#behold my unedited draft written on my phone

[vroomian]

Yrz hit the garden of the royal palace in hell in ablaze of agony and with a glitching form. Unfortunately Lucifer and Lilith are out at the moment and three year old Charlie is in the garden with a pair of imp minders.

Unfortunately those imps see a random angel in the palace garden and abandon baby Charlie without looking back.

Wait, Yrz thinks through the agony, is that a fucking baby????

Also, Yrz immediately flash backs to his disastrous arrival in heaven and how he fried four weak angels just from loosing control.

Unfortunately this baby is sitting well within frying distance. She is also cute as — hah — hell.

Nope! Yrz has never hurt a baby in any goddamn lifetime and he’s not starting now. His monstrous will rises from the depths and his self control snaps it’s jaw around the agony and swallows it whole. He yanks his power into form. It still fucking hurts but that is the least important part of this situation. His glitching form snaps into a body that’s broken but solid. His paper wings and one leg are angled wrong, and what passes for ribs are for sure broken. Inky blood leaks from a multitude of wounds, turning to gold ichor when it touches the ground.

the baby remains unfried.

It only feels like he’s dying. It’s just a body. Yrz can deal.

Yrz’s still working on human adjacent facial features so he settles on manifesting one sheet of paper with a smiley face on it. “Hey honey, where are your parents?”

The little girl grins — and those are little baby fangs. “Daddy go out!”

Great.

Babysitting it is.

This, Yrz thinks, really is hell.

“You got a name, you little demon?”

The girls eyes honest to god sparkle. Why. How. “Char-char!

-

Lucifer and Lilith, alerted to an intruder by their panicked staff, show up in full demon forms.

They find baby Charlie happily scribbling over some of yrzs paper wings and chattering happily to a long suffering Yrz.

All the grown ups pause, wary.

Charlie immediately shrieks and wobbles to her parents in delight. Her very dangerous parents. Yrz recognizes that face from the archives.

Lucifer Morningstar snatches up his daughter like she’s a treasure he thought lost forever. And if that’s Lucifer the woman must be Lilith.

Yrz cannot catch a break.

Yrz clears his throat — or what passes for it. It sounds like a Peice of paper being torn apart. He morphs his stupid smiley face sheet into an origami rose. Harder to read. “I come in peace?”

Lucifer glances at the crater where his garden used to be. He raised an eyebrow.

Ah.

“I fell from heaven really, really fast in peace?” Yrz tries.

“Of course you did, And what do you do to be booted out of the pearly gates? Murder? Arson? Something — worse?” Lucifer sounded tired. He was still clutching Charlie to his chest which undermined the nonchalance in his voice.

Um. Yrz shrugs with his broken shoulders as much as he can. “Nothing really? I left.”

Yrz also trashed the place as he went, but that was more of a side effect than a cause. Besides, was a crime really committed if no one saw you do it?

“You — left.”

“Yeah.”

“You left paradise. The paradise created specifically for humans who lived virtuous lives. The paradise made specifically by God, the all knowing creator?”

“It was nice,” what Yrz had seen of it before he was locked in a golden cage for one hundred years. “But it was also kinda — boring.”

Lucifer stares. “Boring. My fathers crowning glory.”

“I’m sure God worked really hard on it?” Yrz half asked, getting a little annoyed with all the staring. “Look I don’t really know what you want me to say here. it’s not like I asked for eternal paradise okay. I literally just did my job to the best of my ability while I was alive! I don’t even worship any kind of god! I was ready for nothingness, without consciousness! Not hymns and sugar forever! No problems to solve at all!”

Yrz tried to keep himself entertained! But even all of the records of heaven couldn’t last forever for a being of pure information that Yrz had become, a thing that could just — absorb shit instantly,! make it a part of himself! He went through the whole archive in fifty years — and he never forgot anything anymore. Any longer in that cage and he would have chewed off his own wings. He would’ve broken his halo and used the pieces to see if suicide was still an option. He could feel himself slipping into that cold place where humanity meant less than nothing. The only thing that remained was the problem: a way out. By any means necessary.

Yrz was not a being made for stagnation.

Something was bound to break. So Yrz made sure it wasn’t him.

Sure heaven was a little bit… charred, but what prisoner felt bad for their jailers?

Not this one.

“What the fuck,” Lucifer said. His demon form vanished.

“Fuck!” Charlie said, cheerfully.

“Darling,” lilith said chidingly.

“Oh fuck — no I mean, darn! Sorry, dearest. Come on char-char, don’t say that, daddy didn’t mean to say a bad word!”

“Fuck!”

“Oh, this going to be like the s-word incident all over again huh? Why are children like this?”

Lilith and Yrz watched as the king of hell began to wander off, completely absorbed in his giggling daughter.

Finally Lilith broke the silence. “ you’re injured. Come and we shall see to your care.”

“And in return?” Yrz asked, wary.

He wouldn’t exchange one cage for another.

She smiled, a soft, sad little thing. “ while you recover, nothing. You shall be as an honored guest. Afterwards we shall negotiate.”

“…why?”

Lilith glanced after her husband and child. “I am no stranger to the marks left by those who are so convinced of their righteousness that they are blind to the grace of mercy. No one here is a friend to those golden cowards in their golden home.”

Yes. She would be. To be created and given to some man without choice — disgusting. Yrz would’ve rejected that commandment as well. He would belong to himself and those he chose.

“I can’t really move,” Yrz admitted sheepishly. “My — everything is broken.”

Lilith nearly smiled. “I am aware. The injures of a fall that long are also familiar. May I?” She knelt by him, careful of his wings. The scribbles from Charlie were very pink against their paleness.

Yrz blinked. Some sort of healing magic? “Sure — woah!”

Lilith picked Yrz up as if he weight nothing. He stifled a noise of agony and felt his form glitch again. He stilled with a grimness. No frying the queen of hell who’s trying to help you, asshole.

“Sorry,” he said because that had to sting.

“It is no matter,” Lilith said. “You are much more injured than I thought if your form is that unstable. “

“Well,” Yrz said. “There was a baby right there. I couldn’t just — my form is pretty difficult to withstand.”

Lilith paused and looked down to meet yrzs eyes would be, if he had any. “Thank you. She is dear beyond words to both of us. “

“I don’t need thanks for not hurting a kid,” Yrz said dryly. “Not lashing out when in pain is a basic adult skill.”

“And yet it is a rare talent.”

Yrz wished he had eyes so he could roll them. “It shouldn’t be.”

“Mama!” Charlie’s vice called out. “Come sing, sing! Fuck!”

Lilith laughed under her breath. She carried Yrz towards her home and family.

Hell, Yrz concluded, was beyond weird.

He felt better already.