Let's Make a Deal

The Ring of Gluttony

   It takes him a week to get Hell back together. A week to fix everything that happened. Between visiting the other rings, attempting to repair all of the elevators in Hell and helping to clean up from the storms that raged across the entire place. Storms that destroyed buildings, homes, and killed people. Leviathan had gotten some of the worst of it, since his blood water tsunami apparently poisoned the aquatic demons that lived in his ring. It was not an easy solution anywhere and the stress it piled on top of Lucifer, while still attempting to recover from everything, was horrible.

   Even with Alastor beside him, hovering and trying to help where he could, the King of Hell still felt like he was being swallowed up by everything. It threw a wrench in all of their plans, including the project in Envy though Charlie had assured him she and her mother would handle that for them. Which he hadn't known what to do with mentally. The thought and idea of Lilith helping let alone helping with something that was quite important to him and their daughter. With Charlie so invested in it though he didn't see where or how Lilith could screw this up for them. On top of that, he just had too much already on his plate to fight anyone who was willing to offer him help.

   Letting them figure out how to continue the apartment complex while he stitched the rest of the Seven Rings back together was just something realistically he was going to have to allow. He can't be everywhere at once and he can't as, much as he wants to, always keep an eye on Lilith. She was Charlie's mother, and some level of respect and trust over his daughter had to be allowed. Charlie was a strong person, and this project was important to her, Lucifer had to believe that would outweigh any type of manipulating tactics that Lilith could attempt on her.

   While they figured out how to get the project back in motion, Lucifer spent most of his time in his office accompanied by Alastor. They dug through the paperwork with a renewed effort, burning what was far too old to matter anymore and creating new stacks of what they had to respond to, especially after what happened. Alastor was incredible at vetting through what was bullshit (in his opinion), what might be useful later (still bullshit to him), and what was vital to them in the moment.

   The Radio Demon could read through documents far faster than Lucifer could, figure out what it was talking about and where it was talking about it, and how important it might be. More impressive was his knowledge of the Pride Ring and the documents that were related to it, despite being gone for seven years he never lost an understanding of the ring he was living in.  Which, Lucifer realized, made a lot of sense. Sinners can't leave the Pride Ring, which meant he was still here. Whatever he was doing behind the scenes, he clearly never lost sight of where he was or what was going on.

   Undoubtedly, Alastor was a force to be reckoned with when it came to everything around them. As he had speculated from the very beginning, the demon had a terrifying political potential. The ability he had to read and understood everything, the way he could manipulate and control a situation, the ease in which he spoke to anyone he wanted to–Lucifer knew that if he was placed in any situation he would be able to find a way to control it. Either with words or with the power he had available to him.

   When they finally got all the paperwork to a decent sorted amount they still had an incredible pile to go through and actually answer, but his desk wasn't swimming with everything on it anymore. It was a reasonable amount for a King to have to go through, but more than he actually wanted to have to deal with. Vetted with Alastor's approval though, most of it just required his signature and maybe a response letter. One that the demon himself was taking the responsibility of writing up on his own. While he worked through that, Lucifer dealt with the more magical aspect of repairing Hell and signing documents he was handed.

   They worked around each other, a balance that Lucifer hadn't even realized could exist for a place like Hell–or beside him, actually. He never had a support system like Alastor, someone who would stand beside him the way that the other was, who was pushing to find a way for things to work out as they had. For fixing the mistakes that he had caused with his poor management of a system he helped create. A fate he had doomed everyone to with his choices. Choices he might not regret, but that still caused this.