𝘾𝙃𝘼𝙋𝙏𝙀𝙍 𝙀𝙄𝙂𝙃𝙏
ミ★ ( seven deadly sins, act two ) ★彡

     It had been three weeks since Lucifer killed the darach. Since then, she had been in Hell sorting out what she would do next, she planned on staying in Beacon Hills—there was a small charm to the town and she liked the friends she had made. Plus, she didn't want to leave Stiles and Noah Stilinski alone—the two of them gaining the protection of Hell's servants. Lucifer also wanted to pass the time while Derek was away with Cora. She couldn't help but want to push back this weird attraction towards the werewolf, since it wouldn't do anything but make him a target. But she could see the fact that he held the same emotion towards her, making her not want to hide away from them.

     She tried to get back to Beacon Hills as soon as possible so she could get back to help Stiles, considering his mental state was deteriorating, but the demons in Hell weren't doing her any favours by speeding things up. She had to try and sort out how to keep Hell running smoothly while she was gone, she usually went away for some years to wreck havoc, but they couldn't understand why she would want to go to one particular town to protect it.

     It was completely uncharacteristic of her, but they all seemed to forget that she was an angel before she became the devil. Even then, she still is technically an angel—just one that did what most other angels couldn't do as well.

     Considering she's still an angel, it made her worry about her friends in Beacon Hills much more than she would anyone else. Especially Stiles—who was once nothing more than just someone who was helping her out, he became a friend. A very close friend.

     "Okay, so what happens to a person who has a near-death experience and comes out of it seeing things?" Scott asked his group of friends.

     "And is unable to tell what's real or not?" Stiles added while fiddling with his notebook.

     "And is being haunted by demonic visions of dead relatives?" Allison also added.

     "They're all locked up because they're insane." Isaac answered.

     "Ha ha." Stiles fake laughed. "Can you at least try to be helpful, please?"

     "For half my childhood, I was locked in a freezer. So, being helpful is kind of a new thing for me." Isaac informed the human boy.

     "Really, are you still milking that?" Stiles asked.

     "Helping is new for me, too." Lucy said, skipping over towards their lunch table and plunking herself next to Stiles, ruffling his already disheveled hair. "I'm back, baby, and I think I can be of assistance." She smiled, appreciating the small welcome backs from her new friends—who were actually quite glad to see her again.

     While they were all still very weirded out with the fact that they were friends with the devil, they liked her a lot and it felt weird without her. They preferred the group with her and they couldn't imagine life without her now, which was even more strange to think about. It still freaked them out a lot about how calm and casual they were with being around something everyone always assumed wasn't real—but being apart of the supernatural helped accept her sooner.

     Before Lucy could say anything, a girl walked over towards them and Lucy couldn't help but check her out. "Hi, sorry. I couldn't help overhearing what you guys were talking about. And I think I actually might know what you're talking about." She said and Lucy raised an eyebrow, as did everyone else. "There's a Tibetan word for it. It's called 'Bardo'. It literally means 'in-between state'. The state between life and death."

     "And what do they call you?" Lydia asked, pursing her lips.

     Lucy pointed at her. "Took the words right out of my mouth."

     "Kira." Scott answered dreamily, and everyone looked at him strangely. "She's in our history class." He pointed out.

     "So are you talking Bardo in Tibetan Buddhism or Indian?" Lydia asked her.

     Kira sat down next to Lucy, who gave her a small glare, one that was wiped away once Stiles nudged her. "Either, I guess. But all the stuff you guys were just saying? All that happens in Bardo. There are different progressive states where you can have hallucinations. Some you see, some you just hear. And you can be visited by peaceful and wrathful deities."

     "Wrathful deities?" Isaac questioned. "What are those?"

     "Like demons." Kira shrugged and Lucy tried her hide her face with her hair, hiding herself from the knowing looks from her friends.

     "Demons." Stiles nodded. "Why not?" He said looking away from Lucy.

     "Hold on, if there are different progressive states, then what's the last one?" Allison asked, getting the conversation back on topic.

     "Death. You die." Kira answered once again. She then left the table saying she had to go speak to her dad, leaving the group of people glaring at Lucy.

     "Okay, I was going to sugar coat all of that to make it sound less bad before she came in and said that." She tried to explain.

     "So, you forgot to mention that we might be haunted and 'visited' by demons after doing what we did?" Stiles asked her angrily.

     "I thought you already understood the consequences of dying and coming back to life when Deaton explained it to you!" She grit. "And I have been trying to find the demons who have been doing this but it's hard to rein them all in—especially when half of them disagree with my decision to be here helping you."

     "Wait, so you're here to stay?" Lydia asked.

     Lucifer shrugged with a smile on her face. "I'm your own personal not-so-friendly neighbourhood devil, at your service." She said, ignoring the eye roll that came from Stiles. "But in all seriousness, you should go talk to Deaton after school." She added before disappearing.

     That night, Lucifer appeared in the veterinary clinic when Stiles and Scott went to visit Deaton. She arrived when Deaton began explaining what was happening to them. "It sounds like your subconscious is trying to communicate with you." He tells Stiles.

     "Well, how do I tell my subconscious to use a language that I actually know?" The human boy asked.

     "Do you remember what the sign language looked like?" Deaton asked as they walked into another area of the clinic.

     "Yeah, what we're the placement and the movement of the hands?" Lucy asked, looking through the vending machine for a drink in the waiting room, her eyes lighting up when she spotted the coca-cola.

     "You know sign language?" Scott asked.

     "I've been alive for millions of years, Scott, I know a lot of languages." She answered, knocking the vending machine, the coke falling down. She bent down and picked it up, humming in glee when she cracked it open. "Sign language was only created in... 1817, so it's still pretty fresh in my mind." She informed him while motioning Stiles to show her what was being said in his hallucination.

     Stiles brushed off how bizarre that sentence sounded and started to recite the sign language. "The first one was like this." He said holding up a finger and then with his other finger on the other hand, circling around the other finger.

     "That's 'when'." Lucy said taking another sip, studying his movements.

     "Then there was this, twice." Stiles continued, putting the sides of his hands together flat, and then moving a hand away, twice.

     "That's 'door'." Lucy answered.

     "Then there was this in between it." He said flicking his thumb from his chin.

      "That's it?" She asked, and the human boy nodded. "It means 'When is a door not a door?'"

     "When is a door not a door?" He deadpanned.

     The girl shrugged. "I don't know, it's your hallucination."

     "When it's ajar." Scott answered.

     "Are you kidding me? My subconscious wants to tell me a riddle?" Stiles asked.

     "Not necessarily." Deaton disagrees with Stiles' conclusion about the topic, "When the three of you went underwater, when you crossed from unconsciousness to a kind of superconciousness... you essentially opened a door in your minds." Deaton began to explain.

     "Okay, so what does that mean?" Scott asked. "The door's still open?"

     "Ajar." Lucy corrected.

     "A door into our minds?" Stiles thought out loud.

     "It makes sense if you think about it. Doors are everywhere. Physical doors to other rooms, doors to other planes—like how I got to Earth from Hell, doors into your minds..." Lucy began to ramble.

     "I did tell you it was risky." Deaton reminded the boys.

     "What do we do about it?" Scott asked.

     "Close the door, duh." Lucy rolled her eyes, finishing her drink.

      "It's difficult to answer." Deaton answered.

     "Hang on a second, I know that look." Stiles said pointing at Deaton. "That's the 'we know exactly what's wrong with you, but we have no idea how to fix it' look."

     "One thing I do know is that have an opening like that into your mind, it's not good. Like Lucifer said, you each need to close that door. And you need to do it as soon as possible." The druid informed them.

     "Told you." She smirked. "I think you should listen to me more often."

     "Huh, never thought I'd be doing this with you two." Lucifer said as she followed after Scott and Stiles in the woods while they went looking for the dead body of Malia Tate.

     "Neither did we." Stiles grumbled. If you had said to him three years ago that he would be looking through the woods for a dead body with his werewolf best friend and the devil herself, he would definitely think you were crazy. "You know, if my dad's right, that means there's another werewolf in town that we haven't met yet."

     "I know." Scott sighed while looking at his phone that was tracking the spot they were looking for.

     "And if it turns out to be something like triplets that form into, like, a three-headed hound of Hell, I'm seriously not up for that." Stiles told them.

     "Did you really just combine Aiden and Ethan with Cerberus?" Lucy questioned him. "He would be very upset to know you think so lowly of him. He's literally a little puppy. He couldn't harm a fly in Hell." Cerberus was her favourite to play with while in Hell, he genuinely did act like a puppy since he still had a few more centuries to go until he was completely grown.

     Stiles shuddered. "Every time you speak it reminds me how weird of a situation we're in."

     "Are you meaning to tell me you're still not okay with me being the devil?" Lucy asked again.

     "I don't think I'm ever going to be completely okay with it." Stiles told her. "I'm just getting used to it, and I'm okay with forgetting about you being the devil; which gets ruined whenever you bring up the fact you are the devil."

     Lucifer pursed her lips. "Okay, then." She said awkwardly. "I guess I'll just keep my mouth shut about my identity."

     Stiles groaned. "Out of all the things to be offended about, that's what you choose to get upset with?" Lucy might be thousands of years old, but she acted like all of the teenage girls in his grade, she wouldn't admit it, but she did it to annoy him.

     "Cerberus would never say something like this to me." Lucy rolled her eyes. "He wouldn't care who I was, he would still treat me the same."

     "Okay, now you're just doing this to irritate me." Stiles scoffed. "But you cant say you wouldn't want to be around triplets that form into a three-headed hound of Hell."

     "Yeah, I wouldn't." Scott butt in. "Especially if I can't even control my own transformation anymore." He said as they continued to walk.

     The three of them heard a loud howl and Lucy grabbed onto the two of them, stopping them from walking any further, the action made Scott drop his phone down into the puddle of water. Scott glared at Lucy. "What do you have to say about that?" He asked her.

     "Yikes." She said flatly while looking at the phone.

     "Sorry, buddy." Stiles said, he felt the need to apologise to Scott on Lucy's behalf, he knew that she wouldn't say it to him unless she was being ironic. Stiles also felt like he was responsible for her, since he was the only one she seemed to really like — which he didn't mind, he liked being someone to her, and he considered her a friend.

     "Stiles hates coyotes, didn't want him to feel like he was about to be mauled like a helpless tiny animal." Lucy shrugged, jumping down off of the rocks to grab the phone, Scott following after her. She looked up as Stiles slid down the rocks and snorted when he tried to play it off cool like he didn't practically fall down.

     She handed Scott his phone and he wiped the water off with his sleeve. The true alpha shrugged. "It still works." He said.

     Stiles noticed something in the distance. "Hey, let me see that flashlight." He said taking it off of his friend and pointing it in the distance. "I think we found it." He said walking towards it, the two supernatural creatures following after it.

     As they approached it, they noticed it was the car wreckage the family was found dead in. "Uh... why wouldn't they move it? Isn't it evidence?" Scott asked.

     "Probably too much of a pain to tow out." Stiles said.

     "Humans are so lazy." Lucy commented as she inspected the car that was flipped over onto its roof. "Look at this." She said pointing at the claw marks.

     Scott traced it with his fingers. "Animal claws would be closer together, right? A lot closer." Stiles asked.

     "Then it was a werewolf." Scott realised.

     "So my dad was right." Stiles said looking around the car himself, pointing the flashlight inside to see better.

     "What is that?" Scott asked pointing at the doll left in the car. Stiles accidentally squeezed it and it let out an animated recorded message, causing the boys to flinch and scream out, dropping the toy in the process.

     "I think I just had a minor heart attack." Stiles said scrambling up from the ground.

     "Idiot." Lucy commented. They then heard growling coming from the distance.

     "Please tell me you see that." Scott said looking at the two glowing blue eyes in the darkness.

     "Oh, I see it alright." Stiles and Lucy answer. Before they knew it, Scott ran after it, leaving the two behind as Stiles protested him leaving.

     "What a dick." She said, realising if she hadn't tagged along, Scott would have left Stiles alone in the woods at night. Stiles only sighed and began to pace around the car, looking for any other clues he could find. "I hope he trips over." Lucy said as she watched his retreating form.