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Passengers: Lucifer + Theo; Lucifer + Grace; Lucifer + y o u
Location: Greenhouse; conservatory; the vicinity of the gym; others by request
Date: Mid-March
Summary: Lucifer needs to explain himself to Theo; Grace is gonna talk (!?!?!) to Lucifer; Lucifer kills time while a nefarious plan executes; others by request
Warnings: Uhhhhhh none yet I'll edit if necessary

1. Theo, in the greenhouse

Lucifer doesn't feel relief at having the inmates switched out - on the contrary, he feels as if he failed Theo during their last session, and he needs to figure out how to fix it. Theo, he knows, is basically terrified of him, and will avoid him pretty much at all costs until or unless he corners the boy somewhere.

Obviously the best place to corner him is the greenhouse. And - indeed, there he is.

"Learn anything new lately?" he opens up with, keeping his voice light.

2. Grace (or anyone else?), in the observatory (OTA)

There really aren't many places on a space ship that are good for stretching one's wings - especially when your wingspan is like ten feet. The observatory is one of the few places for it, so when he finds himself with a cramp one night, he slips in, standing in front of the big window, gazing out at the stars as he rolls his shoulders and unfurls them. They're not just big - they actually glow faintly, with their own light in the dim room, though Lucifer's face twists in a slight wince as he stretches the right one out a bit, working the kink out of it.

That's when he spots someone, reflected faintly in the glass.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't see you there," he says automatically.

3. Near the gym (OTA)

After the elevator doors close, Lucifer meanders back in the direction of the gym. He looks a little self-satisfied, his jacket off, he sort of slings it over his shoulder cheerily.

Inmates who approach him will be asked if they'd like access to the gym. A warden may be asked if they'd like a spar. "Why not? I'm here for a while."

[ ooc: as always if you want to do something with Lucifer but none of these prompts work for you, ping me over at

frodabaggins or PM this journal. I can do prose or brackets, whatever you prefer. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She snorts, unattractively-- amused? Maybe. "For you, or for them?" That's not a real question. She's pretty sure Advil doesn't work on angels, the same way bullets don't.

Casually, she floats around his wing until she's basically next to him-- she's seen his wings before, on the planet where she said some pretty cruel things last. She didn't like the feeling in the pit of her stomach, the one that made her flesh crawl and her scars throb with the memory of old pain. It's still no excuse. The wings are pretty.

"Maybe you being indestructible had something to do with it," she mutters, "but they still could've split them up. Doesn't seem fair."

"I wouldn't think my invulnerability has anything to do with it," he says, watching her carefully. Again, it's not out of fear for himself, but rather as though he's worried if he makes any sudden moves, she'll bolt.

"In my experience, sometimes when two people can't stand each other, they need to be forced into a situation where they have to be on the same side. Even if temporarily."

He's not actually saying something about himself and Grace, but he's not specifying what he means, either.

"They need to, huh?"

She tosses a look to him out of the corner of her eye, before they flick back to the space vista outside. Space. Just a (presumably very thick) wall between herself and oblivion. Well, all of them and oblivion, really, but when you can and frequently do walk through walls, it feels a lot more precarious.

There's a reason Grace doesn't spend much time here.

"You think it makes people more productive, having to work with an adversary? Solves problems easier?"

She might be teasing. Her tone is... admittedly, extremely hard to interpret.

Lucifer is, admittedly, not always the greatest at reading people. Grace is tough for him to read, so all he can really do is - take her question as a serious one, and answer it with his usual honesty.

"I think finding common ground with someone is often worth the time and trouble. Keeping people apart forever simply because they don't see eye-to-eye won't help them find any common ground. Working together toward a common goal helped my brother and I improve our relationship."

His tone is not argumentative, or smug. He's not here to win a competition. He's not here to prove he knows best. He's simply speaking from his own perspective and experience.

A remarkably open and reasonable answer, and hang on did he just say brother?

"Sorry, your brother?" Grace is visibly disturbed by this thought. Angels have families now? They're not just... summoned into existence by some existential need? Are baby angels a thing?? This is powerfully stupid. Lucifer's universe, she concludes, must be very different from hers.

As if his existence wasn't evidence enough of that. Not that she'd been treating him any differently for it. Shit.

"Yes," he says easily. If he notices her discomfort, he doesn't remark on it. She's nearer the door - if she needs to leave, she can. Nothing is stopping her.

"Amenadiel," he adds, by way of further explanation. "If I have to analogize it, I suppose he was a bit like Travis and I was a bit like Rhys - only in the sense that he's more of a warrior type and I enjoyed goading him into fighting me, though." Gosh, he really hopes neither he nor Amenadiel are actually much like those two.

"Anyway, he ended up stuck on Earth without his powers or his wings, and then our Mum showed up, among other things, so we had bigger things to worry about for a while. We're on good terms these days."

"Your... Mum," she repeats, dumbly. And then laughs, because for crying out loud.

"The devil has a better relationship with his family than I do," Grace mumbles, burying her face in her hands. Ridiculous. "Of course. Of course they gave you Rhys and Travis. Talk about conflict of biblical proportions."

A very long sigh follows, where she scrubs her eyes with the heels of her palms until she can see stars even without opening her eyes. Then quiet, where she hovers very still, very calm. Thinking. For a very long minute.

"...I know you're not evil, you know."

Lucifer just... watches her take all this in, still idly stretching one of his wings to soothe away the vestiges of the cramp. Humans, they tend to have all sorts of different reactions to him being what he is, and how he is, and who he is. He's seen it all. Hysteria is definitely on that list, so if Grace needs to have giggle fits over his family history, well - okay, then. He's not bothered by it.

That last statement gets a curious tilt of his head, however.

"Oh? I'm glad to hear it," he says carefully. "I try not to be, as a general rule." Okay, that last bit might be a touch of self-deprecating humor.

"I mean the whole 'devil' thing. I'm not religious. It's not some kind of hang-up about what you represent, like, metaphorically, or something. That's not why I..."

She snaps her mouth shut, because she was about to say something cruel again. That's not what she came here to do. Be productive. She hugs her arms to herself, tightly.

"People here are way too nice to me, Lucifer. Everybody keeps treating me like I'm a good person. It's weird. I'm not." Her eyes flick away from the window, back to his face. "I just want people here not to hate me so much, so I'm careful about what I say, what I do. It doesn't mean I'm never, like, an awful bitch on the inside, I just don't usually say stuff out loud."

A beat. Then:

"I did to you, though. Because I'm scared of you. It's not your fault. You didn't deserve it. I'm sorry."

Lucifer... blinks. Opens his mouth. Closes his mouth. Blinks again.

He's encountered countless humans over the millennia, who've made all sorts of assumptions about him. Right or wrong, almost everyone he's ever met has associated the name Lucifer Morningstar with, well - lots of different things. And usually treated him based on those assumptions.

What's rarer is a human who is willing and able to come back around and apologize for doing so. Rare enough to take him by surprise, especially coming from Grace, who doesn't know him well.

"It's all right," he finally says, because - it is, it's fine. He's not irreparably damaged by Grace telling him he's an arrogant asshole. He knows he is, sometimes. "I'm sorry I scare you. If there's anything I can do to be - I don't know, less scary, I'll do what I can."

"There's nothing you can do about it," she blurts. Like it's something she's used to saying, except usually it's apologizing for making other people feel that way, and it's weird that she's having to reassure someone else about it now.

She really has been an asshole.

"You don't have to do anything, I mean. You shouldn't. It's not your problem. I'm paranoid and..." She trails off. Broken. And stupid. And should maybe still be dead, she thinks, and does not need to say. "Anyway. That's all I wanted to say. Sorry."

"There's 'not my problem' and then there's 'knowingly being an arsehole to aggravate the situation', though," Lucifer says after a moment. "I don't want to be the latter."

He stretches his wing one last time - all better. Then rolls his shoulders again, tucking them away, out of sight. "You seem like a good and kind person. You pointing out to me that I'm arrogant and wear expensive clothes doesn't make you less good or less kind."

"It kind of does." She mumbles, stares down at her feet (hovering three inches off the ground). "I was the one aggravating things. Being an asshole."

A moment of silence. Then:

"Where do they go when you put them away?"

Lucifer blinks again, then turns a bit, realizing she meant his wings. Right.

"Oh, um. In? They go in. I don't... know, precisely." It's not a biological thing that he can properly explain. It's ~magic~. He doesn't ponder it for long. It just is, he doesn't concern himself with how.

"Some of the best people I've ever known have said and done far worse things to me," he adds after a moment. "I don't think it makes them bad people, either."

In fact, he's pretty sure he told Grace as much - about Chloe, trying to send him back to Hell. He forgave her for that, readily enough. Of course, he'd forgive Chloe just about anything.

"In... your back? Do they shrink? They don't make holes in your clothes." These are questions she would have asked like a month ago, if she wasn't so busy hating him for no real reason. Honestly, focusing on the mechanics of it helps her ignore the warning bells in her brain.

It's the other stuff he says, though, that makes her quiet. And really look at him for a second. He's not lying.

"You're probably gonna be really good at this job."

"They don't shrink, I don't think. They're always there, just... out of the way." Not invisible, exactly, because if that were true they'd still probably bump into things.

But he's far more interested in her comments about being a warden.

"I hope so," he says. "I've helped several people in my own universe, get out of Hell and into Heaven. This is similar in a lot of ways, but also very different in others."

There's a brief moment where Grace is surprised that there actually is a Hell in his world, and then immediately feels like an idiot, because if there's a Lucifer, then of course there's a Heaven and a Hell. And then another moment where she wonders if other religions have their own separate afterlives, or if they all just kind of blur and mingle, and what about other pantheons? How can only one be objectively correct? And then her head hurts and she resolves to never think too hard about this again.

"Get out of hell? How long does that take?" Out of semi-professional curiosity.

Yeah, don’t overthink it, Grace. It’s not worth it.

“It’s different for everyone,” he says. “My first success took one very intense trip into his Hell loop. But I wasn’t actually trying with that one, and I think he was a relatively easy case, if anyone can be considered easy. He wanted redemption, he just needed a nudge to it. Arguably, I’m the longest case, if you count from Dad kicking me out of the Silver City to the day I busted back in.”

He says this thoughtfully, as if it’s the first time he’s really considering how long it takes.

"...Hope most of the inmates don't take that long to get there." Although, it's something to consider. Every inmate is going to be different, have their own journey to whatever it is they consider redemption. A lot depends on the match-up of warden-to-inmate. The wrong match could really fuck something up, or so William implied to her before. Although, from what he and Loki have said, life on the 'other ship' was a lot different from their weird limbo on the Peregrine. Maybe it's apples and oranges.

Still.

"Do you think any of the inmates here actually want redemption? I thought everyone would, before I came." And she was Wrong.

He has to admit, this conversation is going much better than he would've thought, even an hour or two ago, if someone had told him Grace would be talking to him again.

"I think nearly everyone wants it," he says. "The problem is admitting it to themselves, because that requires admitting a lot of other things. Admitting they did wrong in the first place, taking responsibility for those wrongs, facing parts of themselves they don't like. Being vulnerable."

He is, as usual, speaking from his own, often painful, experience. Some of it probably shows on his face.

"It's easier to pretend people can't change."

Grace can see it. For an unknowably ancient immortal supernatural being, he really does wear a lot of his feelings on the outside. How weirdly human of him.

"That explains a lot about Travis Touchdown," Grace deadpans. "He asked me what my--" and here she employs air quotes, "--'tragic backstory' is. Not kidding. Anyway, the conversation turned to him and his choices, because... of course it did, and he literally said to me that he doesn't even think he makes any. That people are hard-wired to be assholes or something and he's just being true to that. I told him how stupid that is, but you know. This was when William had him, and I passed it along, but I doubt he did anything about it. Maybe you can use it somehow."

A shrug.

Lucifer nods. "Yeah, he's said similar things to me. I used to be convinced that every bad thing that happened in my life was my Father's fault, because it was easier to blame God than to accept that I was making bad choices and self-sabotaging constantly."

His smile twists into something wry. "He knows if he takes responsibility for his own actions, he'll have to admit all that killing he's so proud of was completely pointless."

"Oh, sure. Nobody wants to admit when they make bad choices. Then they'd have to do something impossibly hard. Like, apologizing. ...For example."

She flicks a look at Lucifer, out of the corner of her eye, with a tight little smile.

"I bet every warden on board this ship could've been an inmate at some point in their lives."

Lucifer smiles. "There but for the grace of - well, I remember when Amenadiel was anything but graceful. Point stands."

He pauses a beat.

"Though I can't imagine Doctor Claire ever being an inmate."

Yeah. That's the problem with having a virtue name: People are gonna make puns. At least she got an inoffensive one, Grace reminds herself, constantly. It could always be worse.

Her sister's name is Prudence.

"Claire's kind of tough only comes from going through some stuff. She's had to fight for what she has. What she is. You can tell." A beat. "Or I can tell, anyway. Maybe it's a girl thing."