which ever so slightly inconvenienced the people behind them. Lucifer, freshly awoken from his nap, glared absolutely at the humans, only stopping when Chloe pushed him forward. In the first-class cabin, Michael and Aurora settled in two of the apartments with the wall dropped between them while Chloe and Lucifer sat in the very front of the cabin in the residence, Chloe peeping around the corner of their area to indeed see a legitimate double bed.

‘I told you there was a private bed,’ he said with a grin as he buckled his seatbelt.

Chapter Text

Though they moved to the United Arab Emirates for Lucifer and Michael to work on special visas, after a couple of years, Aurora and Chloe were really the only two who left the house to interact with humanity. Most of the twins’ travels from the home comprised of Lucifer taking lunch from his Teams meetings and unending financial paperwork to visit his brother’s house. While Michael was a practicing physician for about a year and a half after their arrival, he was headhunted by pharma and soon found himself also mired in Teams meetings and unending paperwork. They had a revolving set of visitors from Los Angeles during their stay, the most regular being Amenadiel who would stay with Michael for weeks at a time, sometimes pushing the limits of the visa stamped in his American passport. To keep up their regular lie about how the family had split, dividing the twins, Amenadiel had taken Michael's surname for his legal paperwork with his brother's permission considering the holy etymology of the name. He assured Lucifer that it wasn't a slight against him.

When they arrived, Aurora was enrolled in second grade at Abu Dhabi International School, and Chloe started volunteering as soon as she was matriculated, unable to continue in law enforcement as she had up until right before their departure. It wasn’t long until she was unexpectedly the head of the parent committee, deeply involved in the school. At first, Lucifer came to school events, but as time passed, his appearances became less and less frequent, stopping entirely when Aurora was in middle school.

It became a whole thing when a heated conversation was kicked off by Aurora asking Lucifer to come to her father-daughter dance at the end of the first semester of eighth grade, winter 2032. By that point, he hadn’t stepped foot on campus in two years, and they never had anyone over. He was a ghost — there were even mutterings that Chloe and Lucifer had divorced quietly, and he’d left the country. Lucifer was insistent that he show up, convinced that it would be dark enough at a dance that no one would notice his lack of aging over the previous five years. Chloe reminded him that it was a middle school dance in a relatively conservative country, so it would be well-lit.

They eventually decided he’d go, then they’d move at the end of the school year.

While the initial plan had been Finland, Trixie had graduated from Bennington with her BS and started her PhD at Lucifer’s alma mater of Stanford in the intervening years. She’d decided to do her years of field work on Caribbean Hindustani languages with a base in Guyana, and she practically begged her parents, uncle, and sister to join her.

They cleanly cut ties with the UAE and their previous employers, Lucifer making the not-too-difficult decision to forgo further employment, and before the next school year began, they were settled in Georgetown. Lucifer showed up to the first day of high school with his wife and daughter, displaying the new baseline for the school body. It was the first time that another parent mentioned glibly that Lucifer looked too young to have a child Aurora’s age, but it was served with a side of casting judgment on Chloe’s 51 years.

Lucifer didn’t let her know that he’d heard her crying about it later, but he also wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted him to do. He thought she was aging quite beautifully, and he regularly stated how attractive he found her, much to the chagrin of their daughters.

Michael had elected to settle in New Amsterdam, a city a hundred kilometers from the Morningstars, and functioned as an intensivist at the government hospital there. Trixie would sometimes stay with him for weeks at a time to avoid her sister meddling in her academic affairs as she worked diligently on her dissertation. Sometimes, Lucifer would stay at Michael’s during pivotal parts of her writing to assist with language-related queries. Once again, they had many visits from their Los Angeles friends and extended stays by Amenadiel who split his time between Georgetown and New Amsterdam during visits. Their older brother had no interest in actually living where they wandered, and he enjoyed overseeing Lux from the shadows as his lack of aging started to be noticed.

Chloe and Dan attended Trixie’s graduation with her PhD in linguistics in California while Lucifer stayed home for Aurora’s final exams of high school. Electing to take after her father in the accent department rather than being noticeably American, British subject Aurora Morningstar chose to return to a home country she’d never visited by entering the University of Edinburgh to study — hilariously — theology in 2036. The biological daughter of the Devil and only granddaughter of God and the Goddess of All Creation studying religion. Like a Spanish-speaking child taking Spanish in high school, she assumed that it would be incredibly easy, but she’d spent so much time with a benevolent Devil and only stories of a kind of an asshole God from her father and uncles that it made it hard to adhere to human beliefs on the topic.

Theology, as interested as she was, had not been her first choice. An extremely talented coloratura soprano and pianist, much to her father’s great delight, she’d wanted to major in vocal performance and had in fact been accepted to Juilliard, but with the question of how she’d age hanging in the air, she’d decided that depending on a very public career path would be a poor decision. Voice and piano were relegated to home.

In an unexpected series of events, Trixie found herself as a professor in Edinburgh, as she did hold a doctorate in the linguistics of former British territories, the British West Indies.

With both children gone, but both of them admittedly wanting to stay vaguely close to their daughters, Finland finally became a thing. Without the need to show up for a minor child’s school events, they wandered more freely and truly found themselves as a couple again. Michael followed after a couple of extra years in Guyana, and they lived in the same apartment building. The medical specialty Michael chose this go-around was simply primary care.

It was in Helsinki, freed from the stress of actively raising children, that Lucifer was able to bear his soul about everything that happened with the Rebellion, the Fall, and its aftermath in painful detail to Chloe. Unlike Michael’s initial reaction, tainted by his own guilt related to his part in it, Chloe, like Linda, was graceful and supportive in response to every raw admittance, almost making him feel like he should have shared with her earlier. There was still an undercurrent of fear with each new story, however, so he was at the same time thankful he’d waited and just discussed it all professionally with Linda or with the familiarity of Michael and Amenadiel. The only disappointment Chloe carried was the inability to thank Lilith for her part in Lucifer’s rehabilitation so many thousands of years earlier. Lucifer wasn’t entirely certain where Lilith had ended up after dying a couple of decades earlier after Maze visited her, so he made no promise that she would ever have the ability.

Aurora went straight from undergraduate in Edinburgh to graduate study in Reykjavík. Her parents were content to linger in Helsinki until a very abnormal occurrence happened: the Finns in their building started getting intimately involved in their lives, commenting on Lucifer’s lack of aging. This seemed to be tied back to an awkward visit by a rather pious neighbor who saw the old photographs they had sprinkled around the apartment, some of them from as far back as 2020 before Aurora was born. When the neighbor asked in English how Lucifer and Michael had managed to maintain their youth over the intervening twenty years, he’d explained in his fluent, unaccented Finnish that he was the Devil like it was no thing, just like he always had when asked.

It didn’t go over well, even when he went on to explain that his brother a few doors down was the Archangel Michael. Chloe didn’t fully understand the conversation or the subsequent Finnish language conversations Lucifer sometimes brusquely had with their neighbors, but she understood enough to know that Helsinki would no longer be a place they could safely call home.

Chloe and Lucifer followed Aurora in 2041, and Michael followed only months after because of being outed as the Archangel. The religious neighbor got a little too obsessed with this idea and quickly became a creepy stalker. They celebrated Chloe’s sixtieth birthday in their new home in Garðabær near Reykjavík. Trixie flew in from Edinburgh and Dan, Amenadiel, and Linda from Los Angeles.

Iceland ended up being the favorite of the places they’d lived. It was relaxed and friendly without being too heavy on the friendliness. There was a general undercurrent of not giving a fuck. It was geographically beautiful, and they grew fond of long weekends spent in various places a day’s drive away from Reykjavík, particularly at the height of aurora season. Michael and Aurora shared an apartment in Kópavogur, not far from campus and definitely not far from the hospital where Michael settled as a neurologist.

Chloe’s first headaches started one weekend in 2044 when they were in Grundarfjörður successfully chasing the aurora with a visiting Ella. It was bitterly cold, and she figured it had something to do with that. Ibuprofen didn’t totally knock it out, but it did make it bearable. Over the next couple of weeks, following Ella’s departure after a very fruitful aurora search, they grew in frequency and intensity, and the aura from them started to affect her vision. When she admitted she couldn’t drive to Bónus one day because of how blurry her vision had become, Lucifer insisted on having her at least see Michael. She reluctantly agreed.

Michael came to them, and they sat quietly drinking tea as Michael watched her carefully and Lucifer in turn watched his brother for any possible cracks in his physician demeanor.

‘And you didn’t have any headaches prior to this?’

Chloe blew on her tea. ‘I mean, occasionally. Nothing this regular.’

‘You’re too far from menopause for it to be that, I’d think,’ Michael said. ‘If this had happened ten years ago, I wouldn’t think much of it.’

‘Thanks for the reminder of my age,’ she said dryly, taking a sip of her tea.

‘We should probably get some imaging, just out of an abundance of caution,’ Michael said to his brother. ‘I can get her in today, no problem.’

Lucifer nodded, his mouth full of tea.

‘Does this tea taste… off?’ Chloe asked, looking at the liquid in her cup.

‘Same as always,’ Lucifer replied, tapping his teacup back on the saucer. ‘You know I’m picky about my tea.’

‘Chloe?’ Michael asked immediately with great concern, already halfway out of his seat when she dropped her cup and her eyes rolled back.

Lucifer was still closest to her, so when she started to fall out of her chair, he was able to catch her before she fell on the shards of ceramic. He lowered her to the ground as Michael dropped to his knees on the other side of her, glancing quickly at his watch as she started to convulse.

‘What the fuck is happening?’ Lucifer yelled as he tried to hold her still.

Michael unceremoniously shoved his brother off her and turned her onto her side as she continued to convulse.

‘She’s having a seizure,’ he replied, trying to be calm. ‘It shouldn’t last more than a minute or two. When she wakes up from it, we’ll take her to hospital, okay?’

When she finally stopped convulsing, Michael was both surprised and dismayed to see that it had been four minutes instead of the forecasted one or two. She laid perfectly still, and Lucifer didn’t appear to be breathing as he watched her. After a few minutes, she groaned and opened her eyes halfway. Without delay, Lucifer dove down and desperately kissed her forehead.

‘What happened?’ she asked quietly as Michael helped her sit up and Lucifer pulled her to him.

‘Tonic-clonic seizure,’ Michael replied, crossing his arms. ‘We should probably get you admitted for workup.’

‘Work up for what?’ Lucifer asked with an undertone of terror.

‘I don’t want to diagnose anything,’ Michael replied. ‘Let’s just get maybe an MRI and EEG then move from there.’

Chapter Text

At the hospital, Michael peeled off to talk to his team while Lucifer and soon Aurora completed the intake process. The registrar looked at the three of them.

‘You look like our neurologist,’ she said in English initially.

‘Uh, yeah, we’re incredibly identical twins,’ Lucifer replied distantly in Icelandic, not looking up.

‘And this is… your girlfriend?’

‘Hún er konan mín,’ he replied, still not looking up. She is my wife.

‘Dad,’ Aurora said in English, still not entirely comfortable speaking Icelandic but understanding with some fluency. ‘She’s looking at me.’

Lucifer finally looked at the registrar before pointing the pen at Aurora. ‘Hennar?’

‘Did she just call you “Dad”?’ she asked at the same time.

‘I mean, she would, seeing as I’m her father.’

The registrar looked disbelievingly at him.

‘This…’ he said, reaching out to lay his hand on Chloe’s. ‘… is my wife of twenty-five years. Aurora is our daughter.’

‘Your… stepdaughter?’ she asked, clearly not comprehending twenty-five years of marriage from the seemingly thirty-five-year-old man in front of her.

‘Nei,’ Lucifer said with a bit of aggravation. ‘My natural daughter.’

‘… how old were you when she was born?’

‘Rude,’ Lucifer replied. ‘But if you must know, we were both 39.’

The woman looked profoundly confused at this point. Lucifer handed her the clipboard back with a glare and she scanned it over before beginning to input information into the computer. Aurora hugged Lucifer’s neck before doing the same to Chloe, who looked completely drained and had a hand pressed so hard on her head that her fingers blanched. Aurora pressed her cheek to her mother’s head, looking at Lucifer with concern. He reached out and rubbed their daughter’s back.

Michael had arranged for a direct admission, so they were immediately taken to a room. He insisted on getting an MRI initially, so she was shortly whisked away for the hour-long imaging study. Lucifer and Aurora sat in silence for awhile, listening to the sounds outside of the open door, before Aurora finally spoke.

‘Daddy, I’m scared,’ she said softly.

Lucifer held his arms open, and their now 25-year-old daughter sat in his lap, looping her arms around his neck and placing her head on his shoulder while he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. Shortly thereafter, she began crying, and he pressed his cheek to the top of her head.

‘I know it will never be goodbye for the two of you,’ she sobbed. ‘But I’ll lose both of you if something happens.’

‘You won’t lose us, dearest,’ he replied. ‘We’ll always be with you.’

‘It’s not the same, dropping by Hell for visits,’ she said. ‘I thought we still had so many years with Mum here on Earth.’

‘Maybe we do, love,’ he said with a squeeze. ‘Maybe it’s something that we can treat then move on with our lives, yeah?’

When Chloe came back from the MRI, they began placing the electrodes for the EEG while waiting for the results of the STAT scan. They were wrapping her head with gauze when Michael walked into the room with a tablet under his arm. He was silent as he watched the team finish setting up the EEG monitoring. By this time, Chloe had fallen asleep. Michael crossed the room and half-sat on the table between his brother and niece. He sighed.

‘I don’t know what you want to discuss without her being awake.’

Lucifer felt absolute terror grip him hearing the tone in Michael’s voice.

‘Uncle Michael?’ Aurora asked, and Lucifer knew their daughter had the same feeling.

‘I don’t have the official read back from radiology, but they did send through a high priority message when they saw the images,’ Michael continued carefully. ‘I’m not a radiologist, but I do see a lot of brain MRIs as a neurologist, and I have to admit that I’m… concerned by what I see.’

Without waiting for a response from either of them, he unlocked the tablet and brought up a black and white image.

‘If we start here, you can see the top of her brain, totally normal. Grey, wiggly folds, line down the middle basically center,’ he said, looking at each of them in turn to make sure they were watching. ‘But as we scroll down here…’

The image no longer showed the stereotypical brain, but rather a large, lighter area taking up a good chunk of the left frontal lobe. It was atypically shaped, and the line he noted earlier was now shifted noticeably to the right.

‘This appears to be a tumor of some sort,’ he said, and Aurora made a helpless sound. Michael put a hand on her shoulder. ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean something malignant. There are benign tumors as well. They have to be removed regardless, but they aren’t a terminal condition.’

Lucifer was completely still, looking over at the sleeping Chloe. ‘What’s the next step?’

‘I’ll need to biopsy it,’ Michael replied. ‘We’d often do a resection and then do surgical pathology off of that, but with the size and location of this, I’d prefer to do a biopsy to confirm diagnosis before undergoing major surgery, but it is her choice.’

Lucifer nodded stiffly before standing and walking to Chloe. He carefully caressed the side of her face, and she slowly opened her eyes.

‘I’m sorry to wake you, darling,’ he said softly, then sat down on the bed next to her and took her hand. ‘I’m afraid Michael has delivered some potentially bad news regarding your MRI, and we need you to make a decision regarding next steps.’

Chloe looked at Michael then Aurora, who was clearly barely hanging on. Michael stood and walked to her.

‘I’ve looked at your scan, and I don’t really like what I see,’ he said, then leaned down to look her in the eyes. ‘There appears to be some kind of tumor in your brain. I don’t know if it’s benign or malignant; we would need to run pathology on a biopsy or tissue from a resection.’

‘What choice do I need to make?’ she asked with a tremoring voice, and Lucifer reached up to brush her hair behind her ear.

‘Biopsy or resection. For a biopsy, I’ll just make a small hole through your skull and get a core of tissue that we’ll then send to pathology for diagnosis. It’ll probably take one or two hours,’ he replied. ‘The resection takes five or six hours, though likely longer. I’d remove a flap of your skull to get where I need to go, remove what I can of the tumor, close you up, then send the whole specimen for assessment.’

‘The first one,’ she said relatively quickly. ‘If it’s something malignant, I don’t know if I’d… I’m not sure if I’d do anything to treat it. I don’t want to have to recover from a hopeless surgery.’

Aurora let out a strangled cry as Lucifer cupped Chloe’s cheek, tears gathering in his eyes.

Michael nodded and closed his eyes for a few long moments. ‘I’ll see what kind of availability we have in the OR.’

—

Chloe had already been taken into the OR to be positioned and sedated while Lucifer and Michael stood facing each other outside of the OR doors.

‘You’re the only one I trust to do this,’ Lucifer said. ‘You know that, right?’

‘I understand.’

‘How long will it take to get the results of the biopsy?’

‘I’ll send the tissue to pathology immediately, and they should be able to give a preliminary report before they fix the tissue for proper analysis. I’m hoping for a five-to-seven-day turnaround.’

Lucifer was quiet for a few moments, crossing his arms as he looked down at the floor. ‘What do we do if the initial clearly looks like the malignant one?’

‘Totally up to Chloe,’ Michael responded. ‘But it sounds like she has no plans to treat it.’

‘If it’s the bad one, how long does she have?’

Michael was silent for a long moment, very clearly stalling. ‘I’m not an oncologist, Lucifer.’

‘But you work with oncologists,’ Lucifer replied, looking into his twin’s eyes.

Michael looked away immediately, unwilling to see Lucifer’s initial response to what he was about to tell him. ‘Three or four months.’

Silence followed, and it was profound enough that Michael looked up at his brother. Lucifer stood stark straight, one hand to his mouth, the other across his chest, as tears rolled down his face.

‘I didn’t want it to end like this,’ he said, his voice painfully strained. ‘I wanted her to live a long life on Earth with me and our daughters then die peacefully in her sleep. I don’t want her to suffer.’

Michael didn’t know what to say, so he stepped forward and took his brother into his arms. Lucifer slumped into him. They stood there until the circulating nurse stepped out of the operating room.

‘We’re ready for you, Dr Demiurgos.’

Chapter Text

Several hours passed between when surgery ended and Michael came to Chloe’s room. She was sitting up, Aurora in the bed next to her with her arm draped over her mom. Lucifer was sitting in the chair across the room doing nothing and looking at nothing. He glanced up when his brother came in.

‘Hey,’ Michael said quietly then looked at the paper in his hand. ‘I got the initial pathology back.’

Lucifer got up slowly and walked to Chloe, taking her hand as Michael moved to the end of the bed. He looked at each of his loved ones in turn then inhaled slowly.

‘I’m so sorry, Chloe,’ he said, and Aurora immediately began sobbing. ‘We’re sending for a final read, but the pathologist feels strongly that it is glioblastoma multiforme, an incredibly aggressive, incurable, terminal kind of brain cancer.’

Chloe was completely silent as their daughter cried against her shoulder. Lucifer looked as though he didn’t quite comprehend this information, his thumb running over Chloe’s hand.

‘I’ve, um…’ Michael said, his wavering voice betraying his upset. ‘I’ve already told Lucifer, but the life expectancy without treatment is about three or four months.’

‘And with treatment?’ she asked quietly.

‘Twelve, maybe up to fifteen months,’ he replied. ‘The treatments can be really difficult, however. I’m not sure what your quality of life would look like. I can get neuro-oncology in here to discuss options and explain treatments as well as their side effects.’

‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ve made my decision.’

Lucifer slowly turned his head to look at her, tears running down his face as he sniffled quietly.

‘I don’t want treatment,’ she replied. ‘I want to go home to Los Angeles.’

‘Absolutely, my love,’ Lucifer said supportively. ‘I’ll arrange everything immediately.’

‘Also…’

They all looked at her.

‘When we get there, I want to pursue EoLOA,’ she said, looking down.

Michael nodded knowingly. ‘I understand. I can help make that happen without delay, if that’s what you want. I still have some contacts.’

‘Mom, what is EoLOA?’ she asked Chloe, and when she didn’t immediately answer, she looked at Michael. ‘Uncle Michael, what is she talking about?’

‘The California End of Life Option Act,’ he replied uncomfortably. ‘California’s version of Medical Aid in Dying.’

‘Assisted suicide?’ Lucifer asked with some disbelief.

‘We don’t call it that anymore,’ Michael replied.

‘I’m not going to argue semantics with you.’

‘Suicide won't be what’s on the death certificate,’ Michael said. ‘Her cause of death will be glioblastoma.’

‘She’ll still be gone, she’ll no longer be on Earth, she won’t be with our children, her life will be cut short,’ he spat quickly. ‘It’s easy for you to say when it’s not your wife, the mother of your children!’

‘I want this, Lucifer,’ she said, looking up at him with tears in her eyes. ‘I don’t want my health to get worse, for my life to become unbearable. I feel fine right now, and I want to control the trajectory that the rest of my life takes.’

‘You’re only sixty-three years old,’ he said in a strained voice.

‘And it sounds like I wouldn’t make it past sixty-four, even with treatment,’ she said as the tears finally spilled over. Aurora grabbed the front of her mother’s hospital gown as her own tears renewed.

Lucifer finally nodded then bent down and kissed the top of her head. ‘Michael and I will get everything arranged, darling. We’ll aim to be back in the City of Angels by the time the final diagnosis is confirmed.’

She had two tonic-clonic seizures at home in the week and a half they were still in Reykjavík, both daughters staying with them, Trixie having flown in from Edinburgh. When they occurred, Lucifer just calmly placed a pillow under her head after turning her on her side. He cuddled her silently when she regained consciousness then placed her in bed, only allowing himself gasping, ugly sobs in the living room after she’d fallen asleep. For once, he didn’t mind their daughters seeing him completely hopeless and crushed, but he also didn’t derive much comfort from their careful embraces and assistance as they prepared to leave the country.

—

The doctors Michael were able to call in favors from were both located at Hoag in Orange County, so once they landed in LAX, Chloe and Lucifer immediately went for the first of two verbal requests for EoLOA while Michael and his nieces headed to Lux. Lucifer, not permitted in the doctor’s office due to California state law, sat in the hallway, his elbows on his knees and fingers intertwined. A couple of people walking by noticed the office outside of which he sat and shot him looks of pity with whispers about how young he was as his wedding band gleamed starkly on his left ring finger.

By the time they returned to the penthouse after so many years, the cleaning company had brought it back to its former glory. Both were mentally exhausted, so they rested until Michael woke them to meet with the hospice team that would provide comfort care over the next week or so while they sorted out the EoLOA paperwork. Chloe and Michael were the only ones truly paying attention, Lucifer and their daughters in some unbelieving, transient state that this discussion was even taking place.

Forty-eight hours later, they journeyed back to Newport Beach for her second verbal request for EoLOA care and set up the appointment with the consulting doctor. All that was left at that point was that appointment, filling out the paperwork with double witness signatures, and getting the medication.

Then, of course, taking the medication. Chloe chose 27 January.

‘Why that date?’ Lucifer asked as they cuddled on the couch, the other three having stepped out to visit the beach that night per Michael’s command. ‘There has to be a reason.’

‘It’s the day we met.’

—

Linda sat in one of the chairs across from Lucifer and Chloe, looking between them and the paper sitting on the table. Michael was pacing near the wall of scotch as a yet-unnamed woman watched the scene. Trixie and Aurora had gone out with Maze and Ella upon Linda’s arrival to lessen the stress of the specific meeting by having two fewer people present.

‘You want me to…’

‘Yes,’ Chloe said quickly. ‘Family members, blood or marriage, can’t be both signatures, so I can’t have Lucifer and Michael sign. It needs to be my husband or brother-in-law as well as, well, hopefully you.’

‘This is kind of a hard pill to swallow, Chloe.’

‘I know,’ Chloe admitted as she twirled a pen in her fingers. ‘But I wouldn’t come to you if I didn’t trust your judgment as a friend and a physician.’

Linda looked at Lucifer who seemed to have not slept since they arrived in California. His hair was curly and messy, his eyes red and puffy, and he was beyond casually dressed. While he didn’t wear his tailored suits much anymore, certainly not since moving to more relaxed Scandinavia, he always looked put together when she’d visited them in each new country over the years.

Everything about this just felt wrong.

‘I’m having a hard time with it too,’ he said softly. ‘That’s why Michael’s here, if I chicken out.’

‘You’ve already had both visits with the attending physician,’ Linda said.

‘And the visit with the consulting physician is this afternoon followed by picking up the written prescriptions from the attending,’ she replied. ‘As well as the MAiD kit from the pharmacy provided everything is signed and squared away.’

‘And they are absolutely certain that it’s glio?’

‘The slides were analyzed in Reykjavík and here in Los Angeles concurrently. Both pathologists agreed.’

Linda nodded slowly before inhaling and closing her eyes. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her sleeve. Without a word, she reached out, and Chloe handed her the paper and pen. Her hand hovered over the second signature line before quickly scribbling her name and dating it. She slid the paper and pen back to Chloe then looked down at her hands as if they had blood on them.

Chloe reached over to Lucifer, laying her hand on his thigh and rubbing.

‘My light,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s your turn.’

He immediately looked stricken. Michael had stopped pacing, looking at his brother.

‘Darling,’ he said with an apologetic tone. ‘I don’t know if I can.’

‘This is the greatest kindness you can bestow upon me right now, Lucifer,’ she said as she took his face in her hands. He began crying quietly yet helplessly again.

Michael took a couple of steps toward them, but Lucifer held a hand up. He took Chloe into his arms, nuzzling into the crux of her neck and shoulder as he closed his eyes. He slowly and carefully lifted his head and placed his hands on her cheeks, looking her in the eyes before kissing her forehead. Turning, he reached out and took the pen, hesitating for a moment before signing then raising his hand to remove his glasses and cover his eyes. Chloe took the pen from his hand.

The top portion had already been filled out save her signature. She calmly signed as Lucifer watched tensely then looked at the notary who came over and notarized the document. Her purpose complete, she left without a word. Chloe’s eyes didn’t leave the document as she leaned against Lucifer who had fallen back against the couch.

‘We should head out before the traffic gets too bad,’ she said after a few minutes of silence among the four of them. ‘I don’t want to be late or not be able to get the meds from the Hoag pharmacy today.’

Linda poorly stifled a sob, and Michael crossed the room to sit on the arm of her chair, setting his hand on the fellow physician's back. Lucifer looked at his watch to mentally calculate how long they’d be in traffic on the 405, but he was instead slapped by the ‘26’ on the watch face.

This was going to happen tomorrow.

—

That night was meant to be a private party for them in Lux, but the party atmosphere never quite materialized. There was plenty of visiting, lots of reminiscing, and an absurd amount of love. Lucifer sang and played piano to the best of his emotional ability. It was midnight before Lucifer and Chloe made it back up to the penthouse. After changing into pajamas, Lucifer walked to the bar and looked down at the bespoke box from the pharmacy. There were four syringes as well as the items for Michael to start her IV whenever she was ready. They’d offered to start it at her appointment at Hoag, but Chloe didn’t want her last day to involve an IV catheter in her arm. A clarifying text to Michael who swore he was an amazing stick gave her this freedom.

They were completely entwined with one another in bed that night.

‘What are you going to do when it comes to timing?’

‘I haven’t spoken to the girls about it much,’ he replied. ‘This has all been rather sudden.’

‘Yeah,’ she said softly.

‘Rory should graduate in May,’ Lucifer said after a long silence. ‘I should probably hang around until at least then.’

‘No,’ Chloe said, and Lucifer looked at her. ‘She needs you for longer than that.’

‘She’s 25, darling. I’m sure she’ll manage,’ he replied. ‘The girls both have trust funds, and they have plenty of other things to inherit as well.’

‘She needs her dad, Lucifer,’ Chloe replied a bit sternly. ‘I need to know that she’ll be okay. I want her to have a job and home before you leave.’

‘She has a number of homes to choose from,’ Lucifer said smoothly. ‘She need only tell me which she wants, and I’ll be certain to have it brought up to her expectations.’

Chloe was silent.

‘Michael’s not going back to the Silver City just yet,’ Lucifer continued. ‘I’m sure he’ll be a great support.’

‘I don’t have a choice when it comes to leaving our daughters,’ Chloe said. ‘You do. Don’t waste the opportunity to be with them. This isn’t something you’ll be able to take back.’

He pulled her a little closer. ‘I’m being selfish, aren’t I?’

She laughed lightly. ‘Maybe a little.’

‘I don’t want to be here without you.’

‘I know,’ she replied, reaching up to cup his cheek. ‘But I’ll still be wherever you end up, be it Heaven or Hell.’

‘Start with Heaven,’ he said, laying his hand atop hers. ‘I’ll fetch you when the time comes.’