Author's Note: For PixelByPixel as part of the "They're Back; Aren't They" fic exchange.
A little late, but I hope PixelbyPixel doesn't mind. My prompt was "Carry On" by fun. Which, given it's kind of an upbeat song, so you would think this might be a fluff piece, but ahahaha. Nope. I tried it, and it was just terrifying. But - this is my first attempt at doing almost 5000 words from Chloe's point of view, which is a lot harder than I thought it would be, but hopefully it works. Anyways. Enough dawdling. Onwards!
"Detective?"
If she hadn't heard it with her own ears, she would've never believed it. That voice¸ that completely undeniably Lucifer's voice from that face…
For a fleeting moment, her brain skipped directly to Lucifer had horrifically injured himself taking on Pierce. That the raw looking skin was some sort of chemical burn like acid thrown on his face, because even that would make more sense to her than what her detective skills immediately recognized – that chemical burns wouldn't change the color of someone's eyes from brown to red. That an injury that severe and that recent would have even Lucifer on the ground shrieking in agony.
Which meant…
"It's true," she heard herself stutter before she could even properly recognize what she knew to be true. "It's all true."
The irony of finding out not ten minutes after she'd told him that he wasn't the Devil and for the first time, he'd agreed with her wasn't lost on her, and she almost had to smother a hysterical giggle.
Because Lucifer was the Devil.
He swore he never lied to her, and she'd believed him – mostly. Over the months of working with him, she'd come to accept a certain level of weird from her partner, and she'd mostly just let it slide with only the occasional complaint, but to believe he was being one hundred percent literally honest with her…well.
That was just ridiculous.
Until it wasn't.
Until he stood in front of her, with that face, with his voice, dressed in his suit.
Lucifer cocked his head to the side, in that strangely avian habit he had, the smile faltering slightly when he saw her face. Relief gave way to questioning, and he repeated, "Detective?" when he couldn't quite place the emotions he saw play across her face.
And in one horrible moment, she could see the exact second he understood what she was looking at.
In the blink of an eye, the terrible injuries were gone.
Lucifer looked as he always did. So incredibly, undeniably human. As if in the time it took her to blink, he'd simply removed a Halloween mask. She half expected for him to laugh and say "Gotcha!" except…
Except…Lucifer didn't look confused anymore.
He looked horrified.
"No…" he whispered, taking a step backwards. Away from her.
Like he was afraid of her.
And supernatural weirdness be damned, she knew in that moment what he was about to do. What he'd done every time he'd risked getting closer to her, when she saw more of him than he was prepared to give.
"Lucifer…" she said, trying to keep her tone level and calm, to smash down that gut wrenching knot of shock and stubborn disbelief. She kept her hands out to her side, trying to show that she wasn't afraid of him, and that she wasn't going to do anything to him.
It did nothing to erase that look of panic on his face and he took another step backwards, stumbling slightly as he did so and throwing an arm to balance himself.
Except it wasn't just his arm he extended.
An impossible, incandescent set of white wings unfurled behind him with the sound of a parachute deploying.
Her hands clapped reflexively to her lips. Not because they scared her or surprised her (though the noise startled her in the otherwise silent foyer) but because she had to stop a hysterical giggle when she recalled him asking her to put out an APB on his missing angel wings and her less than helpful brain immediately thought 'looks like he found them'.
And because that was an awful lot of blood.
And it was definitely his, because he flinched and gasped in pain when they appeared, and those magnificent wings faltered.
Belatedly, she realized what Lucifer would interpret her reaction as. What probably every reaction to realizing his identity was.
"Lucifer, no," she warned, walking quickly towards him now, no longer hesitant but not outright running – yet. "Lucifer, no, don't you dare…"
But it was too late. She lunged towards him, her outstretched fingers barely catching on his Prada jacket before he vanished in front of her eyes with a flap of his wings (wings, WINGS, for crying out loud) and she stumbled to a halt where he'd just been standing, her hands empty except for the memory of the fabric beneath her fingertips. The only thing left behind to prove that she'd seen anything at all were the few bloodied feathers slowly drifting to the ground.
She stood unmoving in the utterly silent foyer. Trying to wrap her brain around what she'd just seen with her own two eyes.
Lucifer wasn't lying. He'd never lied to her. She knew that. Knew it before this very moment. But at the same time…she'd always stood behind her curtain of perceived reality – that what he told her was impossible. It was a metaphor she'd assumed he'd learned to talk through to deal with childhood trauma, or something his less than stellar family convinced him of. She'd always known that it wasn't just an act – that on some level, it was who he believed he was and now…
Scratch all of that.
Lucifer was a literalist.
She didn't know when her legs decided to give out on her. When the wobble in her knees became too much to stand on. But she found herself quite abruptly on her knees without any clear memory as to how or when it happened.
Chloe didn't know how long she sat there. It felt like hours. It felt like seconds. Her thoughts skipped about like a worn record, staring at Pierce and wondering if what Lucifer said was true about him being an immortal was true, how he could be dead before her with Maze's knife sticking out of his chest. Were the other bodies also human? Were they something else, like Pierce and Lucifer?
How was she going to explain this?
Who was she going to even try to explain it to?
Her phone was in her pocket. She should call someone. Anyone. She could play the dumb, blonde, former actress card – blame shock for what she wasn't willing or able to explain. They were already operating without oversight. No one knew about their plan to take down Pierce for the murder of Charlotte Richards.
She simply sat on her knees, staring at the scene until her legs went as numb as the rest of her.
There was a mild breeze through the shattered windows at the top of the stairs. It felt like ice across her skin and she shivered as it blew one of the errant feathers across her lap, where it caught and stayed.
So much blood.
So very human.
She gently picked up the feather, marveling at the slight incandescence to it, even now.
So very not.
The dichotomy of Lucifer himself, summed up in a single object.
She hardly even noticed when Dan and Ella showed up.
Everything was muffled and far away and no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on them, she couldn't force herself to answer.
They mostly talked to each other – garbled pieces of information like debating who they could call to take care of this. Where Lucifer was. What happened.
It wasn't until Dan was on his knees in front of her, looking her right in the eye with a hand on her shoulder that she even looked up from the feather in her hand.
"Chloe?"
"It's true," she repeated. "All of it is true."
True, and she'd called him a liar. She'd called him deluded, she'd laughed in his face when he told her who he was.
Just like she hadn't believed him about Marcus, and he'd turned out to be right about that, too.
If Dan knew what she was talking about, or thought she was just babbling through shock, he didn't say anything. He helped her to her feet, and somehow got her to the car, and the next thing she knew, she was sitting on the couch in her mother's beach house, not entirely sure how she got there.
Her hands were freezing. She could barely feel her feet. Her cheeks burned, and she felt like she needed to cry, but she just…couldn't. Like she was stuck on pause, a half halt through the motions and the more she tried to concentrate, the worse it was because her mind kept skipping around from Lucifer wasn't lying, to trying to grasp all of what that entailed.
If Lucifer was really the Devil, it meant there was really a God. A Heaven. Hell. There were supreme beings in the world, and somehow, she'd managed to get one as a partner, a best friend, and one day…she'd hoped…something more.
And try as she might, she couldn't come up with the times that Lucifer acted like a Devil. She'd meant it when she said that was never who he was to her.
She clutched the bloodied feather, white knuckled in her fist.
If he was something other than human, why did he bleed?
A ghost of a memory from their first months together flitted through her mind's eye.
Detective, if it's any consolation to your pride, it appears you make me vulnerable, too.
She'd always wondered about his expression that night. Why he looked at her with something between curiosity and betrayal, and his more bizarre than usual behavior in the following days. Why he'd demanded to be able to see her back to know if she was someone sent to kill him.
She put her hand to her mouth, pressing the feather to her lips.
Oh, Lucifer. I didn't mean it.
She could hear Dan and Ella talking to one another, and possibly a third – maybe fourth? Person on the phone, but no matter how much she tried to concentrate on the words because deep down, she knew this was important to know, it just seemed like static.
"Mommy?"
Chloe blinked, then started when she realized Trixie was standing in front of her, and she hissed when the movement pulled at the bruising on her shoulder.
"Hey, Monkey," she said softly, hoping her daughter didn't hear the catch in her voice, and bought the smile she forced on her face to cover the wince.
"Are you okay?"
Chloe considered the level of omission she could get away with. Trixie was smart, so smart sometimes it worried her because nine-year-olds shouldn't worry about their parents' jobs or having to be strong for them when they wanted to fall apart.
"Mommy had a rough day today," she admitted. "There were some bad men, and things were a little scary, but I'm okay, sweetie."
Trixie's gaze drifted to the bullet hole still clearly visible through her shirt, and Chloe watched the frown pull down fractionally at her baby's nose, but her voice didn't waver when she asked, "Did you get the bad men, Mommy?"
Chloe nodded, offering a smile she hoped was more reassuring than she felt. "Lucifer saved the day."
And he had. At great personal cost.
And he thought she was afraid of him.
She squeezed the feather tighter.
"Mommy?"
"Hmm?"
Trixie bit her lip, looking guiltily back towards her room. "You're not supposed to break a promise, right?"
Chloe tried not to bite her lip, because she knew Trixie would read it for the tell it was – that she wanted to be able to tell her daughter that of course, she was going to keep her promise to come home to her, always. But Trixie was getting older. Their lives were already crazy, and with Lucifer…well, that was just a can of…existential crises she wasn't prepared to open just yet, but she could guess it didn't mean their lives were going to back slide into more normal instead of way crazier. The world was getting more dangerous, even without the extra worry of Chloe and Dan working in a high-risk job.
She wanted to be able to gather her Monkey in her arms and hold her tight and everything would be just fine, to ignore the ache in her shoulder that was probably already a spectacular bruise and pretend like it would all be okay no matter what.
Trixie's confession at Starford Academy's orientation class still haunted her, and she wanted more than anything to be able to shield her daughter from the cruelties of the world.
But she couldn't bring herself to so blatantly lie to her face now, either.
"Oh, Monkey, I know I said promises were really important to keep, especially to someone you love, but sometimes…" she trailed off, not entirely sure how to finish the thought.
Trixie worried her bottom lip with her teeth, glancing back at her bedroom door which was closed, despite Trixie being out here. "So…sometimes it's okay to break a promise?"
"Well, no, you should always try to keep them, honey. If you make promises you don't intend to keep, then you shouldn't make them in the first place." She hastily amended it when she saw her daughter's face start to crumble. "But if you make a promise, and you have to break it –"
"Like if someone's hurt and they need help, but they make your promise not to tell anyone?"
Chloe frowned at the oddly specific scenario.
One that sounded suspiciously like someone she knew would make.
"Yeah, honey, just like that. Why? Do you know someone who's hurt?" she asked, trying to keep her voice light and non-accusatory.
Trixie glanced back towards her room once more, still looking like she still wasn't sure if it was something bad enough to warrant the breaking of a promise, but then she squared her little shoulders, nodded once to herself, and took her mother's hand in hers.
"I have to show you something."
Chloe allowed her to pull her from the couch. If Dan and Ella noticed, they said nothing, and she didn't turn towards them to check.
Trixie opened her door with the practiced stealth of someone who used to sneak out for pilfered chocolate cake after bed time, peeking around the doorjamb before leading her inside.
Trixie's room was dark enough Chloe had to blink several times before her eyes adjusted to the dimness after the brightly lit kitchen and living room, and she idly wondered when the hell it became night time.
"Trixie, what –"
She didn't get any further.
"You are a wretched liar, you ungrateful little urchin," a wonderfully familiar voice growled. "No wonder my Father demanded children as sacrifice."
"I ran out of band aids," Trixie said, as if that justified the betrayal of fetching her mother.
He was jammed into the far corner of the room, in the most uncomfortable position she could imagine. The space was too small for his six-foot three frame, between Trixie's dresser and the bookshelf behind the door, propped slightly against her mountain of pillow fort materials, long legs akimbo, looking less like he'd put himself there and more like he'd fallen and hadn't the energy or motivation to move. There were several bullet holes, not unlike hers, spattered across his torso, but no blood. The same could not be said for a slice across his left bicep, and the dark sleeve glistened even in the dimness with what she recognized as blood soaking into the fabric. His skin was pale beyond his normal British fairness, and he looked as exhausted as she felt.
It took her longer than it should have to realize part of the reason it was so dark in the room was because one mangled wing lay unfurled against the far side, blocking out what little light the neighbor's porch would've allowed in. His second wing was folded and crumpled behind him, smashed into a space she didn't think was possible for something that large.
She was grateful one hand was still in Trixie's and the other on the knob, because she didn't need a repeat of what happened the last time they saw each other.
The damage was so much worse than she'd thought. She'd had less than ten seconds to process what she was looking at before, and while she knew he'd been hurt, all she could see was the blood, which had been bad enough.
But it was more than that. Standing this close, even in the dim lighting, she could see where lines of bone were no longer straight, fractured and cracked beneath muscle and skin. Where feathers were missing, broken and split. The faint tremor to them, and the blood that still seeping through the white, dripping onto the floor.
She managed to tear her gaze away long enough to look around the room. Books were knocked off the shelf to the floor. Pictures hung sideways on the walls that boasted dark red smears across their frames. It looked like…
"Did you…crash?" she asked, looking back at Lucifer.
He chuckled bitterly, making no effort to move. "My Father works in mysterious ways, as do the laws of physics when you're attempting to use broken wings. Apparently, adrenaline only gets you so far."
She felt like she was trying to process information through quicksand. Thoughts were slow to come and questions stayed unspoken at the tip of her tongue.
How did you get here?
All that blood…are your wings more like a feathered bat than a bird?
Why did you come here?
Why isn't Trixie freaking out?
What happened?
How…
"I should…should get Dan, or – or Ella, you're hurt," and she hadn't done so hot with first aid in training, if Trixie was out of band aids, that was as far as her medical knowledge went. She'd already half turned to call out to them when Lucifer's wing crashed into corner of the door, pulling the knob from her grip and slamming it shut.
It surprised her more than frightened her, but she whirled back to Lucifer just the same, her hand tightening reflexively around Trixie's. Lucifer's adrenaline rush may have worn off, but hers was apparently alive and kicking.
"Please…don't," Lucifer asked, voice thin and edging towards begging. He'd half lunged forwards, hand outstretched to stop her as if a 12-foot wing wouldn't be enough.
She stared at the oh so very human hand, transfixed by the subtle tremble in those long, elegant fingers. Belatedly, she realized she hadn't said anything, and she'd already messed this up badly enough once but it was too late – Lucifer caught her gaze and realized what she was staring at, saw how her hand clenched around her daughter's.
He yanked his hand back as if she'd burned him, pushing himself back into the corner and pulling his legs up as if trying to make himself as small and non-threatening as possible.
But his wing remained shoved against the door.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean…don't be frightened, Detective," his normal eloquence gone as he tripped over words, keeping his hands up and palms out to show surrender, that he was unarmed, that he meant no harm even as she wondered how he could think she would think that. "I just…"
He glanced towards the door, features twisted into something that could only be described as dread.
"I'll leave, I promise, but I don't…" he fumbled for the words. "I don't think I can take losing any more friends today."
With those simple words, Chloe felt something in her break.
All those half attempts at trying to convince her of who he was, his dismissive confessions that he wasn't worth her time or affection, that he'd been afraid that she wouldn't want him if she didn't need him, that she would be afraid of the half of himself he kept hidden from her…how he was afraid of her, and still trying to convince her that he wasn't dangerous…
She released Trixie's hand as she slowly sunk to her knees, trying not to look like she was looming over him because no matter how other worldly his origins were, what he was currently was a terrified, injured, trauma victim and when her people skills failed, she fell back on years of police training.
"Lucifer…no," she said, sliding fractionally closer to him. When he didn't up and vanish again, she took it as a good sign.
Or that his wings were now so badly mangled, he no longer could.
"Detective, I –"
"Whatever you're about to say, stop. Let me…let me get through this, okay? And if you still want to go, then…" she didn't want to tell him it was okay, because it wasn't, but she didn't want him to feel like she was boxing him in without an escape, either, and she let the sentence hang.
"I'm not afraid of you, Lucifer. Not then, not now, not ever. Understand?"
He didn't answer, but she could just as easily see he wasn't convinced, either.
"What have you always told me?" she prompted. "That you never lied to me. And you didn't. I may not have believed you, and I'm so sorry I didn't, but…have I ever lied to you?"
She waited, watching as she could see the emotions play across his face.
"No," he answered finally, though he still sounded doubtful.
"Then trust me that I am not lying to you now," she said. "I'm not afraid of you. And I wasn't at the gallery, either. I was just surprised, I was…worried, Lucifer. When I saw your face, I thought you were hurt, and then I saw your wings and you were, I was trying not to show you how scared I was for you but…it kinda backfired, huh?"
It didn't get the huff of laughter she was hoping for, but at least his expression was shifting from petrified to that strangely curious and disbelieving one he had every time he tried to figure out if she was patronizing him.
She scooted another few inches closer. She was aware of Trixie hanging back, clutching one of her stuffed animals to her chest, but so far, her daughter seemed to be handling this better than either of them. Trixie seemed less worried about the fact that Lucifer had wings than the fact that said wings were riddled with holes.
"I'm not afraid of you," she repeated, soft enough that it was just between them and no one else.
He met her gaze, and in that moment, she had small glimpse of what she was truly looking at. Lucifer, wings aside, may have an incredible human appearance, but he was timeless. As much as he behaved and acted like a child, Lucifer was hundreds if not thousands of years old. All the things she thought were just bizarre quirks of his were watching as he learned to be human for the first time in his very long life.
"Maybe you should be," he said, just as quietly.
For a moment, she considered it. Maybe he was right. Maybe this was all beyond her scope of understanding and comprehension. That there was a God, angels and demons and whatever else that entailed, and how very small they must all seem by comparison to such powerful beings.
But…
But.
She shook her head. "You took me to prom," she said, smiling wistfully at the memory. "Closed up your night club, bought me a corsage, and took me to prom."
And no amount of weird, existentialist cosmic powers was going to change that. Or any of the hundred other little things about him that made him so wonderfully, beautifully him.
"You play fetch with my daughter," she continued, trying to keep her voice light. "Which, albeit weird, is more than some people have done when they found out I had a kid."
"You promised to teach me to drive," Trixie interjected, and Chloe didn't try to keep herself from chuckling this time, because…everything was just too heavy. While maybe, one day, they would need a conversation that delved into the weight of whatever world-view altering reality they were now sharing, right now…she just couldn't.
And judging from tremors that still shook that magnificent wing above them, Lucifer couldn't either.
Laughter was supposed to be the best medicine, right?
"Someday, we'll find you two a happy medium between fetch and driver's ed," she said. "And we will talk about…this. Later. Much later. So much later." She cast a glance up at his wing. "But no matter what you seem to think, Lucifer, it's a little hard to imagine you as scary when you have half a dozen Elena of Avalor stickers plastered all over you."
"I have no doubt it would've been more if the…" Lucifer scowled towards Trixie, and she made a mental note to one day get a straight answer why he didn't like children, especially since he'd been doing so much better with Trixie's affections lately, "little creature had her usual bag of goodies. Apparently, packing for first aid isn't something one does when going to grandma's house for the weekend."
Band aides weren't going to cut it. Not with that amount of damage. She wondered if Lucifer's tolerance of pain had simply gone up exponentially since she'd shot him in the leg, or if he was going through his own version of shock, and if so, did that come with the same dangers as it did for humans? But while his vocabulary seemed to have returned to him, his color hadn't.
Deal with how you know, worry about details later.
Pushing aside the millions of questions she had for him, Chloe looked back at Trixie. "Sweetie, can you go upstairs to my old room and see if underneath the shoe rack in the closet, there's my old first aid kit?"
While it didn't have much beyond Neosporin or aspirin and self-adhesive bandage tape, it would get Trixie out of the room long enough for her to come up with something beyond trying to call an exotic pet vet that specialized in birds.
"Sure!" Trixie seemed happy for a mission-oriented request, and immediately turned to leave, hand on the door.
Lucifer didn't move, keeping the door firmly closed.
Trixie looked back at him, frowning. "I promise not to tell anyone you're here."
"Like you promised not to tell your mother?" Lucifer challenged.
"Moms don't count."
There was…something in Lucifer's eyes in that moment, something she couldn't quite identify, and it was gone before she could try and decipher it. She vaguely remembered him talking about his mother part in reverence, part in annoyance, and a lot paranoia.
"Lucifer," she warned, raising an eyebrow in warning. Sometimes he was great at picking up subtle hints, other times she felt like she needed a flashing neon sign and seven different interpreters to get her point across.
Just let Trixie leave, and then we can talk.
Lucifer remained unmoving, his distrustful glare remaining fixedly on her daughter and for a moment, she thought he would ignore her, choosing to possibly bleed to death in Trixie's room rather than risk anyone else coming in and seeing him at his most vulnerable.
Wasn't there something about the Devil and his pride?
Very, very slowly, Lucifer shifted his wing enough to allow Trixie out, and as soon as she was, he let it crumple, splaying out across Trixie's bed in a heap as he dropped his head back, staring straight up at the ceiling as he hissed in pain.
"Thank you," she said, and meant it. "I know what that cost you."
"No, I don't think you do," he growled through gritted teeth, and she didn't argue.
Because she didn't.
"Do I need to leave too?" Chloe asked, chewing the bottom of her lip. "Will…will that help?" Maybe he hadn't meant it quite as literally as she thought about her causing him vulnerability, but rationalization and logic said otherwise. He was genuinely surprised when she'd shot him and it hurt. He'd chuckled bitterly about her causing fire to burn the Devil. His wings were shredded but the bullet wounds were simply holes in clothing and she'd never known Lucifer to wear a vest.
"I doubt it," he said tiredly. "The whole mortality thing seems to play a little fast and loose with its own rules, and if your proximity mattered, as soon as I left you, they should've been fine." He gingerly tried to raise the wing again, but it hardly moved before he stifled a yelp of pain. "Despite my brother's protests, I'm inclined to believe my Father is trying to teach me another lesson, if pain is anything to measure by."
Chloe had a less than charitable thought about Lucifer's father – Almighty status be damned.
She had yet to be struck by lightning, anyway, and this was hardly the first unkind thought she'd had about him.
"I am sorry, though, Detective," he said, tilting his head up enough that he could look her in the eye. "This…was not my first choice of ways to tell you."
She snorted, because despite his phone call months ago about promising to tell her everything, she doubted she would've handled it any better then. And every other time he'd tried to tell her, she'd been too angry about something else to really listen anyway.
"Maybe. Maybe not. But I meant it when I said we can't go back. Wishing it was different doesn't change it. And even if it isn't the way either one of us wish it happened, at least now I know. We can move on from this." She sighed, and offered him a wry smile, which is half returned, even if it looked more like a grimace. "The only thing we can do now is…carry on."
This time Lucifer gave a sarcastic laugh. "I hate those awful motivational posters, Detective."
"Yeah," she grinned. "I know."
And she had every intention of getting one framed for his penthouse.
So...yeah, there's some odd plot points. Like why did I pick Penelope's beach house? Because originally, Chloe's POV ended when Dan picked her up from the gallery, and it shifted to Trixie who was going to find him on the beach because that seems to be Lucifer's default place to go to when shit hits the fan or needs to think (where popped up from Hell, where he lopped off his wings the first time, where he set fire to them the next time, where he goes to talk to Amenadiel in season 1 to ask for help, where he loses his mother, where he runs off to and Chloe finds him for their first kiss, etc) and I just didn't feel like going back and using the apartment. Trixie is there because with Maze still on the outs (I think - I only saw season 3 as it aired and not since, so I don't actually remember where things left off, but pretty sure Maze hasn't made up to Chloe and Trixie yet), Penelope's might be where she winds up for the weekend if Chloe and Dan are planning on taking down Marcus in a super secret take down. And one shot endings where I wrap up what I can and not leave a terrible cliffhanger are still nightmarish to write, so you get FLUFF ENDING BECAUSE I WAS ALREADY LATE AND I FELT TERRIBLE ABOUT IT. Anywho...hope you liked it, and feel free to leave a comment! (Lyrics are available on Google or Youtube or this story on AO3, but I can't link them here).