Chapter Text
When she picks up a call from Lucifer, and it’s God on the other end, gravely requesting that she come to his son’s penthouse immediately, Chloe’s heart sinks in her chest, encased in a concrete shell of overwhelming dread. She’s alone at work, Lucifer having gone home during her lunch break to check on his father. The lieutenant gives her permission to leave after Chloe claims a family emergency, and she heads straight to LUX, anxious as she wonders what she’s going to be walking into.
She’s right to be apprehensive, it turns out. When she arrives and the elevator doors slide open, she is instantly greeted with the high-pitched, nails-on-a-chalkboard screeching that she knows is only produced by a very distressed, very frightened child. Rushing inside, Chloe freezes when she’s greeted with the sight of God and Amenadiel crouching on the floor with distraught expressions, trying to coax out… something from beneath one of Lucifer’s couches.
Linda is standing nearby with Charlie on her hip, rocking her son back and forth - but it’s not Charlie who’s screaming. No, that’s the tiny creature hiding beneath the couch, and the cries are filled with so much terror and misery that it sends shivers down Chloe’s spine.
“What’s going on?” she demands with forced authority in her voice, drawing their attention. She glances around searchingly, and ice spreads through her veins at the sight of Lucifer’s cell phone abandoned on top of his piano. Her boyfriend is nowhere in sight. “Where the hell is Lucifer?”
God stares at her with doleful eyes, looking genuinely perturbed. “I swear to you, Detective Decker, it was an accident.”
Oh, that does not sound good. “What was an accident?” she snaps, anxiety constricting her body and lungs like she’s caught in a python’s coils.
Amenadiel finally manages to snag hold of the shrieking, flailing thing from underneath the couch and drag it out into the open by its… tiny bare foot? Chloe’s eyes widen in disbelief and she has to steady herself on the piano to stop herself from collapsing from shock. The squirming, crying little creature is actually a naked little boy. The toddler looks around two, maybe three years old at a push, and has dark, messy curls, petrified chocolate brown eyes, and a pair of frantically flapping fluffy white wings on his back.
It’s Lucifer.
It has to be Lucifer, without a doubt. The child releases another unholy spine-tingling screech of alarm, desperately kicking to try and free himself from Amenadiel’s tight, likely bruising grasp. His miniature white wings slap against the marble floor with audible cracks as he thrashes about. God attempts to grab hold of the toddler’s arms to lift him onto the cushions and secure him so he can’t escape, but Lucifer gets one glimpse of him and howls in fear.
The sound chills her to the bone. “Let go of him!” she shouts.
They don’t, but Lucifer manages to lash out with a powerful kick to Amenadiel’s head, simultaneously whacking his father in the face with one of his wings; the two men are forced to let go of him. The child scuttles back under the couch into the darkness, to what he must presume is safety, trembling all over and bleating like an injured lamb.
Chloe falls to her knees, completely ignoring the sharp pain that ricochets through her legs, tears brimming in her eyes. “What did you do to him?” she whispers. Her cold sadness is consumed by red hot fury when God blinks at her helplessly. “What the fuck did you do to my boyfriend?”
“We had an argument,” the Creator of the Universe explains shakily. “Lucifer accused me of never giving him his due, always treating him like a child, and punishing him harshly without proper reprimand. I yelled at him, saying that I only treat him like a child because he acts like one. He said that he was never a child to begin with, and he never experienced childhood or anything like it because of my expectations and his duties crushing him. I - I… I got angry,” he finishes, his expression contorted with shame. “Next thing I knew, the anger building up inside of me was exploding out, there was a huge flash of light, and…” He gestures to the couch where his now apparently de-aged son is curled up under, sobbing his little heart out. The result of his powers glitching and reacting to his frustration, turning him into a toddler.
“So Lucifer is a kid now,” Chloe says, slightly dazed because of how crazy this situation is. “And I guess you can’t turn him back?” God grimaces, which is a confirmation all in itself. “So he’s stuck like this until we figure out a way to fix him. Has - has he regressed entirely to his Samael days or does he still have his memories?”
“I think he remembers everything, but his mind now has the processing capabilities of a child,” Linda responds grimly, the first time she’s spoken since Chloe arrived. She places Charlie into the car seat she’s brought up with her so she can cross her arms over her chest, approaching them. “And I think that’s why he’s so upset. Can you imagine, billions of years of memories, including highly traumatic ones, condensed into the mind of a toddler? Of course he has no idea how to deal with them. He’s lost all of his coping mechanisms, and all of his protective emotional barriers have been destroyed."
"That doesn't explain him screaming," Amenadiel huffs.
"Is it any wonder that he’s so terrified of you both? His toddler brain is full of memories of you violently Casting him out of Heaven,” Linda points at God, before switching to Amenadiel, “And you repeatedly and aggressively dragging him back to Hell.” The therapist shakes her head solemnly. “I can’t imagine he’s going to be too fond of me either, considering how distressing therapy can be for him sometimes.”
Her gaze fixed on the gap under the couch where she can see a quivering wingtip poking out, Chloe swallows down the bile that rises in her throat. Her stomach twists with nausea, because holy shit, this is an absolute nightmare. Poor Lucifer is stuck as a toddler, probably with the mental processing abilities of one, and he’s being bombarded with eons worth of traumatic memories involving his family - including the two individuals on Earth most qualified to look after him. It’s clear from Lucifer’s reactions to his father and elder brother that he is terrified of them. He would rather cram himself uncomfortably under furniture than allow them to even touch him.
“We can’t just let him hide under there,” Amenadiel says, having the audacity to actually sound annoyed at Lucifer’s behavior. “He’s a child and needs to be taken care of.” He kneels down and starts trying to persuade Lucifer to emerge. “Come on, Samael, I know you’re scared, but I’m your big brother, I’m not going to hurt you. Dad is here too, we’ll keep you safe.” Chloe’s heart clenches painfully and she watches on, reluctantly holding back as Amenadiel grabs Lucifer’s wingtip, tugging on it. The winged toddler’s sobbing intensifies. “Samael, stop this childish nonsense, you need to come out now.”
Getting frustrated with his lack of results, Amenadiel gives Lucifer’s wing another yank, which triggers his crying to transform into an agonized yelp. Her motherly instincts screaming at her to intervene, Chloe rushes forward to smack the angel’s arm away. “All you’re doing is scaring and hurting him,” she hisses. “You are not going to convince Lucifer to come out that way!”
To everybody’s astonishment, the child’s whimpers quieten into sniffles seconds after Chloe says his name, as if he’s listening to what she’s saying. A spark of hope ignites inside of her, and she exchanges a wide-eyed look with Linda. The therapist darts forward to grab Amenadiel’s arm and pull him aside so that he’s next to his father, several feet away. Lowering herself to the floor slowly, Chloe extends her arm to place her hand on the floor just inches away from where Lucifer’s trembling wing can be seen.
“Lucifer?” she says gently. The quiet crying fades into silence. Chloe exhales with a tremor. Lucifer recognizes his name. He’s not responding to Samael, he wants to be called by his chosen name. “Hi, Lucifer. I know you must be really frightened right now, and maybe you don’t remember who I am -” She fights back the urge to cry, “- but I think you probably remember that you always tell the truth. And you can always tell when somebody is lying. So I want you to listen to my voice, okay, so you can hear that I’m being truthful when I say that you are safe, and nobody here is gonna hurt you. Nobody is angry, or mad at you, I promise. We’re all just worried about you. You can stay under there for as long as you like.” She shoots Amenadiel a glare when he opens his mouth to protest. “But it would make me feel a lot better, and I’m sure it would help you feel a lot better too, if you came out. I’ll protect you from your brother and your dad.” Reaching up, Chloe grabs one of the couch’s throw blankets and slides it slowly under the couch as a peace offering. “Here, you can have this blanket if you’d like to cover up, I know you’ve gotta be cold without any clothes on.”
It takes a minute or two for Lucifer to react, during which Amenadiel shifts restlessly while God and Linda observe with carefully blank expressions. Eventually, a small shaking hand stretches out to grab the blanket and pull it under the couch. Chloe waits patiently. Rushing Lucifer will only agitate him even more, and they are far more likely to get a positive response from the toddler if they let him lead them.
Then, after the whole blanket has vanished, Lucifer tentatively pokes his head out, doe eyes wet with tears and shadowed with suspicion and lingering fear. He recoils a little when he spots Amenadiel and God, but when neither of them comes closer or says anything, he appears to relax a bit. Chloe holds her breath hopefully. Sniffing, the baby angel finally wriggles his way out, his wings flaring and tucking uneasily. He’s managed to mostly wrap himself up in the blanket, and Chloe has to resist the urge to adjust it when it slips off his shoulder.
To her immense stupefaction, Lucifer crawls directly into her lap. Chloe holds utterly still as he tucks himself into her body, wiping the snot and tears from his face using the corner of his blanket before burying his face into her shirt. It’s with extreme caution that Chloe slowly raises her hand to stroke his back soothingly like she usually does when she’s trying to comfort Trixie. Although Lucifer flinches at first, the child doesn’t squirm away, and instead focuses on using his pudgy little toddler hands to play with her badge, which he grabs off her belt.
God, Amenadiel, and Linda all appear dumbfounded by Lucifer’s actions. Chloe is as well, but she’s also incredibly moved, because he must trust her to some degree, despite the fact that he absolutely has some troubling memories of her locked up in his mind to deal with. She carries on rubbing Lucifer’s back, even as he curls his wings around himself protectively, his mop of black curls curtained by a sea of glimmering snowy down.
“Hey. Hi, Lucifer. Thank you for coming out,” she greets him softly. “Do you remember who I am?”
Lucifer says nothing at first. He continues to fumble with her badge, but then all of a sudden, he looks up at her. The tears now gone from his eyes, they look like two dark pools of infinite wisdom and pain that are completely wrong for a toddler to possess. “Chloe,” he replies, in a strangely, thickly accented child’s voice, which reverberates with a melodic, inhuman frequency.
“Now, that is an accent I haven’t heard from him in a long time,” Amenadiel murmurs, amazed. “He’s regressed to the point of Enochian being his primary language.”
He and God glance over at each other with hopeful expressions. Amenadiel takes a careful step forward, stopping the instant Lucifer’s head whips around and his wings give a panicked flutter, and a stream of musical-sounding dialect emerges from his mouth. He looks disappointed when Lucifer doesn’t react beyond shuddering and burying his face into Chloe’s shoulder again.
After that, Lucifer refuses to speak. He says her name, pronounced with an Enochian accent, and that’s it, he’s done talking. Nothing they say or ask him can prompt him into replying aloud again, although he emits other noises, sounding more like a feral animal than a child when he growls at his brother and father, whines at Linda, and chirps curiosity at Charlie.
Despite being a lot calmer, the fledgling still wails like a banshee when his brother and father attempt to get close to him, though, clinging to Chloe like a koala and refusing to let go of her. At the mere mention of him leaving with Amenadiel and Linda so they can look after him, Lucifer almost perforates her eardrums with his ungodly squawk of panic.
And just like that, it’s decided that she’s going to be the one taking care of the de-aged Devil, while the rest of them try and figure out how to turn him back.
This is going to be… interesting.
Taking Lucifer home with her turns out to be much simpler than Chloe originally thought it would be. He’s entirely content to hang off her back like a baby opossum rides on the back of its mother, his tiny arms wrapped around her neck and his wings helping him stay balanced. Lucifer is remarkably light in weight for a toddler, although she’s not surprised given how skinny he is - and considering he apparently has hollow bones like a bird, according to God.
The main problem they have is hiding his wings. No matter how many times they ask him, Lucifer can’t seem to furl them, and they remain stubbornly manifested. He emits more of those terrible pterodactyl screeches when his brother tries to help. The issue of them potentially being seen is quickly solved by dressing him in one of his adult self’s shirts. Chloe rolls up the sleeves so his hands stick out and ties the hem of the shirt, that hangs to his ankles, beneath his butt.
Amenadiel and God agree to head back to Linda’s place and then to various baby stores in order to get clothes and equipment she might need. Chloe somehow manages to school her expression into an impassive one when she is informed that angels don’t actually need to eat or drink, and only need to sleep a couple of hours a week. She’s not going to just… not give toddler Lucifer food and water, or allow him to stay up all night. There’s no telling how long this situation is going to last, and Chloe knows for a fact that he will be happier and healthier if he’s introduced to a routine.
Because they have no idea how Lucifer will react to Trixie, she calls Dan and asks if their daughter can stay around his. Dan is only working part-time, and is therefore pleased at the opportunity to spend more time with Trixie. He thankfully doesn’t ask questions; Chloe has no idea how she would explain angel de-aging to him. She still can’t wrap her own head around it.
Linda accompanies them back to Chloe’s house. Amenadiel takes Charlie with him and his father so that the therapist can focus on observing Lucifer; she’s by no means specialized in child psychology, but she’s the best they’re going to get, and hopefully, she can provide some insight into Lucifer’s current mental state. He is shockingly timid and clingy, crying out when Chloe tries to disentangle herself from her embrace. Linda offers to drive her cruiser so that she and the fledgling can sit in the back together.
Lucifer is surprisingly not scared by the car, looking fascinated by the purr of the engine and vibration he can feel through the seats. Chloe sits as motionless as possible, still concerned that sudden movements or touch of any kind might startle and frighten Lucifer, but he seems completely comfortable clambering all over her, turning her into a human jungle gym.
They get Lucifer into her house without incident. He must recognize the place from his memories because his wings snap out and through the material of the shirt. Right, they exist on multiple dimensional planes and don’t obey any laws of physics; Chloe will never be able to make sense of them. Lucifer flaps them delicately, asking silently to be put down. Chloe sets him gingerly on the floor, hoping to God that nothing has been accidentally left out that Lucifer might accidentally hurt himself with. While he isn’t particularly graceful, Lucifer is coordinated enough to walk, run, and climb, although it appears that his wings aren’t developed enough to let him fly.
Chloe takes a seat on her couch, watching as the fledgling wanders around the living room, brushing his fingertips over things as if he’s reminding himself of every individual object in her home. He keeps well clear of Linda, who busies herself with toddler-proofing her house and filling the spare sippy cup from Charlie’s diaper bag with water in case Lucifer is thirsty.
“Hey, Lucifer,” Chloe calls. Lucifer perks up upon hearing his name, turning and blinking at her with beautiful mahogany eyes. “Can you understand what I’m saying? Do you understand English?” He nods at her, which floods her with relief. At least there’s not going to be a language barrier between them, even if he prefers not to talk aloud. “Can you come over here please?”
The fledgling nods again and hurries over, eager to please her. Lucifer jumps up onto her couch next to her with a few powerful flaps of his wings aiding him, getting settled. Leaning into her side, he hugs one of her throw pillows to his chest, resting his chin on top of it. Chloe’s heart swells. He’s adorable. She knows that this is utterly unnatural and that Lucifer was never physically a child like this, but he is quite possibly the cutest toddler she’s ever seen.
“Thank you,” she tells him, and he cracks a shy little smile. “So, Lucifer, you’re gonna be staying with me for the time being, and this is my house, okay? You’re going to be sleeping in my daughter Trixie’s room. I’ll show you it later. But you’re very small and it’s my responsibility to look after you, so we need to set some rules for you to follow, to keep you safe. Do you understand?”
He tilts his head questioningly at her, like a cocker spaniel puppy, but then slowly nods, although his expression has morphed into one of trepidation. She hopes that child Lucifer might actually respect the boundaries she sets unlike his adult self, who prefers to flirt dangerously with the line instead of toeing it.
Making sure to speak slowly and clearly, Chloe begins to explain, “So first of all, please don’t jump on the furniture, run, or go into any cupboards or drawers unless I give you permission to, okay? I don’t want you to hurt yourself. The same goes for trying to fly. I know you can’t really control your wings flapping, but it would be really dangerous for you to fly indoors. Now, in this house, if you close a door, it means that you want privacy, so you have to knock and get permission before coming in. If you want some alone time, that’s fine, but you need to come and tell me first, so I don’t get worried. Do you get everything so far?”
Lucifer hums and nods. He’s not looking at her anymore, more interested in the pillow he’s claimed for himself, but Chloe has experience with toddlers - she can tell that he’s listening and taking what she’s saying in, so she’s not that concerned with him maintaining eye contact, when it might make him anxious.
A very light tap to his knee causes him to twitch, which informs Chloe that he is definitely still paying attention. “If you break something by accident, it’s alright, I’m not going to be mad at you. All I want is for you to come and tell me so I can clear it up, so you don’t get anything like glass into your feet. If you’re hungry or thirsty or feeling sick or tired at any time, come and tell me so I can help.” That’s what she’s worried about the most, really. She does not want an ill baby Archangel on her hands. “And Lucifer, sometimes I might ask you to do something that you maybe don’t wanna do, but I need you to trust me, and trust that I’m asking you to do it for a reason, okay?”
The toddler cocks his head in the opposite direction, his eyebrows drawing together in a confused frown. He pets the side of the throw pillow, not looking very happy.
Chloe bites her lip and continues softly, “If you don’t want to do something, we can talk about it and come to a compromise, or I’ll explain why you have to do it, but you can’t just not do something I ask because you don’t want to. Because if you do that, or if you’re deliberately naughty, then I’ll have to punish you, and I don’t want that.”
As soon as she says the ‘p’ word, she knows it’s a mistake. Lucifer’s eyes widen dramatically and in a flash, he’s scrambling off the couch and launching across the room away from her. To both her and Linda’s bafflement, he completely forgets his previous nervousness around the therapist and uses her as a human shield to hide behind. His wings draw in tightly to his spine as he shakes, peering out from behind Linda’s legs at Chloe with an expression of sheer panic.
Chloe feels sick, an unpleasant guilty feeling sinking its claws into her heart. She should have known that the word punishment might be a trigger for him. She should have known that Lucifer would react awfully to the mention of any sort of chastisement when all he’s experienced in the past from his parents were vicious and cruel forms of discipline, that resulted in mind-crushing isolation and crippling eternal despair.
“No Fall,” Lucifer whimpers in English, but with that lilting, euphonic accent, his eyes glistening with tears. His tone is pleading, trembling with fear.
Linda stays as still as possible, obviously hyper-aware that Lucifer might freak out if he realizes who he’s hiding behind. She does, however, silently motion with a nod for Chloe to lower herself to the floor. She follows the advice so very slowly, hating how she feels like she’s treating the winged toddler more like an abused dog she’s trying to calm down rather than an actual child. Once she’s seated cross-legged on the floor, Lucifer appears to relax a little bit though, inching out from behind Linda.
“‘No fall’?” Chloe echoes, keeping her voice quiet, non-threatening, and gentle. “Lucifer, I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means.”
“No. Fall,” he repeats, emphasizing the words. This time, however, he curls his wings around himself and clutches at his right one protectively with one arm, while he uses his left arm to give a demonstration. He throws his hand up in the air, clenching into a fist, and imitates it falling with a faint whistling sound. And then, when his fist hits the floor, he makes a mock explosion noise, straightens up again, and points at himself. “No Fall.”
Chloe’s blood runs cold. “Oh my god,” she whispers hoarsely in horror and understanding. She raises her gaze to meet Linda’s, which is equally as disturbed as her own.
Lucifer is not talking about falling as in tripping and landing on his face, or climbing a tree and losing his grip. He is talking about The Fall. The grandest Fall of all time. When he Rebelled, and was Cast from Heaven, bursting into flames as he shattered multiple dimensional barriers, before he finally breached Hell’s atmosphere like a fiery meteor and crashed into the Lake of Fire.
Lucifer has been de-aged to a toddler, and the first thing he thinks of when punishment is mentioned is the most traumatic and soul-destroying thing he has ever experienced in his eons-long lifespan. He thinks that childish misbehavior will result in a punishment similar to that.
Chloe is starkly reminded of why she’s always wanted to punch Lucifer’s father in the face.
“Lucifer, you will never have to Fall ever again in your life, if I have anything to say about it,” she says as firmly as possible, forcing the waver out of her voice despite how badly she wants to cry. “Never, I promise.”
Lucifer’s face crumples in relief. He stumbles over his own feet in his haste to return to her, throwing himself with such force into her arms that she’s winded by the tackle. Breathing out, Chloe cuddles him tightly, rubbing his back soothingly with one hand. Her fingers start to comb through some of the soft, downy white feathers covering the bases of his wings.
Lucifer shivers in her embrace, so Chloe stops, worried that she’s doing something wrong and making him uncomfortable. Maybe humans aren’t allowed to touch angels’ wings? But instead of flinching away, Lucifer twitches his wing back into her hand, as if he’s asking her to continue. He relaxes and slumps against her chest when she begins threading her fingers through his feathers again, his upset sniffles finally dying out.
Twenty minutes later, Lucifer is sitting happily on the floor on his blanket they brought from the penthouse, solving a 250 piece jigsaw puzzle of sea creatures she was able to scrounge out of the bottom of a dusty cupboard. She knows for a fact that a 250 piece puzzle is far too complex for a toddler - even a 100 piece one would be difficult - but Lucifer is a tiny angel genius who doesn’t appear at all challenged by it. Chloe sits directly behind him, with him positioned between her legs.
Her fluffing of his feathers seems to pacify his anxiety, so she continues to mess them tenderly with one hand. He’s clearly suffering from some separation anxiety right now, and after the last hour he’s had, she’s okay with staying by his side until he’s calmer. Linda brings her a cup of coffee and Lucifer the sippy cup of water; the fledgling ignores it, but murmurs a musical word out of the corner of his mouth which both she and Linda assume is Enochian for ‘thank you’. He doesn’t even react to Linda taking a seat on the couch near them because he’s focused entirely on the puzzle.
Chloe rubs her brow incredulously at the way he’s rapidly snapping the pieces together and humming under his breath without a care in the world. Knowing that he’s concentrating on sorting and separating out the edge pieces and isn’t listening to her, she mutters to Linda, “I can’t believe he’s bounced back so quickly.”
Linda shrugs. “Kids are remarkably resilient like that, Chlo’. And Lucifer is more resilient than most. Perhaps even the strongest being in the Universe, considering everything he’s survived through and still come out the other side as such a fundamentally good person.” Clearing her throat, Linda speaks slightly louder but with extreme gentleness, addressing the baby angel, “Lucifer, hi. Do you remember who I am?”
“Mm-hmm,” he replies absentmindedly. Well, it’s a much better, less… extreme acknowledgment than Amenadiel or God received, that’s for sure.
“That’s good. So you know I’m your friend, you know I don’t want to hurt you.”
Lucifer pauses, puzzle pieces gripped in his tiny hands. He blinks up at Linda with those mesmerizing dark caramel eyes of his, his expression almost calculating in nature. Deciding not to respond verbally, Lucifer taps his head and then over his heart, frowning and pursing his lips in distaste.
Linda actually smiles a little, though. “Yes, I know, sometimes what we discuss can hurt you in both of those places,” she sympathizes. “But that’s because we talk about big emotions you’re feeling, the good ones and the bad ones. Occasionally, the bad ones can make you hurt. But that’s what I try to help you with, as your doctor. We talk about the bad emotions so that they’re less scary and they hurt less.” Lucifer huffs, but appears to agree, his feathers bristling slightly and tickling Chloe’s hands as they brush against her fingers. “So Lucifer, with that in mind, can we talk about the bad emotion you felt earlier?”
She doesn’t even get to finish her sentence before Lucifer is vehemently shaking his head, stiffening up.
“You don’t want to talk?” Linda asks sadly. Lucifer doesn’t respond this time, with words or a motion. He’s back to ignoring her. Linda sighs and sits back. “Okay, we don’t have to.” Chloe shoots her a confused look. Linda is normally a little more determined than that when trying to get Lucifer to discuss his emotional state. The therapist explains quietly, “There would be no benefit to pushing him into talking when he’s not in the right headspace. It’s much, much harder to coax children into speaking about their problems when they’re - well. We essentially have to think of him as an abused, neglected child, Chlo’, as horrible as it sounds. I can’t lead him at all when just bringing up the… incident, upsets him so much. If I push him when he’s not ready, he’ll just clam up.”
Chloe’s heart aches terribly, and she tries to distract herself from crying by delicately grooming Lucifer’s fluffy tail feathers. Back before she found out that Lucifer had been telling the truth the whole time about being the Devil, she was convinced that he was a cult survivor suffering from C-PTSD and a personality disorder, who was horribly abused as a child. She remembers how she’d chalked up his confusion and disdain of hugs, and all other forms of non-sexual intimacy, to being severely neglected by distant and inattentive parents, leading to his hypersexualization of everything as an adult as he searched for meaningful emotional connections but didn’t understand how to make them. It wasn’t completely true, but she also wasn’t wrong.
The de-aged toddler version of Lucifer sitting in front of her is starved for affection, just like adult Lucifer, but appears to be much more open and emotionally receptive to things like hugs, and having his hair ruffled, and feathers groomed. Adult Lucifer hasn’t let her touch his wings once, but child Lucifer is pushing them into her hands eagerly, wanting her to preen his plumage.
She’s jolted out of her troubling thoughts by Lucifer patting her leg beside him, trying to get her attention. He rewards her with a toothy grin, pointing down at his puzzle. Her jaw drops. He’s completed it. She checks the time. The fledgling finished it in just over thirty-five minutes. Even as a toddler, Lucifer’s celestial intelligence and rapid mental processing have struck once again.
“That’s amazing, Lucifer,” she praises him, and he preens, looking very pleased with himself. “Very impressive.”
Linda bends over to examine the completed jigsaw puzzle, asking curiously, “How did you do it that fast, Lucifer?”
He glances back down at the puzzle and draws a square around the edge with his finger before tapping his forehead.
Chloe catches on quickly. “You saw it put together in your mind?” He nods happily, wings giving a little twitch. Removing a couple of the pieces, Lucifer then lays them out in front of him in a random pattern, covers his eyes with one hand, and uses the other to reorder them and connect them again - all without looking. Chloe stares in disbelief. “You just know how to put the pieces together because you know what it’s meant to look like?”
He nods enthusiastically. “Fun!” he chirps, clapping his hands together and leaning forward to mess up the complete puzzle and put all the pieces away back in their box.
Chloe honestly doesn’t find them all that entertaining, mostly because she gets frustrated that they can take so long, but if Lucifer enjoys puzzles, then she’s going to let him solve as many of them as he wants. He’s ridiculously adorable when he’s happy.
She tweaks one of his feathers playfully. “You like puzzles, then, huh? I think Trixie has some under her bed. Wanna do some more?”
Lucifer gasps, his eyes as round as plates and glittering with excitement. “More?” he repeats, his voice hushed with awe, like she’s giving him the best gift he’s ever received by simply offering to find more jigsaw puzzles for him to do.
Smiling at him softly, Chloe smoothes back some of the dark curls that are hanging over his eyes, agreeing, “Yes, more.”
He stares at her like she’s the answer to every question he’s ever asked. “Yes?” he breathes, like he can’t believe it. And that makes so much sense, doesn’t it? He was denied Free Will by his father, he was punished for Questioning his Purpose. He was denied what he wanted most in the world and grievously penalized for even asking for it.
Chloe shuffles forward so she can hug him from behind, his wings squishing out to the sides. “Yes, Lucifer. You can do more puzzles.”
She’s pretty sure that she’ll get him as many puzzles as she’s able to if it puts that expression of wonder on his face every time.