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Eight weeks and five days.
Chloe had almost convinced herself that she was doing better -- that she’d started to heal since Lucifer had been forced to return to his infernal throne. Since that night on his balcony, she had fully resisted the urge to spend her days wallowing in bed like a heartbroken teenager, screaming and sobbing. Feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t help anyone, and it certainly wouldn’t bring back the love of her life. And Detective Chloe Decker wasn’t one for drowning in self-pity.
So instead, she had dusted herself off. She solved crime with Maze, she danced at Lux, she played board games with Trixie. She babysat Charlie and tried not to hate Amenadiel and did paperwork until her fingers cramped. She forced smiles at her friends and went to Tribe nights and drank and laughed and pretended she cared. As long as she stayed busy, as long as she didn’t give herself time to think, she was fine. See? Some days, she went entire hours not thinking about the bleeding hole inside of her heart. Some nights, she even slept.
Thankfully, nobody in the precinct had questioned why there was still an empty seat positioned next to her own, eight weeks and five days after its occupant had disappeared. (She kept telling herself that she would stop counting days without him. She knew she wouldn’t.) As Chloe saw it, the precinct wasn’t short on chairs. They could let her have this one small memorial.
Chloe didn’t know how long she might have spent sleepwalking if it hadn’t been for the shootout at Lee Garner’s house, when the impossible, the unbelievable, the miraculous happened: Lucifer reappeared.
Eight weeks and two days gone, and suddenly there he was -- her tall, charming Devil swaggering around the crime scene, disarming criminals, saving the day, and pulling her in for a kiss. It was everything she had wanted, what she had only dreamed she’d get, and -- and it had all been wrong.
Lucifer had looked exactly the same -- the hair, styled to perfection; the suits, worth more than she made in a year; the eyes, dark and fathomless, and the lips, smirking at her with his irresistible Cupid’s bow. Except ... except. His mannerisms, his behavior, all his little tics and quirks, they had all been off. Lucifer was a bundle of nervous, unfiltered energy, never able to sit still, viewing the world around him like his own personal candy store. This man was more withdrawn -- thoughtful, quiet, asking probing questions during interrogations, choosing his words and actions with consideration. The end result was disorienting: a mirror image, an inversion, the negative to the original photograph.
If there was one thing her partner had taught her, it was to trust her instincts -- he’d been praising her gut from the very first day that they’d met. And this time, all her senses were telling her the same thing. So she pulled out her service revolver and fired a shot clean into his leg, just to prove what she had, deep down, already known -- that the man standing in front of her wearing Lucifer’s face wasn’t the Devil at all.
Fucking Michael.
So. Lucifer had an identical twin, one that was a manipulative, sadistic bastard. One that had amused himself by trying on Lucifer’s life for a few days, just to see what it might be like. Just to hurt the people his brother cared about.
[And he told me I’m a ... he thinks I’m some kind of ... ]
Chloe would give almost anything to have just one more moment with Lucifer -- to smell his cologne, to feel his arms wrapped around her, to know that he was safe and sane, experiencing one second of peace away from his infernal prison. Losing him a second time, that would have hurt, would have torn open her heart all over again, but seeing him -- that would be worth whatever pain it cost her.
Instead, Michael had swept into her life, wearing Lucifer’s face and using Lucifer’s voice, just so he could dump salt into her bleeding wounds. Being taunted by Lucifer’s duplicate -- kissed by a man wearing his face, but whose chocolate eyes were cool and flat -- it was cruel. Taunting her with what she couldn’t have, would never again have, holding it tantalizingly in front of her -- a mirage in the desert --
The first shot was enough to prove he wasn’t Lucifer. But when Michael straightened up in front of her, she couldn’t stop herself from firing again, over and over and over. Pretending that if she pulled the trigger enough, one of the bullets would pierce that self-satisfied smirk warping Lucifer’s beautiful face, would tear into Michael and make him bleed, would hurt him the way breathing hurt for her.
It was a waste of good bullets, but she couldn’t shoot the late Father Kinley, or the demons who’d been in open revolt, or Lucifer being so fucking noble and good and decent that he did the honorable thing the one time she needed him to be selfish. Michael made a good substitute target.
For all that, Chloe’s rage had cooled almost as soon as Michael left. Not because of anything he told her (not even the bit about me being a -- am I really -- ) but because she was so ... exhausted. Scooped out, numb, empty.
She wished fervently she could get the fury back, but it was gone. She could feel the space inside her where it should be, but it just wasn’t there. Nothing was there.
Maybe Michael had finally managed what all the Celestial madness hadn’t: maybe he had broken her.
And yet here she stood, at her desk, dressed, pretending she was fine. Pretending so well nobody even noticed that she had bled to death. She was discussing the chain of evidence for a revolver in the Washington case with Officer Martinez, and no one could tell she was a bloodless, reanimated corpse. Or was she still alive? How long could you live without blood?
“Hello, Detective.”
That voice. Chloe squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t stop the bit of her heart that thrilled to the sound of it, even as she knew, knew, it wasn’t him.
Fucking Michael. Did he really think -- oh, hey, he’d just toss on another suit and try the same trick again? Did he really think she was that stupid?
[Or that desperate to believe?]
At least a tiny bit of that anger was flickering back to life. That might let her survive this, even without any blood.
“Would you excuse us for a second?” Chloe said, forcing herself to sound polite, detached, completely disinterested. She couldn’t just start shooting him in the middle of the precinct, so she was going to have to talk to him. Dammit.
Officer Martinez raised an eyebrow, and Chloe could see the other woman struggling with her own curiosity. Right. Everyone else still thought Lucifer had actually returned triumphantly three days ago, and that she should still be riding that particular high.
[Sorry, close, but no. That’s not Lucifer -- it’s actually his evil twin, the Archangel Michael, patron saint of cops. My real consultant is the Devil, and he’s back in Hell for the rest of eternity. Easy mistake to make.]
Professionalism finally beat out curiosity, and Officer Martinez dipped her head and walked off to get a mug of coffee. Thank G- ... someone for small favors.
Chloe steeled herself for what she knew she was going to see -- a flawed image of her favorite face, a cruel hoax, fuck you, Michael, you bastard -- and turned.
“No,” she said. Firmly. Completely.
Trixie had told her that some people on Twitter said that “‘no’ is a complete sentence.” Okay, in that case, Twitter would be proud of Chloe. She made “no” into a paragraph. A whole letter, even, signed and sealed in its own little envelope.
[Dear Michael: No. Sincerely, Chloe.]
Although the people on Twitter hadn’t said anything against adding a post-script of go fuck yourself, so Chloe bit out, “Get the hell out of here.”
“Detective, I can explain,” Michael said easily. He didn’t seem in the least deterred by her “no,” not if he could keep smiling at her like she was the sun itself.
Fuck. Maybe today was a good day to call off sick and go home and vomit and cry herself into a nap? Because seeing that breathless, enraptured look on that face -- there was cruel, and then there was entirely unfuckingcalled for.
Steel. Stoic. Uncaring. If Michael did break her, did get her to spend the day in bed, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it. She narrowed her eyes.
[You don’t get to call me ‘Detective.’ You don’t get to talk to me at all. I’ll ask Maze for one of her knives and I’ll carve bits out of you next time you try this.]
“If you didn’t understand the first four times I shot you,” she seethed, careful not to let anyone else overhear, “then I will gladly shoot you again, Michael.”
She expected him to clutch his pearls to his chest in feigned shock, horrified and betrayed that she didn’t believe him. She expected apologies, sad puppy eyes, protestations of innocence. She expected him to glare at her for seeing through his ruse so easily this time.
What she didn’t expect was the warm peal of laughter. “You shot him?” he said. “Brilliant. Sorry to have missed it. But no, darling, it’s me. It’s Lucifer.”
Last night, he’d at least had the decency to admit when he was caught; today, it seemed like he wanted to toy with her.
Chloe swallowed past a lump. It hurt, hearing Lucifer rippling out that free, contagious laugh of his, but knowing it wasn’t him laughing at all. Lucifer was chained to his throne and couldn’t laugh about anything. Focus, Chloe.
“Do you really expect me to fall for that again?” Seriously? Michael seemed to think humans were mentally impaired, but this was pushing it, really. He hadn’t even waited twelve hours before trying the same scam.
... maybe he didn’t think she’d fall for it. Maybe he just planned to show up over and over again, play the part, and force her to tell him to leave. Maybe he just knew how badly it would hurt her, turning ‘Lucifer’ away, day after day after ...
Michael huffed out an impatient sigh. “But -- look at the hair! The perfectly arranged pocket square.” He gestured dramatically to his appearance. “Could Michael pull this off? I don’t think so.”
Oh, fuck. Chloe had to be very careful, now, because Michael’s Lucifer impression was much better than it had been over the past few days. Appealing to his own vanity? Looking at her like she had personally hung the stars? Wearing the hell out of that suit? Michael had decidedly brought his A-game. She needed to be on her toes.
[What if ... what if that’s not Michael, what if that’s --]
She stopped her mind’s insane chattering before it could say the one thing she knew wasn’t, couldn’t be true.
“I --” she started, but she couldn’t find the words to finish.
[Michael’s not this good. That’s not Michael. Is it? It can’t be --]
Her heart was a masochist and it wanted to be smashed into pieces; it was so ready to believe something stupid and impossible and why did she think she could smell him, from here?
[Don’t you dare be so stupid as to fall for the same prank twice, Decker.]
Michael grabbed a passing uni’s arm and tugged her into his orbit cheerfully. “Cacuzza! Come here!”
Chloe studied the angel as the two exchanged pleasantries. Over the past few days, Michael had made a show of being charismatic, but it had settled over him like an ill-fitting coat, awkward and stiff. Charm came effortlessly to this man; he breathed, and the air crackled. He drew attention like the light itself wanted to caress his skin.
[Maybe Michael practiced, maybe he’s just working harder at it, that doesn’t mean he’s -- ]
“Tell me,” he said, in a seductively low voice, “what is it you desire?”
She heard Cacuzza’s voice slip into that flat, hypnotized tone, but she couldn’t hear any of the words, not over the roaring in her ears. Michael hadn’t asked anyone that question. Not even when she’d pressed. Because ...
[Because he can’t. That isn’t Michael. You know who that is. You know.]
“Oh! Naughty you. Thank you,” Lucifer purred, turning his attention back to Chloe with a grin. He gestured triumphantly at Cacuzza's retreating back. “Now I know my brother can’t do that.”
It was true. Was it true? If it was true, why wouldn’t her legs move? Oh, crap, maybe this was a dream. Okay, if this was a dream, whoever woke her up was getting stabbed.
“It’s really you,” she breathed. Please let it be him? “How --”
Wasn’t he supposed to be stuck in Hell for eternity? Minding the demons? Eight weeks and five days wasn’t an eternity, it had just felt like one.
And then Lucifer (it really was Lucifer, it was, it really was) just smiled at her like he -- like -- like he couldn’t believe he got to look at her, like he just wanted to let his eyes wander over her until time ended, like he’d missed her, like he’d missed her maybe a tiny bit of how badly she’d missed him, and she couldn’t breathe.
“It’s a funny story, actually,” he said. “So there I was --”
All at once, she remembered how to make her legs move. The next instant, she had barreled into him and was holding on with all of her might.
The middle of a police precinct was not a good place for a tearful reunion -- too many people shoving past you to use the photocopier, or dragging suspects in between the rows of desks, for one. The smell of burnt coffee, the cacophony of sounds, the chaos -- all of those were pretty disruptive for important, sentimental moments. So after a few minutes of horribly interrupted bliss, Chloe realized the interrogation room might be a better place to go.
Lucifer waited patiently, standing just behind her while she closed the doors and bolted them shut, and when she was sure she’d bought them a little privacy, she whirled around and said hello the way she’d been wanting to: her hands on his lapels, her face tilted up to his, her tongue nudging past his lips.
The sound of his surprised moan was muffled against her mouth, and then his arm was around her waist. He melted against her, yes, please, his other hand reaching up to tangle in her ponytail. She felt more than heard his slight growl as he tightened his grip in her hair, teeth nipping against her lips. They were stumbling further back into the room, and she followed blindly -- she shrugged out of her blazer as they came to an abrupt stop. He’d seated himself on the edge of the table, nearly eye-level with her, and now he tugged her forward, between his open legs, in the circle of his arms.
She hadn’t checked the observation half of the interrogation room for onlookers, and she didn’t care. Were there unis having lunch? Were the cameras on? Fuck it. Fuck everything. He was here, he was alive, he was real, and she didn’t need romance. She didn’t need the perfect setting, wine and roses and a three-course dinner. Could they just be here, together, right now? Right on the interrogation room table, sure, fine, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except him. His hands, his skin, his mouth --
She started on the buttons of his shirt, only to feel him abruptly still against her. Wait. Shit. Was that wrong?
Chloe straightened up, easing out of the kiss, and saw his eyes. Eager, thrilled, but ... there was something troubled there, too.
“Sorry,” she blurted out. Dammit. She was rushing. He’d been in Hell. He’d only just left. He was probably still traumatized, still acclimating. She shouldn’t just start humping his leg the second he reappeared, what was wrong with her?!
Lucifer caught her fingers with his own and shook his head vehemently. “Don’t be, please,” he insisted. “Your enthusiasm is thoroughly appreciated, love. I only hesitated as -- as I wasn’t sure if the situation was clear.”
There it was, the tendril of fear curling down her spine. “Situation?”
Lucifer stared down at their entwined fingers. “Amenadiel came to tell me about Michael’s antics,” he said. “To warn me, that my twin was destroying my life, causing harm to those I care for. He’s guarding the fort, so to speak, while I sort out matters on Earth. This ... this is only a reprieve.”
A reprieve? A stay of execution. A break. A postponement. He meant --
“You can’t stay,” Chloe said quietly.
Of course he couldn’t. She --
She’d known that. She had. Nothing had changed. Lucifer had returned to Hell eight weeks and five days ago because only a Celestial could hold the throne; without him keeping the demons in check, they would come for baby Charlie. It was brave and noble and definitely the right thing to do and Chloe hated, hated, hated it, wished that he’d insisted Hell wasn’t his problem any more. But he hadn’t.
Hell still needed a King. Nothing had changed. He was only here for a visit.
His eyes were full of unshed tears. “Chloe, I --”
She sealed her lips against his, quickly, to stop whatever he was going to say. “No,” she said. “No, I -- I knew that, I knew it, I just -- I wasn’t thinking.”
Had been so thrilled to actually see him, have him, hold him, that she hadn’t remembered she’d need to give him back.
She pressed her face against his shoulder and breathed in his scent. Hers, for now, and then gone. Would he ever be able to visit like this again? If he begged Amenadiel, maybe he could steal up here once every year or two, and all her wounds would reopen, and she’d live her life on pause, counting the days and weeks in between.
His hands were gently soothing over her back, and she -- she wanted him all the more, knowing they were on borrowed time, and yet all the passion had burned out of her, down to ash. She felt hollow, and sad, and like she could spend hours crying and screaming and railing at the unfairness of it all. The injustice.
“What do you need?” he murmured against her ear.
She shook her head. No. I don’t know.
Chloe was an adult and she was going to wipe her face -- no crying -- and stand tall and face her sort-of-boyfriend and not-partner-any-more and tell him calmly that she was all right, that she was pleased to see him but that he didn’t need to worry because she was okay. Michael hadn’t really hurt her, so she wouldn’t keep him too long.
She managed the first part, at least, chewing on her lower lip as she met his eyes.
“Do you know how long -- ?” she asked.
He lifted his shoulders. “A few days,” he said. “I imagine Linda needs Amenadiel’s help with Charlie.”
And what Linda needed mattered, but what she needed -- but that wasn’t fair, and she knew it.
“Honestly, I’m grateful to have this chance at all,” Lucifer continued. “It isn’t just that he can prance around looking like me, lying and causing a fuss. That’s bad enough, but Amenadiel could clean up that mess himself. Detective ... Michael’s abilities are centered around fear. He can pull out secret worries and concerns, toy with them, needle at them, twist a person around in knots.”
Chloe shivered. “I heard him ask someone that,” she replied. “‘What do you truly fear?’ It was so ... unsettling.”
“The wanker gets off on it,” Lucifer grumbled. “He likes to unearth those slimy, dark anxieties and shine a light on them. So for you, it would be -- what? Making you think I didn’t care?”
She managed a weak smile at that. “He seemed ... wrong,” she said carefully. “He’d be sort of like you one minute and then completely different the next. He said he’d changed, and there was this strange -- distance between us. He said it had been thousands of years, so I figured ...”
That she had faded away, for him, into a distant memory. Perhaps even a fond one, but something dog-eared around the edges, a hint of a long-lost past. A photograph whose color was mostly bleached away. She had begun to fear that Hell had chewed up their burgeoning relationship, and that not much was left behind.
Lucifer placed a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to look at him. “It has been thousands of years,” he said softly. “It’s hard to explain. Time in Hell moves differently; it stagnates, it expands. But the thought of you was all that kept me sane. No amount of time could change how I feel about you, Chloe.”
She couldn’t fight the tiny sob that slipped out; she leaned forward until her forehead was against his, wishing she could bottle this feeling of peace, of contentment, of home. She would need it again, and sooner than she’d like to think.
After a moment, he chuckled, softly. “Right, I have to ask,” he said. “You shot him?”
Chloe grinned. “Just in the leg,” she said. “I thought ... for old times’ sake?”
He laughed harder, and it was so good to see him laugh. His eyes -- they were as dark and fathomless as always, but they were tired. Thousands of years, in Hell. It had been two months for her, and that had been agony. Thousands of years!? “If you want another necklace, love, you need only ask.”
She reached up to curl her fingers around his own. “He ... he wasn’t acting like you, and he did a few things you would never do. So ... I couldn’t shake the thought that he wasn’t you at all. I kept thinking it was crazy, but then I thought -- I wanted to see if you bled. I thought, if I was wrong ... I mean, you forgave me last time.”
“I certainly did.” Lucifer was beaming at her proudly, and it was hard not to bask in the light of it. “You know, it took ages for our siblings to catch on when he’d pull that trick. He underestimated you, my clever Detective.”
Chloe flushed. “In some ways, it was obvious,” she admitted, remembering how badly Michael’s reserve had failed him whenever she’d gotten too close. “He, uh, he got flustered when I slipped my hand into his pocket.”
“Flustered,” he hummed, delighted. “Did he now? I almost feel sorry for my poor virginal twin. Care to see how I react with your hand in my pocket?”
She leaned forward to capture his lips. There it was -- the heat licking at her insides again, flames sparking from the embers. And suddenly, it was so simple. She loved him. He loved her. If they only had these few days, she wanted to be with him, mark him on her skin, her psyche, her soul.
New plan. Take the day off work. Spend it in his bed. And on his piano, and on his floor, and in his shower, and --
He broke the kiss, a small crease worrying his forehead. “Right, that was my fault,” he said. “My apologies. Just need to be certain: you know I’m leaving, and Michael didn’t harm you? No dark fears dragged out into the light that might start eating away at you? All’s well, and I should stop interrupting us?”
“I ... I think so?” Chloe said, frowning. “I mean, there was --”
He’d said some outright ridiculous things, like the bit about -- about her being a -- but she was fairly certain he was lying. If Lucifer always told the truth, then Michael always lied. They were like those two guards in fairy tales, and you had to ask a question to one of them to ask the other and figure out the right path to take.
“It’s nothing,” she decided. The right path, in this case, led straight to his penthouse. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Lucifer was studying her face. “Loath as I am to convince you not to ravish me,” he said, “you may not have the chance to ask again later. If it’s going to fester ...”
It wasn’t going to fester. Except --
[What if I really am a -- ]
Dammit. Maybe he was right. It wasn’t like she could text him the next time weird thoughts kept her up at 4 AM. She’d ask, he’d tell her it was a lie, and they could get back to the ravishing. Better idea.
“Okay,” she said. “Don’t laugh. It’s just, I was telling him that he’d failed, that ... that him trying to make me think you didn’t care, I knew it wasn’t true, and he was just a liar. And he got this weird look on his face, just smug, and he ... he said I was ... some kind of ... gift?”
Lucifer’s face was ... blank. Oh. Probably because that was utter nonsense. She needed to keep explaining.
“Like, my existence, I mean. I know my parents, they had trouble having kids? That’s why it’s just me, but he made it sound like -- like God Himself literally just, just put me here on Earth for you, like some kind of --”
No. Not blank. His face was frozen. And all the color seemed to be draining out of it.
“Some ... kind of toy,” she managed.
Lucifer swallowed, but it seemed hard. She watched his throat spasm, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He’d known Adam, hadn’t he? She’d met Eve. Why did angels have Adam’s apples if they were older than Adam?
Maybe Adam had always been meant to eat the apple. Maybe fate was a real thing and people were all just preprogrammed little robots in their preprogrammed little slots. Puppets on strings, playing out their parts.
Her head felt light, like it might float away from the rest of her body. Out through the ceiling, up into the clouds, away like a bird.
“I --” He said, but he didn’t finish. He was so pale. But there wasn’t any sun in Hell, was there? Unfair that he couldn't see the sun, since he was the one who’d made it. “Chloe --”
He didn’t need to say it. Did he? ‘No’ was a complete sentence. He could have just said ‘no.’
She didn’t really ask a yes-or-no question, but he could have said ‘no’ all the same.
‘No, of course not.’
‘No, what are you talking about?’
‘No, I’ve never heard of such a thing.’
‘No, Michael’s completely insane.’
So if he wasn’t saying no, that meant yes.
‘Yes, you’re a gift.’
‘Yes, your entire existence is based on a whim.’
‘Yes, you’re just a make-up present from my father to me.’
‘Yes, you’re destined to be mine, and I’m destined to be in Hell, so we both get to be miserable.’
Five minutes ago she had thought she was Chloe Decker, homicide detective, single mom, divorcee, Celestial insider, daughter, friend, girlfriend-kind-of to the absent Devil.
But she wasn’t. She was The Devil’s Mate, and also, in her spare time, solved crimes and had a daughter, when that didn’t interfere with her primary objective in life, being The Devil’s Mate, which was the only reason her parents hadn’t died childless -- so that he could have a girlfriend.
Chloe’s knees buckled.
“Detective,” Lucifer said, reaching out to steady her with an arm -- but she pushed it away flimsily.
“No,” she said. “No, I can’t.” She backed away from him, and that seemed to help, with her knees not working.
He was watching her with concern. “I can explain,” he said, and she laughed, abruptly. He’d said that earlier, when he was Michael. Michael had said he could explain, and she hadn’t believed him then, and now he was Lucifer, and Lucifer couldn’t explain, either. Maybe she was unexplainable. The Ineffable Mystery of Chloe Decker!
“Am I even real?” she asked. Oh, she’d backed clean into the wall. That was nice; that made it feel less like she was going to fall down.
“Of course you’re real,” Lucifer said, but he lied now. Michael had said that. Lucifer 2.0! But Michael wasn’t Lucifer, except when he was. “Detective, I’m so sorry. I should have --”
“Don’t,” she said, and thankfully he stopped, he just stopped, she’d needed him to stop and he did. (He always did, he always would; Lucifer lived and breathed consent.) She covered her face with her hands and breathed for several minutes.
When he started talking again, it was softer. “I didn’t know,” he said. “Not until later. And I didn’t know how to tell you. I -- I don’t know what it means. I’m sorry.”
Except he did know. They both knew. Didn’t they?
“But I’m not supposed to exist,” she said. “Except to be yours.”
[Special delivery -- a Mrs. Lucifer Morningstar. We made this one a blonde!]
“We don’t know that,” Lucifer said carefully. “Father asked Amenadiel to bless your parents. We don’t know why. We don’t know anything.”
So ... it was a coincidence? She’d been hand placed on this planet, and then thirty-odd years later, while he was vacationing topside, he had met her, and they had decided to date? He didn’t really believe that, did he? Because ... she didn’t.
Was this why she was immune to Lucifer’s mojo? Why he was vulnerable around her? Was this why she’d fallen for him? Why he had fallen for her?
“I don’t know how to do this,” she admitted, and her voice sounded so small. So unlike her.
The silence was broken by the doors rattling; Lucifer glanced at her, asking a question with his eyes, and she nodded. So he went over and un-bolted them, letting in ... Oh. It was Dan.
“Am I interrupting something?” Dan asked, looking awkwardly between the two of them. “Sorry. We just got a call about a body that dropped.”
“Okay,” she said. “Yeah. Give me a couple and I’ll be out, okay?”
He frowned, clearly wanting to say more, but thought better of it and left. Chloe sighed in relief. She couldn’t -- Dan was wonderful, but she didn’t need the headache of trying to explain this mess. Not now.
“Detective --” Lucifer said again, but Chloe shook her head.
“No,” she said. ‘No’ was a complete sentence, but she didn’t know what it meant, this time, other than ‘no.’ If she closed her eyes and refused all of this, entirely, would it go away?
“No?” he asked. His eyes -- his eyes were tired, still, and so sad. So old. He was billions of years old. He was something she could never understand, not in a hundred years, and she didn’t get a hundred years. She was just human. He might have had naps longer than her whole life.
“I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t just -- I can’t. I need to go. I’m so tired, I don’t understand, but there’s a body. I’m a detective. I’m -- I’m going to go solve a crime.”
That, she understood. That, she could pretend she’d chosen. (Had she really chosen anything? Maybe she only cared about crime so that she’d cross paths with Lucifer in the first place. Had Delilah died just so they’d meet? Had Delilah only been famous so she’d be murdered by Jimmy Barnes? Had anyone ever made a free choice about anything?)
“I see,” he said. And he sounded hurt, and sad, and fuck, this was all wrong, he was here and it was wrong, and somehow that was even worse than Michael being here, because this was Lucifer and Lucifer wasn’t supposed to be wrong. She wished she didn’t care, and she wished it wasn’t true, and -- if she started wishing for things to be different, then she’d stand here all day and they’d never solve their murder.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She wasn’t sure what for, except that he was sad, and she didn’t want him to be, and everything was wrong, and she was fairly certain she was losing her mind, and all of that seemed like she ought to be sorry. And he was here, he was back, and yet it was all like this, now, and she didn't know how to ... to make it okay again.
“No, I’m sorry,” he insisted. “May I --” Lucifer cleared his throat, then stood up straighter, hands fiddling with his cufflinks. “Detective. Would it be all right if I accompanied you to the crime scene? For old times’ sake, as you said. Perhaps you can even shoot me, if you’d like.”
It wouldn’t help. He was only back for a few days, and they needed to talk about this, really talk, but she couldn’t talk without screaming, or crying, or throwing up, and she wanted -- she wanted him back. Even more than she wanted to climb into his bed, she wanted him to sit next to her in her car and make inappropriate jokes at witnesses and be her civilian consultant. She wanted to pretend for just five minutes that maybe she could have him back, her best friend, her partner. Was that so horrible?
“Okay,” Chloe said. “Yeah. Come on. Let’s solve a murder.”