The Steadiness of Small Things

A/N: Just needed to riff off of that incredible 2.13 sequence scored by X Ambassadors' song "Unsteady." I'm playing a little loose with the timeline for Dan and Ella, perhaps. But Trixie, in particular, wanted to remind everyone that she was nearby when it all went down. And then Lucifer took over by thinking way too much for once in his immortal life.

Get back to the Detective. Remember the formula. Get it into someone's hands.

Lucifer staggered out of the elevator, every muscle in revolt. He grasped the sliding doors for a second to steady himself, thoughts locked on the hospital room at the turn of the interminable corridor and on the scribbled lines of chemical code he had left behind him in Hell. The antiseptic world around him, like the memory of pen on paper, felt as insubstantial as eroding sand, the thinnest of lifelines.

Chloe. Formula. Move.

He plunged forward, breathing shallowly against the ache in his chest. The pale blurs of hospital staff dodged out of his way, their concerned voices nebulous, staticy, unimportant. He stumbled into a cart, and it skittered aside to crash into—something—spilling other somethings across the floor with a clatter. He felt them like caltrops beneath his unsteady feet, and knew that if he looked down to see them his body would follow his gaze, sinking into the cold floor and darkness, and his Detective would be gone forever.

Keep going. Just ahead.

"Sir? Are you okay? Let me help—" Pushing past the fingers on his sleeve, he willed his sluggish knees to obey, one step after the other. Like the slow crawl of time in his former kingdom, the Devil moved implacably, relentlessly onward.

He'd been dead. Again. This time, his forced resurrection left him feeling battered, bruised in bone and soul, made breathing a laborious and painful effort. Even the sting of the electrical burns across his chest failed to mask the aftereffects of being hauled back to life by machine—the lingering taste of death on the back of his tongue, the sense of being somehow just outside this human world. Worse, at the very edge of his consciousness, he could still feel a cold white blade in his hand. A warm slick of angelic blood still seemed to coat his fingers, and the deep knowledge of betrayal and manipulation and horrible mistakes choked him.

Not now. Remember the formula. Remember Chloe.

He shook off yet another nurse with a voiceless snarl, his eyes on the knot of chaos just around the corner, filling the path to the Detective's room.

Amenadiel's broad silhouette stood braced in the doorway, draped in security guards who scrambled and fell and lunged uselessly against him. Sunlight poured around him through the curtains of the room beyond, out of place in the fluorescent medical world. Lucifer hesitated, one hand on the wall beside him, narrowing his eyes against the glare that haloed his brother and trying to see a way through the the tumult of staff and equipment and staring visitors. Another guard tumbled unharmed beneath the legs of a worried-looking nurse, and Amenadiel shook himself, a lion turning back to his lands. Lucifer tried to call out to him, but his burning lungs refused to take the air.

No way except through.

It seemed an eternity before Lucifer shoved through the clutching, gaping guards and nurses to grip his brother's shoulder. Amenadiel spun to meet him, stony face and adamantine eyes ready for war. Lucifer tightened his fingers, leaning into his brother's strength because he needed it and remembering in a flash his sibling as he used to be—before the jealousies and petty scraps, before the rebellion and the Fall. He saw recognition and relief break over the familiar features and felt a broad, warm hand on his own shoulder in return. As their eyes met, something electric passed between them, a surety like a circuit flaring to life after aeons of disuse. Brothers, still and forever. Even if neither of them were angelic anymore.

Unable to speak, Lucifer could only give a short nod of assurance and thanks before turning to seek the Detective.

Amenadiel lingered behind him for a moment before falling back. The confused security team almost forgot to reach for him until he was past them. "Hey, you! Stop right there," one of them barked.

Even with his back to them, Lucifer could hear the uncertainty in the human's voice, just as he knew without looking that his brother complied with the rough demand. Father's Firstborn settled into the hands of those who had been unable to master him only moments before, still subtly barring them from the room and from Lucifer himself.

The Devil swallowed, trying to rouse his voice in protest. But even as he did so, his eyes found the unconscious woman in the bed. Faint tremors racked Chloe Decker's slender form, and she seemed so much smaller than he remembered, frail and faded against the white sheets. His ears filled with the warning beeps of machines working on her behalf and the indignant twittering of the crash team's doctor now standing in front of him. An impatient hand landed on his aching chest, and he was abruptly pushed backward out of the way, away from the Detective and his task. He gasped, coughed a small flare of agony, and seized the woman's wrist. "Wait. Please—" he finally rasped. "I can—."

The doctor tore her arm away, angrily waving more security toward him.

"Leave him alone!" A tiny, fierce voice piped up from the hallway. "Leave them both alone!"

Lucifer glanced reluctantly away from the Detective, out to where her miniature spawn had appeared defiantly beside Amenadiel, pink and grey arms akimbo, chin thrust out below a scowl every bit as ferocious as her mother's could be.

"I said quit it!" Little hands slapped at the security guards who held Amenadiel. "Don't you touch him. He's mommy's guardian angel. Let him go!"

"Sorry, guys," said a nurse in purple scrubs to the guards, holding his hands up helplessly. "I couldn't hold her any longer. Watch out! She kicks!"

Trixie glared at him, too, but before she could do anything else, Dan skidded around the corner. "What's going on here? Sorry about that," he muttered insincerely to the nurse, his gaze racing across his daughter and Amenadiel, the gaggle of guards, and the worried-looking medical team, before finally lighting on Lucifer. "Did you get it? Well, did you?" he demanded, bypassing his now-grinning offspring and the crowd in the doorway. "We got the ZX3. Did you get the formula?"

Nodding fervently, Lucifer made a shaky writing motion, and the other man produced paper and a stub of pencil. While Lucifer leaned against the wall and recorded Carlisle's formula with unsteady fingers, he dimly heard Dan speaking with the doctor, nurses, and security force. He caught only "LAPD" and "antidote" and "access to your lab" before the hospital personnel around him were all moving again with a purpose that no longer seemed to include him.

Dan snatched the paper out of his fingers as soon as he proffered it, whipping out his phone and reading the list in a loud, clear voice. Lucifer listened hazily as it was repeated back by a tinny digital chirp that sounded rather like Ms. Lopez, and saw the paper passed off to a waiting orderly who raced back toward the elevator.

"Twenty minutes," Dan said, pocketing his phone. "It'll take twenty minutes to compound."

Lucifer nodded again, still leaning against the wall. He cleared his throat painfully. "Are we in time?" he asked the doctor hovering over the Detective's bed.

"I think so," she said, a little stiffly, clearly still confused by events.

Lucifer didn't care how she felt, only that there was hope for the Detective again. Only that he had done what he could. He closed his eyes, let his head loll back against the cool wall.

"Man, you look wrecked." Dan's voice at his elbow actually sounded concerned. "You should sit down before you fall down."

Lucifer snorted. "Already done that once, so to speak," he quipped half-heartedly, but found himself being guided to one of the armchairs in the room by a strong hand beneath his arm. When he scowled in the Douche's direction, he found himself staring instead into the somber brown eyes of his brother. "Still here?"

"Where else would I be?" Amenadiel shrugged. "I promised a little girl I'd watch over her mom. The Devil Himself might take issue if I broke that promise. And his trust," he added a little more quietly.

"Yeah," agreed Trixie from somewhere below. She wriggled herself in between them as Lucifer slumped into the chair, her small fingers intertwining with Amenadiel's massive ones when they weren't full of Devil.

Amenadiel raised his eyebrows in surprise, peering down at the child.

The sparkly hummingbird on Trixie's jacket glimmered, bright in the washed-out institutional space, and she gave both of them a tentative smile. "Is mommy going to get better now?"

Dan knelt beside his daughter, taking her other hand between his. "Yeah, monkey. We think so."

Wide, dark eyes searched Lucifer's. "You saved her?"

The former Lord of Hell grunted, wincing and shifting uncomfortably in the chair. "Please don't hug me, child. I don't think I'm up to it right now. Or ever, really."

Trixie brightened. "Okay. I'll owe you one for later!"

Later.

Lucifer felt a sick plunging sensation that had nothing to do with sticky hugs from tiny nascent humans and groaned softly. He didn't want to think about later, hadn't let himself even consider later during the crisis. Later meant making decisions he didn't want to make, coming to terms with his Father's continued manipulation, that long game of determinism that had apparently led to some of his most transcendent moments of joy and now to the most confusing despair. Just when he had imagined— He swept his eyes over the hospital bed to take in the Detective's sweat-streaked hair, the bruised-looking skin around her closed eyes, and the shallow, rapid rise and fall of her breathing.

Oh, Father. How could you?

And, said a more mocking, darkly bitter voice inside his head, how could the Devil have ever imagined he could be worthy of this? Of her? After Hell, after Uriel—

He dragged his gaze away from the Detective in shame and disgust.

"You wanna tell me how you got the formula from a dead man?" Dan again, no doubt trying to fill the time as they waited for the antidote to appear.

Lucifer cut his eyes up at the cop. "I'm still fairly certain you don't want to know."

"Seriously, man. Is that a burn?" Dan flicked at the open edge of Lucifer's shirt. "I mean, what the hell did you do?"

"Just that. Nothing more," Lucifer said grimly, deflecting the too-forward fingers. "Perhaps I'll show you sometime if you insist on wrinkling the Egyptian cotton."

"Oh, please—"

Gritting his teeth, Lucifer sighed. "Look, Daniel. Let's just say that I called on my underworld network, shall we? And leave it at that."

Amenadiel chuckled wryly, and Dan looked even more confused, but the attending doctor rushed in at that moment with a syringe of familiar orange fluid, and Lucifer lurched back to his feet to watch the antidote administered. Breathless minutes passed, and perhaps it was only his imagination, but the Detective's brow seemed to smooth and the rigid line of her body relaxed beneath the rumpled blankets, trading unconsciousness for an easier, more peaceful sleep.

A flurry of activity erupted around her bed, nurses checking and verifying, changing orders, making decisions about necessary next steps. Many of them glanced with nervous or curious expressions at the three men who watched them intently and offered smiles to the child who bounced impatiently between them.

"Incredible," said the attending after a while, turning to Lucifer. "That seems to have done the trick. Just incredible."

Nodding, he sank back into the chair, masking his own bone-deep relief with a dismissive wave of one hand. He rubbed his eyes tiredly, feeling the doctor's clinical gaze on him now that the emergency had passed, and was grateful when she didn't remark on whatever she saw.

In time, the room slowly cleared of medical personnel. Dan hugged Trixie, then stepped out into the hall to call Ella with the good news. The child rested her hands and then her chin on the edge of the bed, watching her mom sleep with a contented smile. Amenadiel folded his arms over his chest and looked generally awkward and out-of-place standing in the middle of the too-human hospital room. Lucifer stared at them both in turn, then laid his head back and closed his eyes again, confident that the Detective was well-guarded.

The Devil knew he wasn't given to introspection. It was a human trait that divine creatures had little need of in their Father-given routines. But in the reddish darkness behind his eyelids, with the sunlight of late afternoon warming the filtered air of the room and the aching weariness of resurrection and recovery weighing him down, he couldn't help but remember. Not the ashen shadows of Hell, but the determined light of everyone who had ensured his Detective's survival against impossible odds.

The child who hid her tears and fought for them.

The ex-husband who acted without question on the most fragile of promises.

Ms. Lopez who, despite the Detective's concerns, did not fall apart, clearly maneuvering behind the scenes to speed the cure into appropriate hands.

Even more surprising was his fallen brother who, this time, chose to stand with him at the critical moment. Who lingered even now, a solid and strangely comforting presence.

Dr. Linda, acting against her training and instincts because she did, indeed, care almost as much about the Detective as he did.

Even Mazikeen, ever fierce and trustworthy—for a demon. His right-hand, grown so independent, but still here. He suspected she had a hand in convincing Mum to join him downstairs, after all.

And Mum.

"I've been manipulating you, stoking your anger against your Father in hopes of using you against Him . . . I pushed you and that human closer, knowing it would crush you when you learned the truth."

Machinations. Hidden motives. Fate. Patterns.

Uriel's shocked gasp. His brother's last breath at his ear over and over again. The smell of divine blood invading his penthouse home, pattering down on the marble floor. The rightness of Azrael's blade in his own unresisting hand. Horror. Wrenching, bottomless guilt.

Lucifer opened his eyes, suddenly strangling as if his lungs and his pounding heart wanted to stop again. The very atmosphere in the room seemed to have turned to tar and sulfur, drowning him in a misery he hadn't felt since he lost Heaven.

So many reasons why he couldn't stay. No longer needed, he couldn't go about this pretense of a life as if nothing had changed. He wasn't—couldn't be the man the Detective seemed to believe he was. Not without answers. Not without free will.

Maybe not at all.

Guilt and the recognition of coming loss threatened to overwhelm him.

Desperately, Lucifer turned his thoughts to more immediate things. He needed a drink and a cigarette or twenty, for instance. Maze still had his flask and, he hoped, his new jacket with his case tucked in the pocket. Fumbling at his shirt buttons, he grimaced. He really did feel like he'd been run down by a L.A tour bus, but physical pain it was better than thinking about things beyond the here and now. Buttons. Coat. Finding some alcohol. He wondered if Maze had finished all of the whiskey in his flask. It would be like her. Well, she could damn well teleport her demonic ass back to Lux and get a refill, if she had.

Movement drew his attention. Trixie was gingerly climbing up onto the end of her mother's bed, careful not to jostle the sleeping Detective. She perched where she could look up at Amenadiel, sitting back on her knees. "Thanks for watching over my mommy," she said earnestly.

"You're welcome," Amenadiel rumbled in response. Against his will, Lucifer found his brother's slight smile to be somehow warming. He hadn't seen that expression on the big man's face in some time, if ever. Maybe back before things had gone so horribly wrong in Heaven, maybe once some months ago when he had spoken of Maze—

"And I really like your wings," the child added.

Amenadiel's smile froze. Lucifer looked up sharply.

"What?" Amenadiel blinked, shook his head as if to clear his ears. "What did you say?"

"I said like your wings. They're cool."

"I—I don't—" Amenadiel, once the Holy Warrior of Heaven, gaped stupidly at a small human in a kitten t-shirt and sparkly star hair clips. A monitor beeped softly in the background, steady and content. "I don't have—"

Trixie crawled slowly along the edge of the bed, unaware of the effect her matter-of-fact words were having on the two beings behind her. "Yes, you do," she continued blithely. "I wish I had wings."

Amenadiel seemed to find his voice. "What makes you think—?"

"Duh. I saw them, silly." She pushed blankets out of her way, careful of the many tubes and cords that crisscrossed the bed, and turned around to toe off her sneakers and let them drop to the floor below. "When you both were standing in the door together." She pointed at Amenadiel and spread her arms wide. "They're so big. Like huge! They'd be scary if I didn't know you're trying so hard to be good."

Amenadiel dropped one hand on the bed rail as if suddenly in need of support.

"I'll bet they're really strong, like you. But Lucifer's are prettier. They look fast. And they're so bright!"

Lucifer felt his heart surge against the cage of his ribs, reminiscent of that wild, breathless flail before it had began to beat again. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, staring at the child past his brother's shoulder. What was this? There was no possible way she could see what no longer existed. He didn't have wings. Not anymore.

Trixie wiggled herself carefully closer to the Detective's side and was rewarded when her mother turned instinctively toward her, smiling in her sleep. "It got kinda hard to see with great big wings everywhere. I think it scared the guards, too, just a bit." She beamed up at them both, knowing. "Is that why you hide them?"

Lucifer found that he once again had no words, no air. Amenadiel, too, only scrubbed at his face with one hand in a flummoxed silence.

The little girl had no such trouble, her voice soft and sure. "But the guards were probably afraid of me, too. I told them to stop!" She looked up proudly. "Right, Maze?"

From the open doorway came a dry "Sure thing." Mazikeen stalked into the room with Linda hurrying at her heels. "You could have at least let us know what happened. She's not dead, right?" The demon stared at Trixie and the Detective, head cocked. "Small human seems to think she's fine, anyhow. Unless it's okay for a kid to cuddle a corpse."

"Ew!" Trixie wrinkled her nose and gave Hell's most talented torturer a mock-scowl. "Shhhh! Mommy's sleeping."

Mazikeen ruffled the child's hair fondly, then snatched her hand away and stared at it as if offended. "Well, whatever," she groused. "Looks like it worked. Guess that's good."

Linda touched Lucifer's cuff. "And you? Are you okay?"

He answered before he thought, still shaken by the child's vision, still afraid of what he knew he needed to do next. "Fine. Fine, Doctor. Thank you."

She stared at him speculatively, genuine affection and concern in her eyes. "You're not, are you?"

He glanced down at her, then at himself, his disheveled clothes barely hiding the scorched patches of skin—evidence of their battle to bring him back to this world. The burns, small and insignificant, nevertheless reminded him again of all that lay beneath his human visage, of his war with his Father and the newfound reasons to find a way to answer Him in kind. As much as he longed to be here, with these people both supernatural and human, he could not—would not—continue the farce that had been his entire Father-damned existence. Would not offer his trust again so easily.

Lucifer lifted his chin slightly, gave Dr. Linda a reassuring smile that masked the slow swell of anger and grief, and didn't answer her.

After all, the Devil did not lie.

The Detective and her progeny were in the best of hands—friends, family, guardians all. He knew he would speak to her when she woke, assure himself that all was well, and then . . . survive whatever he did, whatever came. He would move against all those who would control him. He would find a way to sever the strings of Fate, to harden his too-vulnerable heart, to leave behind everything, everyone—

Chloe Decker murmured something into her daughter's hair, dreaming. Amenadiel slid quietly over and ducked his head to whisper to Maze. Linda's hand found its way to the small of Lucifer's back, her touch cool through his shirt.

Lucifer drew a slow, deep breath, and, against his better judgment, hid the memory of this impossible hour and these improbable people deep below the surface. Somewhere deeper than his steadily thrumming heart. Somewhere he just might find it again.

A/N: Reviews always loved and appreciated. (You have no idea how much.) Would love to know if this helps with the hiatus or if I've made it worse? ;-)

(And for folks waiting on updates on "All I Need of Hell," a new chapter is coming soon! Hope this helps ease the wait.)