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The knife slips between his ribs almost expertly, in and out, clean and quick and easy, slicing through flesh but not touching bone. Lucifer’s mouth parts at the shock of it, though the pain hasn’t quite hit him yet. He turns his attention back to the crowd and meets the eyes of a child. (Not an expert then, just sheer luck.)
I’m sorry, the urchin mouths, looking genuinely regretful, and then they’re gone, disappearing into the masses.
The pain hits then, his hand moving reflexively to press at the wound and the blood that’s pouring out of it all too quickly. Rage follows shortly after, rage that they would dare attack him, rage that they would send a child to do a man’s work, but Lucifer lets it simmer in the background. The target of his ire isn’t here at the moment, and there are far more important things to deal with.
Like the fact that his vision is going blurry and his knees are starting to weaken.
“Lucifer!”
It’s the detective, and Lucifer turns to meet her shocked and startled gaze, suddenly overwhelmingly grateful that he’d been the target, and not the woman standing at his side. There’s no question that she already knows what happened; the blood is flowing freely, over his fingers pressed into the wound and spreading to stain his suit. He can see the conflict in her eyes: leave him wounded, let him heal, or help him.
In that instant, it’s clear that her instinct to help wins out. She moves, quick and fluid on sure feet, to spin around him and step to his other side, throwing his left arm over her shoulder and letting him lean on her. Lucifer is grateful for that, too. He’d much prefer to just put some distance between them, let himself heal, but in the moment standing is rather difficult. And there’s more at stake here than just his health.
“Lucifer,” the detective hisses again, “what happened?”
“He seems to have forced one of his orphans to do his dirty business, no doubt in the hopes of making a scene,” Lucifer bites out, his tone a low growl. He’d already wanted to get his hands on that man long before this, but now… He’s already broken the no-killing rule by offing Cain, what’s one more?
“Should I …?”
Lucifer shakes his head, jaw tight as he takes shallow breaths through gritted teeth. “We can’t let him get what he wants,” he counters. The rest of the undercover officers can finish up the operation for them (it's not like they were undercover, their faces already known), but if he lets the detective call an ambulance, or just rush him out of here, the operation will be finished without the success they're looking for. (He could always get his own justice, outside the courts and the cops, he doesn’t need them for that, but given how he can barely stand at the moment, and given how much this means to the detective, he can’t risk their ongoing operation.)
At his side, Chloe steels herself. She remains as clever and quick as always. She knows what he means. She knows what’s at stake here, better than him even, perhaps, given her in-depth understanding of the mortal justice system. “Right,” she says, jaw tight and tone unhappy. “I need to see how serious it is before I’m leaving you alone though. Let’s…”
Lucifer’s mind runs through his memories of arriving here this evening. “Off the main foyer,” he says. “There was a coat room.”
The detective nods. “Can you walk?”
The pain is, quite frankly, ruthless, and the blood loss certainly isn’t helping matters. He certainly couldn’t make his way there unassisted, but… He’s had worse. And the detective is counting on him. Lucifer nods.
“Quickly,” he bites out. “Before someone spots the blood.” And that grates at him, that he is the weak point for this mission, that it is his folly that could screw the whole thing, all because he hadn’t even considered that their foe would use children to do his dirty work. The rage continues to build, and Lucifer continues to let it simmer. It won’t do him any good. Not yet. (Oh, but when it will, when he finally gets to let loose…)
Chloe complies with his command, and Lucifer leans on her more than he’d like as they step their way out of the ballroom. The damage from the blood loss continues to compound, but Lucifer trusts the detective. He lets himself ignore the noise of humanity around them, only just aware of Chloe waving someone off who must be another officer, then casually brushing aside someone else with what he thinks is a story of too much to drink and a spilled cocktail. He leers, then, more lecherous than normal, hoping to sell her tale, and then they’re stepping clear of the room.
It's not quite the relief it should be because they still need to find a room to tuck him away, out of sight, but the crowd is gone and there’s no longer a need to maintain appearances. Lucifer refrains from slumping any further, purely out of a desire not to put too much weight on his much shorter partner, but he lets his expression drop, lines of pain etching themselves onto his face.
“Not much further,” the detective says, reassuring, comforting, even through the worry that permeates her tone.
Lucifer grunts, searches for the words to reassure her in turn, and fails to come up with anything. She knows the truth of things, knows he’s had worse, knows he’ll be fine as soon as there is distance enough between them. She worries anyway. It warms him, in a way he hadn’t known warmth could be comfortable (or in a way he’d merely forgotten) before meeting her. He focuses instead on putting one foot in front of the other, in ignoring the sticky-wetness covering his right palm and the fire that races up and down his chest behind his ribs.
The hall they walk through is a blur but one that is soon over and then the detective is lifting his arm off her shoulder, lowering him to the ground. Lucifer does his best to help her, relieved to give his legs a break and lean against a wall.
“I’m going to find a first aid kit,” the detective says. “They should have one behind the front desk, or nearby.”
She presses his own hand further into his wound, and Lucifer grunts again. “Keep pressure on that,” she says.
Mustering his strength, Lucifer manages an easy grin at her. “Of course, Detective,” he reassures her.
She frowns at him, as though his reassurance had meant nothing, and then she’s gone. Lucifer takes a moment to worry about her, wracks his brain long enough to remind himself that the front desk is unmanned, otherwise they’d have been spotted coming in here, and then focuses on his own problem. Shucking off his jacket doesn’t seem like a smart idea at the moment (or one he's capable of executing), but he doesn’t have any other fabric to press down on the wound. (Loosing the jacket that way would be a terrible waste too, if the corner flapping over his hand as he’d walked wasn’t already doused in his blood. Lucifer’s laundry service is good, but not that good.)
He presses down further with his palm, the pain sharp as if the blade were still present, his vision momentarily whiting out. Hmm. Not fun, that. His world had been much simpler, before the detective, when the only things that could hurt him were his siblings’ actions.
But worse, he acknowledges as Chloe returns in a flurry, throwing herself to her knees at his side with a large first aid kit at the ready. He’ll take this pain any day.
“There’s no need to get too elaborate,” he says. “So long as we stem the bleeding for a time, I’ll be right as rain.”
The detective doesn’t pause from her rooting through the kit. “I’ll be the judge of that,” she says, pulling out a thick wad of gauze. “Here, lift your hand.”
Lucifer does as ordered, grateful for the momentary relief of lifting the pressure too, though he knows for a human it’d be a risky move. Chloe gets in close to his side with a pair of scissors.
“Ah –”
She throws him a deadpan look that cuts him off. “If you say one word about your suit –”
He grins. Well, he’d already been mourning its loss, and there’s a rather large hole in it already. He concedes the point with a nod. The detective gets back to work, slicing the fabric open around his wound so she can see it better. Not that there’s much to see; his side is swamped with his own blood, leaving the depth and breadth of the wound to one’s imagination.
Chloe, of course, doesn’t take that for an answer. Without a warning she grabs something else from the kit and starts to wipe.
The sting and cold of the disinfectant on the cloth wipe takes Lucifer’s breath away for a moment. He inhales sharply, biting his lip, and laments again the loss of his invulnerability around his partner.
“Sorry,” the detective says distractedly, not sounding it at all. Lucifer’s always admired her practically.
He offers a grin to show that there are no hard feelings. “Well, Detective,” he says. “What’s the diagnosis? Will I live?”
Blood is still spilling from his torn flesh, but the area is clean enough now to get a decent look at the damage. Chloe throws him a sharp look at the question, quick to toss aside the disinfectant wipe and grab the wad of gauze she’d arranged earlier. “Press down,” she says again.
Lucifer waits until he’s done so – until his breathing is steady (shallow, but steady) and he can make out the detective’s expression clearly – before he speaks again. “Well?”
The detective swallows. “It’s not good,” she says grimly.
It isn’t hard to read between the lines. If he were anyone else, their foe’s plan would have worked. Chloe would be calling an ambulance now, if she hadn’t already in the ballroom, and the ruckus would dissolve the undercover operation, giving their foe a chance to go uncaught. But he is Lucifer Morningstar, and while this wound might kill him yet, it’s not quite a fatal blow. Not if they wrap things up quickly enough, not if the detective manages to get far enough away.
“Well then,” he surmises, trying to ignore the black dots swimming in his vision. “I suppose this is where we part.”
But Chloe shakes her head, still grim. “He’ll probably have men at my car,” the detective says. “Just in case we tried to, well…”
Lucifer grimaces. Right. He doubts their foe would have imagined the detective driving off without him, but, well, the same obstacle presents itself either way. He must truly be slipping, not to have thought of that himself. “Of course,” he says, breathless and pained.
“I told the other detectives to speed things up,” Chloe says, looking pained in another way entirely. “You just have to hold out until then. It’s almost over with.”
She looks positively distressed, and Lucifer simply can’t have that. Not over some mere flesh wound, not because of him. He shifts where he sits, straightening his shoulders best he can, and flashes her a grin that he’s sure comes out more pained than reassuring, but a grin nevertheless.
“Detective,” he says, going for sly and probably hitting weary instead. “I’m hurt by your lack of faith in me.”
Chloe’s return smile is grim, but a smile nevertheless. “Amenadiel?” she says.
Lucifer blinks at the non sequitur. “What?”
“You brother. Can he help?”
“He’s not the angel of healing, if that’s what you’re asking.” Might have solved a few issues the past years, if he was though.
“No, but, he could get you out of here, couldn’t he? Or me?”
Ugh. For a moment, the pain fades to the back of Lucifer’s mind. Amenadiel could, provided he answers Lucifer’s prayer and isn’t busy, but the idea of asking him to ferry him out of here like some damsel in distress is so unseemly.
Then he looks at Chloe again, and the worry in her expression and his blood on her hands. Anything, for her.
“I suppose he could,” he admits reluctantly. “Provided he is not otherwise occupied.”
“Go home, then,” she says. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”
Affronted, Lucifer tries to straighten even further, forgetting his wound for a second before it sharply reminds him why that’s a bad idea. He hisses out the pain in a sharp breath, keeping his gaze locked on the detective’s face. “If you think –”
“I’ll have five detectives and a dozen uniformed officers at my side, by the time this is all over with,” the detective says, firm. “He won’t try anything.”
But this way, Lucifer won’t get the chance for vengeance. Rage boils up in him again, and it’s all he can do from flashing his eyes red here and now. “He deserves –”
“He deserves everything our justice system will throw at him,” Chloe cuts him off. “They aren’t kind to child abusers in prison.”
His detective is so fiercely defense of true justice that, in any other situation, Lucifer knows that fact would pain her. She has her own idea of justice, and reform, and that – usually – isn’t it. But here, and now, knowing what this man has done…
It’s still not enough for Lucifer, but Chloe knows enough to read that in his eyes.
“And when that’s all said and done,” she continues, before he can speak, “I’m sure you’ll get your turn with him.”
Oh, he will. Few of their cases stick out so strongly in Lucifer’s mind as this one. He will remember this man for eons, and he’ll make sure their foe remembers it too. It’s only a shame that he won’t get to inform the man of that to his face. (At least, not until he’s dead.)
“Lucifer,” Chloe says, firmer now. “You will die, if we both stay here too long.”
He grits his teeth. She is, he hates to admit it, correct. The effect of the blood loss has been piling up. He knows he couldn’t stand even if she insisted on it and the black at the edges of his vision has been creeping inward ever so slowly. His healing isn’t instantaneous. He can’t confront their foe, even if the man was stood right in front of him.
“Very well,” he says, then closes his eyes and prays.
It doesn’t take but a moment for Amenadiel to arrive.
“What have you gotten yourself into –”
His brother cuts himself off when he sees the blood, blinking in surprise. “Luci!”
“He’s hurt,” Chloe cuts in. “You need to get him away from me before it gets worse.”
“Of course,” Amenadiel agrees, a sharp turnabout from the way he’d been only a few years ago. Then, he probably would have scooped Lucifer up only to dump him at the gates of Hell.
Lucifer wants to argue, or at least banter, but he’s loosing strength. He’d spent too much of it reassuring the detective he was fine. He barely notices that Amenadiel has moved to his side before his brother has bent over and lifted him into his arms, but even though his vision whites from the pain again, he has one more thing to say.
“Detective!” he calls out, still breathless, still pained, but still fierce and full of a promise for vengeance. He grins. He could wish for Chloe to stay safe, but she already knows he wants that. “Make him pay.”
Chloe smiles, still grim, and nods. She steps forward, brushes his hair back from his forehead, and kisses his cheek. “Stay safe,” she says in return, and then the world around him vanishes in a fluttering of wings.
The healing will come shortly, Lucifer knows, but for now he lets the world vanish even further, lets himself sink into the darkness of unconsciousness, knowing all is well. The detective is more than capable and his brother, against all odds, won’t let anything further happen to him.
(He feels safe, a rare treat, a wonderful sensation. Linda, he can’t help but think, would be proud of him, and then he isn’t thinking anything else anymore.)