God's Gone AWOL

[Bonus Features] Soup for the Soul (Part 2)

By the time Xander returned with his collection of various mushrooms, Zibs had already poured the broth over the onions and garlic. It was too late to sauté anything else, but that was okay. Everything was going to be cooked in the same pot anyway.

"Got a whole variety for you." Xander tossed his funguses onto the counter.

Zibs glanced over. He had gathered a rather large assortment. There were cute, button-like mushrooms, tall gilly tunnels, thin rubbery needles, and large flat funguses. Some were still wet from recent rain, some had brown clumps of soil still hanging onto their stems. Looking at all of them, a flicker of uncertainty crossed Zibs' face.

"The recipe only calls for brown mushrooms," she told Xander.

"Yeah, but there are so many kinds of brown mushrooms out there, I didn't know which one to pick," Xander explained.

"That one is white." Zibs pointed to a large, flower-like fungus sitting amidst the heap of brown.

"That's a snow fungus. I made a detour just to get it,"

"The fuck did you do that for??"

"Well Lilith and Bentley used to make me a soup out of it sometimes. I figured it'd be a good addition,"

It was clear that Zibs had no intention of talking about her own bygone days with Bentley. Shrugging apathetically, she scooped up Xander's fungi collection and threw it all into the pot at once.

"Were we supposed to wash those?" Xander asked.

"I just put them in water, didn't I?" She slapped a metal lid over the pot. "Okay, now we simmer it for a while before adding the cream,"

"So the cream does NOT come from the mushrooms," Xander clarified.

"No," Zibs confirmed.

"Got it,"

A good while later, Xander and Zibs sat together at Lucy's table. Since most of the apartment was just one very large room, there was no dining room to speak of. There was just a black wooden table set up in front of the bar with a set of chairs placed around it. However, despite the minimal setup, the apartment itself was very nice, and clearly brand-new.

"Why didn't we stay here when Bentley was on the run?" Xander wondered, "It's is bigger than my place in Hell,"

But as he thought about it, he vaguely remembered them talking about Lucy's apartment when they were kicked out of the Cupboard. At the time, Bentley and Atticus had decided to stay with Micaiah instead. Granted, this apartment was smaller and more compact than anywhere else they had stayed, and the big city was rather disgusting. Despite the apartment's cleanliness and abundance of human-safe foods, it wasn't the most ideal place in the four realms.

"It's cuz' Lucy's a selfish little bastard sometimes," Zibs answered.

Bubble bubble bubble... the muffled sounds of steadily simmering soup came from beneath the pot lid.

Hearing her words, Xander's eyebrows twitched. Despite his own habit of doing the exact same thing, Xander didn't like it when others spoke ill of Lucy while he wasn't around to defend himself —even Zibs.

"You don't believe me?" She accurately read his expression. "This isn't the only piece of property he owns. He's got a wholeass mansion in Northern Ireland that he doesn't touch. —Bet he didn't even tell you that,"

"No, he didn't," Xander said, genuinely stunned.

Of course, if anybody were to own a mansion, it'd be Lucifer. However, the fact that he hadn't mentioned a single word of it, especially while they were actively looking for a safehouse, was a little annoying. Xander decided that if the subject ever came up, he would certainly ask.