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Chloe had thought she’d had Lucifer Morningstar pretty well figured out. Without knowing any of the specifics, she’d pieced together enough bits of information he’d dropped over the past three years to understand a broad overview of his life. He’d been adopted into a large, extremely devout family. His father had been controlling at best and abusive at worst, and had had a vision for Lucifer’s life that he clearly hadn’t shared. His father had kicked him out of the house, his mother had done nothing to stop it, and Lucifer had created an elaborate string of internally consistent metaphors wherein his father was God and he was the devil cast out of Heaven and condemned to rule Hell for eternity.
It was weird, and Lucifer was what she could charitably describe as strange, but it was generally harmless. As far as coping mechanisms went, Chloe figured it had probably done a good job of protecting him when nothing else had.
Except now Chloe Decker was looking upon the face of the devil, and her brain was trying to reshuffle everything she knew about the world to accommodate this new truth.
Her first thought was It’s all true. Lucifer was the devil, which meant that God was his Father, and Heaven and Hell were real. That knowledge whited out everything else that came before it.
The devil wore Lucifer’s clothes and used Lucifer’s voice to speak her name. Her mind stumbled on this information and swiftly backed up, reordering the world with new information. Lucifer wore his own clothes and used his own voice to speak her name. It was just that Lucifer was the devil.
Hadn't she known? Hadn’t she felt that creeping surety on the roof, just moments ago?
Chloe stepped back.
In an instant, the world snapped back to how it had been. Lucifer’s familiar face stared back at her, no longer a red mass of scar tissue, just the face of the man who had been her partner for the past three years. His face was blank, but his eyes — his eyes flicked up to her face to meet her eyes.
“Detective,” he said again, slowly. She knew that voice. She knew the voice of the devil. “Are you alright?”
“It’s all true,” she repeated.
He had told her so many times that he was the devil. He announced it so calmly, so casually to anyone who asked but mostly to people who didn’t. He had told her he was the devil in ways that seemed playful, boastful, like he was daring her to argue with him and spoil his fun.
But not always always, a part of her mind interrupted. He was often gleeful in admitting he was the devil, and seemed genuinely annoyed when people — when she — didn’t believe him.
And he certainly hadn’t been anything resembling prideful or playful that night — only two nights ago — on the balcony of his penthouse. He’d spoken the words like a confession. I am the devil… He’d looked so vulnerable that night, right before he’d kissed her. She’d kissed the devil.
He didn’t look vulnerable now, though. He looked guarded, withdrawn, as if he would bolt at the slightest movement.
“You’re alright,” he said. His voice was distant, distorted. He took a small step towards her, his hands out in front of him in a placating gesture. Chloe could hear only the sound of small pieces of plaster being crushed under his shoes. She didn’t move. “Everything’s okay.”
All the things he’d told her were true. All the things she’d filed away as elaborate metaphors were true. There was a God, and he’d thrown Lucifer into Hell, and all those siblings he talked about were angels. Angels that lived in Heaven. She had never so desperately wanted to drink before in her life.
Thinking about drinking made her think of Lucifer, drinking glass after glass of scotch at his piano. Lucifer, who wasn’t named after the devil: he was the devil.
“Lucifer?” she said. She sounded faint even to herself. “What is this?”
“Chloe,” he said. He so rarely called her by name, that hearing him say it felt like being jolted with electric currents. She started and her eyes refocused; she realized that she hadn’t stopped looking at him at all even though he mind had been coming apart at the seams. “I always tell you the truth. I’m telling you the truth now. You’re safe.”
Lucifer, usually so brash and temperamental, was being calm. But there was a hint of strain under his voice, a tension she could hear, as if he was barely keeping it together. His voice was so familiar; he was so familiar.
“You killed Pierce,” she said. She could see him lying behind Lucifer, a knife jutting out of his chest and a horrible patch of red seeping outward from the wound. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that — there was no room in her chest for any more emotions when shock was spreading inside her.
“I did,” Lucifer said.
There was more to it than that. She’d been shot, and she woke up in his arms. “You saved me,” she said.
“I did,” he said.
She remembered the sound of the gun, falling back from sudden pressure against her chest — and coming to in the sunlight on the roof, three floors up. You’re safe, he’d said. That’s all that matters. And then he’d just disappeared. He’d just vanished. She had been lying on the roof, looking up at him, and the instant she’d turned her back he had been gone.
There were bullet holes in his white shirt. She had heard the gunshots, but he wan’t lying in a pool of blood on the ground the way that Pierce was. Pierce, who Lucifer had been so adamant in insisting was actually Cain, from the Bible, the world’s first murderer. That was true too.
She had followed him down from the roof and had seen him there, crouched over Pierce’s prone form, and when he’d straightened up and turned towards her —
“You’re the devil,” she said.
“I am,” he replied.
And that was when backup arrived.
Chloe was lost in a sea of questions, statements, a shock blankets. She had the wherewithal not to tell them that Lucifer was the devil, but that was about it. She fumbled her way through the past couple of days: suspecting Pierce of killing Charlotte, the man at the penthouse who had tried to kill Dan, coming to the loft, being confronted by Pierce, getting shot and knocked out of the playing field. She looked up occasionally, looking for Lucifer; and he was always there, not directly beside her, but in her line of sight, speaking to another detective. He was close enough to see, close enough to hear, but not too close. His suit was buttoned, hiding the bullet holes that she knew were in his shirt.
He was present, but not once did he look at her. He didn’t attempt to make eye contact or speak to her. She couldn’t decide whether she was grateful for that or not.
At least she didn’t have to explain away her shocked and confused countenance. Her colleagues were perfectly fine accepting the idea that she would be shook up by Pierce’s true identity as the Sinnerman and being shot to worry about how she was — or wasn’t — interacting with her partner. Her partner. Her best friend. Her maybe something more than friends. Lucifer, who was the devil.
When one of the officers offered to drive her home, she didn’t protest. She looked at Lucifer, who nodded at her, the first time he had acknowledged her presence since others had come. She turned her head away for a moment, and when she looked back, he was gone.
The only thing Chloe cared about that night was spending time with Trixie. She was safe in the house, the house where Lucifer had been countless times — had broken into several times, as it were — had eaten breakfast with her, had played monopoly with her and her daughter, had argued with Maze about —
Oh, Maze. Maze was a demon. Lucifer always called her a demon, and, well, he was the devil, and Maze was one of his demons. Her old roommate was a demon, a demon who had babysat Trixie countless times and who had never done the dishes. There probably weren’t any dishes in Hell. Because Hell was a real place, and Maze was too busy torturing people to do any dishes.
“Mommy, are you okay?” Trixie asked. “You stopped reading right in the middle of the sentence.”
“Sorry, monkey,” Chloe said. “I’m okay. I just had a really long day at work. I think I’m just a little tired.”
“Did something bad happen?”
“It did,” she said. She knew she needed to tell Trixie about Pierce — the man had almost been her step-father, after all — but it wasn’t a conversation she particularly wanted to have. “But I’m fine, and your dad’s fine too.”
“Is Lucifer okay?” Trixie asked. Chloe felt her heart constrict.
“Of course, monkey, he’s okay.” He was immortal. He’d told her so countless times before. Of course he was okay. She paused, and closed the book and put it to the side. “But Marcus isn’t.”
Trixie twisted to meet her eyes. “Is he in the hospital?”
Chloe swallowed. Telling people about death was never easy, even when she didn’t know the victim or their family. It was so much worse to tell Trixie about this, but if not her, who would? She would rather Trixie hear it from her, and sooner was better than later. She wouldn’t be doing either of them any favours to put it off.
“No, monkey,” she said. “He got hurt really bad and… he didn’t make it.”
She recognized the look in Trixie’s eyes, that blank look of shock before the comprehension set in. It tore at her chest to see that look, the look she saw on so many people day after day, on her daughter’s face.
“Oh,” said Trixie. Her voice was ragged on the inhale. Pierce may have been a criminal, may have committed horrendous deeds, may have tried to kill Dan and Lucifer and her, but Trixie didn’t know any of that and Chloe wasn’t going to go as far as to tell her. To her, Marcus had been a nice guy who made her mom happy. He had brought her chocolate cake.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said as Trixie’s eyes filled and started to spill over.
She pulled her daughter closer to her side and cleared her throat. This was what was important. Her daughter was safe, and she got to come home to her at the end of the day. And if she clung just a little bit tighter, and hugged Trixie just a little bit longer, well, her daughter certainly wasn’t going to complain about it.
“Are you okay, mommy?” Trixie said.
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “Everything’s okay.”
Chloe woke the next morning and for a brief moment, the world was as it always was. She had fallen asleep in Trixie’s bed, and her little monkey was clinging to her like a limpet. The sun was streaming in through the window, and the clock on the bedside table told her it was almost seven. And then the world flipped back upside down and Lucifer was the devil.
He would probably disappear from her life anyway, now that she knew the truth. That was just how these things went, didn’t they?
It would be a blessing to get called in to work. A dead body, a new case, something that didn’t have anything to do with angels or demons or a devil with a penchant for designer suits.
But work wasn’t an option, not today. She was no doubt on some sort of leave following her shooting and would remain so until the mess surrounding Pierce and the Sinnerman had been investigated externally. She assumed that Dan and Ella were undergoing similar treatment, but she didn’t know for sure. She hadn’t thought to ask. She vaguely remembered seeing them at the loft yesterday, but she didn’t know when they had arrived or even if she’d spoken to them.
Chloe gently extricated herself from Trixie’s bed and shuffled into the kitchen. Her daughter needed to know that she was still here for her, and that meant making breakfast and sending her off to school. A little normalcy would do them both some good. She pulled the eggs out of the fridge and set to work.
Trixie was awake and stumbling out of her room just as Chloe tipped eggs onto a plate for her.
“Here you go, monkey,” she said, setting the plate down on the counter. Trixie slid onto the chair and began picking at her eggs. “How are you this morning?”
Trixie shrugged, fiddling with her fork and avoiding looking at her. “Sad, I guess.”
“Me too.” Chloe scraped the remaining eggs onto a plate for herself. “But I’m here for you, and you can always talk to me about however you’re feeling, okay?” Trixie nodded, and took a bite of her eggs. “Do you feel up to going to school?”
Trixie shrugged again and looked up. “Do I have to?”
Chloe set down her fork. “You don’t have to if you really don’t want to,” she told her. “But sometimes, when I feel sad, I think I want to be alone. But actually, I feel so much better when I see you or my friends, or just other people in general. It probably doesn’t seem like it now, but I think you might feel better if you go to school and go to all your classes.”
“I guess,” said Trixie. “Okay.”
“My brave little monkey,” Chloe said, leaning across the counter to kiss her head. “I don’t have work today, so I’ll drop you off at school and pick you up, okay? Why don’t you go get ready and get your stuff?”
Dan called as Trixie jumped down and ran off to her room. “Hi, Dan.”
“Chloe!” he sounded relieved. “How are you doing?”
“I’ve been… better,” she said slowly. “I’m on leave, right?”
“Yeah,” said Dan. “Until this mess gets sorted. The whole thing is being taken out of the department’s hands.”
“Do I have to come in?” she asked.
“Eventually,” said Dan. “Not today. I know you’re not very good at resting, but — try to take care of yourself. I’m doing all I can here.”
“Thank you,” she said, and meant it. Dan was still dealing with the loss of Charlotte, and here he was trying to make her life easier. “I wish I could be there. I hate playing the waiting game.”
“I do, too,” he said. “But they’d just send you back home again if you came in.”
She sighed. “You’re right.”
“Do you want me to take Trixie?” Dan asked. “Give you some time alone to deal with things?”
“No,” she told him. “I feel better with her here. I — I told her about Pierce. About how he’s dead. That’s all she knows right now.”
“We’ll get through this, Chloe,” said Dan. “I promise.”
It was a bit of a platitude, but Chloe decided not to call him out on it. There were worse things in the world than a little reassurance.
Chloe dropped Trixie off at school and circled back home, ignoring the turn that would take her down to the strip where Lux was. She opened her front door and was met with the stillness of her apartment.
She couldn’t go into work. But that didn’t mean she had to stop being a detective.
She took a deep breath and started from the beginning.
She’d looked into Lucifer Morningstar shortly after she’d met him. He had appeared seemingly out of nowhere in 2011 with a fully formed identity with absolutely no history attached to it. Over the years of their partnership she had considered different explanations for that, from a criminal past to involvement with witness protection. But now she knew, didn’t she? That was the year he’d left Hell and arrived on Earth, because he was the devil and the fact that he had been on a different plane of existence was something that was actually possible.
That first case that they had worked together — that hadn’t been until 2016. He had been living on Earth for five years before they met, running Lux and hardly causing a stir. Chloe worried her bottom lip between her teeth as she flipped through her old notes. It was all so — unassuming. The devil comes to Earth and opens a nightclub? Really?
And later, at that same nightclub, Delilah had been shot and killed. No, Chloe corrected herself. Delilah and Lucifer had both been shot outside of Lux, except Lucifer had walked away without a scratch on account of being immortal and therefore immune to a volley of lead projectiles.
“How does she end up dying in a hailstorm of bullets and you get away without a scratch? I think that’s interesting, don’t you?”
“The benefits of immortality.”
He’d told her. He’d given her the answer, even then. She pressed her palms against her eyes, trying to lessen the ache growing behind her eyes.
She had seen him throw people through glass windows and pick them up with a single hand. She had seen him show up inexplicably on the other side of locked doors. She’d seen things she couldn’t possibly explain, only to have him throw out an impossible solution that in retrospect weren’t so impossible after all.
She’d decided early on that she couldn’t unravel the mystery that was Lucifer, so at some point she’d stopped trying. And after Amenadiel had shown her —
Oh. Amenadiel. Amenadiel was Lucifer’s brother. That meant that Amenadiel was an angel. He’d also lied to her, had gone to great lengths to prove to her that Lucifer wasn’t who he said he was.
She’d met him at the auction. Shit, where Lucifer’s angel wings had been up for bid. He’d told her that he’d had Maze cut them off, and then there they were, strung up for hundreds of people to bid on. They’d been so beautiful, even though Lucifer had been in a rage over the fact that they were fake. She could only imagine what the real ones looked like.
Chloe swallowed. The thought of how Lucifer looked, those beautiful white wings arching out from his back, a stark contrast against one of his black suits, sent chills down her spine.
It hadn’t been that long ago that he’d told her they were back. She frowned, reaching for a newer notebook. There was that witness who’d said she saw an angel, and then there was Lucifer’s dramatic drive to prove it wasn’t him. He’d completely spun out over that case — hair unkempt, suits mussed, red rings around his eyes. He’d told her that his wings were back, and he’d been so distraught about it. She’d brushed him off, not wanting to encourage his delusions — but they weren’t delusions, were they?
She slammed her notebook closed and threw it back into the box. She couldn’t keep rehashing everything that had happened to her over the past three years; she would find more clues, more evidence, and there were only so many world-altering revelations a girl could have in a day or two. She’d known for years that she’d drive herself crazy if she tried to solve Lucifer Morningstar. It might yet happen to her.
She still needed to make an official statement, and there were only so many times that she could scrub the kitchen counters clean to distract herself. Chloe dropped Trixie off at school the next day, hugging her for just a touch longer than usual, and made her way to the precinct. She stepped out of the elevator doors and was immediately accosted by Ella.
“Chloe!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around her. “Thank God you’re alright.”
“Hi, Ella,” Chloe said, hugging her back just as hard and trying not to visibly flinch at her choice of phrase. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m just here to give my statement.”
“I want you to know that Dan and I have been at it non-stop,” Ella said, drawing back and leading her into the bullpen. “We’re totally on it. I mean, as much as we’re allowed to be on it.”
“You’re not allowed to work on this?” Chloe asked.
“No,” said Dan, walking up to her desk. “Hi, Chlo,” he added, giving her a brief hug before switching back to business. “Internal Affairs have taken over. I guess when a Lieutenant turns out to be a big crime boss, they don’t let that precinct conduct their own investigation.”
“At least they haven’t taken over my lab,” said Ella. “They have some huge mobile unit parked out back. I want in it so bad.”
“We’re trying to help them out as much as we can,” said Dan. “We just can’t help out that much.”
“We’ll introduce you in a sec,” said Ella. “They’re probably done with Lucifer.” Chloe flinched at hearing his name dropped so casually, and hoped neither of this noticed.
“Who’s done with me?” came a voice from behind her. She froze. She knew it. She just knew that was going to happen.
Ella jumped. “Dude, you scared me! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” She turned and whacked Lucifer on the arm. She turned around and whacked the devil on his arm.
“Well, speak of the devil and he shall appear,” said Lucifer. Of course he did. Of course he would say that. There wasn’t a saying about the devil that he didn’t gleefully fling himself into. He was just — standing there, in a three-piece suit, smirking at her like he usually did as though nothing were different. As though her entire world hadn’t been shaken up and dumped out onto the floor.
“I was just telling Chloe about IA taking over the case,” said Ella.
“Ah, yes,” said Lucifer. “Gave my statement to the handsome one who wants to have sex with me.”
“Dude, come on,” Dan complained. “Don’t have sex with people in Internal Affairs—”
The rest of Dan’s reply was drowned out as Lucifer turned to Chloe, the full weight of his attention resting on her. His gaze had always been intense. It had never made her uncomfortable, that sensation of his entire being focused solely on her, but at the moment she wished he would direct it on someone else. “Detective!” he exclaimed. “You look a bit peaky. Are you alright?”
She wasn’t sure whether she should avoid his gaze or stare at him, but Chloe Decker was no coward. She squared her shoulders and met his eyes. “I’m fine,” she said, aiming for casual but landing on clipped instead. “Everything’s fine.” She could stare down the devil. Why not?
“Latte?” he asked, lifting up a cup that he hadn’t appeared to have been holding moments before. “Do you want me to spike it for you? You look like you could use it.”
“Dude!” said Ella. “Stop telling her she looks bad!”
“I was not,” said Lucifer frostily. It was jarring: hearing his voice sounding the way it usually did, hearing him interacting the way he usually did. It didn’t line up with her new knowledge, like a jagged puzzle piece that didn’t seem to fit anywhere. “The Detective always looks radiant, obviously. She’s just looking a little less radiant than usual. I was trying to offer a solution.” He sniffed and tossed his head like a particularly offended cat.
“Okay, that’s enough,” Chloe found herself saying right before she watched her hand reach out and grab Lucifer and drag him off to the side. She was dragging the devil around by his sleeve, her mind supplied somewhat hysterically.
“Oh, alright,” said Lucifer. “Apologies for trying to give you alcohol before noon. Easy on the suit.”
Was he serious? Was he seriously going to pretend that nothing had happened? Like she hadn’t seen his face, and learnt the truth, and had her entire world turned on its axis? She felt like her eyes might pop out of her skull at any minute. Of course Lucifer would appear in all his Lucifer-ness just to Lucifer at her. Typical.
“What are you doing here?” she whisper-screamed.
“I’m here to give my statement about how Pierce attempted to make us mincemeat,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
She squinted at him. Chloe was a creature of habit, and it was part of her routine to ignore most of the ridiculous things Lucifer said to try to distract her from the point she was trying to make. “I mean I don’t get why you —” she gestured broadly at him and hoped he understood that when she said ‘you’ she really meant ‘you, the devil’. “— Are here. When you could be…” she trailed off and pointed her fingers towards the floor.
“I’ve told you before, Detective, I’m retired,” Lucifer said. “Well, semi-retired anyway. Turns out you can take the devil out of Hell but you can’t quite take Hell out of the devil. Hence the return of the devil face.”
“Keep it down!” Chloe hissed, looking around to see if anyone had overheard. She had no idea what he was talking about — it turned out knowing that Lucifer was the actual devil did little to make sense of the complete gibberish that flowed out of his mouth at all times. The more things changed and all that.
“What, do you think if I say it loud enough, they’ll believe that I’m the devil?” Lucifer said in his worst stage whisper that ended in a shout on the last word.
“Lucifer —” she took a deep breath, closing her eyes briefly. She could absolutely believe this was a conversation she’d have with Lucifer, who was perfectly capable of being prickly and childish when it suited him. She couldn’t quite believe she was having it with the devil, though, who surely wouldn’t bother with police precincts and giving statements. “This is a lot to take in,” she continued after a moment. “I would appreciate it if you could take this seriously.”
“Wouldn’t be very me if I went and did that,” he said, leaning in closer. “I am merely proving my point.”
“Point?” she said. “What point?”
“That I’m completely normal,” said the devil. “You don’t have to treat me any differently, Detective, and I don’t have to treat you any differently. Same old partner, same old cases, same old witty banter. Nothing’s changed.”
Nothing had changed? Was he being serious? Could she just keep on being partners with the devil, who refused to follow protocol or do paperwork or behave in general? Could they be friends? Could she show up at his penthouse with paperwork and get coaxed into having a drink or two? Could she just — keep him the way she had been doing?
She narrowed her eyes. “Nothing has changed?” she repeated incredulously.
“Except for those narcs taking over the conference rooms and emptying the vending machine of all the good snacks,” he said. “I mean…” He straightened up and let out an indignant huff, as if these actions were unforgivable offences.
“I’m kind of freaking out right now,” she told him. It was the sort of thing she could tell Lucifer, but she wasn’t sure what the devil would do with that sort of information.
Lucifer’s countenance of arrogance and nonchalance dropped for a moment. He was looking at her the way he looked at her sometimes, as if she were someone wholly precious. She wasn’t sure she wanted him to look at her that way. “Freaking out, maybe,” he said. “But not running away.”
She blinked. He was right. She wasn’t running away. At no point had she considered packing up Trixie and trying to flee the country. She hadn’t even considered trying to warn anyone about him — not that they’d believe her, anyway.
The devil was standing in front of her, and she wasn’t afraid. She’d never been afraid of Lucifer, no matter how dangerous or unhinged he could be. She wasn’t afraid of the devil. She was a lot of things — confused, angry, hurt, ready to implode or explode or go completely numb — but it hadn’t occurred to her to be frightened.
She wasn’t sure what to do with this revelation. Sane people probably would be afraid to meet the devil; what did it say about her that she wasn’t?
“You’re taking this very well, you know,” he added. He looked absurdly proud of her. “Definitely better than Dr. Linda. Most people see my devil face and wind up a gibbering mess on the floor. Well,” he said casually, examining his fingernails for non-existent dirt. “You know. You’ve seen it.”
Her mind flashed to all those perps who had spent a few seconds alone with Lucifer and had subsequently shrieked in terror and turned themselves in, all in a desperate bid to get away from him. So that was it: they’d seen his other face and tried to get as far away as possible. Another piece of the mystery slotted into place. And then she caught up with the rest of what he'd said.
“Wait, Linda knows?” she hissed.
His eyes lit up. “Yes, you should talk to Dr. Linda!” he said. “Who better to talk about human feelings with than another human? And then everything will go back to normal. Well done, Detective!”
And with that he straightened the collar on her jacket and waltzed off.
Normal? How he could consider any of this normal? He was the devil who had apparently decided to retire from Hell, open a nightclub, and help her solve crimes. None of that exactly screamed ‘normal’ to her.
Well, if that was how he wanted to play this, then fine. She would show him just how normal she could be.
Her resolve was tested almost immediately by the detective from Internal Affairs. It turned out that officially being in the know made it a lot harder to navigate the truth than when she was just another clueless human. She could appreciate Lucifer’s commitment to telling the truth — it was certainly a lot braver than the way she found herself scrambling to limit her answers to the believable.
“Well,” said the detective, flipping the folder closed. “Thank you for coming in, Detective Decker.”
“Are you pressing charges against Lucifer?” she said. The thought of officers coming for him, taking him away in handcuffs, throwing him in prison… it made her chest tight. Although, come to think of it, why on earth would Lucifer allow himself to be thrown in prison? Surely the devil could just disappear and not have to deal with things like laws or court systems or jails. He seemed to go along with a lot, but she couldn’t imagine him letting himself be convicted of a crime.
The detective coughed and tugged at his collar, flushing slightly. She recognized the signs of someone who was desperately attracted to Lucifer and didn’t know how to deal with that information. She might have been surprised if she hadn’t watched men and women fling themselves at him for years with absolutely no provocation whatsoever. Was this something that all angels had, this inherent magnetism? Or was it particular to Lucifer?
“Ah, well,” said the detective. “I can’t divulge information about an ongoing investigation just yet. We’ve spoken to Mr. Morningstar and while his testimony was definitely, uh, interesting —” Chloe had no doubt the sort of things Lucifer had told them; a few days ago she would have been equally exasperated — “It does seem to be consistent with yours.”
She let out a breath. “Thank you,” she said. “I know he can be a little, well — you’ve met him now.”
He hummed in agreement.
“But he’s a good man,” she said. She was surprised that she said it, but as soon as she did she knew it was true. Lucifer was the devil, sure, but he was good. Even when he was angry, or hurt, or particularly self-destructive, he still tried to do the right thing.
“We’ll take it into consideration,” said the detective, standing. “We’re done for today, but please make yourself available if we have any further questions. And stay in town.”
Chloe nodded. She knew the drill. “Thank you,” she said, stepping back out into the bullpen. She brew out a breath and headed towards the elevator.
She had to talk to a therapist about a devil.
Chloe knocked three times on Linda’s door and waited, shuffling her feet. She heard movement behind the door and braced herself.
“Chloe!” said Linda, smiling. “This is a pleasant surprise. What brings you here?”
“Lucifer is the devil,” Chloe blurted out, then stopped herself from saying more in case every thought she’d had over the past couple days came spilling out of her mouth in one horrible flood.
“Oh,” said Linda, opening the door wider and stepping aside. The smile had dropped off her face. “Yes. That. You’d better come in.”
Chloe walked in, holding her arms crossed over her chest. She took a seat on the couch as Linda sat down across from her, and had a sudden acute awareness that Lucifer came and sat here in this very spot every week. She had always been curious about what he talked about in therapy — especially as he appeared to have very little in the way of self-awareness.
But armed with the fresh knowledge that Lucifer was the devil, and that Linda knew he was the devil, she found herself thinking about their sessions together in a whole new light. Did he talk about being the devil? Did he talk about Hell? Did he talk about Heaven? Did he talk about his father? He sort of did all those things already with people who weren’t his therapist, but it must be different to talk about them with someone who knew the truth rather than a bunch of people who think you’re eccentric at best and certifiably insane at worst.
“Lucifer said you might stop by,” Linda said, drawing her out of her thoughts and back into the room. “He told you.” It wasn’t a question.
Chloe nodded, focusing on a point somewhere to Linda’s right. “Well,” she said. “He’s told me hundreds of times. He told me the first day we met. But I sort of just thought he was crazy, you know? But then I saw —” she gestured vaguely, hoping that Linda would get the idea.
“Lucifer calls it his ‘devil face’,” Linda commented.
It was like a dam bursting. “Yes!” Chloe practically shouted. “Because he’s the devil! And he just announces it casually to everyone he ever meets, like he absolutely doesn’t care who knows, and — and he’s been my partner for three years!” she continued. “And we’ve kissed! And my daughter once drew a pink unicorn on cheek! And that’s crazy!” Chloe realized she was almost shouting and cleared her throat, resettling on the couch and dropping her hands back down into her lap. “So that’s happening.”
“How did it happen?” Linda said calmly. It was good that she was being so calm. Chloe appreciated the calm. She desperately needed that calm.
“Pierce tried to kill us,” Chloe said. “Lucifer saved me, and he went back and — he killed Pierce.”
“That is terrible,” said Linda. She sounded concerned but not shocked. Had Lucifer told her? Had he had a session with her this week? Did he talk about work with the police, or was that something he kept quiet from her? “Are you okay?”
Chloe swallowed and nodded. “I came down the stairs and he was just crouched over the body, and then he stood up and his face was — and he didn’t even realize it at first. He didn’t even know that I knew. But I saw it. I saw — him.”
“That must have been very shocking for you,” Linda said. She sounded so understanding. It was nice. No wonder Lucifer kept talking to her.
“I just kept thinking about all the times he told me, you know?” she said. “And I’d ignore him, or brush him off, or I’d tell him that — and then there he was, standing in front of me. You know. The devil.” She threw her hands in front of her, as though Lucifer were right there and she were presenting him to Linda Vanna White style.
“And what do you think about that?” Linda asked.
“I can’t even be mad at him,” she said. “It’s not like he lied to me about it, because apparently he’s never lied about anything, although he sure has omitted a whole lot. I only have myself to blame for not believing him any of the hundreds of times he told me before.” She felt like a prize idiot. How many times had Lucifer told her the truth, and how many times had she looked into his eyes and refused to believe him? Stupid, stupid.
“But are you mad?” Linda asked.
“Yes!” said Chloe. Then she paused. “No. I don’t know what I am.” She put her head in her hands and sighed. “I feel like an idiot. He’s told me so many times. I can’t be mad about this because he’s told me so many times. He told me again just the other night and I —” she laughed, because at this point, why not — “I told him that he wasn’t, and —” she stopped herself. Best not to go there. She wasn’t ready to deal with that just yet.
She trusted him; he had been her partner for three years, after all. She knew Lucifer so well, and she knew he didn’t lie. So why had she clung so tightly to a lie instead of facing the truth? Why hadn’t she just believed him, when he was honest about everything else in his life?
“He told you,” said Linda. Her eyes were kind. “But he never showed you.”
“No,” said Chloe, her voice slightly muffled by her hands.
“You are allowed to feel angry about this if that is what you are feeling,” Linda continued. “You’re allowed to be angry, or upset, or hurt. He told you the truth, but he knew you didn’t believe him, and he offered nothing as proof. It’s not unreasonable to require proof when someone tells you he’s the devil, and it doesn’t make you foolish not to have believed him before. It’s natural to be skeptical. This is LA: we can’t believe every person we meet who has delusions of grandeur.” It was a sensible point. It was a very Linda thing to say.
“And when I did see his face, he didn’t even mean to show me,” Chloe said. “It was an accident.” She tried to ignore the hurt in her own voice.
“Ahh,” said Linda. “Why do you think that is? I mean, why do you think he’s never shown you his devil face before?”
“I don’t know,” Chloe said. “But he showed you.” Linda knew. Linda was great and everything, but he showed Linda before he showed her. There was a not insignificant part of her that was unhappy about that. So the devil trusted Linda more than he trusted her; that shouldn’t be something that made her feel upset, for God’s sake. This whole thing was ridiculous. She shouldn’t want the devil to come talk to her, because only crazy people wanted the devil to show up at their house. She had never really gone to church, but she was pretty sure that conversing with the devil was generally frowned upon.
“He did show me,” said Linda. “But we’re not talking about my relationship with Lucifer, which has very different foundations from yours.”
“But he showed you,” Chloe insisted. Why had he shown Linda, and not her?
“I may have goaded him into it,” Linda admitted. “And then I may have had an extended existential crisis and refused to speak to him for two weeks. And then when I did speak to him again, all I did was ask him about Hitler.”
That brought her out of her spiral. Chloe stared. “Hitler? Really?” She hadn’t thought about that part. The whole part with damned souls and torture and the fact that Lucifer had tortured souls in Hell. Because he was the devil. And the devil had certainly tortured Hitler.
She was still trying to wrap her mind around the fact that Lucifer was the devil, but she hadn’t really stopped to think about what being the devil actually meant. She had only been thinking about it in the vaguest possible sense. It meant punishment, and torture, and eternal damnation. It meant that the crimes of the guilty weren’t wiped clean after death, and that the people she put away for life were going away for a lot longer than she had anticipated.
“Yeah,” said Linda. “Hitler. And my uncle Ed.”
Chloe stared a little longer, and then to her surprise, found herself laughing. What else was there to do?
“But really, Chloe,” said Linda once she’d stopped. “Why do you think he’s never shown you before?”
“Maybe he just never trusted me with it,” she said, wondering why thinking that made her skin prick uncomfortably. Something nudged the back of her mind, something half-forgotten and trying to rise to the surface of her memory.
“Trust is a complicated thing,” Linda said.
“I think he tried to tell me once before,” she realized suddenly. “It was right after he was kidnapped and left out in the desert. Which, I mean — okay. He came back and got really serious about how he was going to show me something. He closed the blinds in the room and said he was going to show me the truth, but then he didn’t. Or, it was like he couldn’t, maybe. I remember being so angry with him — I thought he was just being a jerk.” She sat a moment in silence. “He was trying to tell me the truth then, wasn’t he?”
“It’s very possible,” Linda said.
“But why didn’t he?” I can’t prove it to you… he’d said so just a few days ago. “He couldn’t, maybe?” She leaned back and dropped her head against the back of the couch. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“What about his emotional state when he was going to show you the truth?” Linda asked. “How did he seem to you?”
Chloe thought back to that day. What had he been like? “He drank out of his flask,” she remembered. “Maybe he was nervous.”
“Okay,” said Linda. “So if he was nervous to show you then, what does that tell you about why he hasn’t done it before now?”
“He’s afraid?” she phrased it as a question, not really believing that could be the right answer. I was afraid you’d only want me because you’ve only seen certain sides of me…
Linda raised her eyebrows and nodded, which Chloe assumed was some sort of therapist body language for ‘keep going’.
“Afraid of what?” she asked. Linda raised her eyebrows a little higher. “Of me?” she said, then laughed. “No way. He’s not afraid of me.” There was no way that the devil was afraid of her. That was absurd. Absurd, just like how it was absurd that the devil had moved to Los Angeles, opened up a nightclub, and was a consultant for the LAPD.
“Not you as a person,” said Linda. “But perhaps he was afraid of your reaction.”
“My reaction to finding out the truth?” Linda nodded at her, so she tried to keep going but promptly hit a dead end. “But why?”
“I think that’s the real issue,” said Linda. “Why would he be afraid of your reaction?”
“I don’t know. Well, he was going on about how nothing has changed,” Chloe admitted. “How everything is normal. He was aggressively normal, actually. So I guess he didn’t want anything to change? Is that right?”
“Okay, so he wants things to be normal,” Linda said. “And what is normal for you now? Or rather, what was normal for you right before you found out?”
Chloe stared at the table in front of her. What had been their normal? It had felt as though they were on the cusp of something great and now it was out of their grasp forever. Chloe’s thoughts kept coming back to their moment on the balcony, before she had received that phone call about Charlotte. I am the devil… “We… may have had a moment,” she said. I’ve been avoiding things in the present, like how I feel about you…
“Oh?” Linda sat up a little straighter. “A moment? Sounds like we should talk about that. For the therapy,” she added hastily.
“We sort of, tentatively, started something,” Chloe said. “But we were interrupted by news of Charlotte Richard’s death, and then working to take down Pierce, and then I saw his face and things, you know, changed.”
“Have they?” asked Linda. “Have they changed?”
“Of course they’ve changed,” Chloe said. “My partner is the devil. I have feelings for the devil. It’s one thing to be — something with Lucifer, but it’s something totally different to have that with the devil.”
“You’re talking about Lucifer and the devil as if they’re two separate people,” Linda commented. “Are they?”
“I don’t know,” said Chloe, gripping her hair in her hands. “I guess I’ve been thinking about them as two distinct entities.”
“Why?” asked Linda.
“Because I can wrap my mind around having feelings for Lucifer,” she said. “I don’t know what to do about having feelings for the devil.”
“Then I think,” Linda said, “that’s what you need to figure out.”
Chloe snorted. “Easier said than done,” she said.
“I can only imagine how hard this must be for you,” Linda said. “But speaking as your friend, I think you really should give Lucifer and Maze a chance.”
“I haven’t even seen Maze since I found out,” she groaned into her hand.
Linda smiled. “I know this all seems completely crazy,” she said. “And Lucifer being — what was it? — aggressively normal in your direction probably isn’t what you want right now. But give it some time and you might be surprised by just how normal it becomes for you.”
Chloe considered this, propping her head up on her fingers. “I don’t know what normal is anymore,” she admitted. “I don’t know what’s real or fake, or —” She huffed out a breath. “Any of it.”
“It may not seem like it right now,” said Linda. “But you’ll get there.”
“I suppose you’re probably right,” she said. “You’re still around.”
Linda laughed. “Yeah, I suppose I am,” she said, smiling. “But I’ve had some time and some people — well, celestial beings — who have lent a friendly ear. It didn’t happen overnight. Which I will remind Lucifer of.” It was a rather pointed remark, and Chloe didn’t think it was directed at her, but perhaps at whatever previous conversation she’d had with Lucifer. “Give yourself some time, Chloe.”
She looked over at the clock and almost swore. Trixie was almost out of school.
“Linda, I’m so sorry. I have to go pick up Trixie. I just barged in here during your office hours and now I have to leave —”
Linda stood up and held onto her arm. “You are my friend and you’re in crisis,” she said. “Of course I’m going to help you.”
“I appreciate it, really,” Chloe said.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Linda. “I know how crazy this can be. You don’t have to deal with this alone. You can come talk to me anytime.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you, Linda. Really.”
“Any time,” Linda said, walking her towards the door. “And Chloe?”
“Yes?” she said, turning back to face Linda as she stepped outside the room.
“I’m really glad you know,” Linda said. “I think it’s best for both of you.”
Chloe thought for a moment. “You know what?” she said, nodding. “Me too.”
She was surprised to find that she was being completely truthful. She had the truth, at last. She wouldn’t say she was happy about it, necessarily, but it was a relief. No matter what happened in the future, not matter how her relationship with Lucifer changed — or didn’t change, as Linda seemed to imply — she had learned the truth.
She waved goodbye to Linda and walked away down the hall.
“Okay,” said Ella. “I know that the most important thing is that you guys are safe and you got out of there in one piece, but Chloe, that crime scene is bonkers.”
They were in Ella’s lab at the precinct. Internal Affairs was wrapping up their investigation and had released the crime scene into Ella’s overly eager hands. The department had been cleared of any wrongdoing; there was nothing to link anyone there to any of the crime Pierce had committed as the Sinnerman. Even Lucifer was ruled to have acted in self-defence and wasn’t being charged with anything.
“What do you mean, ‘bonkers’?” Chloe asked.
“Well, I mean, where to start,” Ella said. “First of all, Pierce, like, stabbed himself. Lucifer confessed to stabbing him, but my question is like, dude, how? There are no other prints on the murder weapon, so it looks like he was manoeuvred to stab himself. Lucifer’s pretty strong, I guess, but the bones in his right hand are crushed, and humans aren’t capable of exerting the amount of strength required to pulverize bone.”
Chloe made a strangled sound in her throat.
“That reminds me — IA is furious,” Ella sang, drawing out the last word.
“What? Why?” Chloe asked.
“The murder weapon went missing from their mobile unit,” Ella said. “They tore through here looking for it, thinking maybe one of their techs brought it in by accident, but nope. It’s totally gone. They’ve been handling all their own forensics, so they can’t point any fingers and they’re just about losing it. Ha! Get it?”
“Right,” said Chloe, feeling faint.
“And next,” Ella continued, “we have the bullets.”
“What about the bullets?” Chloe asked.
“Well, they’re missing, first of all,” said Ella. “There was a serious firefight, like five guns just raining bullets into the centre of the room. Bang bang bang bang bang! Probably for about thirty seconds, judging by the number of casings. We’ve got casings, but we can’t account for the bullets. They’re just gone.”
“Didn’t they hit the statues or something?” Chloe wondered. She remembered getting hit with a single bullet to her vest, and the next thing she knew she was waking up on the roof. She’d assumed it had all happened within seconds, but maybe not.
“Some, but not enough. Most are just not there at all,” said Ella. “So either someone got riddled with bullets, or they were all shooting blanks.”
A feeling she couldn’t name started to bubble up from inside her. She knew Lucifer had saved her, but maybe she didn’t know exactly how much saving there had been.
“There’s also the window,” said Ella.
“It was broken, right?” said Chloe.
“I mean, yeah,” said Ella. “But it was broken from the outside in. Like a wrecking ball came and just bashed through the whole thing. And the balustrades at the bottom of the staircase are broken clean off, and those things are solid wood.”
“So weird,” said Chloe.
“Not to mention all the bloody feathers,” said Ella.
“Feathers?” she repeated.
“Yeah,” said Ella. “Feathers that are actually bloody. It’s not human blood at least, ‘cause it came back inconclusive. Unless some poor chicken totally bit it.”
“I wish I knew what happened,” said Chloe, who was starting to have a pretty good idea. Angels had wings and were totally capable of crashing through windows, destroying lofts, and crushing bone to powder. And Lucifer, apart from being the devil, was still an angel.
Angels had wings that could shield them from a volley of bullets that might leave bits of feathers and blood across the floor.
“Hey, Ella, I gotta go,” said Chloe.
“Yeah,” said Ella. “I’ll be here, trying to figure out the weirdest forensics evidence ever.”
“Honestly,” said Chloe. “We should just forget the whole mess ever happened and move on.”
Chloe changed her mind twice en route to Lux; once, pulling an abrupt u-turn a few blocks away; and the second time after she’d pulled over and collapsed against the steering wheel.
“You can do this, Decker,” she told herself firmly, starting the car back up again. “You are going to go up there and have a civil conversation like a couple of reasonable adults. Because you are both adults. Even though one of you is the devil and is usually unreasonable. And may or may not be as old as the universe.”
She parked the car down the street from the club. She could see the line of people stretching around the block as it usually did, and she ignored the looks they threw her way when she walked past them to the front of the line and was waved in by the bouncer. She’d never seen him before, but she gave him a smile as she passed; he obviously knew who she was if he hadn’t even asked for ID. She’d always taken it a bit for granted that she’d been given immediate access into Lux, what with Lucifer being her partner, but something about that moment made her insides squirm pleasantly. Someone had gone through the trouble of including her no-questions-asked access to the building in the training manual.
Skirting the dance floor, she scanned the room for Lucifer. His presence would be hard to miss, so magnetic that her eyes would have been drawn to him automatically as they had been so many other times she’d come here. The club was packed, but he didn’t appear to be anywhere in sight. She walked up to the elevator, stepped inside, and pushed the button for the penthouse. The doors closed and the noise level dropped. She let out a breath. This was something she’d done hundreds of times before, surely. There was no reason for it to feel like the first time.
The elevator dinged and the doors opened. The penthouse was dimly lit, but Lucifer was there; she was greeted by the soft sounds of the piano. She could make out his profile, his head tilted back and eyes closed, a glass of whiskey resting on top of the piano. Chloe stepped out of the elevator and the sounds of the piano paused. Lucifer’s eyes opened and he reached out for the whiskey and took a drink.
“Detective,” he said without looking around at her. “You’ve saved me a trip.”
She walked across the floor and stood at the side of the piano, looking at him. Now that she was here, she didn’t know why she’d been so apprehensive about coming here. She knew him. She knew this Lucifer.
“Were you going to come talk to me?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” he said. “I admit, I’m in a spot of trouble."
“Trouble?” she echoed. “Haven’t you heard? IA is wrapping up their investigation. You’re not being charged.”
He stood up and walked over to the bar, pouring himself another drink and then filling a second glass and holding it out to her, meeting her eyes at last. His eyes were dark and closed off. “I wasn’t referring to human laws,” he said.
The words struck her as a blow. Human laws. Something that he clearly didn’t think applied to him.
“I guess we’re not pretending that everything is normal anymore,” she said.
He huffed. “No,” he said. “I suppose there’s little point in that.” He suddenly seemed infinitely old, more like a world-weary devil than a perpetual teenager with an excellent tailor. “I killed Pierce. I killed a human. It’s… frowned upon.”
She accepted the glass, not really out of a desire to drink anything, but just because she wanted something to cling to. “Pierce tried to kill you. He tried to kill me. It was self defence. You didn’t have a choice.”
Lucifer laughed, a cold, sharp thing that sounded nothing like him. “Didn’t I?” he said. He was looking at her intensely. She wished he would blink. “I had already got you out. You were safe. I chose to go back. I chose to fight him. I chose to kill him. No one made me do it. No one forced me to put a knife in his chest.” He walked over to the table and flipped open a box there, and pulled out the missing murder weapon — one of Maze’s blades. “I did that all on my own. You think I can’t win a fight against a human?” She could only shake her head numbly, but he carried on, relentless. “I’ve been telling you for years that I’m a monster. Now you’ve seen it for yourself.”
“I don’t believe that.” Chloe swallowed. Throughout all of this, she never thought that he was a monster. Had she told him that? Had she said that out loud? She didn’t think so. “I know you, Lucifer, and you are not a monster.”
He looked away from her and stared down at the blade. “It doesn’t matter what you believe, Detective,” he said gently. “I killed a human. That’s against the rules.”
“It was clearly self-defence,” she said. “The law is on your side here.”
Lucifer made an impatient sound. “Not the law,” he said. “The rules. Dad’s rules.” There was a moment of complete surreal detachment; Chloe had heard him talk about Dad and dear old Dad and my Father countless times, and he was talking about God, like capital-g God.
“The rules?” she said.
“Angels aren’t allowed to kill humans,” he said, taking another drink. She’d only ever heard him call himself the devil before; this was the first time she’d heard him talk about himself as an angel. “I was never a very good angel,” he continued. “But I don’t think that excuse will spare me this time.” He set the knife back down in the box and flipped the lid closed.
Chloe shook her head, fear spiking through her for the first time since this all began. “Spare you?” she said.
“Undoubtedly,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time before the skies start raining blood and LA is beset with locusts.”
“Why would that happen?”
“Oh, a bit of punishment for what I’ve done,” he said. “The usual.”
“There has to be some sort of exception,” she said. “He must know why you did it, right? I mean, God knows these things, right?” she finished sort of pathetically. She sounded like an idiot.
He snorted. “He’s very judgemental about these things, I assure you. I don’t think the ‘why’ much matters.”
“I don’t think you deserve to be punished for what you did.” She may not be the devil, but she thought she had a pretty good grasp of right and wrong. And she didn’t think that Lucifer’s actions — even killing Pierce, when he’d been upfront in his intentions to kill Lucifer — were the wrong ones.
“Detective, you’ve seen what I am,” he said, holding out his arms with a flourish as if to gesture to everything that he was. He spoke softly, with such certainly but without anger. “You know I’m a monster. I have spent eons torturing souls in Hell. And I have done things, horrible, monstrous things, the likes of which you can’t even imagine.”
“No,” she said. “It’s not —”
“Not what? Not true?” he countered. “It’s true. It’s all true, Detective. However you imagine that I’ve tortured souls, I’ve done it. Think of the most depraved thing, the cruellest thing someone could do to another, and I’ve done worse. So just say it. Call me a monster.” There was a crack in his voice, the tiniest break in his calm facade.
The thing was, she believed him. She was certain that what he was saying was the truth, because it had only ever been the truth from him, hadn’t it? He had no doubt done things to souls that she couldn’t even begin to fathom, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to.
He wanted her to call him a monster. She took a step forwards, dropping the still full glass of whiskey onto the top of the piano with a thunk. Lucifer was all about doling out punishment to those who he felt deserved it; this she had known about him for as long as she’d known him. And right then he was asking for his own punishment: to be called a monster, for her to affirm every little bad thing he thought about himself.
But punishment was the work of the devil, not Chloe Decker. She had never seen herself as a punisher, and she certainly wasn’t going to start with Lucifer.
“You’re not a monster,” she said firmly. “You’re not.” Had anyone told him that before? Had anyone in his entire existence told him that he wasn’t the monster he thought he was?
“But I am,” he said. His eyes were soft now. “I don’t understand how you can still say that, now that you know.”
“I’m not denying that you’re the devil,” she said. “But you’re not a monster. A monster wouldn’t have saved my life. You did.”
“No, I —” he tried to protest, but she wouldn’t let him.
“You saved me,” she insisted. “With your wings.”
There was a moment where he stood still, considering her. “I did,” he said, stepping back.
She swallowed. In for a penny, she thought. “Can I — can I see them?”
He looked at her for a moment, and then sighed, as if she had asked him to do some paperwork that he was trying to avoid. “I suppose you deserve to see them on your own terms,” he said. “Unlike — other parts of me.”
He took several steps backwards until he was standing in the middle of the room, with ample space around him. “You may want to sit down,” he said. “Divinity tends to be a bit unsettling for humans.”
Her legs felt like jello anyway, so she picked up the glass once more and stumbled her way over to the the couch and sank down onto it. She took a deep breath and let it out, and then took another one just in case. She clutched her glass to her chest. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”
“Well, bully for you,” he said, continuing to stand in front of her.
Nothing happened. “Can’t get them up?” she said.
“Well, you’re staring at me!” he said hotly. “Never had performance anxiety in my life, have I? Not about to start now with my bloody stupid wings.” He shifted.
He was nervous, Chloe realized. He was nervous, just like he’d been, almost a year before, when he had tried to show her the truth about himself.
“You don’t have to,” she said. She really wanted to see them, but it occurred to her that nobody severed their own limbs unless they had some serious issues. It was obvious that he was uncomfortable with them.
He sighed again. “No, I’m going to,” he said. “You deserve the truth.”
And with that her vision was filled with white: feathers so pure and bright that they were glowing. Lucifer’s wings spread beside him, each one massive, easily as long as he was tall. They looked so right on him, like every time she’d seen him before now he hadn’t been complete. Each feather shone like a piece of starlight. They were beautiful. He was beautiful.
“Lucifer,” she choked out. She couldn’t manage anything else, but she looked at his face and she could see understanding in his eyes.
“I guess they aren’t the worst thing in the world,” he said grudgingly. “If I didn’t have them we’d both be Swiss cheese by now. So I suppose they can stay.”
She laughed a little at that. “You saved me,” she said.
“I did,” he told her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You don’t have to thank me,” he told her.
“I want to,” she said. Perhaps Lucifer, with his draw over people’s desires, would understand that. “There were blood and feathers all over the crime scene,” she continued. “But Pierce shot you and you were fine.”
“Yes,” he said. “What are you asking, Detective?” He looked ruefully at his wings and then tucked them away with a roll of his shoulders. Chloe tried not to feel bereft at their disappearance.
“One more mystery,” she said. “I’ve seen you bleed, I’ve seen you get stabbed, I —” she touched her necklace. “I shot you, and you bled.”
“I was far more surprised about that than you, Detective, I assure you.”
“So — why?” she asked. “Why do you sometimes bleed and sometimes don't?”
“It’s Dad’s idea of a joke, I think,” he said.
Chloe shot him a look. “That’s not an answer.”
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “Oh, very well, Detective. I am immortal with occasional bouts of mortality. It’s sort of a proximity thing.”
It was clear that this wasn’t something he wanted to tell her, but Chloe wasn’t going to back away from the truth, not when everything was finally falling into place.
“Proximity?” she said. “Proximity to what?”
He sighed, resigned. “To you.” There was a knife in his hand, not one of Maze’s wickedly curved blades he’d been holding earlier, but one that looked equally sharp. “You make me… vulnerable.” He drew the blade across the palm of his hand.
Chloe made a strangled ‘stop’ noise and reached out to him, but it was too late. The blood welled up and spilled out over his hand. Lucifer eyed it with fascination. “Why did you do that?” she scolded, setting her drink down with a thunk and getting up to search for something to stop the bleeding. “Do you have a first aid kit?”
“Detective, it’s fine,” he said. “Really. It’ll heal the moment you go back downstairs.”
She ignored him, ducking into the bathroom where she found a cloth to press against his hand. “I don’t want to make you bleed,” she said quietly.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “It’s all rather thrilling, actually. Mortality is quite the adventure.”
But Chloe’s mind had already returned to the loft. “You protected me with your wings,” she said. “You got shot dozens of times. And you felt every single bullet.” Her eyes were stinging.
“Don’t cry,” he said, wiping his thumb under her eyes. She felt more tears spill over to replace them.
“I don’t want you getting hurt because of me,” she said.
He smiled, but she didn’t see what he could possibly have to smile about. “I don’t mind taking a few bullets if it means keeping you safe,” he said, as if it were as simple as that.
The weight of his declaration pressed down on her. “Oh,” she choked out, letting go of his hand and shifting back to her original seat. She picked up her drink once again. She didn’t know what else to do.
“‘Oh’, indeed,” he said.
“Why?” she asked. He looked appalled, opening his mouth to say something, but she pressed on. “Why me? Why Los Angeles? Why Earth, in general?”
“Las Vegas would be a bit on the nose, don’t you think?” he said. It was such a Lucifer thing for him to say that she huffed out a laugh without meaning to. “There you go,” he continued, sounding approving. “I knew you’d be charmed by my comments again eventually.”
“Unbelievable,” she muttered. “I mean, I kind of get the nightclub, den of iniquity and all that. It’s very — on brand, I suppose. But the whole solving cases thing…” she trailed off helplessly. She didn’t even know what she was trying to ask. “Why?”
His eyes were so soft. “Angels don’t have free will,” he said slowly.
She thought about that for a moment. “I don’t really understand what that means,” she admitted.
“Of course not,” he said, not unkindly, sinking onto the chair opposite her at last and leaning forwards. “Angels are not born; we are created. And we were brought into being to help create the universe, each of us with a specific purpose.”
Chloe remembered she had a drink in her hand a took a large gulp. “And your purpose was to punish the guilty?” she asked. This was an entirely surreal conversation to have.
“That came later,” he said. “But we were created to serve. God’s angels, and all that. And I always felt… wrong. My Father would give me a task, and I would feel resentful, but I didn’t know why. Angels are not created with free will, so most of them don’t understand it. My siblings would tell me to trust in our Father’s plan and carry out great deeds in His name.”
Chloe didn’t know what to say.
“One day, Dad announces His little side project: humanity. And you were going to have free will! You wouldn’t have to serve Him. You didn’t even have to believe in God, and He would still love you anyway.”
He blew out a breath and continued. “And I wanted that. I wanted free will. I could be whoever I wanted to be and do whatever I wanted to do. So I approached Him, and I asked Him why He had created humans with free will. I told Him that if humans got to have it, then angels should have it as well.
“He didn’t listen to me. I was so angry, I — well. I started a bit of a rebellion. So He kicked me out of Heaven and cast me into Hell, where I was supposed to torture and be tortured for the rest of eternity while I thought about what I’d done.”
“Lucifer,” she said. It was all so much.
“And I just — I had enough. Enough of the torture, enough of doing what He told me to do. So I came to Earth and planned on having a nice quiet retirement.”
He looked so lost. Her chest was heavy under the weight of this emotion. Sympathy for the devil, indeed.
“So that’s why I’m here,” he said abruptly, the lost look gone from his eyes and replaced with something that was defensive but no less vulnerable. “I’m here because I choose to be here. I choose to live in Los Angeles, and open a nightclub, and work with the LAPD. And I may make bad choices, and rash choices, and terrible, unforgivable choices, but they are my choices, Detective.”
“Lucifer,” she said again. It was the only thing she could say. She didn’t know how else to express all these emotions that were surging inside of her. What could she possibly say to a revelation like this? How could she even hope to fully understand the enormity of what he was talking about?
He looked at her. “And as for why I work with you,” he said. “Well, I thought it was obvious.”
“Obvious?” she repeated. He was a celestial being with a giant set of angel wings and a chip on his shoulder. Even before she knew he was the devil, his motivations were often cloudy at best. She had never thought that anything about him was obvious, and she certainly wasn’t about to start that now.
“How I feel about you,” he said. He had said that before, hadn’t he? I’ve been avoiding things in the present, like how I feel about you… His confession seemed heavier now. His words, his actions tonight all had a certain weight them. She wasn’t sure she knew how to breathe anymore.
“You were interesting,” he said. You’re far too interesting to let die, he’d said, after she’d woken up in the hospital. “And then I liked you. I wanted to spend time with you.” He shrugged, perhaps trying for nonchalance and missing the mark by a mile. He leaned back in his chair, looking away from her and casting his eyes to the side.
“You… wanted to spend time with me?” Chloe said. It seemed so simple the way he said it. The devil had found a human to be interesting and decided to hang around a bit and help her catch murderers. Why not?
“Of course,” he said. “I won’t deny that I enjoy the work — I am a punisher, after all. But if it were all about the punishment, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
There wasn’t much sense in arguing with that. “I don’t even know what to say,” Chloe said. She looked at her drink. It was empty. “I need a drink.”
She stood up, feeling outside of her body. She couldn’t feel her feet or her hands but she got to the bar and set her glass down on top of it.
Lucifer was at her side, pouring her a drink. “This doesn’t have to change anything,” he said, sliding the glass back to her. “I’m still Lucifer. I’m still me.” He reached out, tentatively, and cupped her cheek.
Of course he was still Lucifer. Everything she knew about him was still true. He hadn’t changed at all; this was just a new dimension. She knew him. She loved him.
As if that didn’t break her heart.
It would be so easy, she thought. It would be so easy to lean forward and kiss him, get caught up in the moment they’d had the night that Charlotte Richards was killed. It would be so easy to give in. She just had to look up into his dark eyes and get swept away by him. He was so tender with her, so, well — vulnerable. Out of all the emotions swirling inside her, it would be so easy to focus on just one and let her feelings for Lucifer be her lifeline. They could continue from where they’d left things, and she could rebuild her life, piece by piece, around this one thing.
She closed her eyes for a moment.
“I know,” she said, reaching up to his hand. “I know you haven’t changed. But I have.” She took a deep breath, looking into his eyes. “Last week I was an atheist who thought you spoke in metaphors all the time. My entire world just got turned inside out and I — I need time. I need to figure things out.”
He smiled, a small, sad smile that was nothing like his usual smirk. He said nothing, but his thumb traced the soft skin under her eye.
“Can’t we just go back to normal?” she said. “We can do that, right? Can’t we just be partners?”
“Of course,” he said softly. “Normal.”
“I just need time,” she said again. She needed him to know that this wasn’t the end. “My whole world just got rearranged and my head feels like it’s going to explode most of the time.”
His hand moved back around her neck and he gently tugged her forward into a hug. She melted into his familiar warmth. “I’m here for you,” he told her. His heart thumped under her ear and she closed her eyes, listening to the sound. He always made her feel safe.
“I need time,” she said. “Please don’t disappear on me.”
“Okay,” he told her, as simple as that.
“You must think I’m an idiot,” she sniffed. “All those times you told me and I didn’t believe you.”
Lucifer stroked her hair and hummed. “No,” he said. “I think you’re a brilliant, logical woman who needs proof before she believes some weirdo who walks around in a three-piece suit and calls himself the devil.”
She laughed. It was a bit weak, but it was there. She took a deep breath. Normal. Right. Normal. She could do normal. “Do you want to help me catch some killers?” she asked.
He squeezed her a little tighter. “Detective,” he said. “I would love to help you catch some killers.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I’m officially off leave, and I need my partner back.”