Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It is far too early in the damned morning when someone starts banging on his door.

Granted, Alastor is already awake. He’s always been an early riser, even before he died. But he does like to take an hour or so to mentally prepare for the day without having to deal with people, and he does not like his preparation interrupted.

So when his relaxing morning sitting at the bayou breakfast table with a cup of coffee and some light jazz is interrupted, Alastor is more than ready to commit a little murder over it.

“Deal with that, will you?” Alastor says out loud.

The pool of shadow at his feet stirs, and eyes appear in its depths, blinking sleepily. After a moment, the darkness uncurls into Phantom’s more recognizable outline. It gives him a baleful look, before muttering in its odd not-quite-speech, Noise-kill?

“Perhaps,” Alastor says. “See who it is, first, and if it’s an emergency of some kind.” He can grant some allowance if there’s an attack at the front door, or if it’s one of the original tenants. If one of the new guests has seen fit to bother him at seven-thirty in the morning, however, then Host or not, he’ll be having Sinner for breakfast.

Phantom slithers off across the bayou and into the room proper, melting under the door. A moment later, it reports sullenly, Light-Maker noise-maker.

And not even a second later comes Lucifer’s startled yelp, followed by, “Hey! Charlie already told you, leave my shadow alone. And me, too!”

Alastor groans, massaging his forehead with one hand. Of all the people to be outside his door before he is ready for company, Lucifer Morningstar is the least desired option. He’s obnoxious, he’s loud, he’s obsessive—and unfortunately for Alastor, he’s also indestructible. At least, indestructible without angelic steel on hand.

And also due to their...co-parenting pact. Alastor knows he’d agreed to it for the sake of convenience, and for protecting Charlie, but it still galls him that he’d ever agreed to work with Lucifer on anything.

“Send him away.” Alastor mutters it out loud, but he also transmits the thought in his head, enough for Phantom to pick up on outside the door.

A moment later, Lucifer yelps again. “Hey! Woah! No touchie! Wow, rude. First of all, it’s ‘Light-bringer,’ not ‘Light-maker,’ so jot that down. Second of all, you didn’t even ask what I’m here for, and it’s important!”

Alastor’s ears prick up in surprise at that. It sounds suspiciously like Lucifer is conversing with his shadow. Which no one has ever been able to do. Not even Charlie, outside of his own assistance with translating. It should be impossible.

Then again, Charlie had told him that Lucifer comprehended every single language, human and demon. Is it even possible for him to speak whatever form of language Phantom uses? Do shadows actually have a language of their own? He’s always been mentally connected to Phantom since he arrived in Hell, so he’s never even considered it.

Despite himself, he’s curious. So he sets his coffee down on the table and makes for the door himself, listening to the bickering outside.

Light-is-Light. Go-away-go-away-go-away-go-away.

“No, I get that Charlie is Light and yes I technically did make her but c’mon—hey! No, I’m not going anywhere until I talk to Alastor himself, okay? Geez, try to bring a guy a gift and he’s an asshole—”

Alastor whips the door open, and raises an eyebrow at the sight on the other side. Phantom looms over Lucifer, which is not a difficult feat given the man’s small stature, claws extended and swatting menacingly at Lucifer’s shadow. Lucifer himself has his hat off and is waving it back at Phantom like he’s trying to drive away a vexing fly, hopping back and forth like a puffed-up, upset bird.

Both freeze when the door slams open, Phantom grinning widely, Lucifer with a startled squeak and a look like he’d been caught stealing.

“Why, exactly, are you harassing my shadow outside my room at seven-thirty in the morning, sir?” Alastor asks, fixing him with a firm stare.

“I—what—I wasn’t harassing it, it was harassing me!” Lucifer says, indignant.

“You’re trespassing, so it has every right.”

“I’m not! I’m in the hallway! This is a public space!” Lucifer says, pointing at the carpet beneath his feet like it means anything at all.

“On my side of the private floor.”

“It’s our floor, and I can be here too. I built the place!”

Phantom sneers at him, before slithering back into the room and at Alastor’s feet. Alastor watches it go, before saying, “Well, the hallway is free of shadows now, so be on your way, if you please. It is far too early in the morning to deal with you.”

Lucifer rolls his eyes as he slaps his hat back onto his head. “Trust me, I’m not staying long. I just wanted to drop of a present before I go.”

“Go…?”

Ah. Yes. Today is Sunday. Specifically, Father’s Day. Charlie has an entire itinerary planned for the both of them, to Alastor’s bemusement. Despite Charlie’s repeated claims of him being a father figure to her, or her Monster Under the Bed as she preferred to call him, he had not actually anticipated being a part of the entire event.

But his half is in the afternoon and evening. Charlie had asked him to dress nice enough for dinner but comfortably enough to walk, and hadn’t said much more than that. She wanted to keep him in suspense, it seemed. Alastor is intrigued, and so is Phantom, but neither had gone so far as to dig into exactly what the surprise is. Father’s Day had never been an important day for him, when his own father was no one worth praising. But he’s never been a father figure of any kind himself before and is willing to indulge in a little anticipation for something new.

Lucifer, befitting of his surname, is scheduled for the morning and early afternoon. Charlie has a whole outing prepared for him, including brunch and some sort of event in one of the Lower Rings. Alastor isn’t sure on the details; something about a circus. He would have protested the outing, but he’s fairly certain that if Lucifer himself can’t keep her safe while out and about, absolutely no one can. Loathe as he is to admit it.

And the beginning of that schedule starts soon. “You are supposed to meet Charlie downstairs in less than ten minutes,” Alastor notes, glancing over his shoulder back at his clock. “Should you really be wasting time here?”

“Probably not, but for some fucking reason I thought I’d do something nice for you, too, on Father’s Day,” Lucifer grumbles. “Stupid, huh? The things I do for the Daddy Pact.”

Alastor bares his teeth at him. “Sir, we have talked about that name—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, weirdly sexual, whatever,” Lucifer says, waving the complaint off dismissively. “Look, I don’t have time to rehash that whole conversation, so let’s get down to business, yeah? Although, since you’ve been nothing but an asshole to me this whole time, maybe I don’t want to give you your gift anymore.”

There it is again, the second reference to some sort of gift. Alastor is curious despite himself, but also not willing to take the bait Lucifer is throwing out. He makes a show of rolling his eyes instead and says, “Sir, do whatever you had planned or don’t, but either way, stop wasting my time and your daughter’s, hmm? She’s gone through all the trouble to set up a day for you, you’d make quite a terrible father if you were late to your own celebration.”

Lucifer fumes in place for a moment, scowling up at Alastor. Alastor stares back unrepentant. For a moment, he’s certain that Lucifer will turn on his heels and march off in a sulk, or maybe rush off in distress at the thought of ever disappointing Charlie.

But after a moment of nearly vibrating in place, he says, “Ugh! I can’t not, not after I went through so much work to put it together. If you’re Charlie’s weird monster-dad, you gotta know about her.”

This is not the direction Alastor expects this to go in. “I beg your pardon? I know her well enough. I’ve supported her dreams for the past year, haven’t I?”

“But you don’t know her like I do.”

Alastor’s eye twitches despite himself. “Oh, do excuse me for not literally being there at her birth. I was probably busy being enslaved by your wife, and doing her dirty work for her since she was otherwise engaged at the moment!”

“Ex-wife!” Lucifer snaps, eyes flaring red, before clutching at the brim of his hat with both hands and pulling it down over his face. “Ah, shit, shit, shit. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Fuck. Okay, rewind, starting over.”

Alastor narrows his eyes at Lucifer. But Lucifer only lets go of his hat and shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it, before saying in a measured, careful way, “I wasn’t trying to make it a comparison. I’m trying to offer you an opportunity.”

Alastor can’t help but raise an eyebrow at this. “Are you intending to make a Deal, then?”

Lucifer barks a laugh. “Hah! Even if you had anything I want, which you don’t, you probably couldn’t survive a Deal with me. No, I said it already, you antique radio. I’m giving you a present. A Father’s Day present. It’s a gift, free of charge.”

This is perplexing enough that it cools Alastor’s ire in favor of confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“Look, we’re wasting time. Let me just show you.” And with a flourish, Lucifer pulls something out of thin air and shoves it in Alastor’s direction.

Alastor barely manages to tuck his staff under one arm before the object thumps into his stomach and he scoops it up. He blinks down at it in bewilderment. It’s a book—a surprisingly beautiful book, with a soft maroon-dyed leather cover and embossed gold tooling. The book is ornately designed with apple motifs, and across its front gold letters stamp, The Book of Charlie.

Despite his confusion, Alastor can’t help but note, “A rather biblical title, don’t you think?”

“Family tradition,” Lucifer says. “Go ahead, open it.”

Alastor regards Lucifer suspiciously. The book is beautiful, but holding it in his hands, he’s aware of the hum of magic inside it. Books in Hell can be dangerous, full of arcane spells and strange rituals, and it’s best not to open one until determining what’s in it. “Is this going to harm me in any way if I open it?”

Lucifer rolls his eyes. “Suspicious guy! No, it’s harmless.”

“There’s magic in it.”

“Preservation spells to keep it from decay, damage, or fading, mostly,” Lucifer says. “Some memory spells too. You’ll see why when you open it.”

Still cautious, Alastor flips the book open to a random page...and blinks in surprise. Instead of drawings of spell circles or detailed ritual rules or sketches of materials and vévé for conjure, the open pages contain photographs. The left page shows a much smaller Charlie, wide-eyed and chubby-cheeked, enthusiastically blowing out six candles on a disgustingly pink cake settled before her. The opposite page is the same Charlie, surrounded by unfamiliar demons, as she tears glittering pink wrapping paper off a box in front of her. Beneath the photographs, a surprisingly neat golden script reads, Charlie’s 60th birthday, making a wish! And Charlie and her Uncle Ozzie, Aunt Bee, and Aunt Belphegor, opening Auntie Bee’s present. It was an BEE-Z Bake Oven. I ate runny lukewarm brownies for weeks.

“What...is this?” Alastor asks slowly. He can’t help but stare, entranced, at the little Charlie Morningstar on the page. Even so much smaller, she still has that same innocent smile and wide-eyed wonder in her eyes. And that same delight for inane and overly-cute things, apparently.

“It’s a photo album, obviously,” Lucifer says. “And these ones, with the gold outlines?” He points at the still image of Charlie blowing out the candles, which does indeed have a faint, shimmering gold outline. “They’re actually memories I copied out of my mind and bound to a page. Not video, don’t worry, I know you’re a stickler about that. Just tap them gently and they’ll show the scene.”

Alastor tries it, perplexed. To his surprise, the moment he gently touches the corner of the picture, it starts to move. Little Charlie takes a deep breath—despite it being some kind of moving picture, the sound is audible—and tries to blow out the candles, squeezing her eyes shut. She accidentally spits hellfire instead, and ends up setting them on fire almost as fast as she puts them out. Most of the onlookers surrounding her laugh and cheer, until a hand from the viewer’s perspective that he recognizes as Lucifer’s waves gently, and the candles go out all at once. Little Charlie doesn’t notice the difference, and bounces up and down excitedly on her chair, squealing, “I did it! I got them all this time!”

Alastor likes to think he has a very tight control of his emotions, but he can’t help but snort at that even so. Her little voice is so squeaky, and she sounds so proud of herself, and has absolutely no idea that she’s been conned...however innocently.

“She’s cute, isn’t she?” Lucifer says fondly. “I didn’t have the heart to tell her I put those out for her for years. She’d been working so hard to control her hellfire, y’know? The year before she set her cake on fire. There’s a memory of that in there somewhere, too.” He gestures to the earlier part of the book. “Bee had to create another cake on the spot when Charlie wouldn’t stop sobbing about how she ruined the first one. Took me half an hour to calm her down. Kids.”

“She certainly is...excitable,” Alastor agrees. “Though you appear to have made a mistake in your description.”

“Huh?” Lucifer frowns, leaning over Alastor’s elbow to read the annotations beneath the photographs. “No, that’s right.”

“It can’t be. It says it’s her sixtieth birthday party. She’s hardly a grandmother, and there are only six candles on that cake.”

Lucifer shrugs. “I mean, getting sixty candles on a cake is a pain. May as well just set it on fire at that point. We just did six to make it easier.”

“Implying that she is sixty years old in this photograph,” Alastor says slowly.

“Yeah.”

“Six decades. Six-zero. Not just six.”

“Real glad to know you can count, Bed Monster,” Lucifer says. “I’d be a little worried letting Charlie call you a father if you didn’t know your numbers.” He smirks up at Alastor, but at Alastor’s dumbfounded expression, he adds slowly, “Uh, problem?”

Alastor is certainly beginning to think so. “Lucifer. How old is Charlie, exactly?” Because up until this point, he could have sworn the girl isn’t a day over twenty-five.

“Oh, she’s still pretty young,” Lucifer admits. “Two hundred and twenty-three next month. That’s why I worry about her so much, you know? She’s still figuring out how the world works.”

Alastor considers this in silence for a very long moment, before saying, “To be clear. You are saying Charlie is over two centuries old.”

“Sure,” Lucifer says. “Born in 1802.”

Alastor stares at him, incredulous. He was born in 1898, and besides Lucifer himself, is possibly the oldest member of the Hazbin Hotel. Or so he’d thought. His grandmother hadn’t even been born before Charlie. Possibly his great-grandmother hadn’t been born before Charlie. He didn’t even exist when this photograph was taken. And yet somehow, everything about Charlie now screams that she’s younger, more naive, and more innocent than him.

“How?” he asks, stunned.

Lucifer raises an eyebrow at him. “How was Charlie born in 1802? Do I need to give you the talk about the birds and the bees? Because it works basically the same as it does for humans—”

Alastor can’t stop the flush of embarrassment from spreading over his face, or his ears from flattening, but he does bare his teeth with a snarl. “I will kill you if you try,” he snaps. “I’m not asking for the...mechanics. I’m asking how the Hell she’s over two centuries and yet still so ignorant about the way the world works. Especially how Hell works.”

“Oh. Well.” Lucifer shrugs. “We kept her in the palace a lot, for her own safety. I mean, Princess of Hell—kind of a good target.”

“Not what I mean.” Alastor gestures to the photographs. “How is it that she is sixty years old here, but only appears to be a child?”

“Oh!” Lucifer nods in understanding. “Well, Charlie’s kind of a...unique case. There’s no one else quite like her, y’know? She’s part angel on my side, and a human-demon hybrid on her mother’s, and all of that mixes kind of...weird. We think she inherited some of my extended lifespan. She ages a lot slower than most mortal things. She really is about the equivalent of a six year old there.” He points at the photograph. “More or less. Not an exact science, but every ten years of her lifespan is about the equivalent of a year for a mortal human.”

Alastor looks down at the photographs again. Charlie really does look young in the pictures, or in the memory when it moves. She sounds and acts like children at that age that he remembers seeing when alive. It’s hard to imagine she has already, as this tiny thing, lived for nearly twice as long as Alastor ever managed. He’d died at thirty-five, which was young for human standards even in his day, but had still allowed him to live a rich and productive life while he had it.

Heavens above. She’d have been the rough equivalent of nine, perhaps ten years of age when he was born. By the time he’d died, she’d only have matured as far as the equivalent of a thirteen year old. It’s a bewildering realization to come to grips with, precisely because it is so strange.

“Is that weird?” Lucifer asks, giving him an odd look.

“She was born nearly a century before I was and yet considers me a parental figure,” Alastor says. “So yes, it is weird.”

“Oh. Hmm. Never really thought about it,” Lucifer says, crossing his arms with a puzzled expression. “Time’s sort of a non-issue for me. I mean, when you can count your age in eras of Earth, a couple centuries here and there are the blink of an eye.”

“I am frankly afraid to ask how old you are, if you think two centuries are a blink.” Alastor is just coming up on his first century of death, eight years from now. For the most part, it’s either been full of suffering, or dreadfully boring, with nothing ever changing and nowhere new to go in the Pentagram.

It has been a very long century.

But Lucifer only shrugs, and says absently, “I helped design stars. And the Earth. And things on the Earth. Dinosaurs were my favorite, at least until I came up with ducks.”

And that is just about all the metaphysical and demonic nonsense Alastor can take today. Instead of pursuing that line of thought further, he glances down at the book again and says, “Why are you giving me this?”

“So you can get to know Charlie better,” Lucifer says. “And see, it’s already working!”

“But why,” Alastor insists. “Why you, specifically? We may have established a...pact, in order to protect Charlie. But I know I’m hardly your biggest fan. Why spend your time putting together something like this, for me?”

“I told you,” Lucifer says. “You don’t know her like I do. But I think you deserve to, after everything you’ve done to help her. Deserve it more than my ex-wife, at any rate. And sometimes when me and Charlie are talking about older times I’ve spotted you looking just a little bit jealous.”

Alastor snaps the book shut. “I am not jealous.”

Lucifer snorts. “Bitch, please. Father of Lies.” He points at himself with one hand. “Origin of Sin.” He points at himself with the other. “I can practically see the envy coming off you in waves, and I can smell the lies on your breath.” He points both fingers at Alastor, wiggling them around a little.

“Shut up,” Alastor hisses through grit teeth. “I am not jealous. I am on occasion irritated that your...ex-wife has those sorts of memories when she clearly does not appreciate them or deserve them.”

“Not arguing with you there,” Lucifer says. He doesn’t look fully convinced by Alastor’s insistence that he’s not jealous, but he doesn’t push it. “And for the record, nothing in that book has...her in it. I cut memories around her if I had to or excluded pictures she’s in. Figured you didn’t want the reminder after all the crap she put you through.”

And in a smaller voice, a little more forlorn, he adds, “It wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be.”

That has unsettling implications for the little Morningstar family and how present Lilith had really been in their lives, or at least Charlie’s most important moments. Alastor doesn’t want to dwell on that, so all he says is, “The thought is...appreciated.”

Lucifer shrugs, absently summoning his Fruit-of-Will topped staff to fiddle with the star shaped fruit at its head. “I cut myself out of some too, if I could,” he adds absently. “I know we have the dad—uh, co-parenting pact, but we’re not exactly friends here, so I figured you wouldn’t wanna look at my mug in your book about Charlie. The memories are mostly from my point of view anyway, so you won’t see me a lot. But Charlie’s just so stinking cute in some of them that I’m also in, I had to include it anyway.”

“I’m sure I’ll survive,” Alastor says, running a hand absently over the embossed cover of the book. Lucifer’s handiwork, he assumes. The man does have a talent for creating things. Usually gaudy, obnoxious things, but this is surprisingly nice.

“Anyway. That’s it. And, shit, will you look at the time, I gotta go.” Lucifer starts to back away from the door, still fiddling awkwardly with his walking stick. “Anyway. Enjoy. Uh, if you have questions about anything, I can answer them later. Figure you can learn a little more about Charlie this way though and—well I guess you deserve it, after everything, so, um—”

“Lucifer.”

“Eh?”

Alastor refuses to meet his eyes, instead staring down at the gold-embossed title. “Thank you. It is a...thoughtful gift.”

“Oh! Um. Ha-ha. You’re welcome, I guess, Charlie’s just so great I can’t help but share everything about her, I’m sure you want to brag about her all the time too after all the amazing stuff you’ve seen her do and—”

“Lucifer.”

“Huh?”

“You’re going to be late. Do not keep Charlie waiting, not after all her efforts to set a day up with you.”

“Shit!” Lucifer whirls, and in a twist of flames, he disappears.

Alastor rolls his eyes and steps back into his room. Phantom rises from the floor to close and lock the door for him as he makes his way back to his bayou and breakfast table, cradling the book with surprising care.

Read-now? Phantom asks, slithering up over his shoulder with curiosity.

He sets the book on the table, running a hand over the soft leather again. “I suppose I didn’t have anything planned for the morning anyway,” Alastor muses. Vaggie had agreed to take the guests’ needs for the day to give Charlie time with her father and Alastor. He had planned to still do a little work over the course of the day, perhaps tackling the pile of invoices and inventory in the office, but…

Well, bills can wait a day. He is far more interested in sating his curiosity.

Who had Charlie been, before Alastor met her? Now is the time to find out.

He summons fresh coffee, and opens the book to its first page. Immediately he is met with a picture of Charlie as a newborn infant on her first day of life. She looks tiny, wrapped in a little red blanket, most of her hidden away except for her head and one itty-bitty hand. Her alabaster white skin is still translucent and the marks on her cheeks are more rosy than ever, and she looks both fragile and squishy. There is a little bit of blonde hair, short and scruffy, on her otherwise bald head.

Light-little-very! Phantom remarks, surprised.

“She was only just born,” Alastor says, scanning the golden script below the photograph. It reads:

First day in the world!
Princess Charlotte Lilliael Eden Morningstar
Born: July 23, 1802, 5:03 AM
Length: 18 inches
Weight: 6.8 pounds
Born happy and healthy. Screamed just long enough to let us know she was alive and then went right back to sleep. Didn’t like making people upset even then.

“I believe it,” Alastor says, vaguely amused.

The following picture is somehow more surprising. This one includes Lucifer, holding the newborn Charlie in his arms. There are tears in his eyes, but he looks happy as he cradles her close in a careful hug. Infant Charlie is still asleep, although this must have been a few hours after the last picture, because her skin is less translucent.

What really strikes Alastor is the size difference. Assuming Lucifer is the same short little bastard he’s always been here, that makes Charlie so small, and the picture emphasizes it in a way the measurements on the prior page simply can’t do justice to. With her eyes closed, Charlie looks like a little porcelain doll that Lucifer is holding, a toy and not a person. It’s almost unfathomable that this tiny little thing could one day be the same Charlie that let him through the doors of the Hazbin Hotel. Or willingly stared down Adam. Or threatened her mother.

This seems to be the intent, because the note beneath the picture in Lucifer’s script says, Sorry to put me in so early, but you just had to see the size difference! Look how itty-bitty she was! Isn’t she adorable?!

Alastor hates to agree with Lucifer on anything. But he does have to begrudgingly admit that Charlie is, in fact, very tiny, and very adorable.

Phantom agrees as well. Light-tiny-very-very-very-very! It says, shocked. Hold-in-hand! It outstretches one of its massive sets of claws to demonstrate.

“I suppose you could,” Alastor says. Its shock is perplexing, until he realizes that in Hell, Phantom would have seen very few infants. Most children are spared the indignity of Hell due to their innocence. There are some older children in Cannibal Town, but those ones would have been old enough to understand what sins they were committing, enough to damn themselves here. Only Hellborn children would be common in Hell, but most Hellborn lived in the Lower Rings. Imps were the most likely Hellborn to live in the Pride Ring, or the Goetia on the outer circles, and none of them were stupid enough to bring their largely mortal children to the city of Sinners.

Either way, although Phantom is a part of Alastor, they don’t share experiences prior to his death. Phantom seems genuinely fascinated, crawling further over Alastor’s shoulder for a better look.

“Antlers out of my face,” Alastor says, pushing its head aside.

Phantom hisses at him, but it’s mostly out of habit. It readjusts to have a better angle that isn’t also blinding Alastor in the process, curling over his head instead.

Lucifer had set up the book on chronological order, and Charlie’s birth photos gradually grow older as he progresses through the pages. Her father had caught a number of her childhood milestones, either with a picture or witnessing it personally, and Alastor slowly makes his way through them. The first time she sat up on her own (almost five years after her birth). Her first toddling steps on her tiny hooves. Her first word (“Sing,” which had disappointed the memory Lucifer greatly since it wasn’t ‘dada.’ Alastor had laughed). Her first lemon, and the puckered face she made at tasting sour for the first time. Her tenth birthday, which was the equivalent of her first birthday by human standards, when she was finally old enough and coordinated enough to be given a cake. She’d put her hands in it enthusiastically and made a mess, rubbing frosting all over her face.

He finds her first smile especially radiant. One is never fully dressed without a smile, but Alastor’s smiles have been calculating or masking for over a century. Charlie’s first smile, on her chubby little baby cheeks, is full of innocence and trust and happiness of the purest kind. Even the memory of it nearly takes Alastor’s breath away.

There are some firsts humans never deal with, either. Alastor doesn’t know much about Hellborn anatomy, but it seemed nobody at all knew what sorts of traits Charlie would develop, between her mixed angelic and demonic heritage. Every time she develops something new—tiny horns, a little spade tail, coughing hellfire in her sleep—Lucifer tracks it with almost religious fervor.

As Charlie ages and grows more mature, she starts to show more personality. It’s almost funny, how fast she seems to change from a living, squishy potato in these photographs and memories, to something that suddenly found sentience. At some point there’s life and understanding and intelligence in her eyes that wasn’t there before, in earlier pictures. She starts forming connections, understanding things, creating opinions.

This is when the Book of Charlie starts to get genuinely interesting, as she begins to grow into the version of herself that Alastor knows nearly two centuries later.

Still photographs are still common. Pictures of Charlie nestled among her favorite stuffed toys. Birthday parties, with her very powerful family all around her. Sinsmas pictures, surrounded by wrapping paper and a horde of gifts. Bath times surrounded, unsurprisingly, by an army of rubber duckies in bubbles up to her neck. Sitting on a little pony and supported by her father while an imp attendant held the reins. Holding up messy art projects of paint and glitter and dried pasta, covered just as much in the art medium as the pages.

But the memory scenes become more and more common too, and Alastor can see why. Charlie has so much personality, even so young, it’s hard not to adore her or want to hold those moments forever. They’re always from Lucifer’s perspective, which is a bit irritating, especially when his hands in the view or his voice so close breaks the illusion of Alastor watching himself. But that’s a small price to pay for windows into some of these moments that happened when Alastor wasn’t around, or when he didn’t even exist.

Toddler Charlie carefully plays with a shape-sorting toy, dropping colorful, cut blocks of the appropriate shapes into their matching holes over a bucket. Lucifer’s hand appears to pluck up a bright blue triangle and wedge it through the square hole, and Charlie gasps as though actual murder has been done. “No, Daddy!” she says immediately. “That’s wrong! No!”
“Alright,” Lucifer laughs. “How do I do it, then?”
And Charlie hands him another bright blue triangle and guides his hand as she very carefully instructs him how to fit it into the triangle hole. When he does it successfully, she claps and bounces in delight, and says, “Yay, Daddy! Good job, Daddy!”

Light-Maker-stupid, Phantom notes.

“I am not disagreeing, although in this instance he is clearly playing with her,” Alastor says. If the King of Hell doesn’t know his squares from his triangles, all of Hell is well and truly fucked.

Toddler Charlie absolutely howling with fury, tears pouring down her face, as she yells, “No no no!”
“It’s okay, Sweetheart,” Lucifer insists, as his memory’s viewpoint shifts and crouches down in front of her. “It’s just a shadow, Char-Char, it can’t hurt you—”
“NO!” Charlie howls, pointing at her shadow on the wall, which is a completely natural shadow and points right back at her. “STOP IT! STOP COPYING ME! STOP IT, I HATE IT, STOP IT!”
“That’s what shadows do, Sweetheart,” Lucifer says. He sounds helpless, but also like he’s trying very hard not to laugh in the face of Charlie’s clear and obvious distress. “It makes a picture of you out of darkness, see? I have one too.” He points at his own shadow on the wall.
“I don’t WANT it to! Tell it to STOP!” Charlie wails.
But obviously, Lucifer can’t stop basic physics, and this shadow isn’t alive. It continues to copy Charlie’s every movement based on the light behind her. Her meltdown grows truly catastrophic until she throws herself on the floor, kicking and screaming, about the existence of her own shadow—which, of course, also throws itself on the floor and sets her off again. The memory-Lucifer’s voice sighs, but also chokes as though still trying very hard to not laugh, as the point of view backs up and waits for Charlie to calm down.

Alastor shakes his head, incredulous, but he also can’t help but laugh a little. “Truly the little things that will upset children,” he notes.

Over his head, Phantom is practically wheezing laughter and amusement through their mental link at the absolute ridiculousness of telling a natural shadow not to exist. Phantom-make-Light-shadow-stop? It asks, twisting to grin at Alastor upside-down.

“You are not permitted to take her shadow at all,” Alastor says. “...but perhaps mimicking her when she’s not paying attention would be an acceptable prank.” Most people didn’t pay attention to where their own shadow was, or what shape it took based on the lighting around it, which was something they’d taken advantage of more than once.

Phantom-funny-scary, it purrs in response, and Alastor just knows it’s plotting.

The note under the tantrum memory is an especially long one from Lucifer. It writes, I’m not gonna show you all of these meltdowns—

—thank goodness, Alastor thinks, because even this one got grating after a few moments despite the ridiculousness of it all, listening to Charlie wail like that—

—but just so you know, fifteen minutes later she forgot about this whole thing, or the fact that her shadow was ‘copying’ her. Kids. They’ve got it rough, right? So many big emotions in those little bodies. They just explode out whatever way they can. If you’re curious, some other things she had meltdowns over in the past were:

• Not allowed to eat the fruit on Daddy’s hat (way too young to understand the irony of that one)

• Gave KeeKee some of her snacks. KeeKee ate her snacks. Upset because KeeKee ate her snacks.

• Not in all of the portraits in the palace that had me or her mother in them. Almost all of them were done before she was born. For thousands of years. She was twenty-five.

• Could not see her horns on top of her head. Was absolutely convinced the butler made them disappear, even when we had her touch them with her own hands.

• Wanted to have wings like me. Upset to learn she didn’t have any. Tried to throw herself off the second floor balcony in the grand foyer of the palace to fly and ‘make the wings come out like daddy’s.’ Screamed for twenty minutes when one of the servants stopped her. (I gave that man a bonus for not letting her crack her head open though).

• Her Uncle Asmodeus was “too fluffy.” I’m not even sure what that means.

Alastor’s eyebrows raise the further he gets down the list. “I think I’m quite glad to have missed this stage of development overall,” he confides to Phantom. His shadow nods in agreement. As funny as these things sound now, if Charlie threw an absolute fit like this over inane things like that all the time, Alastor is fairly certain he would have lost his mind. Not hurt her, not Charlie, but he’d absolutely have to leave the room before that screeching in his sensitive ears made him start breaking other things.

Though...that does put certain things into perspective. He cocks his head curiously as he re-watches the memory, but this time he pays attention to the way Lucifer reacts, not Charlie throwing a fit over her shadow ‘copying’ her. The man is obviously exasperated, even if he finds the reason for the fit a bit funny. But he only tries to calm Charlie, and when that doesn’t work, he backs off and lets her burn herself out. No yelling, no taking out his frustrations on the girl for being upset over something so stupid, no raising a hand to her even once.

He can’t help but think, if this is how children are, that he must have pulled this sort of stunt when he was a toddler. And he can’t help but think that his mother would have handled it with grace, and his father would have handled it with beatings. He probably had, even if that’s all too far away for Alastor to remember anymore.

Alastor grudgingly finds that his impression of Lucifer grows fractionally more positive. The bar his father had set is in Hell, but, well, they are too. It says a lot that even the Devil himself manages to clear it with ease.

Other memories lead Alastor’s mind to less dark places, thank goodness.

“Did you paint on the wall, Charlie?”
“No,” little Charlie says.
The point of view in Lucifer’s memory turns to stare at a nearby shining white palace wall. It could not more obviously be smeared in purple paint along the bottom foot and a half of the wall with tiny violet hand-prints. The little purple hoof-prints on the floor are also a dead giveaway, especially when they lead straight to the culprit. Lucifer’s view follows the trail straight to little Charlie herself, spattered with paint and caught red (or in this case, purple) handed. She blinks up at him innocently, clearly having no doubt in the world in her lie.
Lucifer’s voice is strained, like he’s trying very hard not to laugh. “Are you sure about that answer, Sweetheart? Remember, we talked about how lying is bad.”
“Mommy says you’re a daddy to lies,” Charlie says. “And you’re my daddy, so I can lie, too. But I didn’t lie, ‘cause I didn’t paint on the wall.”
“Uh-huh,” Lucifer says, and now it is very clear he’s fighting hard not to burst out laughing. “How did the paint get on your hands, Sweetheart?”
Charlie looks down at her hands, and seems to realize the evidence is there for the first time. Her eyes go wide as she looks up at her father again, and she makes a perfect little ‘o’ of surprise with her mouth before stammering, “I fell in it!”
“You fell in the purple paint?”
“Yeah!”
“On just your hands and feet?”
“Yeah!” Charlie nods enthusiastically.
“Are you sure, Charlie? Are you really sure that’s the answer?” This time, despite the obvious amusement at the terrible lie, there’s a tone of sternness in his voice.
Charlie’s eyes water up almost immediately. “No,” she whimpers. “Are you mad, daddy?”
“I’m not mad. But this is a very big mess, and it’d be mean to make the servants clean it up. So, how about we clean it up together, and you can tell me why you wanted to paint on the wall? Maybe we can get you some other things to paint on instead.”
“Will you paint with me?”
“Of course! But only after we clean.”

Alastor rolls his eyes. “I see her inability to lie is innate from a young childhood,” he notes. Although he can’t help but re-watch the memory again just to see brazen little toddler Charlie, caught purple-handed, vehemently denying the crime anyway. He admires that sort of dedication to one’s craft. Perhaps it’s something he could tease back out of her, reteach her, if given enough time to train her properly.

After all, little Charlie wasn’t wrong: she is the daughter of the Father of Lies, and she damn well better learn his craft at some point. Perhaps from someone who is more uniquely gifted to the art of hiding lies in truths, and truths in lies, and manipulating meanings on both ends.

The memories go on. So many of Charlie figuring out how the world works, and determining how she feels about it all. Getting KeeKee as a kitten for a birthday present (and goodness...that means that cat is older than Alastor too, damn it). Receiving Razzle and Dazzle, who were nearly as big as her back in the day. “Helping” one of the imp servants to bake a pie for a Father’s Day present and being absolutely covered in flour. (It was an apple pie, Lucifer’s golden script said, and it was the worst thing I’ve ever eaten because Charlie put a ton of salt in when the servant wasn’t looking, but I ate the whole damn thing). Getting absolutely covered in dirt and mud in the garden while trying to catch bugs. Singing silly little songs to her toys and Razzle and Dazzle as she served them imaginary drinks at tea parties. Walking around her nursery with the golden snake normally on Lucifer’s hat draped around her shoulders like a feather boa, pretending to be rich and important, unaware that she was rich and important. Getting caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar, knocking it over, and trying to blame the cat for it. Singing so, so, so many songs; learning songs to teach her things, and songs she makes up at every chance she can. Flying with her father, arms outstretched and pretending his wings were her own.

Her firmly set sense of morality in her later years certainly isn’t there as a toddler. Alastor finds it quite amusing. He was never overfond of children in life, and he’s mostly relieved he needn’t deal with them anymore in death. But he can respect that they are refreshingly honest and self-centered, and never seem to do anything that they don’t feel like doing without being pushed into doing so.

Lucifer seems to include anything and everything that lets Alastor see who Charlie was, or is, or where she came from. But there is one memory in particular that he seems to have included entirely for Alastor’s benefit, with him in mind as an audience.

“Alright, you’ve had two stories Char-Char, it’s time for bed,” Lucifer says, and his hands in the memory snap a storybook shut as he levers himself up from the bright purple bedspread.
“No! Not yet!” little Charlie wails. “I don’t want you to go yet.”
“Why not? You have to go to sleep so tomorrow will come.”
“But if you go away monsters and angels might get me!”
Lucifer sets the book aside on Charlie’s nightstand and affects a gasp. “But I’m an angel! Does that mean I can get you...like this?” His hands dart out to tickle Charlie’s neck. “Get you, get you, get you!”
Charlie squeals with laughter, trying to pinch her head against her shoulder to stop her father’s tickling assault. “Nooooo!” she yelps, kicking and wriggling in bed. “Not like that! Stop it!”
Lucifer laughs, but relents. “So what’s the problem then, Sweetie?”
“There might be Not-Daddy Angels,” Charlie says seriously, her tickle-induced cheer fading rapidly as she looks up anxiously at her father. “Like from the ‘ster-min-shuns.”
“Oh, Sweetie, that won’t happen here,” Lucifer says immediately, swooping close to run a hand over her hair. “I promise. They’re not allowed to hurt you, and I’d never let them. Never, ever, ever.”
“But what if there are? Or monsters?”
“I guess I’ll have to check for them, would that make you feel better?” Lucifer asks. Charlie nods insistently. “Alright, where do I look first?”
“Under the bed!”
“Right. Under the bed. Alright, monsters, if you’re under the bed, you’re gonna be in so much trouble, ‘cause this Daddy Angel will get you,” Lucifer says. He makes a show of pulling up the blankets to look under the bed, although obviously there’s nothing at all beneath it besides a few discarded toys and dust bunnies. “Nope! No monsters there. No Not-Daddy Angels either.”
“Closet!” Charlie insists next. And so Lucifer checks in the closet, pushing aside racks of little dresses and coats and nightgowns, casting motes of light inside to assure the little girl there’s nothing lurking inside. Then behind the door. In the wardrobe. In the toybox. No matter what ridiculous place Charlie thinks a monster or an angel might lurk, Lucifer checks every one, making a game out of it all.
“There!” He says eventually. “We’ve checked every spot, right Sweetie?”
Charlie nods, but she looks forlorn. “Still don’t want you to go, Daddy…”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like the dark. What if monsters come out in the dark once you leave?”
“Aw, Sweetie. I can leave a light on, if you want. You like your star nightlight, right?”
“But it’s not the same as you! And there’s still dark.”
“Well, what if I told you dark doesn’t always have to be scary?”
“It doesn’t?”
“Nope! You can have fun with the dark, too. Let me show you! We’ll have to turn out most of the lights, but don’t worry, I’ll still be here.”
Charlie whimpers a little when the lights go out. Lucifer’s memory sight looks down at his daughter cuddled against his side anxiously. He pats her on the head and says, “Now, hold this for me,” and hands her a flashlight.
She does, and angles it as instructed when he guides her hands. The light casts a wide circle on the wall, which Lucifer uses to make shadow puppets with his hands. They’re simple enough things to delight a little girl—bunnies, dogs, birds. One absolutely insulting caricature of a deer.
But little Charlie is in awe of the way the dark she’s so scared of can be fun, just like her father promised. She tries her own shadow puppets, struggling to coordinate her stubby little toddler fingers with any finesse, but she has fun.
And eventually, when Lucifer says it’s time for bed for real this time, Charlie relents. He lets her keep the flashlight at her bedside when he tucks her in.
“So you can summon your shadow friends if you ever need a reminder again,” he tells her, and she smiles up at him, radiant.

The memory is long, but Alastor can’t look away, and neither can Phantom. The note in the book beneath the memory says only, in Lucifer’s flowing golden script, Guess I missed a monster. Or maybe that flashlight was stronger than I thought. Figured you’d like this one either way.

“Bastard,” Alastor mutters out loud, grinding his teeth. But he is disgusted to admit to himself that Lucifer is precisely right: this might just be one of his favorites. It makes him feel squishy and warm inside, emotions he’s since learned mean love and affection. Damn it.

This one certainly seems to be Phantom’s favorite. Alastor replays the memory, and it points gleefully at the moment Lucifer looks under the bed. Solid-Phantom!

“It certainly is the origin of Charlie’s name for us,” Alastor agrees.

Phantom grins over the memory, and laughs at the pathetic little shadow puppets Lucifer puts together. Phantom-better, it says, and leaps away from Alastor’s shoulders to splash into the grass at his feet and turn into a perfect rabbit, then falcon, and then an accurate silhouette of his full elk form. It rushes around the small glade Alastor’s breakfast table is in, before leaping back to him with a kick of insubstantial hooves and shifting into its monstrous form.

“You have an advantage,” Alastor says, with a roll of his eyes.

Phantom-better-better-better.

“Undoubtedly. It does explain the game Charlie played with you during your naming day, though,” Alastor notes. She’d tried making little shadow bunnies when attempting to connect to Phantom more. It had been surprisingly...cute. Which is a disgusting word to apply to his shadow. And perhaps a more meaningful interaction than either of them had realized.

Phantom seems quite pleased at this thought, though. Phantom-shadow-friend, it nearly purrs, as it crawls back up his shoulders to lean over his head for a better look again. Light-little-little-little Phantom-safe-keep. Eat-dark. Eat-monster. Eat-angel. Fierce. Light-little-little-little-PROTECT.

Perhaps, Alastor thinks, as he watches the memory again, not exactly the lesson the Lucifer of some hundred-and-fifty years ago had been trying to teach. But then, he never could have predicted that his daughter would summon shadows quite as powerful as Alastor himself.

The dark truly can be a terrifying thing—but Charlie is lucky, because that darkness is on her side, and it would never let monsters or angels close now.

The Book of Charlie continues, but as Alastor pages through the memories and the photographs, she starts growing older and taller. She doesn’t just have personality anymore, she’s starting to form opinions on how the world works as she learns to interact with it and with others. Alastor watches from a distance as she grows taller and smarter and a little more recognizably the Charlie he knows now, as she begins schooling and eventually hits her first century.

(Alastor is reasonably sure that at this point, he’s been born, although of course he would have no idea about the little girl beneath the ground finding her own way at the same time he found his. He hadn’t believed in Hell, after all).

There’s so many new firsts as Charlie grows older, especially given the unique challenge of the way she ages. Lucifer’s notes implied that, since Charlie aged much slower than most Hellborn, she’d been home-schooled with private tutors to keep her from being outgrown by her classmates. But she still worked hard at her lessons, as far as Alastor can see in the pictures. The first time she ever read a book to Lucifer, so excited that she could tell him a story. Photographs with highly graded tests or essays, ones that grew more complex the older she aged. Her first stumbling attempts to speak Impish with one of the servants, and her pride in herself when she did it well.

And while she had been home-schooled, it seemed that her family at least tried to involve Charlie in extracurricular activities with others, to get her used to people if nothing else. Sports don’t seem to go over too well; Charlie is enthusiastic but not, based on Lucifer’s memories, overly competitive. That certainly tracks with Alastor’s understanding of her now. But he is shocked to find she is at least reasonably competent in the use of spears and tridents, to at least manage not to injure herself.

He makes a mental note to get her back into sparring for her own protection. Perhaps as an activity she can do with her lady love. He can pitch it as bonding, Charlie will like the sound of that.

But there are certainly some things Charlie takes to like—well, to use the obvious metaphor in relation to her father, like a duck to water. She participates in theater groups across the Seven Rings, which really does explain why she assumes breaking into song is an apt response to fix an issue. She takes leading roles often, as both male and female characters, but there is no doubt in Alastor’s mind that she earned those roles with her skill and not her surname.

And there are some things he hadn’t anticipated, somehow. Gardening for one, even though he really should have anticipated it in retrospect, with all the plants she keeps in her room. He watches with amusement as an approximately-seven-year-old-equivalent Charlie is given her first plant by her father that she cares for religiously. Lucifer’s note said it had survived until the fall of the first Hazbin Hotel, when it had died in the rubble, and Charlie had been so upset at the loss of ‘Planty the House Plant.’

(It wasn’t even a proper adjective that time. Phantom really is lucky someone else had come up with its name).

Riding came as a surprise as well. The pony in earlier memories had been one thing, but Lucifer shares a few genuine competitions, in which a much younger Charlie rides a horse with a flowing mane and tail of flame. They run courses and leap over obstacles, and Lucifer includes a photo of several awards and ribbons she’d gotten for her efforts. That mare died when she was about a hundred and fifty-seven, Lucifer’s comments under the memories add, and she was too heartbroken to pick up the hobby again, but she could have been amazing at it if she’d wanted.

Fascinating.

But what Alastor finds the most intriguing are the memories of magic lessons.

Charlie stands nervously in the memory, shifting from foot to foot, staring up at Lucifer. “You’ll do fine, Sweetie,” Lucifer says, and his hands appear to gently cup Charlie’s in his own, supportive and guiding. “You’ve been doing really good so far.”
“I’m scared to do it without you,” Charlie says anxiously. She looks ten, or at least the approximate equivalent of ten, in this memory. Her hair his shorter, tied back in a single tail, and she’s starting to loose some of the baby fat in her face. But her eyes are the same as ever, even so young: wide, trusting, full of love and adoration and just a bit of anxiety.
“I’ll be right here,” Lucifer promises. “Now, what do you do first?”
“Breathe.”
“And?”
“Focus.”
“Right! Let’s breathe and focus together.”
They do. For Lucifer it must not take much effort, because his memory seems to be focusing much more on watching Charlie. Baby’s first spells aren’t difficult if you’ve built stars, and watching Charlie squeeze her eyes shut and wrinkle her brow as she takes exaggerated breaths is much more entertaining.
“Do you feel it?” Lucifer asks after a moment. “Do you feel your magic, like we talked about?”
“I think so,” Charlie says. “It’s warm. Really warm. Like fire, but special.”
“That’s your birthright, Charlie,” Lucifer says. “Magic and hellfire. Angel and demon. It’s all yours to use, Sweetie. It’ll come if you call. Try it.”
“What if I burn something?” Charlie wrenches her eyes open and looks up at Lucifer anxiously. “What if I hurt somebody? What if I hurt you?”
“I’m right here, so you don’t have to be scared of anything bad happening,” Lucifer promises her. “And you can’t hurt me. Just try it, okay? Call to it. Ask it to come to your hands. I’ll help guide you.”
Charlie squeezes her eyes shut again, and takes her deep breaths. After a moment, a little spark of something appears in her cupped hands. One of Lucifer’s thumbs brushes over her own, reassuring, and the spark grows brighter, until a small tongue of flame bursts to life in her palms.
“Open your eyes, Char-Char,” Lucifer says. There’s a smile in his voice. “Look at what you did, all by yourself.”
Charlie’s eyes open. She stares at the little red flame dancing in her hands, and squeaks. “That’s all me?”
“That’s all you.” As if to prove it, Lucifer gently takes his cupped hands away from hers. It’s like watching a child ride a bike for the first time without a parent supporting them. The flame dances even without his interference.
Charlie squeaks again, and nearly drops it. The flame grows wild for a moment, and she makes a soft cry of alarm before Lucifer’s hands are back to cupping hers. “Easy, easy,” he says, soothing and patient, and the flame returns to a safe little flicker at his coaxing. “No need to be scared, Charlie, it’s your fire. It doesn’t hurt, does it?”
“No…”
“It’s yours. It’s your birthright. You’re doing amazing, Sweetie. You should be proud of yourself!”
“For real?”
“For real. Want me to teach you how to make it change colors?”
Charlie’s eyes widen with delight. “Can we make it a rainbow?”
“You bet we can,” Lucifer says. “I’ll teach you everything I know.”

It’s the first of many lessons for objectively simple things—flames, sparks, fireworks, lights. Charlie gravitates naturally to this sort of magic, it seems, and gets better at it with more practice. Alastor finds it fascinating to watch, because he’s never been involved in any of Charlie’s magic lessons with Lucifer since they returned from the Nothing, but this certainly gives him an idea of what it must be like.

It’s fundamentally different than anything Alastor has ever done with magic. He can create a simple flame with ease, and he’s been able to do so for decades. But it doesn’t come from an innate birthright, like it seems to with Charlie. Alastor had learned the ways of hoodoo in life, and supplemented it with shadow magic and demonic skills in death. There are rules and order to them in a way that doesn’t seem to exist with whatever the Hell it is that Lucifer and Charlie do.

It does explain why it had been so damned hard to coach her in magic in The Beginning, at least. He’d tried again and again to coax out that strange power of Charlie’s, the one that changed her voice and her claws into something even Lilith feared. But there didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, and now Alastor’s beginning to understand why.

Magic and Hellfire. Angel and Demon.

Alastor snorts. No wonder Charlie struggled with magic so much in the Nothing. She’s the combination of two fundamental opposites. It’s probably a miracle she exists at all, or can do functionally anything.

“Perhaps I should teach her something that relies a little less on these ridiculous notions of birthrights,” Alastor mutters, after watching another memory of Charlie creating a fireworks display for Sinsmas with her own magic. It was pretty, but functionally useless. If Lilith went after her again, Charlie could hardly protect herself with a light show. “She could learn hoodoo. I think she could be good at it.”

Phantom gives him a skeptical look. Solid-magic-scare-Light.

Alastor rolls his eyes. “Most ignorant sorts are,” he says. “But she could learn. It’s something anyone with dedication can do, and we know she has power.” He smirks. “Unless you think shadow magic would be an acceptable alternative?”

Phantom actually hisses at this, its outline bristling into something sharper and more jagged. Light-PHANTOM-MINE, it growls in Alastor’s head. Other-shadows-no!

“You’re never going to consume her shadow,” Alastor reminds Phantom sternly. “She’s perfectly permitted to contract with a different creature if she desires.”

Phantom-eat-Other-Shadow, his shade growls stubbornly. Light-protect. Shadow-other-bad.

“Implying you’re good?”

Phantom-scary-scary-scary, it snaps. Phantom-protect-Light. Scare-other-shadows. Phantom-strongest-shadow.

“How noble of you,” Alastor says, with a roll of his eyes. There’s not much of a chance of Charlie ever coming across another thing like Phantom, anyway. Nearly a century later and Alastor’s still not entirely sure what Phantom really is, other than a shadow, and a creature that appeared at the moment of his falling into Hell to consume his natural shade. They’re meant to be together, two halves of a whole, but Alastor has never seen another thing like his shadow in all the years he’s been here. Not even a lesser, half-realized version waiting for its own human soul to enter Hell.

More pictures and memories go by in the Book of Charlie, more insight into her life through the eyes of Lucifer and the occasional other photographer. Charlie dressed up for fancy balls in fancy dresses that make her look like the sugary sweet little princess she is. Charlie on vacations with her family in various exotic locations that look nothing at all like the Pride Ring—Alastor can only assume these are the other six Rings of Hell. Charlie playing with some other children that appear to be her approximate age. Charlie holding strange Hellish animals at zoos and parks. Charlie going on rides and playing carnival games at that ridiculous park in the Northwest of the Pride Ring, Lu Lu World, and suddenly the name makes a suspicious amount of sense. Charlie trying her hand at all manner of arts and crafts, songs and dances and activities, learning what things she liked and what things she didn’t.

And then, right around the time Charlie enters what Alastor calculates are approximately her teenage years, there’s a rather dramatic shift in the book.

It starts innocuous enough. Not long after her 130^th birthday party, there’s a change in the balance of recorded memories to photographs. Both still exist, but Lucifer’s enthusiasm for mentally recording and preserving memories in the book wanes and the contents of the book change more often to simple, still photographs. Charlie with friends at a theater group. Charlie accepting a first place ribbon at a nightmare riding contest. Charlie holding a Hellish driver’s permit excitedly, showing it off for the photographer.

But Alastor is not stupid. And he cannot help but notice that these memories are much more public, and much less intimate. Or that the photographer did not necessarily have to be Lucifer, who doesn’t appear in most of the photographs, either.

Change-start, Phantom notes.

“You saw it too, hmm?” Alastor flips back a few pages to Charlie’s officially-a-teenager photograph, and notes the date. July, 1932—Alastor had still been alive, but he’d be dead by the next year, which means he has a rough understanding of where Hellish politics would be at this point.

He can’t help but notice that just twelve years after this photograph of Charlie blowing out her candles, her mother will make her Deal with Alastor and enslave his soul. For people who measure their years by the thousands, that isn’t all that long. Charlie and Lucifer had both implied that they’d discovered Lilith had been interfering in their relationship for some time, driving them apart.

He may not have been there—he might not even be dead, at the moment this birthday picture was taken. But Alastor has no doubt that Lilith had started her work around this time, almost a century ago, the moment Charlie started forming any degree of independence and critical thought. It wouldn’t have been hard. Teenagers were easy to fool, and Charlie trusted her parents.

It makes Alastor sick to think of it. To look down at that happy face of young Charlie Morningstar, blowing out the candles on her cake with her family and friends around her, and to know that her mother was already tying a web of lies around her that would haunt her a hundred years later.

Break-book, Phantom warns. Alastor stops clenching his hands before his claws puncture the parchment and leather, although he finds the book is unusually resistant. Perhaps it was those preservation charms Lucifer had mentioned.

He takes a deep breath. “It already happened,” he says out loud. “We can’t fix that. It’s pointless to be angry over it.”

Old-owner-bad, Phantom says. Anger. Fury. Kill Kill KILL.

“Yes,” Alastor hisses. “We will, when we come across her again.”

When, not if. Lilith has a great deal to pay for, even without the other Morningstars’ involvement.

This book just gives him even more incentive to hate her.

But it doesn’t seem like Lucifer had been completely absent at this stage. The memories are less frequent, but they do still exist. Charlie dancing with her father at her formal debut party, some fancy rich party designed to officially present her to Hellish society. Charlie officially collecting her diploma after passing her home-school exams, to Lucifer’s excitable congratulation.

And there are still photographs. Some of which Lucifer is even in, such as the one of her standing next to her father near a wall with scratches in it, enthusiastically gesturing at their heights. Lucifer’s note below it writes, she finally got taller than me at one-hundred-forty-two. Been looking up at her ever since.

Alastor smirks at that.

Or the curious selection of photos of Charlie in a style that seems very uncharacteristic of her. The Charlie Alastor is used to, and the one until now in this book, has always been bubbling and smiling and full of energy. This one is perplexingly the opposite: she doesn’t smile, her face is smeared with dark makeup, her hair dyed black in streaks and messily unkempt, her horns visible and accented with black ribbons and hairbands. She wears almost exclusively black and dark purple clothing, some of it baggy, some of it tight and absolutely inappropriate for a child, some of it covered in strange logos or graphics that Alastor can’t make much sense of. In a few pictures she even attempted to smudge her rosy cheek spots black.

Charlie’s goth phase, Lucifer’s notes say of this curious trend. She tried so hard to be edgy and cool. It was actually kind of adorable. Just look at her! She even had a spooky goth name she made up for herself: Rayven Hellmoon Morningstar. Yeah, ‘raven’ spelled with a ‘y.’ I don’t think she realized that being the devil’s daughter is just about the gothest thing you can already be. She tried real hard to be bad, but could never actually bring herself to really break any rules. She gets real embarrassed if you bring it up now. It’s your duty as a dad to embarrass her with it as much as you can.

Alastor is not entirely sure what a ‘goth phase’ is, other than perhaps an obsession with black clothing and a grim appearance. He supposes this might make sense if it is at all related to gothic literature. He’d read his fare share of it in his lifetime—Poe, Stevenson, Stoker, Shelley, and the like—to equate the grim look this teenage Charlie is attempting with the grim and frighting outlooks of those famous writers.

Nor can he say he really understands the appeal. He supposes teenage rebellion is natural, although in his day, it was much different...as were their circumstances. When Alastor was thirteen, he was old enough to be a threat to his father, which meant more beatings for himself and his mother. His rebellion had been fighting back against very real danger. The rule he’d broken was strong enough to damn him to literal Hell, when he’d murdered his father. Charlie’s rebellion seems laughably pathetic and silly in comparison.

What he can say is he fully agrees with Lucifer’s assessment that while Charlie is trying to be dark and rebellious, she is not very good at succeeding. Most of the pictures and the few memories Lucifer supplies seem to be mostly Charlie trying her hand at new forms of expression and clothing, listening to louder music and complaining more if she’s asked to do things like coursework or feeding the cat. But she never goes so far as to be outright rude to their servants, and never seems to do any actual damage to anyone or anything.

“What are you doing, young lady?” Lucifer says, alighting on the balcony outside Charlie’s room. Charlie herself, decked out in her rebellious blacks and grays, squawks in surprise and frantically scrabbles to catch a cigarette as it slips from her fingers. It falls off the balcony and down into the garden below, thankfully landing on a patch of gravel in the landscaping.
“Dad!” Charlie howls at him. “What are you doing here? You have no right spying on me!”
“Spying? You’re on the balcony, and I was out for a flight, and saw a weird light. Trying to sneak a cigarette, huh?”
“No!” Charlie scowls at him.
But Lucifer’s hand raises into view as he shakes his finger at her. “Ah-ah, Charlie, I can tell when you’re lying, remember?”
“Ugh! Dad, you’re the worst.”
“Well, I am the Devil, Sweetie. So, gonna tell me the truth?”
“Fine. Yeah, I was smoking. I’m a hundred and sixty five, Dad, I’m not a kid anymore!”
“Oh yeah?” There’s something amused in his voice, but it’s smothered with sternness. “Alright. Share, then.”
“Huh?”
“Hey, if you’re not a kid anymore, then I can treat you like an equal, right? Share.” He holds out his hand for a cigarette, while adjusting to sit on the railing.
Charlie’s affected scowl melts away for a moment in favor of confusion. “Uh, why?”
“Can’t a dad enjoy a smoke with his very grown up daughter? C’mon, share and I won’t tell your mom what you’re doing.”
Charlie makes a decidedly un-gothic squeak, but hastily retrieves the cigarette pack. She handles the cigarettes clumsily, fishing one out with her fingers instead of offering the carton. “Um. Here?”
“Well, don’t be shy. Get one for yourself.”
She does so uneasily, now confused. It’s clear she doesn’t know how to handle her own with any degree of expertise either. Or know how to use her lighter, which she fumbles with until Lucifer snaps his fingers and lights both cigarettes for them.
He takes a practiced draw from the cigarette and blows smoke out gently, before gesturing with the cigarette between two fingers. “Don’t hold back on my account, Sweetie.”
Charlie looks distinctly nervous now, holding the smoldering, untouched cigarette in her fingers awkwardly. “Is this a trick? Are you trying to get me into trouble? What’s going on?”
Lucifer takes another draw, breathes out the smoke, and says, “No trick. You wanna smoke, you’re old enough to make your own decisions. You said so yourself. So go ahead. Free will!”
Charlie watches him suspiciously, but after a moment she tries to mimic him by putting the cigarette between two fingers and breathing in. She starts hacking and coughing almost immediately, dropping the cigarette to the balcony floor as she rushes over to the other side and fresh air, gasping for breath.
“S’matter, Sweetie?” Lucifer asks cheerfully. “I thought you were smoking?”
Charlie’s face flushes even underneath all her dark, thick makeup. “You’re the worst, Dad!” she screeches at him, once she finally manages to stop coughing and hacking. “You—you did that on purpose! You tricked me! I hate you so much!” Then she whirls around and rushes back into her room, slamming the balcony doors and drawing the curtains shut.
She must not realize Lucifer can still hear her, because once she’s fully hidden, she moans, “Oh, that was so gross. Why do people do that? Ew, ew, ew, ew!”
On the balcony, Lucifer sits on the railing for a moment, finishing his own cigarette and chuckling to himself. He flutters down from the rail long enough to stomp out Charlie’s abandoned cigarette with his boot, and to scoop up the rest of the pack and tuck it into his jacket pocket.
“I think she won’t be trying that again,” he laughs, as he takes back off into the air.

Alastor is cackling by the end of the memory. “Oh, the poor dear really did try, didn’t she?” he snickers, tapping the memory again just to watch Charlie’s fumbling attempts at smoking once more. He distantly remembers his own first cigarette, but smoking was hardly stigmatized back in his day. Everyone did it, just like everyone drank, even when the law said otherwise. It was one of the tamer vices in Hell, to the point Alastor barely considered it a vice at all.

But he supposes for a (relatively) young teenager in a rebellious phase, it would be another story entirely.

Phantom snickers along with him, watching Charlie hacking over her one attempt at smoking. Light-bad-at-bad, it summarizes.

“You aren’t wrong,” Alastor says gleefully. “Oh, I may have to actually thank Lucifer for this. How terrible that he might actually earn some proper gratitude.” But the entertainment in this little bit of Charlie’s life alone was worth it. It was adorably pathetic. He absolutely understands what Lucifer means when he writes it’s your duty to embarrass her with it as much as you can.

He’s going to have fun with this later.

The “goth phase” ends at some point, gradually petering away in the last images and memories as Charlie slowly reverts back to her more colorful attire and bright smile. Apparently, somewhere along the way, she’d decided rebelliousness wasn’t who she was.

As amusing as Alastor finds the pictures, he’s rather glad she discovered her smile again. It suits her much more now that she’s reclaimed it.

There’s still many more pages in the book, but the moving memories become few and far between and the photographs start to space out further and further in time, and Alastor is fairly certain Lucifer had not created these ones. Pictures of Charlie with friends and other family members, Goetian royalty, nobility. Charlie working on projects or at formal events. Lucifer’s commentary grows less and less detailed as well, like he doesn’t have much to add beyond what’s pictured.

In fact, the only photograph in this era with any degree of notable commentary is one of Charlie, dressed in formal wear, standing next to a young man of approximately her age. He’s dressed in an expensive suit, and the corsage on her wrist matches the flower in his buttonhole. They’re both smiling at the camera, and according to Lucifer’s notes, this is some kind of fancy ball for young nobles and royalty in Hell.

But his words are otherwise scathing. If you ever see the kid with Charlie in this picture, Lucifer’s script says, scare the ever-loving shit out of him. Sic your crazy shadow on him. Whatever you gotta do. He dated Charlie for a year, then cheated on her with a Goetian princess and left her heartbroken. She cried for a month. I wanted to snap him in half but I wasn’t allowed to.

Alastor’s eyes narrow. He doesn’t like the idea of Lucifer giving him orders, even in written form. But he can certainly commiserate with Lucifer, if this young man had really treated Charlie so poorly. Hardly the actions of a proper gentleman, to do his Charlie wrong in such a way.

He scans the young man’s face, committing the details to memory, just in case. Phantom crawls over his shoulder with a growl, clawed hand reaching out to touch the page as it does the same.

Scary-very-very-very, Phantom promises.

“Oh yes,” Alastor agrees. “This young man had better hope he never crosses our path. Forget the fear of God; we’ll put the fear of the Radio Demon in him.”

Never mind that Alastor hadn’t even been in the picture when this event happened. The man will regret acting poorly by his Charlie. Alastor is exceptional at holding grudges, and he has a very long memory.

The younger photographs of Charlie end rather abruptly. The last image is of a Charlie that looks approximately eighteen, at some sort of formal ball, and it looks like it was clipped out of a Hellish newspaper. Part of the photograph had been cut away completely, and Alastor can guess who had been standing there before.

Clearly, Lilith had succeeded from this point onward. The Charlie in the newspaper clipping looks old enough to have moved out on her own, or at least to have made the decision to stop interacting with her father. If she was guided by her mother, however insidiously, she might not even realize a wedge had been forced between them against both their wills.

But there’s still so many more pages left in the Book of Charlie. “This is clearly the end of Lucifer’s history with her,” Alastor mutters out loud, as he thumbs the pages. “Charlie didn’t speak with him again until she called him on that day. It’s only been a few months since. What could possibly fill this much?”

Light-Maker-obsess, Phantom remarks. It paws at the edges of the pages, adding, Look. Answer.

Well, it isn’t wrong. Alastor turns the page, unsure what to expect. Perhaps more newspaper clippings, watching Charlie from afar. Maybe a memory of that silly commercial. Perhaps recently created memories since he’d joined Charlie in her efforts to facilitate Redemption.

Alastor does not expect to see himself.

At first, he’s too shocked by a crystal-clear image of himself at all to take much note of anything else on the page. The reds of his clothes and hair stand out vibrantly, and the black accents of his ears and antlers and hair are sharp and crisp. There isn’t a shred of interference in the image—which is a moving image, and not a mere photograph.

Alastor hasn’t been captured by any device perfectly in decades. His static runs automatic interference with any recording device outside of audio that he chooses to permit. Modern cameras cannot focus properly on him either with their digital settings and complicated systems, not even if they’re meant to take still images. Only classic analog cameras have any real success taking his photograph. Even when he permits it, there’s often strange interference or odd artifacts in the pictures.

But this image is perfectly crisp and clear. Even Phantom is there, which is just as impossible; Phantom is even harder to capture on film than Alastor is, as a creature of shadow. And after a moment, Alastor realizes why: it isn’t a photograph at all, or a video, but a memory. It’s a little slice of time impressed into the page with magic, not mechanics, and none of his usual static interference has any effect.

Solid-Phantom-Light! His shadow says excitedly.

And yes, Alastor realizes, as he stops staring in bewilderment at himself. Charlie is there too. The memory is in her room, and Charlie is wrapped in her blankets and snuggled against his side, resting her head wearily on his shoulder. The Alastor in the image is resting against the headboard and the mound of pillows, sitting on the very edge of the bed with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. Phantom—then unnamed—hovers over the two on the wall, watching attentively.

“When did he get this?” Alastor asks.

Watch, Phantom says. Answer-get. It paws at the golden-outlined image, trying to activate the memory.

“Watch your claws,” Alastor says, slapping his shadow’s sharp hand away. “Don’t damage it.”

Never, Phantom hisses at him. It sounds insulted. Watch! Answers! Solid-Phantom-Light!

“Don’t rush me,” Alastor snaps back. He’s never seen an image of himself in motion before, much less something like this. He remembers this day, and a part of him is hesitant to see what Lucifer had captured. It had been a...difficult evening for Alastor to come to terms with.

It had been the night he’d realized he would do anything, literally anything, for Charlie. To keep her safe and support her.

To stall, he reads the golden script at the bottom of the currently still memory. It reads, You didn’t believe me on this day, when I said you became a dad. You said you didn’t adore her. Y’know how I kept telling little Charlie all through this book I can tell when she’s lying? Yeah. I knew you were lying. And even if I didn’t, here’s what I saw. Watch it and weep, asshole. You adore her.

“How ominous,” Alastor mutters.

Watch! Phantom pokes him in the cheek with one of its shadowy claws. Neither one can actually hurt the other, as a part of their bond, so it’s a dull, annoying pressure at most.

Alastor nips reflexively at its claw tip anyway. Shadow melts away immediately on his tongue and rejoins Phantom. His shadow barely notices, and only points more insistently at the image.

So Alastor taps it gently, and watches.

He can tell it’s from Lucifer’s point of view right away, because almost immediately the man’s hand flashes up into his field of vision. Motes of light coalesce around his fingers, and his vision jolts and drops suddenly, like he’s crouching. He’s clearly preparing to attack, outraged at finding Alastor in bed with his daughter.

Given the circumstances, Alastor can hardly blame him. He hadn’t exactly asked to be in the bed with Charlie, and he’d have attacked on sight if their situations had been reversed.

But Lucifer pauses as he focuses on the two in the bed, and slowly his hand drops, and his view raises. His head tilts, and with it the point of view, as he observes and waits.

It gives Alastor an unobstructed view of himself, as he...well, how had Lucifer put it? As he becomes a father.

The expression Alastor sees on his own face is something he doesn’t think he’s ever seen even in the mirror. Everything about him is softer somehow, and his sharp smile manages to be gentle. His ears are set forward, attentive, invested, but not alert for danger, because there’s not so much of a twitch towards Lucifer or even the recognition that he’s there.

The object of his focus is Charlie. She looks sick and miserable, sweaty and flushed from fever, her hair a mess and her body mostly wrapped in blankets. But she’s snuggled against Alastor’s side, her head resting on his shoulder, and something about her posture and her face suggests she feels unquestionably, absolutely safe and protected right where she is. One of her hands emerges from the blankets to clutch lightly at his shirt.

And the Alastor of now...doesn’t know how to explain what he’s seeing in his own face, as his memory-image safeguards Charlie. It’s not something he’s ever seen in himself, before. Awe, perhaps. Wonder. Incredulity. And something else, something he can’t quite place, but something that seems so familiar—

—until he recognizes, with a jolt of shock, it’s something he’d seen on his mother’s face, when she looked down at him when she was a child. Wonder and pride and gentleness and maybe, maybe something he thinks might have been love, and it’s there now in his face, and he can’t begin to fathom it or how it got there.

That feeling of familiarity only gets stronger as he watches the memory play out. As he watches his memory-self, through Lucifer’s eyes, stroke Charlie’s hair with more tenderness than he ever thought possible of himself. As his memory-self watches overCharlie, as she trusts him absolutely and unhesitatingly with her safety while vulnerable. As she mumbles a little in her sleep and whimpers, and the memory-Alastor turns his fingers to gently stroke the back of his hand down her cheek, mindful of his claws. As he cradles her a little more securely, and adjusts the white noise frequency he emits to be a little steadier, a little more calming. As the memory-Charlie nuzzles a little closer and a little safer against him and settles again, safe in Something and asleep once more.

Alastor doesn’t remember doing any of this. He’d been so lost in his own thoughts, in his slow recognition that Charlie meant everything to him, in wondering what it meant for him.

But he can see what Lucifer saw now, when he’d claimed Alastor had fallen in love, that he adored her. Because Alastor can watch it now, in this memory, and see himself making that connection. Even if he hadn’t known what it meant at the time. Even if, in many ways, he still doesn’t understand.

No wonder Lucifer hadn’t believed him for a second, when he’d claimed he didn’t care.

“Bastard,” Alastor mutters out loud, as the memory ends. It’s a short one, just a few seconds long at most, but it feels like so, so much longer. “Recording a private moment like this.”

Light-like-like-like-like-like, Phantom says. Solid-soft-soft-soft-soft.

Alastor bares his teeth, but there’s no real mocking in Phantom’s tone. After a moment he says, “I suppose that’s true.”

Phantom-Light-like-like-like-like-like, his shadow agrees. Phantom-soft-Light.

“At least we’re in agreement.”

Light-ONLY, Phantom stresses. Else-scary-scary-scary-scary!

“Oh, unquestionably.”

Silence for a very long moment. Then, Watch-second?

Alastor wordlessly taps the memory to start it again in answer.

They watch it three more times before either of them is willing to move on. Alastor still can’t begin to believe the expressions that are on his face, or the way he’s shockingly gentle with Charlie. It doesn’t seem possible. He knows she’s protected from him through the soul chain, but even so, the trust she shows him is baffling. He could hurt her so easily; he knows he’s more than capable. But even so vulnerable, Charlie isn’t afraid, and even so deadly, the memory-Alastor is impressively careful and attentive.

And the expressions on his own face...Alastor still can’t believe it. He wouldn’t at all, if it were film or recordings, because he couldn’t be captured in that fashion and this would obviously be doctored. But it isn’t. It’s a memory, a living record made by a seraphim, and somehow, Alastor knows it’s real. It’s his real smile and his real face, and somehow it’s his mother’s too. It reminds him of being alive again, and it feels like that other part of him from other choices found its way into his body and showed him what he was capable of.

It’s bewildering. It’s shocking.

But he doesn’t exactly hate it. Not as long as it remains private, at least.

(He will have to have words with Lucifer. If this gets out to anyone else...well. He may have to break their little non-aggression pact long enough to teach the man the importance of privacy).

They don’t really tire of the memory, but Alastor does decide to turn the page after a while, now genuinely curious what else Lucifer might have recorded without either of them realizing it.

Except there are no more images. Instead, there’s a page taken up by one last note in golden script. It reads:

This is it for now. And you’re probably wondering about all the extra pages right? Yeah, they’re empty. I left some for you. Charlie’s story isn’t over yet, and you’re a part of it now, like it or not. There’s room for you to add your own pictures, and I can add more pages if you use these up. I can even pull the moving memories from your head, if you want, or teach you how to do it yourself. But it’ll cost you. You’ll have to be nice to me as payment. A day’s worth of not being an asshole for each memory I move for you. A month of not being an asshole for me to teach you to do it yourself. That includes your shadow that hates me! Payment is non-negotiable, but the offer open whenever you want. Just ask.

Alastor thumbs through the remaining pages of the book, just to be certain. But as Lucifer had said, the rest of the pages are blank. “I wonder if that’s a serious Deal offer,” Alastor says, thoughtful.

Phantom makes a face. Phantom-nice-Light-Maker?

“You would have to be, if you want to preserve memories like this one,” Alastor says, flipping back to the page with them in it.

Phantom watches itself hovering in the memory over Alastor and Charlie, like a protective little shield, safeguarding their moment. Phantom-image-too?

“I suppose we’d have to ask if your memories could be transferred in,” Alastor says. “I’m not even sure how the process works. Or if it’s compatible with the way you remember things.” Phantom’s form of communication is already complicated enough as it is. His shadow thinks in concepts, not words, and while Alastor is used to it, he’s not entirely sure that would transmit to a page.

Phantom considers this. After a moment, it projects its version of a memory to Alastor: the day it had played with Charlie in the kitchen while trying to earn its name. Want, it says. Phantom-nice-Light-Maker.

“I have quite a good memory of that day,” Alastor agrees. “If you can keep your tricks and trouble-making to yourself long enough for us to learn the skill and complete the Deal, then I will record it.”

Phantom seems satisfied with this answer. Phantom-nice, it agrees.

Well. It seems Alastor will have to track down the Devil for a proper Deal later, then.

A quick glance at his clock tells him hours have passed, perusing the book. He’ll need to get going soon for his late afternoon Father’s Day with Charlie, whatever it might be.

But it does still give him a little time yet. So he and Phantom comb through the book a second time, and Alastor carefully marks pages for their favorite moments in time with bookmarks. He has a feeling it will not be the last time he reviews the pages, to learn more about Charlie, or simply for the entertainment value.

Damn. He really is going to owe Lucifer for this gift, isn’t he? Perhaps he can worm something suitable out of Charlie later tonight, as a feasible return gift. He can’t spend months being nice to Lucifer, after all. He does have an image to maintain.

(If he marks the memory of himself with a bookmark quietly, neither he nor Phantom question it. It hadn’t been asked for, but it’s too special a thing to let go, now that he has it).

By the time they’ve cataloged and in some cases, re-watched their favorites, it’s nearly time to go. “This stays safely with us, I think,” Alastor says, gently cradling The Book of Charlie in his arms. “Too valuable to simply leave lying around.”

Not to mention too full of vulnerabilities. The thought of someone like Vox getting a hold of this book makes Alastor want to commit murder, especially if he were able to catch a glimpse of that last image of Alastor being...soft. It would not end well for his reputation.

Lock-book, Phantom says, as Alastor tucks the book away quietly in the deepest of his shadows with his most important personal items.

“Not a terrible idea,” Alastor muses. “I’ll have to speak to Lucifer on the subject and be sure my forms of magic don’t damage the book’s first, though.” He doesn’t want to risk losing those memories, or the preservation spells to protect them.

It’s far too precious a thing for him to ever give up now.