Lucilith fluff/angst AU with a "what if heaven didn't send Lucifer to hell as punishment, but instead, they sent him to earth" premise.
I doubt I'll write it because it contains some heavy dead dove themes (TRIGGER WARNING), so I won't go into the technicalities and history of humanity, but the gist of it is "humans don't take kindly to the person responsible for making them WORK to get into heaven and esentially damning them all." Esentially, His punishment is whatever humanity deems fit. And it will end whenever humanity will deem his debt paid.
He's stripped of his powers. He's collared with angelic steel that's unbreakable by any human or demonic forces. It signalizes his position at the bottom of the barell.
Lilith had never been created as Adam's wife. Adam's first wife was Eve from the beginning. So, even Lucifer's first days when he dropped to earth were not kind to him. Adam took out all of his rage at the one who poisoned his pefectly obedient wife with knowledge and the ability to think for herself, the one who invited evil into the world and damned all of humanity with the threat of hell. (Also, Adam is a fucking asshole who needs to compensate for his small dick energy by hurting other people.)
Lucifer thought maybe his life would be better after Abel, who grew up kind and gentle. That was until Cain murdered him, which left Lucifer stuck with him just like he was with his dad.
The first humans know who he is and what he's done and they don't let him forget it.
Civilizations start to rise.
Lucifer has lost all hope by the end of the first century of his punishment. And what's worse, he knows their sadistic proclivity for violence and cruelty is HIS fault. He's eating the fruit of his own labour.
It's heaven's perfect punishment.
The AU started out with the idea of Lucifer losing his light. As in. He literally goes dark. Like looking into a night sky. His skin is black, his hair falls down his frame like a veil of raven strands, unkept, making him look even more despondent. If one looked closely at his skin, they could vaguely see small stars shining, like looking into a void or a different dimension.
But what's really stark about him are his eyes. Red and slitted (the shade of red they get when he's stressed out in canon)
He doesn't speak. He had lost the ability a long time ago.
He's not even that good for sport anymore, he's so used to the pain he hardly screams unless the torment is particularly excruciating.
Other demons get the same treatment, ones that humans managed to catch and imprison. After 10000 years, Lucifer is forgotten. His name, once meaningful, vanishes into a fragment of the past.
He's been subjected to every single torture method humanity has thought of. And he can't die. So they literally have no reservations when it comes to hurting him.
Then, on a random autumn day, he's huddled in his cage, left to rot, trying his best not to make any noise and ignore the wretched cramping of his muscles from the tivht confinment, when he hears a female voice.
Lilith happened to haply stumble across this random shop and her eyes instantly latch onto him. He's so striking, yet terrified of every small movement. She decides she can't leave him here. From the looks of it, she didn't think he'd survive for long before his owner disposes of him. The shopkeeper calling him "useless" and "expired" only reaffirms her decision.
She saves him (*cough* buys him *cough*)
Tun tun Lucilith commence.
When she brings him back to her home, he's trembling. He's expecting her to hit him, or hurt him, or punish him for the hell of it like all his previous owners used to do. She doesn't.
She leads him to the bathroom, and he's so shocked that she's allowing him to share HER bathroom rather than just hosing him down with ice cold water like any typical human would have, that he's now even more afraid. This woman is unpredictable. She's clearly toying with him. Trying to get him to step out of line so she could make him pay for it after. But, he can't disobey.
He's been forced out of even thinking about it a long time ago.
When he's finally clean, she tells him to sit down on the bed so she can take a look at his wounds. (Miss gurl has no idea what she's doing lol. She has never owned a demon before, especially not one like him. She fights against their enslavement for a living for god's sake! She can barely see the wounds because every time she comes close to touching his skin, it gives the illusion that her hand is falling through pitch black ink).
(She doesn't know he's not a demon, but a highly powerful angel and the literal devil).
He's even more shocked now. Because what do you mean his master allowed him to SIT on a BED?? He's usually relegated to the floor or a cage or even the kennels.
She tells him to lie down, and he does, just barely sitting on the edge.He jumps and topples to the floor when she taps her fingers against the nearest wound. Lilith starts to get the idea that he's severely traumatized, far worse than the typical response one might have. He's full on shaking, and when she scoots closer, reassuring him that it's alright, he only backs away. He's been taught to crawl, never to walk, so he just huddles at the closest wall, thinking she'll definitely hurt him now.
Lilith does a double take, understanding that standard reassurances and sweet talk won't comfort him. She asks him if he understands her. He nods. She asks him if he can speak. He shakes his head. After some contemplating, she takes a firmer approach and orders him to sit on the bed.
Lucifer does so unquestioningly, but he's no less terrified. She tells him to lie down on his back so he doesn't end up jumping again and hurting himself (PROCEED WOUND HEALING GRRRRRRR).
He's shaking the entire time, anticipating a hit or a scolding or SOMETHING. But it never comes.
At some point, his body goes slack. Her tender touches cause his eyes to droop. He's exhausted. The shopkeeper used to kick him awake at random times in the night to keep him on edge for no purpose than the sick pleasure of making him suffer. He hasn't had a proper sleep in weeks.
He's shocked again when she gives him clothes, but he knows better than to refuse an order. He gets dressed and a thousand ideas swirl in his mind about how Lilith might deceive him. Once more, she diverts his expectations, and doesn't hurt him.
Shs just throws the blanket over him, locks his collar by a chain to the headboard (she doesn't trust a demon enough to let him run loose in her home), and tells him goodnight.
He's too paranoid to fall asleep after that. He's expecting her to throw the door open and come back with some torture device. Maybe she's waiting for him to fall asleep so she can take advantage of him during the night. But, eventually, he's too tired to fight it, and he passes out
After that, it's pretty much Lucilith fluff and them learning to trust each other.
Lilith has no idea the demon nuzzling into her neck and experiencing the first and only gentle touch from humanity he's ever received is the devil himself.
Lucifer starts regaining his light slowly, with every moment he spends with Lilith. He starts to heal. He starts to hope again. He starts to relearn affection which he had forgotten the feeling of so long ago. His hair starts first. The tips start to turn golden. Then his hands, his fingers turning white, glowing, soft. His chest is the last thing to heal, at some point it just looks like a bloch of ink right over his heart.
The healing process is gruelling and long. After the first month of Lilith playing with him like this, he crumbles down in tears. He takes a metal pipe from somewhere in the storage cabinets and offers it to her. He's crying, silently begging her to stop tormenting him like this and deal the pain he KNOWS is coming. Because it always did. Kindness was not something he deserved or was allowed.
She just takes the pipe, puts it aside, and pulls him onto her lap. She tells him firmly she will not hurt him and guides his head onto her shoulder. She holds him for hours as he shakes and cries and clutches onto her for dear life because she CAN'T be real??
She kisses his temple and brushes his back and hides her own tears from him. Her heart breaks every time she sees how abused he's been. No one, demon or otherwise, deserved this.
Because of her, he gets to experience the small pleasures in life again. He hadn't been allowed to touch a pillow, let alone lay on one in over 10000 years. He just feels it in his hands for a moment, his head slumped on top, too tired to lift itself, as tears silently fall down his face. It's a PILLOW!
He can't believe any of it is real. He relearns what warmth means. For the first time in forever, he doesn't feel cold. He's not naked. There are no chains keeping him freezing or suspended in uncomfortable positions. He's not discarded somewhere like forgotten trash. He's not strapped down to anything.
No. Instead, he's covered with an honest to god BLANKET?! He's wearing CLOTHES?!
It feels wrong. All of it feels so wrong, but he can't resist it. He knows it will be ripped away from him soon and that he'll be punished brutally for indulging in these small gifts, but he can't let go. Even if just for a few moments. Just a minute or two, and he could handle whatever came next better.
The first time Lilith gives him food, he's expecting something stale or rotten, leftovers, dry moldy bread, some disgusting brew, just typical things he was usually fed - on the rare occasions when he WAS fed at all. And those were things at the top of the list of what he's been fed. He doesn't want to think of all the filth that had been shoved down his throat over the years that his masters had had a good laugh at.
He kneels at her feet and bows, waiting for orders. She's startled at his behaviour, already concerned enough by his emaciated, malnurished state, but decides that maybe telling him to sit on a chair would cause him to leap like he did yesterday, so she goes along with it.
He's not allowed to use utensils, and she decides forcing him out of the habit and making him uncomfortable would do more harm than good, so she feeds him from her hand. Small pieces of toast and butter - something pleasant on the tongue but won't irritate his undoubtedly empty stomach.
He waits patiently for every piece, even though he's desperate for more. He's beyond grateful; all his previous owners either made him eat off the floor like a dog or rammed a tube down his throat so that he wasn't even allowed the privilege to taste the food. When he's done, he reaches for her dress to lift it up.
She jumps and just stares at him incredulously for a second or two.
He's not sure what he did wrong.
He was SUPPOSED to show his gratitude for every meal somehow, right?
That's what all the others demanded anyway.
Eventually, Lilith catches on that this is another learned response, and her heart breaks further. His eyes are wide and terrified as he stares innocently up at her, not even processing the weight of his behaviour. He's completely desensitised to all of it.
They spend the first few days together like this. He's constantly on edge, waiting for the shoe to drop because no human was this kind to him. Ever. It HAD to be an act.
One night, she sees him kneeling in a corner, trying to make himself as unnoticeable as possible (to divert any attention to himself because whenever someone paid attention to him it ended with him screaming). He's sulking, his head is bowed, he's completely dormant, waiting for orders or to be of use.
She tells him to come to her. He crawls, refusing to walk even though she had told him multiple times he could if he wanted to. He settles next to her legs, anticipating something awful, and he's so confused when she puts a pullow for him to sit on. His owners usually made him kneel on broken shards of glass or hot coals. But, a pillow? Nope. It had to be another deception.
But, he can't refuse a kindness. That would be insulting to his owner, and he can't have that.
She tilts his head onto her thigh, making him face her, and slowly threads her fingers through his hair. He's tense at first, thinking she's about to pull and yank at his hair, tell him how stupid he was to think he deserved any of her generosity, tell him how worthless and repulsive he was. It never came.
She caresses him into the night, and slowly, the tension oozes out of his frame. He falls asleep at some point, and when he wakes, he's met with a soft face gazing lovingly down at him. There isn't a shred of malice in her eyes, and he startles at the realization at how he could think she's capable of such cruelty as the kine he's expecting from her.
A face that beautiful was a sight beffiting of heaven and nothing else. She makes him feel like he's back there again. Home.
(I forgot to mention at the beginning. Lucifer's punishment isn't just him facing the consequences of giving humanity free will, it's also a way to break his pride, to clear him of all sin).
I don't really have an idea for the chronological order, but I want Lilith to get mad and cause him to flinch. And i want it to be after she finds out who he really is.
Because he's unusual. He's gentle. He's soft. He's curious. He's KIND. Once, she saw him picking up a spider and taking it outside on the balcony/porch. That is NOT typical demon behaviour ffs! He's not like the average demon one might come across
So, she gets curious, too.
She goes online and to libraries etc. to find out what this strange behaviour is. She researches the goetia, the sins, hellhounds, sinners, hellborn, trying to find out WHAT he is. Demons don't just turn from pitch black night skies to pearly white sunshine?!
She reads and reads and loses track of time, and throughout every historical piece she comes across, one name keeps popping up that matches her experiences with what she's seeing:
She goes home that night, and just stands by the doorway for a moment, terrified of walking through, terrified of going into her own house.
She has been living with the devil...
She has been sleeping in the same bed as the devil. She has held him in her arms and granted him access to roam freely. His lips, hiding lethal fangs, have been pressed against her neck while she had been utterly unaware for months now.
She shivers. A stone drops in her stomach. Reality keeps spinning as the horror of how vulnerable she had been before one of the most poeerful beings in the universe completely drenches her.
(She doesn't know he's not actually evil. She just knows Lucifer the same way humans do: as the devil, cruelty incarnate, harbringer of destruction, all that, etc. etc.)
She's quiet when she goes inside.
Instantly, Lucifer notices.
He's been trained to be attunded to his master's mood at all times. He gets on his knees immediately.
She's afraid to approach him. Her hesitance makes him afraid too.
She spills everything. She tells him she knows exactly who he is, WHAT he is. He can see her visible hurt is hiding the betrayal she feels deep down, and he starts to panic.
He should have told her, but how could he? She was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him. He couldn't ruin that by telling her the truth, even if he could speak.
He keeps mute throughout it, the silence in the room unbearable. He tries to reach for her, regret swimming in his wide eyes, but she backs away from him and for the first time, she looks at him like everyone else did: not with love, but with disgust.
She lashes out more loudly eventually, and he flinches.
He had ruined it. He had ruined the only good thing that had ever happened to him.
Now, she's gonna take him back to that shop and throw him into the life full of pain and misery he's always known.
He backs away from her, hitting the wall behind him, and Lilith's eyes widen.
For all the knowledge of how limitless his power is, she realizes in that moment as she stares at this mighty creature cowering from her, that power is really just an illusion in the grand scheme of things
She stutters out an apology, feeling awful at her outburst. She excuses herself. She still doesn't feel safe around him like she did before, even though deep down she knows this is a soul who would never lay any harm to her. The proof ripples in his glassy eyes as he silently implores her to forgive him.
At around 3am that night, Lilith still couldn't sleep. Her mind is running a hundred miles an hour, but her heart had calmed down. She recognizes that what she did was inexcusable, especially knowing what Lucifer has been through. She gets out of bed and goes to look for him. She finds him kneeling outside her bedroom door with his forehead pressed to the floor and his hands clasped behind his back, waiting for orders, like he's been conditioned through centuries of torment to evade his master's ire.
She rouses him from the slump, and he groggily lifts his head up. She starts speaking, a half-baked apology on her lips, but she's so tired all she wants is to get him to bed and extinguish his fear.
He suddenly latches onto her leg. His arms wrap around it so tight nothing could have pulled him from her.
"P-please..." he rasps, and Lilith is so shocked she can't do anything for several moments but gawk.
It's the first word she hears him speak.
"Please... don't take me back..!" he begs her. His voice is rough, hoarse from disuse. He's speaking for the first time in thousands of years.
The words come slowly, painfully, his tongue dragging and sluggish. When she tries to pull away and tell him she won't send him back, he just clutches tighter to her and starts crying.
His face, stained with tears, is pressed against her leg as he's shaking with ragged sobs in such a wretched display of desperation Lilith feels another part of her heart break for him.
Not listening to her reasurances.
Terrified out of his mind.
She has to forcefully push him to get him to let go, and she cups his face to steel his attention on her. She grips him in a bone-crushing hug and tells him she would NEVER let him go. She tells him how sorry she is about what happened earlier, and - in the most honest she's been thus far - she tells him he's the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to her, mirroring Lucifer's own thoughts.
They cuddle that night. <3
Up until then, Lilith didn't have a name for him. She just called him sweetheart, darling, or love - much to Lucifer's shock. He was always called something degrading along the lines of slut, bitch, whore, filth, scum etc.
The next day is the first time Lucifer makes an active effort to learn how to speak again.
Also, after months together and after Lucifer feels safe enough around her, Lilith finds out the weird creature she bought is INSANELY clingy. 10000 years of pain and abuse, and he's finally being held and hugged gently. Once he gets comfortable with her, he holds on like a lifeline. He's not satisfied unless he feels like he's crawling under her skin.
And Lilith knows she sometimes comes off as cold and untouchable, so when this man is treating her like paradise on earth, it's like a dopamine rush to her brain. She gets cuteness aggression from him, but she has to control the urge to bite.
(Also, I forgot to mention, Lucifer's snake pupils spool into normal pupils once he stops being afraid 24/7)
The story goes on, he starts healing and learning to be a PERSON again. They starts speaking again. They start falling in love, day by day.
They go to a ballroom at some point. Lilith takes him to a private room so they can dance (because demons aren't allowed to dance). She removes his chains, and they kiss that night. He's the one who initiates it.
They're both equally as surprised.
Also, at some point, she has him on her lap because she doesn't want him kneeling at the floor or serving as her personal chair like all the other chained demons in the room. That's not what he is to her. None of the people in that room could understand how much he means to her, or how desperately they need each other.
In the end, his collar breaks.
Because the punishment constituted that he'll pay for his actions however humanity deemed fit. For the first time in 10000 years, humanity decided he had paid his dept and deserves kindness.
Lilith frees him through her love.
For the first time in thousands of years, Sera sleeps well.
