The Devil's Heart
A/N: For four seasons I've resisted writing Lucifer fanfic. Now I've caved. Here's my take on a possible opener for season 5.
Disclaimer: As usual, not mine, no profit, please don't sue.
This is dedicated to the amazing cast and crew of "Lucifer." Thank you, thank you, thank you!
"Are you sure you don't want to stay for dinner?" Dan made a vague gesture with his hand. "I'm sure we could arrange …"
"Dad, you've already ordered food for two," piped up Trixie.
"Yeah, Trix, because it's impossible, of course, to call them and place a follow-up order," teased Dan with an eye-roll.
"Or you could share your half," said Trixie mischievously and poked a finger into Dan's stomach, which had expanded ever so slightly over the past few months.
"Oy!" Dan cast Chloe a glance that was part amusement, part desperation. Chloe chuckled.
"Thanks for asking, but I'm not really hungry. I'm bone tired, to be honest."
"You don't look too well," observed Dan, then added with a sheepish grin, "No offense."
"None taken." Chloe yawned. "I wouldn't be much of a laugh tonight, anyway. I think I just want to go home, crash on the couch, and fall asleep in front of the TV. If I weren't a mom and cop, I'd mute both my phone and the doorbell."
"Message received," said Dan. "We won't call you unless it's an emergency."
"Thanks, Dan." Chloe put her hand on his arm and smiled. "You guys have fun!" She hugged Trixie and gave her a kiss on top of her head. "I'll pick you up Sunday afternoon. Maybe we can all go for some ice cream then, how does that sound?"
"Great!" shouted Trixie with a wide smile.
"Sounds like a plan. Good night, Chloe!" Dan started to close the door when Chloe poked her head back through the gap and said, "If you feel like company tonight, you can always ask Ella to come over. I know for a fact she's free most nights these days."
Dan stiffened visibly, but Chloe did not say anything else. She winked at her ex-husband and her daughter, turned around, and walked to her car. She could see Trixie appear in the kitchen window, waving as she got in the car. Chloe tapped her high beams twice in salute, accelerated, and drove down the street.
She continued in the general direction of her house until she reached a large intersection, where, instead of carrying on straight ahead, she turned right, heading downtown.
She felt a little guilty for lying to Dan. But he wouldn't understand what she was about to do, and after all, they were not married anymore. It was none of his business where she went, and if anything happened to Trixie, he would still be able to reach her. But at least she knew he wouldn't call her unless it was really urgent.
Chloe continued along the road until she had reached her destination. As she pulled into the private car park round the back, she looked toward the street.
The line in front of the Lux was shorter than it used to be, especially on a Friday night. Word had gotten around that Lucifer Morningstar, the devilishly handsome owner, known for his impromptu musical performances and other unexpected tricks up the sleeve of his impeccable suit, had left town on urgent business without leaving a return address. His second-in-command continued to run the place, but there was no doubt about it that the heart and soul of the Lux was gone, at least for the time being, and the club was now just that: a club.
Chloe got out of the car and entered the building through the service door at the back, first using the key Lucifer had given her and then punching in the code to disarm the alarm. The code was, unsurprisingly, 6-6-6. Lucifer had probably thought it was funny. She crossed the hall, briefly debating taking the shortcut through the interior of the club across the dance floor and up the stairs, but decided against it. Instead, she took the long way around, climbing the stairs to the upper floors where the office was, and then calling the elevator that went up to the penthouse. Using her key and the code once more (remembering how Maze had once told her, deadpan, "It's the same code as downstairs, only backwards"), she rode all the way up to the top, got off, and stepped into Lucifer's apartment. The elevator doors closed, and silence welled up around her.
Chloe took a deep breath and leaned against the wall for a moment. Lucifer had only been gone for a few weeks, but the place already had a distinctly empty feeling to it. It was too neat, too orderly; no used glasses on the counter, nothing on the couch table, the lid of the baby grand piano closed. The bottles of liquor in the backlit bar cabinet were gathering a thin layer of dust, the only exception being Lucifer's favorites: a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of Jamaican rum, which Chloe now grabbed from the shelf along with a glass to pour herself a shot. Sipping the amber liquid, she slowly wandered around the apartment, as she had done so many times over the past few weeks.
When she had come here first, three days after Lucifer had left, all she had wanted was to make sure everything was in order. But she had found that it gave her a strange sense of calm and consolation to be here, where every piece of furniture, every decorative item, still preserved his presence. She felt close to Lucifer in those hours alone in his apartment, and so she had come back again, and again, and again, never staying too long at a time, but lingering nevertheless. Sometimes she'd have a drink, or walk out onto the roof terrace, or simply stand there and take in the atmosphere of the place, remembering.
And she had the strong suspicion that she wasn't the only one. Once she had entered the penthouse and seen a figure outside on the roof terrace which she was pretty sure had been Amenadiel. It spoke volumes about all that she'd learned, she reflected with wry amusement, that her first thought upon seeing a stranger outside a top-story window wasn't "cat burglar" but "angel."
Another time she had bumped into Maze in the elevator. Maze had pretended that she'd just been up to look for a certain folder she needed for the tax advisor, but Chloe wasn't fooled: Maze was missing Lucifer almost as much as she did.
Chloe set down her glass of rum on the grand piano and sat down on the stool. Running her fingers over the gleaming keys, she struck a few notes, but her piano playing skills didn't add up to very much. A small pile of sheet music was stacked on top of the piano. Chloe knew that Lucifer usually played his pieces by heart, but she supposed that even he had to check the score from time to time.
Her heart constricted painfully in her chest as she spotted the sheet music of "Eternal Flame" in the pile. Pulling it out and unfolding it, she noticed that it had been heavily annotated.
Lucifer had sung that song for her once, in front of a crowd of people. It now seemed a lifetime ago; back then, Chloe still had had no idea about her partner's true nature. But she had sensed the truth behind the song, the sincere apology in it, and seeing the hand-written notes in the sheet music now touched her deeply: Lucifer had obviously spent quite some time perfecting his performance. He hadn't just winged it, as he so often did; he had planned it meticulously, wanting it to be perfect.
"Lucifer," whispered Chloe, tears welling in her eyes. She ran her fingertips over the piano keys once again, sounding out the melody of the song.
She took a deep gulp of air, trying to breathe down the pain, wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and reached again for her glass of rum. Downing the rest of the shot, she tipped her glass briefly toward the floor in salute and then stood up.
The sudden rumbling of the elevator arriving and the subsequent ping of the doors opening startled her. She whipped around, hand on her gun, but relaxed a moment later when Maze ambled into the room.
Maze looked at Chloe with a slightly cocked eyebrow and mockingly raised her hands to her shoulders. "Easy, Decker," she drawled.
"What are you doing here?" asked Chloe, regretting the words as soon as they had left her mouth. As if Maze had any less right to be here than she had.
"I could ask you the same thing," Maze promptly retorted, heading straight for the bar and pouring herself a glass of the same rum Chloe had had earlier. "But I won't."
"Yeah, I … " Chloe trailed off and instead held out her glass. "Pour me another one, will you?"
Maze filled her glass much more generously than Chloe had the first time around and pushed it back to her across the bar, then lifted her own in a mock toast. "To Friday nights, Decker!"
She downed the shot, refilled her glass, and then leaned her hip against the counter. The backlight of the bar cabinet threw the perfect angles of her face into sharp relief. She looked like a scowling, angry statue. But Chloe also noticed that her usually smooth, snakelike movements were slower, weaker somehow, and that the dark shadows under her eyes were not the result of a make-up experiment. Maze looked worn, much like Chloe herself was feeling.
"What are you doing here on a Friday night, though?" Chloe asked. "I thought you usually came here during the week to have the weekend free for bounty hunting?"
"Yeah, well, the stupid tax officer's breathing down my neck," Maze growled. "Apparently I'm late in filing that shit. As if I knew what bloody papers and receipts and signatures the old bore needs! I never had to deal with that stuff, I only worked the bar."
"I can help you with that if you want," Chloe offered spontaneously. "I'm not an expert, but at least I've dealt with tax officers before."
"Oh, believe me, I have dealt with tax officers back home, too," said Maze sardonically. "But back then, they were on the receiving end, not me!"
Chloe's lips twitched, but that made her think of something else.
"Maze …" she said hesitantly, "speaking of back home … what are you still doing here, anyway? Not that I want you to leave, too," she hastily added, "but all this time you were so fed up with Earth. You always told Lucifer you wanted to go home, but he wouldn't, and so you stayed. And now he's returned, and you could finally follow him, but you haven't."
Maze's face hardened as her jaw clenched. "He hasn't called me back yet, so I figured I'd stay just because I can," she said curtly. "I can't come and go at will. He needs to send me, or send for me."
"Oh." Chloe hadn't known that. "So once he calls you back …"
"… I'll be there with him until it tickles his fancy to send me back up again, yeah," said Maze. "Same reason I couldn't go home before. He wouldn't let me."
"Why hasn't he called you back, then?" Chloe asked. "I thought you were his most loyal sergeant? Won't he want you by his side …" Her voice cracked a little.
Maze stared past Chloe's shoulder into the distance. "I don't know," she said curtly.
But Chloe thought that she knew. Maze had been Lucifer's only friend for a long time, his closest confidante, and he had done precious little to reward her. But now she suspected that he had seen the obvious: Maze had finally gotten accustomed to Earth; grown to like it, even. She had connected to people: Linda, Chloe herself, Trixie, even Dan. Linda's son Charlie adored Maze; he wasn't in the least intimidated by her but smiled like the rising sun whenever he laid eyes on her. Chloe could tell that Maze was deeply attached to the baby, too. Charlie was cute as a button and one of the happiest kids Chloe had ever seen. Perhaps it was his angelic side. He almost never cried and was awfully regular when it came to bodily functions, keeping nighttime emergencies and exploding diapers to an absolute minimum. Yes, Maze had bonded with all those people, but most of all she had bonded with Eve.
And Eve was still out there.
Chloe had never hated Eve. She had burst into their lives at a crucial turning point, she had turned Lucifer's life upside down for a while, and she had messed up royally, but whenever Chloe thought of her, she remembered what Trixie had told her: When they had all been at Lucifer's apartment and the armed assassins stormed the place, Eve had not hesitated for a moment to protect Trixie, had jumped in front of her with every intention of shielding her with her body, should the men shoot. Not to mention that Eve's intentions had never been evil. She hadn't meant to mess with Chloe's feelings, to butt into her already fragile relationship with Lucifer, and Chloe had to admit that she had liked her bubbly enthusiasm. In a way, Eve had reminded her of Ella.
But Eve had left, too, on a quest to find herself, something she had to deal with on her own. It was obvious that Maze had feelings for her, and that Eve herself displayed a certain streak of heteroflexibility which opened up a range of possibilities for them. Chloe hoped sincerely that Eve would eventually find her way back to Maze. She could only guess how torn the demon had to be; torn between her sense of duty, which demanded she should go back to Hell and join her master, and her heart, which told her to stay put on Earth and try to get a shot at her own happiness.
"What about the body you're inhabiting?" asked Chloe after she had finished her line of thought. That was one thing she had been thinking about for a while now.
"Girlfriend, this is all me," said Maze, indicating her handsome shape with a sweeping gesture. "It's one of the reasons I can't come and go at will, because I need to be physically transported, and you need an angel's assistance for that."
"I'm sure if you said the word, he would send for you immediately," Chloe said. "But I'm glad you're still here."
"Awww, Decker, are you going soft on me?" Chloe could tell that Maze was secretly pleased. "Would you miss me?"
"Maze, I miss you already," admitted Chloe, and only as she spoke the words did she realize that they were the truth. "I never should have let you move out." In a quieter voice, she added, "I can't really bear to be alone in my house these days. That's why I come here."
Maze was uncharacteristically silent for a moment. Then she pushed herself away from the counter and strolled over to the bedroom safe, rummaged around for a moment, and emerged once again carrying a large red folder. "Well, here's the deed to the Lux and all that stuff," she said. "I'll take that down to the office. If you really want to help me, you can stop by tomorrow afternoon."
"I'll be there," Chloe promised.
She looked after Maze as the elevator doors closed behind her, then went to the window and gazed out at the lights of the city sprawling beneath her. Inevitably, she remembered that day weeks ago, that fleeting moment of pure, unadulterated happiness when she had finally admitted to Lucifer how she felt about him and read the answer in his eyes before he even spoke. For the briefest of moments, she had felt whole, as if something had clicked into place which she hadn't even known was out of joint, as if she had fulfilled some sort of life purpose she had never even been aware of. Twice before, she and Lucifer had kissed, but this time, it had been different. This time, it had been real.
The cruelty of having found this only to lose it again was still weighing heavily on her.
The elevator rumbled again, and Chloe turned as the doors opened once again.
"What'd you forget, Maze?" she said. "Need another …" And then the words got stuck in her throat, because the person who walked out of the elevator and now stopped in their tracks as she spoke wasn't Maze.
It was Lucifer.
For one endless moment, they looked at each other without speaking. Chloe was not sure whether her legs would hold her, so she leaned back against the windowsill to steady herself.
He looked the same as always, and then again he didn't. He looked more haggard, his face more angular, the muscles under his shirt hardened. His eyes flashed red as he looked at her, and Chloe almost recoiled, but stopped herself in time.
"Detective," Lucifer said eventually, visibly making an effort to sound exactly as he always had. "Fancy meeting you here!"
"Lucifer! What … I mean, why … and how …" Chloe stammered, her thoughts an incoherent mess. "Are you really here?" she eventually managed.
"In the flesh!" declared Lucifer with a mock spread of his arms. He looked around and immediately spotted the two empty tumblers on the bar counter. "Have you been drinking my whiskey, Detective?" he asked sternly, taking a glass and sniffing it. "Ah, no, the rum. Well, that's all right, then." He took another step into the room and looked around, taking in the unchanged interior. "Love what you've done with the place," he quipped.
Chloe just continued to look at him. The shock of seeing him stroll in like he'd just been down to buy cigarettes still hadn't worn off. She could tell Lucifer was trying very hard to put on his usual nonchalant façade, but she also saw his hands shaking slightly, saw the nervous flicker of his eyes.
"How are you here?" she asked, finally managing to take a shaky step in his direction. "I thought you had to return to Hell for good. What happened?"
Lucifer stopped fidgeting around and focused his eyes on her for the first time. Something in them softened as he looked at her, and she saw the ghost of a smile brush across his mouth.
"You happened, Chloe."
"I don't understand."
"You will in a moment," said Lucifer. He walked to the piano stool and sat down on it, placing his hands on the piano keys in an almost unconscious move. Stroking the keys without actually pressing them down, he said, "Have you noticed any changes in your behavior recently, Detective? Have you been acting more recklessly? Cared less for the rules than you used to? Invented creative ways of outwitting your suspect when conventional police methods failed you?"
Chloe gaped. "Indeed," she said, remembering how Ella had jokingly told her that apparently she was channeling Lucifer in his absence. "I … I haven't cared about a lot of things these past few weeks," she added in a small voice.
"Well, I have found myself the exact opposite in Hell," continued Lucifer. "I've been reluctant to mete out punishment, for one. Been too nice to my underlings. I found myself challenging my own decisions every day, always looking for something good in the souls that arrived. Does that sound like anybody we know?"
"It sounds … it sounds like you've retained more humanity than you expected," said Chloe hesitantly.
"Exactly!" beamed Lucifer. "You've hit the nail on the head! I was too good. Too much …" He became serious again all of a sudden, looking straight into her eyes. "Too much like you," he added quietly.
"Like me?" Chloe's mind raced. "What does that mean?"
"It means that I am no longer fit to reign in Hell." Lucifer took his hands off the piano keys and turned on the stool until he was facing her. "You've made me a better man, Chloe. And as such a man, I have now returned to Earth while Father is trying to find a replacement."
He held out his hands to her and swallowed. "If you'll still have me, that is."
Chloe's feet started moving as if on their own accord before her conscious mind caught on. She covered the distance between them in a few strides until she stood directly in front of him, their knees brushing. She stood there for a moment, trembling, and then Lucifer raised his arms slightly, his hands at her waist, and the touch was all it took. With a shuddering sigh, Chloe took his upturned face into her hands, bent her head to his, and kissed him.
He responded immediately, his lips opening under hers, soft, tasting of bourbon and cigarettes. His arms tightened around her waist as he pulled her as close as he could. Her hands explored his face, tracing the outlines of his cheekbones, then traveling around his head and burying themselves in his silky hair.
Again and again they kissed, and slowly that feeling came rolling back over Chloe, this wholeness, as if she were exactly where she was meant to be.
After some time, Lucifer pulled back from the kiss, his eyes searching her face hungrily. "I've missed you so much," he said simply. "Chloe …" And he buried his head against her chest, his arms once again tightening around her waist. Chloe wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rested her cheek on top of his head, and they just stayed like this for a long moment.
When Lucifer raised his head again, a single tear hung in his lashes.
"There you have it, Detective," he said in a hoarse voice. "You've got the devil's heart. And quite literally so, I'm afraid."
"Literally?" Chloe frowned.
"Yes, indeed. The devil only has one heart to give, meaning he can only truly fall in love once, and when that happens, he literally gives part of him away. Sharing true love's kiss with the devil means you swap a tiny little bit of yourself with him. That's why you've been channeling me, as Miss Lopez so aptly put it, and why I've been pulling a Chloe Decker down in Hell, trying to see the good in people and holding back on the punishments."
"You …" Chloe cleared her throat. "You lost me at 'true love's kiss'."
Lucifer's eyes softened as he raised his hand to cup her cheek. "You heard that right," he said. "You're not only my first love, Chloe. You're my true love."
"I am?" Chloe whispered, overwhelmed.
Lucifer took one of her hands in his, his thumb stroking gentle circles in her palm. Then he lifted her hand toward his face and pressed his lips to her knuckles. He remained like that for a moment, his eyes closed.
"No one has ever made me feel the way you do, Chloe," he said quietly. "My life on Earth used to be all about fun and games and making deals and lots of meaningless sex. And then I met you, and you made me want to be better. For you, I was prepared to leave these wicked ways behind and become someone worthy of you. It took me a long time to understand that I actually hated who I was, and that I longed to be someone else. Someone you would be able to love."
"But you made me better, too," said Chloe. "You made me a better detective. Working with you was the greatest eye-opener of my life, and so was getting to know you." A slow smile spread on her face. "Falling in love with you was almost inevitable at some point. And it feels right, Lucifer, it feels as if that's exactly what needed to happen! I've never felt like that before. Nothing has ever felt more right than loving you." She blushed a little at the confession.
Lucifer froze. His eyes flashed red once again as he rose to his feet, standing so close to her that their bodies touched. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her eyes.
"You don't know," he said, and there was wonder in his voice. "Of course you don't know, we never told you …" He took her face between his hands and lowered his head toward hers. "Let me kiss you once more before I tell you," he whispered. "You may be angry with me afterwards."
A/N: I don't really mean this to be a cliffhanger, but I don't have a fully developed theory on how it may turn out when Chloe finally learns that she was placed in Lucifer's path on purpose. This is really just meant as a sort of opener for season five the way I can see it happening.
Themes to delve into in that season could then include:
The repercussions of Chloe being a little more like Lucifer and Lucifer a little more like Chloe
Chloe's thoughts on free will and choice and how her entire connection with Lucifer seems orchestrated by dear old Dad (maybe the bonus episode from Season 2 could be revisited in the course of that)
Quintessential Deckerstar, of course
The search for a new Prince of Hell
Maze dealing with the fact she is beginning to love Earth
Eve and Maze's relationship
Baby Charlie
Ella and Dan
We will see, hopefully, whether the showrunners are thinking roughly along the same lines. Anyway, thanks for bearing with me. Feel free to leave a review if there is anything you would like to tell me about this story