What We Are • •

[lucifer journey bright]

Lucifer was used to his job revealing some of the darker sides to reality. Most of the time he expected it. He didn’t need to get more than a few lines into a case file before he understood exactly what the rest of it was going to read like. Sometimes it was just all a little too familiar to him. Lucifer didn’t broadcast the fact that he grew up bouncing from foster homes until he was old enough to go to college and take care of himself. There was no point in it. It might be why he did what he did now, but he didn’t see why anyone needed to know his history. Sometimes he would share it with children who needed that reassurance, who needed a connection to build some trust. Lucifer had been in their shoes, but he wouldn’t preach at them, or lie to them. It was hard growing up in the system, and for some it was even harder. Everyone had different circumstances. Lucifer would give his life for the kids who came his way. They were more than the files that landed on his desk. They weren’t just case numbers and documented reports to him. They were boys and girls who had a shot at a good future if they took care of them like they were supposed to.

He did all that he could for those kids. If he felt something was off about the living arrangements, then he wasn’t afraid to make surprise visits. More than a few times he had been able to pull kids out of unsuitable homes because of his unannounced trips to their doorsteps. Nothing made him feel better than rescuing a kid from a family that only used the foster system for their own gains. Others in his profession might choose to believe that they didn’t exist, but Lucifer had been in enough to know differently. Honestly, given how he was treated in some of them, he was lucky not to walk away with lasting scars. Monsters blended in with the real world a little too well for Lucifer’s liking, and he was the guy who got strange looks for being named after the greatest monster of all.

While the little boy was in with Waverly, Lucifer got himself a coffee from the cafeteria and grabbed Lewis a milkshake for when he was done. He’d managed to find out that the little boy liked chocolate the best, and so it was a treat for when he was done with these therapy lessons. No one truly knew exactly what Lewis had been through, but everyone knew enough to know that it had been traumatic. Between the therapy and the care home Lucifer had him placed in, he was coming out of his shell though. Lucifer wanted to speak to Waverly when she was done about taking the kid out more, letting him mix with others who weren’t in the system. His youth centre offered plenty of programmes and existed as the perfect escape for children and teenagers who needed to just be young for a few hours. Lucifer thought it might be an idea to get Lewis down there for a bit, but not too soon. He was currently schooled with sensitive needs children and lived in a home with them. His entire care plan was tailored around helping him recover from the horrors that had stolen his early childhood from him. Lucifer sat in the chair outside the office, drinks in the carry tray, reading the notice board relaying various information about mental health services and child care offers. It was all entirely identical to what they had in their offices at work, but it was better than staring blankly into space.

• • •

TAGGED! Waverly Peyton Lake
WORDS! 611!
OUTFIT! Dashing Devil!
LYRICS! Teenage Wonderland - - - Kids In Glass Houses
NOTES!

[Waverly Peyton Lake]

Waverly's upbringing wasn't exactly white picket fence, front porch swing and big yellow lab sleeping by the steps but it wasn't bad either. She had a roof over her head, food on her plate and enough toys and books to keep her curious mind occupied. No one had ever been called to check on her after becoming concerned with a bruise or because she wore a long sleeve t-shirt on the hottest day of the year. She had nice clothes, tons of friends and at least a mother who might not have outright said she cared but showed it in the little things. Maybe her childhood didn't read like the typical horror story of foster home to foster home but it did read as empty as it could be. Her childhood was just one of those things she had gotten used to so it had never actually seemed like a bad one to her. It wasn't until she'd gotten into medical school that she realised just how mentally messed up her childhood was. So saving children's lives had been her plan from then on. It had been what she'd thought she would do with the rest of her life; be one of those quirky surgeons who had more tattoos than 'sense god gave her'.

In fact, her tattoos gave her a starting point with her younger patients. They were always curious about a doctor that didn't look like a doctor and Waverly was most definitely one of those. She didn't believe in having to look a certain way just because she was a professional. Besides which, her looking different than the usual doctor meant the kids from darker backgrounds tended to talk to her more and the ones from the upper middle class thought she was cool and talked to her because they felt like they could. Truth was, she was there to listen and offer suggestions to solve problems. Sure, once in a while her suggestions meant medication but she preferred to talk first. A lot of the patients she had took a lot of work before they would open up to her but she was a patient woman and it wasn't too long before they were sharing. Little things at first of course, but eventually she got the truth, all the scary little details that made her want to pull these kids into a bear hug and tell them that things could only get better for them. She didn't but she really wanted to sometimes.

Lewis was one such patient. It had taken some time but she was finally getting somewhere with him. She couldn't fathom the horrors that the young boy had seen in his short years but she would be there for him whenever he needed to talk to someone. She'd already offered up her work mobile to him and told everyone who needed to know that he could and absolutely should call her whenever he felt he needed to which had proven to be a good idea. There didn't seem to be many adults in his life that were in his corner so showing him and proving to him that she was there had been a crucial point in his process. He still wasn't saying much about what happened before he'd been brought to the new home but he spoke a lot about that place and the kids there, which was still good. He was a good kid and though he was clearly traumatised, he could be quite funny, certainly made her laugh, though she did hate seeing him pout when she told him their time was up.

Waverly was chuckling at a joke he'd attempted to repeat after reading it in a book when she opened the door to the waiting area. "That's a good one. Keep practicing so you can tell me more next time, okay?" She asked, getting down to his level. She always wanted her patients to feel like they were being spoken to not talked down to. When he grinned and nodded, she smiled. "Excellent. Give me a couple minutes with the man in charge here and you'll be good to go, yeah? Come on, dude, handshake." She continued, reaching her hand out to go through the steps of the not so secret handshake they'd created one day during a session. She looked up at Lucifer with that smile still on her face. "Anything you'd like to add there, Man in Charge?" she asked him with a smirk as she rose.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tag || lucifer journey bright
Words || 751
Clothes || Coming Soon!
Music || Yours --Russell Dickerson
Notes || <3

[lucifer journey bright]

The system was a broken mess, and one man could not fix it by himself. However, that didn’t stop Lucifer from trying. He stepped on toes, spoke up when he ought to hold his tongue, and generally made sure that people knew his name and who he was. He had seen the procedure from both sides of the fence, and honestly, it only made him better at his job. It gave him an edge that many other social workers lacked, or were afraid of listening to. Some of them, he knew, were terrified of actually looking at how many bad guys wore their masks so well. It didn’t take too much to be granted the role of foster carer, and it was a position that a minority of people out there abused. They wanted some easy money, but didn’t care about the kids they were supposed to be helping out. Lucifer would live up to his namesake if he got his hands on even half of those types. Children were not a source of funds. They needed care and nurturing otherwise the future for everyone was going to be bleak and horrible. He had seen too many children fall through the cracks and end up in gangs, or homeless, even dead on the street because they were too young, too vulnerable to have been out there in the first place.

That was the reason why he had founded The Odyssey and filled it with people he knew actually gave a damn. Beatrix, for all her fire and fury, was like a lioness protecting her cubs. She would spend nights at the youth centre just so kids could reach her in person. They were the kind of people the system needed. Lucifer had suggested it to her before now, but she had always raised her eyebrows and told him that her houseplants were barely alive under her care. Apparently she could do the mentoring, and the youth worker role perfectly, but any more than that and the shutters came down very quickly. He trusted her completely to put the troubled kids on the right path when they came into the youth centre out of the cold, or looking for someone to just care. He saw the same things in Waverly, only with her there was more of an air of professionalism about their relationship so far. He hadn’t yet seen her snoring on a couch in a sweater she had been wearing for three days. If that happened then maybe, just maybe, he’d find her sliding into the same family type bracket that BB had made her own space.

Lucifer grinned at the exchange between doctor and patient. It was so good to see Lewis smiling after so long of the sullen silences that he was far too young for. He handed him the milkshake from the holder and gave him a high five ‘well done’ for getting through the session without seemingly any trouble. They were walking a long road with this kid, and while it was a slow walk, they were making it. “Just the usual questions and some other stuff.” He didn’t want to mention the centre in front of Lewis until he had more of an idea about if and when it would happen. No point in exciting the child or making him more anxious and setting him back. “You wanna enjoy that ‘shake with the action figure you were eyeing up before the good doc called you in?” Lucifer suggested, glancing down at the little boy who barely came up to his waist.

• • •

TAGGED! Waverly Peyton Lake
WORDS! 601!
LYRICS! Teenage Wonderland - - - Kids In Glass Houses
NOTES!