Disclaimer: I don't own Lucifer and am making no money from this; it's purely written for enjoyment.
Author's Note: Written for Ice Queen1 who requested a fic where the reason why Lucifer's mom was locked up in Hell is because she tried to kill her husband's favorite child in a fit of jealous rage. I kind of tweeked it a bit, but hopefully it still satisfies.
In the Beginning, there was Betrayal
"You're afraid… But you're never afraid… Who could possibly scare you?"
Amenadiel's voice echoed in his mind, punctuated by the crash of thunder above. Lucifer wondered briefly if Dad was impatient for him to get started on his new task or if He just felt LA needed a little more rain. Well, Daddy Dearest would have to send down a lightning bolt if he wanted to get Lucifer moving any time soon. He needed some time to… process.
"But you're never afraid…"
Oh, but Amenadiel was wrong. There was one time... Long, long ago – even by Lucifer's standards. He'd almost forgotten what it felt like. Fear, that is. Though Detective Decker had poked that dormant emotion a few times…
"Lucifer? What the hell are you doing?"
Speak of the Devil…
He chuckled as Detective Decker's face peered down at him, hair curtaining her face and soaking up the rain.
"Thought our warehouse jaunt was so fun I'd have a reenactment. Want to play? You can go hide by those air conditioning units and be quiet," he said, waving to the left of Lux's rooftop.
Eyes the color of the stormy sky stared down at him for a moment, but instead of rolling in exasperation as usual, they softened and she lowered herself to the ground to sprawl out next to him.
He wanted to tease her, to give her a salacious look and naughty comment about her laying with the Devil, but the words wouldn't come – he couldn't find the energy.
"It's been a rough week," she said, folding her hands over her stomach.
She looked like she belonged in a casket…
He looked away and stared up into the rain again. "Yes. It has."
"You were framed for murder. Trixie was kidnapped. I thought you died."
"Yes, detective, I was there, I don't need the recap."
"You thought I betrayed you…"
Muscles clenched involuntarily, teeth bared in the gruesome facsimile of a smile. "You thought I killed that preacher."
"I didn't know what to think," she admitted, then added softly. "It killed me to suspect you, even for a moment."
He gave out a harsh bark of laughter. "Don't be silly, detective. I'm the Devil. Who'd be stupid enough to trust the Devil."
"Me."
He looked at her then, and some foolish little part of him latched onto the earnest look she was leveling at him, wanting so badly for it to be true. Because he trusted her…
He turned away, the image of broken chains flashing through his mind and his breath caught.
"Don't set yourself up for failure, Detective Decker. Betrayal is a tale old as time and it likes to repeat itself…"
"What's this about, Lucifer?" She asked, propping herself on her elbow to look over at him.
"My Mum," he said quietly, not sure why he was telling her, but having to tell someone. Amenadiel had balked at the news, getting quiet and broody and disappearing. He was probably laying on another rooftop moping…
"You've never mentioned your mom…"
"Yes, well, good reason for that. Anyway, she's escaped Hell and Father wants me to bring her back."
He could feel her mind working as she stared at him, trying to make that sentence fit into the "real world", trying to translate it into something her mind could believe.
"You talked to your dad? I thought you to didn't…"
"We haven't. Not since the Fall. But… I needed a favor. One he granted - for a price, of course."
"So, your mom's missing and he wants you to bring her back?" Decker asked, eyebrows Ved in confusion. "What's she like?"
His hands twitched on the rooftop, nails scratching the concrete as he remembered. Suddenly, he couldn't sit still, couldn't lay there so exposed. He lurched to his feet and stalked to the edge of the building, looking at the street below but not really seeing it.
"She's beautiful. And terrible," he said softly. "So very, very terrible…"
He looked back at the Detective then, she'd sat up and crossed her legs, watching him closely. She was so… small, so… vulnerable… and he felt his fear skyrocket.
If mum found out that Detective Decker was special to him, that she was his Light Bringer…
He took a shuddering breath.
He had to protect her.
Chloe watched Lucifer with mounting concern. She'd never seen him like this – tightly wound and so very scared. Scratch that – she'd gotten a glimpse of that once.
When she'd seen the scars on his back.
"Your family, Lucifer… What was it like?"
She knew she was either poking an open wound or a sleeping bear with that question. But something was very wrong and she needed to know…
"Family… That was where it had all started, wasn't it, really?" He gave a raw laugh that made the hair on her arms stand on end as he turned to look out over the city again. "Not with humans doing dirty deeds and needing a keeper in the afterlife. Not with Father "gifting" that job to me. Not with my rebellion. Not even with the creation of human kind.
"It started with Family…"
He took two tight steps to the right before spinning back – an aborted pace as she could practically see the coiled energy in him reaching a boiling point.
"Everyone thinks of evil as starting with me. That all things were good and dandy before I screwed it all up. But…"
He looked at her then and there was such pain in those dark eyes that she found herself on her feet moving toward him without really making the decision to do it. But he shied away from her touch in a way that made her gut clench – a flinch and a turn away that left her standing with an outstretched hand.
"I had a Family, you know," he said, shocking her with the softness of his words. "Brothers… So many brothers. And Father. And Mother. For a while… things were good, but…"
He turned and sat on the edge of the building, rain dripping off of his hair into downturned eyes.
"It's a story that's lasted the test of time. Lucifer, brightest of the angels, jealous of the humans Dad created. But that's not where it started. That's not where it started at all. But it's still the same story, really, the beginning. And it wasn't me."
The last words were so broken, yet so angry Chloe was left adrift in how to react. She was finally getting a piece of the puzzle that was Lucifer's past – mired in the religious metaphor, but still. Something she'd wanted since she'd met the mysterious man and here she was... wanting him to stop. He was about to tell her something painful, something she couldn't un-know. Something that hurt him deeply and she was scared that it was unfixable - that her curiosity and pushing would just break him further.
"What happened?" She found herself asking instead. The words were hers, but she swore she hadn't given herself permission to speak them out loud.
"The same damned story," he said, giving a laugh that was razor sharp. "The brightest and most beautiful being in the universe. Loved by God himself and loving Him in return. Basking in His devotion and affection. But then He got bored and created something new and interesting. Suddenly his attention shifted to this new and wondrous thing.
"And suddenly this perfect being knew fury. She knew jealously.
"These sons. These Angels. Had taken Him from her. One in particular - The Light Bringer," he said, falling out of story mode to gesture at himself and hop off the ledge with a showy little bow and a bitter smile.
"She was jealous of her own son?" She asked, baffled by the thought.
"Hmm," Lucifer hummed with a nod, turning away. "More than just jealous, though. She was furious at the thought that something could outshine her in my Father's eyes. She wanted to destroy anything that could do such a thing. She very nearly succeeded…"
Horror tightened Chloe's throat as she stared at Lucifer's back. His normally languid and confident stance, was hunched inwards, as if he were protecting himself.
"She- she attacked you?" She choked out in disbelief.
"Oh, yes. And if you can believe it, I was taken totally off guard. I'd been so naïve," he snorted then, a self-conscious, bitter sound. "How many would be shocked by that idea? The Devil, shocked by betrayal. She taught me the meaning of that word that day. And pain. And humiliation. All foreign concepts to me until that moment…"
Chloe's hands were shaking, nausea rolling in the pit of her stomach as she tried to imagine Lucifer, young and impressionable, attacked by his own mother. For a moment she thought she might actually vomit.
"But that wasn't even the worst part," he said with a high pitched laugh as he spun back around. "He forgave her. She almost destroyed me and He forgave her. The story thinks my Fall came with the creation of humanity, but it came well before that. After what she did, what He did, I just… Nothing was the same. I couldn't go back to how I was before. Then humanity came and… I rebelled. It probably would've happened anyway eventually, they were just the… what's the saying? The straw that broke the camel's back?"
He laughed that disturbing laugh again, but it broke in the middle and he spun away before she could get more than a glimpse of his face crumpling.
"He didn't forgive me. I was cast out. Relegated to Hell with a line about it being a job of utmost importance – as if guarding the place of punishment for the rotten part of his precious humanity was a bleeding honor. He just wanted me gone…"
Chloe's feet finally regained feeling and she moved forward on weak legs.
"He did eventually cast her out as well though," he said in a faux cheerful voice. "I never saw her, but Maze- Detective?"
Chloe wrapped her arms around him from behind, face pressed between the soaked shoulder blades of his suit where she knew another painful story for another day lay. After a moment, she felt the tension leak out of him and a warm damp hand rest over her own.
She wanted to tell him he could trust her. That she was sorry for what happened with the priest and the frame job, that it would never happen again. But she knew words were hollow things to be crushed on a whim.
Instead she'd show him.
If his mother really was out there somewhere, escaped from some place and looking to hurt him again…
She tightened her hold.
She would protect him.
Neither noticed the rain stop or the sun light shining down, just on the two of them.