Author's Note: Post-'A Good Day To Die'.

LUCIFER (337)

The fires of hell weren't so much fiery as dank humidity, pressing in on her as she moved slowly through the swirling ash and stealing her breath. Endless stone walls - in all directions - surrounded her, heavy doors locked tight still barely containing the screams and cries from within their depths. Her footsteps didn't echo as she expected them to; somehow they were swallowed up and silenced even though her breathing sounded louder and louder the further she moved. Everything danced before her eyes, her gaze skittering over the dark forms and surfaces when she tried to focus. It was wrong - it was all wrong.

A small light appeared in front of her, beckoning. She waited for the instinct to flee to kick in - just how was she going to get out of here, anyway? - but nothing came except for a soft insistence that she walk towards it. The warm light in a sea of dark enticed her, called to her, and she knew that whatever lay behind it was safe. It was her island in a raging sea, and suddenly it was there, in front of her, filling her vision and embracing her, pushing away the dark until all she could see was light. She took a step forward and just as suddenly it disappeared and she was standing in the lift at Lux, the doors opening onto Lucifer's private rooms.

Except they weren't - the panoramic view of Los Angeles and the bright city lights at night were replaced with nothingness. Little details she remembered from her times spent with him were missing; half the drinks along his bar wall, the side table set next to the steps leading to his bedroom, some of his art.

A figure sat at the piano, elegant fingers resting on the keys but not playing. His stance was slumped, but not defeated. Just waiting. At first she thought the place was silencing everything just as it had been outside, but there was a hush in the air, an expectancy that words would come tumbling out to fill the void.

"Detective."

One word, one word that Chloe never thought would have the power to make her weak. It was the way he said it, interchanging exasperation, verbal caresses and anger with ease that changed the meaning of it forever. He never used her name and her title had become a replacement that was only powerful when used by him. Others just spoke it. He poured emotion into it.

The piano stool gave a soft creak as he swivelled to face her, taking in her tear stained face, her hair unbrushed and clinging to her cheeks where the tears had caught the strands on their relentless descent. She wanted to shout at him, rail at him, scream her pain and fears and abandonment issues until he was on his knees and begging her to stop, but his haunted eyes stopped her and it was an inane question that slipped past her lips. "Is this Hell?"

He let out a sardonic laugh, his expression unreadable. "Of a fashion." He stood and waved his arm in a sweeping gesture, a glass tumbler with dark amber liquid appearing in the outstretched hand, and he paused for a moment as if it had surprised him before taking a careless swig. "Someone like you will never see Hell, so you're standing in a version of how I see it, combined with the more familiar surroundings of Lux. A patchwork, if you will."

"What do you mean, 'someone like me'?" Chloe took another step forward.

"An innocent mortal, a kind soul, a miracle." The last word was almost spat out into the space between them, and her breath caught in her throat. The bitterness and confusion at the events of the past few days was apparently not only hers to battle, but she suspected that Lucifer's issues were vastly different to hers. As if reading her mind, he sighed. "This is a conversation best had whilst seated, so I suggest you try to make yourself as comfortable as possible."

He didn't wait for her, merely sat in the armchair that wasn't quite in the right place, so she finally allowed herself to enter the room and skirted round the piano, settling into the sofa opposite him. She licked her suddenly parched lips and like magic, a glass of water appeared on the coffee table before her. She reached for it and took a sip, surprised at the clean, almost sweet taste which quenched her thirst immediately. Lucifer watched her and as soon as she set the glass back down, he breathed a sigh. "Hell isn't what people expect. We don't go into the whole 'fiery pits of boiling lava' any more, although those particular centuries were rather fun." He twisted his lips into something resembling a smile. "It's a little more personal. With the exception of Maze and a few other demons with a penchant for physical torture, every individual is plunged into a hell of their own creation. The events that turned them into a person worthy of hell, played over and over again with them as the star performer. The whole point is to show them the error of their ways. Their guilt is used as the worst weapon against them. They were created by my Father, and their punishment was for turning against him, turning into something that doesn't meet with his strict moral codes." He let out another short sharp laugh. "Daddy dearest is the creator, judge and jury. Fallen son Lucifer gets the job of executioner. But they're already dead, so what can I do? I punish. I torment them the way their actions torment the world. Everything was simple, so clear. So black and white. Those that do wrong should die, and when they do, they spend eternity repenting. I thought I understood everything." His voice trailed off and Chloe found his eyes boring into hers once again. When he looked at her like that she felt her soul was bared to him, every single action and thought on display. But the worrying feeling of judgement turned into acceptance. Understanding. "And then I met you."

He sat up and forward, resting his forearms on his knees. She watched as he clenched a fist, the muscles in his arm cording below the haphazardly rolled cuff of his shirt. He let his eyes move over her, the way she was curled into the sofa as if it were the only protection against the world, her leggings and loose shirt making her seem smaller than usual. She didn't yet see the connection between who she was and his earlier words, but knew he would find his way back to the answer. He appeared to have much to tell her but little idea where to start.

"Maze and I were bored of Hell. I was fed up of being Father's little secret, cast out of sight and kind, and doing his dirty work. We came to LA and set up Lux. What better place for the Devil and his demon than a nightclub, the epitome of sin? Sex and drugs and contemporary music."

Chloe found her lips battling a smile. She would never let him know that she loved to listen to his little rants, even when they were at the most inappropriate of times, but he caught her and his expression softened in response.

"And then one day Detective Chloe Decker walked into my life, and everything changed. I found something to keep me amused, helping you with your cases. I learnt more about mortals than the sum of their sins. Then I saw family, friends, complicated relationships, the grey areas of life, and I started to lose grip of the way of life I knew. I thought this was all mine, my discoveries, my rebellion against Father's wishes. But I forgot that he is the Creator. He has a plan. And although I like to think that being his own bloody son I might be exempt from that, he apparently controls what I thought was my own free will."

Suddenly restless, he stood. He ran his hands through his hair and she yearned to reach out and touch it, the lack of control from his usual groomed appearance appealing to her. His shirt was a little wrinkled and not quite tucked in, the stretch of his arm lifting the shirt tail and exposing a strip of skin just above the waistband of his suit trousers and for a moment she was distracted, her mind back in her dream (was it only a few days ago?) where their hands were all over one another, the glorious slide of skin over skin under fabric as they battled out their passions in breath-stealing kisses. (Until she woke up to find Maze at the bottom of her bed, eating popcorn and enjoying the apparent show.)

Guiltily she realised he was talking again, his back to her as he stood by the glass window and stared into the nothingness.

"You weren't meant to be, Detective. Your parents had tried for a baby for a long time but nothing they'd done had helped. They were desperate; they prayed and prayed for a miracle. So Father gave them one."

"Lucifer...I don't..."

"Amenadiel blessed them. Father sent him to them, and he blessed them so they could have you. There's a photograph of him with your mother." His head dropped, and Chloe found herself on her feet, moving up behind him, but he sensed her and turned, finding her so close he could only grasp her arms with his hands. "You will never see Hell because you are a rare thing. A blessing, a miracle, a wholly good soul." His voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. "But you were also placed in my path by my Father. He planned this. He took away my - our - free will. How am I supposed to know what was planned and what wasn't? Did he plan every single detail? Is this part of his plan to get me back to Hell? I just want to know what I felt, what I feel, is real!"

They were so close, Lucifer gripping her arms, Chloe's hands having found their way to the front of his shirt where she was holding onto the bunched fabric, the space between their bodies rapidly closing. His pain, his confusion, was written all over his face and for a moment she thought the film of moisture gathered in his suddenly expressive eyes would spill over as tears, but he blinked rapidly and flexed his fingers, back in control.

"I don't care," she whispered, moving onto tiptoes until their noses were centimetres apart. "I don't care whether this has all been part of some big plan, whether someone behind the scenes is pulling the strings, or whether you're still crazy. Because what I feel is real and that's all that matters to me."

This close, she could see the flame coloured flickers in his eyes, but they didn't scare her. Somehow things made sense in this place, even if they shouldn't. She could see and try to understand what he was saying, accepting that maybe - just maybe - he was the son of God and the Devil himself.

Once again he demonstrated an uncanny knack of reading her mind. "You're taking this extremely well."

"I'm in a place that comes from your mind, where drinks appear out of thin air, so the idea that you are the Devil seems a little more plausible than before." She leaned forward until their noses touched, and one of his hands came up to cup her cheek, his thumb smoothing over her skin. "Now it's my turn. I filled your voicemail up and drove to Lux only to find everything covered with dust sheets. You left. With no explanation. All I wanted to do was talk."

He closed his eyes, taking a breath. "How am I meant to go any further when I don't know what's real? And how am I supposed to let you get involved with someone who doesn't age, who is vulnerable only when I'm near you, and who one day might have to go back to the one place you will never go? I'm not someone you want a relationship with, believe me. There's a reason you've never heard of the Devil having a wife or girlfriend."

"Yet," she countered, but he shook his head. She filed away the reference to vulnerability for another time.

"Relationships are different. You've heard me speak about my family - whether you believed me or not. My father banished my mother to Hell, and I let Maze torture her. Amenadiel and I have been at war for centuries, pawns in a game only my father knows the rules to. Uriel is dead because -" he choked off, a flash of pain in his eyes before he cleared his threat and moved on quickly. "You've never seen the real me."

"Then show me, Lucifer!" She tugged on his shirt to reinforce her words. "You've never let me make up my own mind, this whole time! The one thing you could have done to prove yourself to me, to prove who you are to me, and you haven't done it! Why?"

His eyes turned bleak, the room starting to fade as if it were linked to his emotions, to him. "Because I was afraid you'd reject me."

"Show me."

Lucifer clenched his jaw, his hands moving to her shoulders and gently pushing her back. The darkness was edging towards them but he was still lit by some unseen warm glow, almost like firelight casting shadows over the planes of his face until his skin darkened and his cheekbones were sharp and his eyes -

Chloe gasped, an involuntary breath as she tried to take it in. Everything she thought, she believed in, challenged by one man, and now the proof she hadn't known she wanted but needed was standing before her, the light of hope fading fast as she stood immobile. She forced herself to move, and it was her arm that answered her bidding; rising to his face where she lightly drew her fingers over the unfamiliar shapes, marvelling at how much softer the burgundy skin was than it looked. Lucifer stood before her in silence for once, letting her fingertips explore him, his eyes an endless darkness lit from within by the flames she had expected to see on the way in. He was Hell. Hell itself was the personal torment he'd explained earlier, but the fire and brimstone version written through the ages could only have been written by those who had seen him. She met his uncertain gaze. She wasn't afraid.

"No horns?"

He let out a sound that was nearly a laugh, twisted by the rush of pain and rejection that were being replaced with relief and hope and possibilities, and suddenly she was there, kissing him, his hands - his oh-so beautifully elegant hands - were back in her hair, twisting the strands around his fingers until you couldn't tell where he ended and she began, bodies pressed so close and her own hands travelling over his shoulders and down under the collar of his loose shirt until she was stroking the jagged scars and soothing the pain, understanding coming thick and fast as her mind pieced together everything he had said and she had believed were metaphors, stories, myths created in his own mind. Passion erupted between them and flowed around them, the darkness encroaching but she didn't mind, so wrapped up in his warmth and desire that was dissolving...everything was dissolving...

She pulled back a fraction, her eyes begging him to stay but he was shuttered to her again, the pain hidden by a hardening facade.

"Lucif-"

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I can't."

And he was gone, the darkness pressing against her until she gasped out a sob and turned, her bed suddenly soft beneath her and a harsh bright light from the screen of her phone declaring 'Lucifer (337)' like a beacon of failure.

Author's Note: I know she wouldn't have actually called him that many times (well, she might have done!) but it just seemed to fit.