"I think there's a fault in my code. These voices won't leave me alone." Gasoline ~ Halsey

Helpful hint; don't lose yourself...

"Tch." The Puzzlemaker glared at the screen as he watched the girl, Marinette, fall off of Chat Noir's back into the dark pit. "I expected the girl behind the mask to be more... heroic. But here she is, doing nothing, making her partner do all the work." Puzzlemaker tsked as he shook his head, watching as Chat swung an arm back in an attempt to grab her.

"But what's more interesting is that he is so intent on protecting her. Why would someone go to such lengths to protect another?"

I'll protect you forever, Mary.

The Puzzlemaker growled at the memory, shaking his head in an attempt to keep said memory locked away, far back in his brain. Unfortunately for him, no matter how hard he tried he couldn't keep the memories from resurfacing. Slipping through the cage he had worked so hard to build, memories of what made him who he was flashed behind his eyes like a movie that he did not want to see.

Pictures of a teenage boy with shaggy raven hair laughing with a blonde haired blue eyed toddler flickered, luring him in deeper until he eventually gave into the strong tidal wave of memories.

"Ew! Stay away from me! I can't be around the devil's son!" A boy his age, seven, cried out in mock fear. The friends behind the acting boy snickered before joining in on the hurtful taunts. Laughs surrounded the raven haired boy as each boy pushed him to a different one.

"Why don't you go back where you came from?"

Why didn't he go back to where he came from? He was sure mom would understand.

His eyes watered as the shoving continued, getting more rough with each push until he stumbled on an outstretched foot. Colliding with the hard concrete, he cried out as the skin on his knee tore open. Not even seconds later, dark red blood ran down his shin in streams, prompting the bullies to run away from the scene.

The tears that had gathered ran down his face as he bit his lip as hard as he could to distract him from the pain on his knee and keeping his sobs as quiet as he could. If he cried, teachers would hear him. And if teachers hear, they would get those other boys in trouble, and if they got in trouble all the other kids would call him a tattletale and would never like him.

He hated it. The Puzzlemaker hated how he wasn't strong enough to take on those boys back then. But what he hated more, was his eyes. His eyes were the reason he was named Lucifer, named after the devil. Everything, all the bullying, this. It all traced back to the color of his eyes. His eyes that were such a beautiful color, were also not normal.

Violet eyes are not normal.

As he grew up, he was told that his mother named him Lucifer because she thought he was the devil's son due to the color of his eyes. She thought her own child was the antichrist. Even after she had named him on his birth certificate and the doctor had informed her that Lucifer was indeed not a demon or devil she kept it the same. Even after learning that her son had a rare disorder called Alexandria's Genesis.

"They weren't always purple," Lucifer's mom told him, "They were actually blue the first three months of your life." But she didn't have money to go to the hospital, not even when the disorder first appeared. Which is why he was nameless until six months after he was born. She said it wasn't right to call a child by a name until it has been written down on a birth certificate. She said a lot of things.

She also didn't think that the name she had given him could affect him greatly in the future. She had years to change it but she never did. Along with many of her other beliefs, she thought it was wrong to rename a child after he had already been given a name. It was almost amusing now that he thought about all of his mother's 'beliefs'. Sure, he may have loved her when he was still Lucifer, but all of her 'ideals' were overly ridiculous. Like naming him Lucifer.

All his life he had grown up with people terrified of him. His teachers feared saying his name, and he's even been switched to a different class because a teacher refused to teach a child with the same name as the devil.

It wasn't until Lucifer was twelve that he knew why people were scared of him and stayed away from him. But by then it was too late. He had quit going to school, opting for teaching himself at home instead of dealing with all of the bullies and the loneliness he felt inside the school. And even though he had little social interaction, he still remained his bubbly and outgoing self.

He always told himself, it didn't matter how others treated him so long as he stayed true to himself. And that was the guideline that he lived by. The Puzzlemaker could remember all of his comedy performances he'd give to his mother when he was fifteen. Once a week, his pregnant mom sat on the couch in the living room, her stomach huge and swollen, as she laughed at his performances. And he always did it for one reason. So that his little sibling would grow up happy and have better luck than him when it was born. So that the precious child growing in his mother would have a reason to laugh and smile in the cruel world that it would so be born in.

That thing, that fetus. The Puzzlemaker hated it too. He hated that it made Lucifer feel something that he had never felt in his entire lifetime. It made his former self feel love, pure love, for the first time ever. And that feeling was something the akuma inside of him despised more than anything else in this damned world.

On December 24th, his mother went into labor. Lucifer sat patiently outside by himself, waiting to hear about his sibling. He was also supposed to call the ex-boyfriend and tell him that his child was going to be born, but he never did. He didn't want the baby to have that horrible man as a father. So there he sat. He watched as the minutes ticked away on the clock, nearing closer and closer to midnight. If it was born after two more minutes, it would be a Christmas baby.

His sibling had in fact been a Christmas baby. Twenty-seven minutes after midnight, his mother had given birth to a healthy blue eyed girl, to which she named Mary, after Jesus' mother in the bible.

It took one glance at his sister for him to notice that he loved her more than life itself. The little girl with a head full of curly blond locks and deep blue eyes. He prayed she wouldn't get his disorder as he took the giggling baby from his fatigued mother's arms. When Mary wrapped her tiny fist around his finger, Lucifer figured out that he'd do anything for this child. He'd give her the Earth and the moon if she requested it. And though he grew up in a very poor home, he would do 'odd jobs' to help earn money here and there. His goal a year from then would be to save up enough money to take him and Mary away to live in a bigger house in better living conditions, but he didn't know that then.

But for now, Lucifer just wanted to live in this moment, freeze it in time as he held his sister protectively to his chest, their mother smiling tiredly at her two children. He wanted time to freeze because within the next moment, her eyes had closed, a dark red flooding the crisp white sheets she had been laying on.

His mother had died during the following hours. During the surgery, one of the newer surgeons had accidentally snipped an important artery in their mother's body. They couldn't salvage the vein as his mother quickly bled out. The doctor's apologies had fallen on deaf ears. One tiny mistake, and his mother was taken from him within a blink of an eye. He had watched the blood leak out of her frail body, useless as she died right before his eyes. Mary had been placed in the nursery for safekeeping.

The Puzzlemaker's eyes stung, a single tear slipping out before he could stop it. Lucifer regretted never telling her that he loved her that day. Lucifer regretted that he didn't realize she was bleeding sooner. Lucifer regretted that she didn't get to say any of the last words he knew she wanted to say. But those were Lucifer's regrets, not the Puzzlemaker's. He shouldn't be allowing them to affect him.

The following week, after her funeral, Lucifer and Mary were forced to move in with their alcoholic uncle who would later on become a drug addict. He lived in a shabby house that constantly stunk of alcohol. And if he wasn't busy with fixing the structure of the building, then he was working on all of the broken appliances in it. And his uncle did nothing for it. He had zero common sense. For instance, when Mary started crying, he'd try to dip a towel in some beer and place it in the screaming infant's mouth before Lucifer came rushing in with a bottle of formula for her to eat.

It was safe for Lucifer to say that he absolutely despised his uncle. He was no guardian. Lucifer was the one who had to act like the adult as his uncle plunged himself further and further into debt. People were constantly dropping by, each reeking of either alcohol or smoke. He never stuck around for long, not after seeing a package of white powder being handed to his uncle. After that, he'd always take Mary with him somewhere, sometimes to spend the night in a fort he had built for the two of them. And if they couldn't escape the house while the dealer was there, than he'd hide them away in his room doing anything he could to keep her quiet.

He'd gotten a job as soon as he was of age, being forced to give all of his hard earned money to the druggie in his house, only for the old man to waste it all on more drugs. His uncle made paying bills hard, and when the time came for Mary to be enrolled in preschool, it was hell.  But what he didn't tell him was that he always kept a handful to himself, and the fact that he had two other side jobs to work. He didn't know that Lucifer was saving money for him and Mary to get as far away from the hellhole they lived in. He didn't know that Lucifer swore to give the blonde-haired girl the best in life.

The Puzzlemaker scowled. Even though the addicted bastard was the whole reason in this mess, he would never be thankful to him. Lucifer's hatred for him was so overwhelming, it had even been passed on to him in this form. Just like that little sliver of love for his damned sister. But even through all of those his hardships in his life, that wasn't the reason why he ended up like this.

No, the people at fault are long disposed of now.

Now, they can never touch his sweet little Mary again.

Guys, I swear I have had the first half of this chapter written for like, five months okay? I am just an extremely good procrastinator. I swear I am trying to get back on my schedule, but this semester's classes are a lot more difficult than last semester's, so it's taking up a lot more of my time. But I am trying, okay?

Word Count: 1,977

Date, April 12th, 2017

Until next time, peace!