Chapter Text
Chloe sat at her desk, staring at her computer despite her desktop background being all that was on display. They had told her to go home, but she wasn’t ready. Trixie wouldn’t be out of school for hours yet and being alone in an empty apartment was the last thing she needed … not with all of … this.
Everyone thought she was distressed about Marcus Pierce after she had given her statement. They thought the shock of almost marrying the Sinnerman had thrown her for a loop. They were giving her time to process.
She did need time to process, but not for that … at least, not yet. No, she needed to process Lucifer. That he had never been lying, that he wasn’t delusional. All of it was true. All of it was real.
How was she supposed to process that? That everything he had told her since the day they met was just the truth?
Actually …
Clicking open a folder of past cases, Chloe began to scroll through years of files. She had an idea. The facts would help jog her memory, and she had an excellent memory - wouldn’t have made detective without one. Maybe if she could just look at the facts (because that’s what they were now and not just Lucifer’s delusional ramblings) and think of everything he told her before this shit storm - maybe that would help.
Their first cases weren’t even official, they came before their partnership. She met him when his friend Delilah was murdered. Chloe shuddered, remembering Jimmy bashing his head bloody against the plexiglass. That was later, though. Focus Decker, she chided herself as she opened the folder. He had been the only true witness, with a testimony that raised all kinds of red flags. In retrospect, it was just so … Lucifer.
Name: Lucifer Morningstar - not stage name, ‘God-given’, note: check records. Well … next.
Referred to others as ‘humans’.
“Oh G- ugh!” Chloe put her head in her hands. This was already feeling like too much and she hadn’t even really started. Clenching her fists, she kept going.
Said he survived because he’s immortal.
“He would just- he still sometimes just says that to people,” she muttered, closing those notes and opening the ones she had made of his ‘arrest’.
He had gotten right out of her handcuffs - if she remembered correctly, she’s pretty sure if he hadn’t thought it was fun she wouldn’t have been able to ‘cuff him in the first place.
It wasn’t in the notes, it had been too absurd for her to think of a way to write it up, but she definitely remembered the pitch he had given her to let him help. That he could draw out desires, that he was persuasive. He couldn’t read minds, didn’t have power over sins, but people liked to tell him things. Back then she hadn’t realized what an asset that could be in law enforcement. She also hadn’t thought it was real, either. When it proved to be effective, she had eventually stopped questioning it … couldn’t explain it …
Chloe glanced around the bullpen with a sigh. It was rare that she looked back on that day, but when she did, it was usually for much better … more normal memories. When they met, Lucifer had complimented her - told her she was smart and to trust herself. She had needed that after Palmetto. He stood up for her with Dan, and even back then he’d said they had a connection, that he wanted to work with her. With another, much smaller, sigh she opened her notes on their meeting with Linda.
When had he decided to start seeing her? And if not for being delusional, what made him decide he needed therapy?
She quickly shut down that line of questioning. She could save that particular rabbit hole for later. Right now she needed to focus on the facts she already had. As usual he had told her that he was the devil. Her reaction to him was apparently ‘normal’, and something Chloe had since learned to ignore. He made a deal with the therapist for information. His word was his bond. Another thing he constantly reminded her of.
Skipping the next few files she got straight to Jimmy and forced herself to go through it slowly and in order, even though flashbulbs in her mind wanted to light all over the place. Lucifer had wanted punishment. Stacked up in their years together, this was just one blip - Lucifer always wanted punishment. He delivered this one, though, she was sure.
“He’s the Devil! He’s the Devil! HE’S THE DEVIL!”
Most important was … she was pretty sure he had saved her life. That he had been properly immortal that day and stopped Jimmy from causing further damage, and somehow minimized the wound she’d already gotten.
“I won’t let you, my Father will just have to wait for you.”
The promise came to her out of a fog, something forgotten in the pain. Previously she had only remembered what he had told her in the hospital - he was the first person she’d seen upon waking - that she was too interesting to let die. Also, he had wanted to be her friend. Chloe bit her lip, feeling her face growing red. Lucifer had been so oddly sincere and honest right from the start and she didn’t know what it meant that he was so undeterred when she went on to reject all of it in the weeks that followed. He didn’t make sense then and he didn’t make sense now, even with this … even if he really was …
She shuddered.
He hadn’t necessarily deserved that, not really. Of course, back then he was the most annoying person she’d ever met and gotten on her nerves like no one ever had. Delusional or not. He’d mellowed out since then. They’d both gotten used to each other. Chloe checked the time - it had only been 15 minutes. Good, she thought. There were a lot more files to go through.
The next one wasn’t for an actual case. It was the file she had started on Lucifer himself, and she had given up on it a long time ago. What kind of detective was she, really? At least when it came to him? She had never just … quit searching before. Hasn’t since. The investigation into Lucifer Morningstar hadn’t been making any sense. Now she knew why.
She had tried to watch him undercover at Lux. It hadn’t worked. Maze … Maze used to hate her, Chloe recalled. How had that slipped her mind? They had become roommates, and friends, and then drifted, and now where did they stand?
No, not right now, she really needed to focus.
Mazikeen had proudly told her that she followed Lucifer through the Gates of Hell.
There had been no record of him before 2011. So that means Lucifer’s been ‘retired’ for 8 years now, whatever that meant. After existing for how many years? Billions? Her fingernails dug even harder into the palms of her hands, and it took some serious effort for her to unclench enough to grab the mouse again.
She had pretended to flirt with him to figure out if he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Of course he hadn’t been. His words echoed back to her as she minimized the file.
“It’s not a secret if I’m telling you the answer.”
There was more to Lucifer’s file, but that investigation had been interrupted by the paparazzi one. The crime scene that he had followed her to, uninvited, had smoked weed that was evidence and then assumed afterwards that they both would just go back to Lux to enjoy the rest of their ‘night’ … one of the events he had just reminded her of in his attempt to get them ‘back to normal’. Her eye roll was immediate and automatic. Despite how she felt now, Chloe really didn’t feel guilty for not liking Lucifer back then because RIGHT after all of that he came over unannounced and nosed around her house. He’d tried to have Trixie play fetch.
Then she found out he had charmed his way into interrogation. Chloe paused, and looked around. By this point, no one was surprised to see him around, but there was no official normal Earth or whatever reason for Lucifer Morningstar to be even slightly qualified to work here. He had decided he wanted to and just made it happen. Even after Lieutenant Monroe had gotten promoted (the favour Lucifer had apparently done in order to work here in the first place) no one ever questioned it. Except for Charlotte Richards … but wait, that was before she lost her memory, when everything was even weirder between the two of them …
She was getting ahead of herself. Still, how was it that no one else noticed? Chloe couldn’t believe that she had stopped noticing it. With another glance around, she went back to looking at her computer. They had gone together to follow a lead, Lucifer incited a paparazzi brawl after they went after her, and then he took her back to Lux.
Had he been defending her or something? She’d probably never know and it didn’t matter. When they figured it out, Lucifer had wanted to deliver an ironic punishment. Chloe would never forget that one, because if she hadn’t figured it out people would have died. He had told her that deciding who gets punished and how was exactly what he did.
Because Lucifer’s the devil.
Lucifer is a fallen angel whose angel brother, if what he had told her at the time really was true, slowed time so he could pluck a bullet out of the air when the whole thing almost went pear shaped. Shit, Amenadiel is an angel.
Chloe exited the file and escaped to the bathroom, where she splashed some cold water onto her face. All of these things, all of this ‘proof’ Lucifer had offered her. She ignored it, because it had sounded crazy. Had seemed crazy. But she experienced them and she was a detective. Her job wasn’t to catch criminals in the act, it was to figure out what happened after the fact.
So the fact that for some reason Lucifer had never shown her his ‘devil face’?
Well, she certainly was finding plenty of evidence very quickly now - and there was only going to be more. The thing was … for every bit of evidence she found there were even more examples of him behaving in a way that no one would ever imagine the devil acting.
After stopping in the break room to get a coffee, she sat back at her desk. She still had two hours before she needed to leave to pick up Trixie. Chloe opened up the next file - Lucifer had called her to a crime scene, a high profile case. The whole time she had thought he was feeling guilty about influencing that kid, but he just didn’t see it. Almost tampered with evidence, tried to get her to trust him to find out who was supposed to be punished.
It was actually getting a little easier to remember. Probably because she was so used to Lucifer going on and on about punishing people. For once, she was glad that her partner rarely could stop talking.
The devil. Lucifer Morningstar. Her partner.
She scrolled through more of the case. Lucifer had taken over that sting operation. Shortly before he threw Ty’s agent through a glass wall. The security footage was part of the file, but she didn’t need to watch it. Right after it happened she had replayed it so many times that it was burned into her mind.
When Chloe clicked open the next case, she gasped. It’s not that she had forgotten about it - how could she? The necklace rested on her chest right at this moment. No, she gasped because she was finally really remembering why she had shot him in the first place.
She had asked Lucifer to help her with an undercover operation, despite the fact that he had just broken into her house. He’d actually never stopped breaking into her house.
Did locks not work on him somehow? Like, any lock?
That case had been ridiculous because the entire time she was trying to work, Lucifer had been boldly trying to get her to bed. He’d told her he could arrange for hell to freeze over. Now she had no idea if he was joking or not. Anyway, he had ended up ruining the undercover op because of it.
She’d seen him naked (well, for the first time. She’d seen Lucifer naked way more often than two people who were not sleeping together or living together).
She’d seen his scars. He said they were from his wings.
His angel wings.
“Hold on …” Chloe whispered. She didn’t need to keep looking at this file. There wasn’t a point, she remembered it well enough without rereading her case notes. He had shown his ‘devil face’ and she had glimpsed it’s reflection … for just a second. But she needed to remember what had happened to his wings because she knows they had went missing. And just recently he’d said they were back. He had been devastated.
She grabbed her necklace, just to fidget, and then leaned away from her computer. This was the bullet. Lucifer had said he was immortal. It was how he survived the drive-by with Delilah, how he’d saved her from Jimmy … but she had shot him. He had bled. And he had been so shocked.
That had been his attempt at proof. A non-devil face, not make you fall on the floor and wet yourself proof at showing her who he was. It hadn’t worked.
If she remembered right, he said it had something to do with her. That she made him vulnerable. Putting context to everything was killing her - she had a massive headache. It didn’t help that the cases she was looking at were so old.
“You know what,” Chloe muttered to herself, “it doesn’t matter.” She closed out of the files and copied the folder onto a flash drive, just in case she needed to look at them later. Within a few minutes she was logged off and leaving the precinct. When she got into her car, she had no destination in mind.
Somehow she found herself pulling up to the beach. Their beach … the one where they had had their first kiss. Being there didn’t pull the memory to the forefront, instead a different kiss flashed through her mind - on the balcony, just the other day … he had told her how he felt, had told her that he was the devil …
“Not to me” she had said.
Chloe got out of the car and stumbled toward the water, wind whipping at her hair and blowing water against her cheeks. It took a moment for her to realize that it wasn’t salt water, that she had started crying. Lucifer was the devil. It was all real.
God was real. The devil was real.
How was she supposed to deal with this?
A wave of exhaustion hit her and she let it take her, sitting down haphazardly onto the sand, staring into the ocean. Never in her life had she felt so lost. Not when her dad had died, not right after Palmetto …
She looked up at the sky and tried to imagine an omnipotent being watching everything that was happening. Watching everything and doing nothing, if Lucifer was to be believed. Chloe stared at the sky and let herself cry.
“Not to me” she had said, and it- he was actually the devil. What did that even mean, though? Did it matter? Why was he even here? The devil doing detective work in LA?
She sat at the beach until her phone went off, a traffic update notification reminding her that she would have to leave soon if she wanted to be on time getting Trixie.
“Oh my g- ah Trixie,” she whispered to herself as she rushed back to the car, rubbing at her face and trying to get rid of every trace of her crying. She needed to be strong for her daughter … and she wasn’t sure that she could … not right now, not with this.
On her way to the school, she called her mom and ended up having to tell her about Charlotte, about Marcus (Cain?!) before she agreed to take Trixie for the rest of the week. It gave Dan time to grieve … it gave her time to try to get through all of this.
Hopefully by the time the week was out, she would have a handle on everything. She needed to be strong, and she would be. At least, Chloe hoped so.