Chapter Text
If a single journey through space-time is enough to make one an expert in time travel, it follows that Rory should be a master in the field. The reality of the matter, however, is that Rory’s inadvertent tumble through time has done more to confuse than to clarify: beyond the very basic ground rules of time loops she’d garnered from vintage re-runs of Doctor Who, the mechanics of her experience lie well beyond the realm of her understanding.
Which is why, now, as she stands in the center of Lucifer’s penthouse and shrugs off the celestial tendrils of light that have (she presumes) carted her through the seams of time itself - she’s got the very vague idea that something has gone wrong.
She’s supposed to be by her mother’s side right now, watching her final moments slip past. That’s where she first disappeared from; where her rage had swallowed her up in threads of ghostly light and whisked her decades back. So - from her admittedly limited understanding - that’s where she should have returned. Home. With her ailing, dying mother next to her. She shouldn’t be here, in the penthouse she’d thought she’d just left only moments ago.
Maybe it just…hadn’t worked. Maybe she hadn’t traveled at all. The thought seizes her nerves, and she shouts through the haze of fevered light that blinds her gaze.
“Dad?”
She shuffles forward, slightly.
“Guys, I don’t think anything happened. I’m still here, I —“ the light draws like a heavy curtain from her eyes, forcing the penthouse into sharp focus. The rest of her words teeter from her hanging mouth. “Don’t think I…travelled,” she finishes numbly.
This… is not the same room she’d left moments ago in a swirling beacon of light. It’s trashed - completely, utterly, trashed - a far cry from the fluffed Italian pillows and slick, roaring fires she’d come to expect.
She appears to be occupying the only square foot of the penthouse that isn’t coated in some debauched substance. The coffee table is raked with smudged lines of coke, glass powdered white like a sinner’s snow-globe. There’s water - and god knows what else - splashed across the stone at her feet; and as she follows the trail of liquid her gaze falls on an inflatable pool slouching limply in the center of the room.
Until this very moment, Rory had taken pride in what she’d assumed to be an extensive knowledge of all things kinky. She was the Devil’s daughter, after all, and a penchant for misbehavior - however reformed - was a simple fact of her DNA. Plus, she’d been born in the age of the internet, and of the incognito Google-search: though no amount of sleuthing on Trixie’s computer could have prepared her for what now lies strewn about the penthouse.
There’s a mercifully empty human-sized cage in the corner of the living room, surrounded by a myriad of toys and contraptions she can’t even begin to fathom a use for. Outside on the balcony lies a set of wooden crossbeams in the shape of an X, and as she stares at the mechanism her heart sinks with the weight of sudden understanding.
She looses a low, wandering whistle.
“What the fuck,” she whispers.
Maybe she’s just jumped a few days ahead. She had, admittedly, only seen her parents together for a short period of time - plus, she’d had zero desire to hear anything further about their proclivities after they’d regaled her with their sex math. Maybe this was just their way of saying goodbye, before Lucifer left for Hell. The famous Lucifer-Mom partnership in action - just a…very different action than any she’d ever hoped to witness.
That has to be it. Either that, or she’s somehow, someway, landed in the depths of Hell.
Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe something went astray in the time travel department and sent her to Hell, instead of Earth. The thought settles her stomach, somewhat - she would be glad to be in the bowels of the underworld if it means the scene of depravity that currently lies in her father’s penthouse is a fabrication.
The tip of her boot clinks against a discarded handcuff, and she prays - really prays - that she’s in Hell.
Her haunted reverie is broken by a grumbling rustle across the room. She yelps when the mess of faux fur blankets draped across the sofa begins to move, bunched and groaning like a matted beast.
“Who’s there?”
It’s a man’s voice, gruff and rocky with the fog of induced sleep. Rory stares as the blankets fall away, revealing a very attractive, very disheveled, very naked man. He stares back at her.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“Who are you?” she barks.
“I’m Paolo.”
Rory blinks, holding his bemused gaze for a long second.
“Great,” she says, finally.
Naked Paolo shrugs and lies back down. Rory tuts in hushed disgust, turning from the languishing stranger on the couch to face the looming wall of Scotch, instead. She’s only just reached the bar and leaned her elbows on the granite countertop when a woman - a naked woman - pops up from the other side of the bar with dark, blown eyes and a loose smile.
“Oh! Hi!”
“Jesu—“ Rory’s elbows fly from the counter as she stumbles back. She regains her footing a few feet from the bar and stands in uncomfortable silence, mouth slightly ajar. The woman fixes her with a curious gaze. She looks like a Siren — long black hair, swaying body, swollen lips. The entire penthouse looks like a perverted scene from the Garden, cheerfully naked duo and all, if the Garden had been littered with half-used bottles of flavored lube and clinking handcuffs instead of…ribs, and fig leaves.
“Who—um—sorry.” Rory clears her throat. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be rude, but, uh — who are you? What are you…doing here?” She nods to the mystery Naked Woman, and to her companion, now sound asleep and snoring atop the blankets.
The woman looks confused - though given the size of her pupils and box of pills that lies beside her hand, Rory figures it would be a substantial feat if she even heard her question at all.
“Are you here for the party?” the woman asks, voice lilting. She even sounds like a Siren. A Siren with a tablet dissolving on her tongue and an infinity symbol tattoo scrawled beneath her right boob.
“What party?” Rory probes.
A familiar voice cuts the silence. “The sex party.”
Rory whirls around — she’s been so transfixed by the evolving scene before her that she hadn’t even heard the elevator doors slide open. Maze stands in the threshold, one hand on either side of the elevator as she leans lazily and surveys the penthouse.
“Maze,” Rory says. “Thank god.”
Maze narrows her eyes. A flicker of confusion darts across her dogged gaze.
“Do I know you?” she asks, lips curved.
“What?” Rory laughs, nervously - that same, one-note bark she’d picked up from her mother. “Is this a prank? Maze, I saw you, like, yesterday.”
“Mmm,” Maze shakes her head. “Nope.” She steps forward, peeling herself from the elevator and stalking toward Rory like a hackled leopard. She runs a light finger over Rory’s jaw and flashes her a predatory smile. “I would’ve remembered you.”
Oh, fuck.
Fuck.
“No, Maze, I—” she surges backwards, nearly taking a barstool down with her in her attempt to evade her aunt. “I’m not here for the…sex party,” she says, hurriedly. “I just need—I need to talk to Lucifer.”
Maze shrugs, evidently unfazed by her failed advance. “He’s not here,” she yawns. The naked woman in Rory’s peripheral lunges across the bar and reaches for a half-eaten bunch of green grapes, dangling them into her mouth.
“This was supposed to be for him,” Maze explains. There’s a twinge of annoyance in her otherwise blasé tone. “To get him out of this stupid funk. He doesn’t even bother to show up. He’s still hung up on Chloe, even though she—” she cuts off, gaze thinning once more as she examines Rory. “Who did you say you were?”
“I—” Maze’s steely expectance jolts Rory into action. She shoves past her aunt, making for the elevator with blurred desperation.
“No one,” she pants, as a mounting panic climbs to her throat. She slams on the down button, raising an awkward hand to the naked woman behind the bar as she pauses in her grape-eating to wave enthusiastically. The doors slide shut, freezing Maze’s tilted look in place. “Never mind.”
Chloe will know what to do. She always knows what to do.
It’s the middle of the day — and, judging by the number of suits streaming past Rory on the sidewalk — a weekday, so she forgoes home entirely in favor of the precinct.
The most significant advantage of her wings has, thus far, been the opportunity to avoid LA traffic. Her conclusion holds true today — she arrives on the doorstep of the LAPD in record time, shimmying slightly to shake the smog from her feathers.
She tells the officer at the front desk she’s come to speak to Chloe Decker, and slinks past when he retreats to find his superior. She can’t help but breathe a faint sigh of relief at the mere sight of the precinct: it looks normal, at least — just as she remembers from her time growing up, when Chloe would tote her around by the hand and let her dig Maze’s knives into her office carpet.
She makes a beeline for Chloe’s office now, lowering her head as she speeds past wandering officers and lifting a hand to rap against the door.
“Mo—“
Her voice falls, and her palm slides from the glass. She can see through the translucent door — there’s no one inside, and more than that, too: there’s nothing inside. Just stacked boxes in various stages of disarray, some taped shoddily and others left spilling over with manila files and haphazardly-packed awards. Her gaze finds the emptied desk, and she squints at the placard that still rests atop it.
Lt. Marcus Pierce
“Oh, shit.”
“Hey. Can I help you?”
She starts at the noise, whirling around with her hand still half-raised to the door. Her heart doubles down on its quest to her throat.
“Dan?” she blinks.
Dan returns her measured gaze, and when he notices her staring at the papers in his hand he shifts them closer to his chest.
“You’re holding paper,” Rory says, eyes wide.
Dan opens his mouth to speak, closes it, and tries again. “Sure am,” he says, with a feigned smile.
“Like…you’re holding it.”
“Mm.” he glances past Rory to the precinct beyond, as if willing someone to intervene. “Yep.”
“Wait.” Rory leans forward and jabs him with a single index finger, leaving a crumpled dent in his jacket. He shrinks back at the contact. “Holy shit!” she laughs. “You’re alive!”
“Well, I — I mean, I hope so.” He’s still smiling — that goofy, questioning smile that begs his passing colleagues for help. He drops his voice as Rory continues to stare. “Do you need some help?” he asks again, gentler this time. He’s looking at her like one might approach a stray dog stuck in a fence. “I can get you set up in a room, get someone in to talk to you—”
Rory isn’t listening. She’s staring at the desk behind his shoulder: there’s no one in the chair, but papers are littering the wood and covering the keyboard. She can’t see the name card, but she doesn’t need to — she can see the wire mesh trashcan beside the desk, and the scribbled coffee cup that lies within.
There’s only one person she knows who orders tall, nonfat almond-milk lattes with sugar-free caramel drizzle.
“Chloe Decker,” she says, jabbing her index finger again toward her mother’s empty desk.
Dan’s brow lifts. “You know her? Do you…have something scheduled with her?”
Rory pauses. “Sure,” she ventures.
“She’s on vacation right now,” he says. “It was kind of short-notice, otherwise I’m sure she would have called to reschedule. Was she gonna take a statement? I can take it down for you, if you—”
Vacation.
Chapter 15 of Linda Martin’s rough — and boy, was it rough — draft manuscript is burning a hole in Rory’s mind.
Still reeling after the death of her murderous ex-fiancé, Marcus Pierce (Note: CAIN from the BIBLE!), and the reveal of Lucifer’s Devil Face, the Detective had gone to Rome, on a “vacation”. Little did Lucifer know, she was plotting something sinister, with the help of a scary, bearded Priest…
“What year is it?” Rory whispers.
Dan shifts his weight and shuffles his papers. “2018,” he says, finally.
There’s a long, uninterrupted beat. Marcus Pierce’s placard glints in teasing bronze above the door, and her mother’s long-discarded coffee cup weeps a single, caramel tear.
“Oh, shit,” she says, again.
Dan’s eyes close in a confused attempt to gather his thoughts.
When he opens them again, she’s gone.
The Hotel Lunetta is .3 miles from the Pantheon, 1.2 miles from the Coliseum, and 6,327 miles from Lucifer.
Chloe had been grateful for the distance, at first. She would have gone to the ends of the earth if it had meant outrunning what she’d seen. But there was no hiding — and when the pounding of her heart had slowed, and the suffocating fog that had settled about her mind had cleared — all she had left were her thoughts.
And Lucifer is all she thinks about.
He consumes her every waking moment, gnawing away at her heart in the daylight and patching up the ripped pieces each night. Her mornings with Father Kinley are spent poring over ancient spines and heavy, yellowed pages — and she can’t help but think that the Devil who rots on aging parchment is nothing - nothing - like the one who had bounced with such childlike fervor at her side.
But Father Kinley is persuasive, and she’s scared.
She’s so, so, scared.
And so she reads about the Prince of Darkness in the morning and thinks about the Lightbringer at night, when she slides her hand to the empty side of her bed and almost - almost - prays he’d fill the spot beside her.
She nearly texts him. In the three weeks since she’s been in Rome, she’s drafted a hundred messages and sent none. Her fingers ghost across the screen each night, sometimes going so far as to write a text in all its glory — only to stare at the words in their little white cage and wipe them from existence with a cowardly thumb.
He’s made a valiant effort to give her space, too. She’s used to him regaling her with the latest emoji update, or sending incoherent ramblings when he’s had an epiphany in the blackest hours of night. But there’s nothing — no unstoppable wall of grey messages. There are just three, simple texts, dated two weeks ago — and nothing since.
When you’re ready, he had said.
A few minutes later, the smiling devil emoji.
And then, finally - Sorry.
He’d sent those three days after she’d arrived in Rome, and been silent ever since. She wonders if he’s waiting for her to make the first move — or if he can sense, somehow, that she’s abandoned his ship and slipped into bed with the enemy.
She stares at her phone. Her face lights up blue in the darkness and she rolls to her side, tapping out an aimless rhythm against the screen.
For the thousandth time, she writes the words and robs him of them.
I’m confused, she types. Deletes. Types it again.
She almost tosses her phone when three dots appear beneath her faltering fingers.
“Shit,” she hisses. Surely he can see her typing, too — and she wonders if this is the first time, or if he’s watched her try to reach for him night after night.
She can’t help the sob that slips loose when his text trembles in her hand. She’s not sure who she’s crying for — if the tears are selfish ones, scared ones; or if they’re for him, lost and broken and pining for her to come home.
She stares at his words through blurred eyes, clutching her phone as she turns to the cold side of the bed. The side she’d accidentally — on purpose — reserved for him, in the depths of her mind.
She can hear him through the screen as his voice splinters at the seams.
I miss you, Detective.
And then another one, seconds later. A correction, or an affirmation, or maybe — maybe — just a way for him to seal her name against his touch.
Chloe.