Credit for the Song goes to Robbie Williams, Feel.
The characters used in this story are not mine, the idea of this story probably is.
Linda was worried. Since Maze had stormed into her Office a few days ago, she had not only learned what Maze had done but also to what it had led to.
Chloé had told Linda what had happened to Pierce, what she saw. Considering all, she was dealing surprisingly good. Sure, Chloé hadn't explained it in detail but Linda saw the signs and just offered to be open to anything she had to say, so in the end Chloe had opened up about what happened to Lucifer. That he got his other face back.
Chloé of course didn't use those exact words, that was Linda's Conclusion.
So now after several days of trying to reach Lucifer via ignored texts and unanswered calls she was on her way up to Lucifer's Penthouse. She had a bad feeling that Lucifer was relishing in self-loath up there. She had no idea whether she was here as a friend or as a therapist, but she guessed it didn't really matter much.
The elevator dinged, and the doors opened.
Chloé was staring at the TV screen, not really seeing what show was on. She was spaced out, like so often these days. Trixi was with Chloé's mom. Her mother was still the last person she wanted to influence Trixi's life, but she had no other choice. She could not have her daughter around while she tried to get a grip of reality again.
She had not a shred of sanity left. That's what it felt like to her. The God, every next guy used to emphasis on, was a real thing. Like a real person… or was he? She couldn't really know because she didn't talk to… him. She was not afraid of him. But it scared the shit out of her that he was indeed who he claimed to be.
She was not a religious person so to her it felt like Mulder and Scully just knocked at her door.
Of course, Linda had helped. She was like the centre of this… superficial-thing… or whatever they'd call it. She knew about …him. She knew who he was, had known for some time and was still treating him… no. She was still his friend. If Linda could work through this, damned so could she… wait. Damnation was an actual thing… like in fire, sulphur, torture the wicked.
She couldn't picture …him doing the bloody stuff. She had seen him angry but outright torture? That tasted more like… Maze. She needed to wait, he came first. She needed to figure him out first. Yet she couldn't even think his name… her mind could not wrap around the fact that he was… this…, that he was both those… hims.
She knew as much about heaven and hell as the next guy, but it felt wrong to try to line him up with that knowledge. She knew him. Or she thought she did… did she? She knew the handsome, narcissistic, self-absorbed, obnoxious, cute, devastatingly caring and occasionally funny British man. The man she had grown feelings for. How could he and this other him be one and the same? She needed to figure this out she just had no idea how.
Lucifer was sitting at his piano. Where else really. His fingers hovered over the keys. Lingering here and there but never playing any note. No song would come to him. The worst possible thing had happened. The Detective had seen. He had a feeling that the time of calling her by her first name was a short lived one. For calling, talking, seeing at all, he mused.
He had no idea how this happened. Amanadiel's idea of angels and humans being responsible for the punishment themselves? He did not know if it was true, but he knew that he had actually felt better about himself lately… well before he had to proof to her and himself that he was indeed a monster.
He had called the deal with Cain of to protect her but in the end, he had destroyed her live, her world. It was borderline funny. Funny how he had wanted her to know the real him and still chose him but at the same time he just wanted to be who she saw in him and leave everything he was behind. It had happened without him noticing it at first.
It had started as a rush of joy, a feeling of uplift every time he did something for her, something selfless. Well at first, he had thought it was a general feeling, not connected to a certain person but he came to connect the dots.
The rush, the wish to do good, to be better.
No, if he was being honest with himself it started even before that. So many dots where needed to paint a picture.
He had felt the first humming of those feelings the evening she had turned up at his place drunk. he had not been able to comfort her like he had done for so many others. This humming had made him want more than just use her and be used, he knew that now. Now that it was too late everything seemed to make sense.
It all came down to her. She was the beacon of light and hope to him. But he should have known. No one in their right mind could ever… like him. Be any more than friends with him.
Not one human who had laid with him, wanted him really. They wanted what he could do to them, with them. They wanted the pleasure he could bring, his body not his soul. His eternal soul that was truly damned to go to hell.
To exist for eons looking for something, never finding it because he did not know what he was looking for in the first place! That was until he found her… she was, what he had been looking for. It seemed that Linda had been right all along. Because she wanted him. Wanted his mind, his jokes, his Luciferness as she called it. But that was before.
Now everything was different.
While his thoughts had gone their own way, his hands had finally began to play.
When the elevator doors opened the first thing Linda noticed was the music. Lucifer was sitting at his piano, playing and singing a song she didn't know but she got the message loud and clear.
"There's a hole in my soul
You can see it in my face
It's a real big place"
As she crossed the threshold to his penthouse, lucifer stopped playing but did not turn. "Doctor." It was a statement not a question.
She walked over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Lucifer, still not looking at her, asked "Came for a last session with the devil?" his voice mocking.
Linda knew his defence mechanisms and just ignored his tone. "I'm not here as a therapist" not only she mentally added "I'm here as your friend."
Linda could not know that those words stirred a new wave of grief in his soul, she had been his friend… before. His voice became flat as he answered "I appreciate the gesture, but I assure you it is not necessary. I… "
Linda cut him off, "You need a friend now, it's part of the feelings stuff that I know, and you don't. Accept it."
She let go of this shoulder and sat down next to him on the small piano bench. He looked dishevelled, exhausted, not at all like his usual self. His hair was wild, sticking in different directions and angles from the remaining products. His eyes were rimmed, his eyeliner smeared. His eyes looked puffy, but she couldn't be sure. His stubble was thicker than usual, and his dress shirt looked like it still was the one he wore when he encountered Pierce, if the bullet holes were any indication.
From his looks he should've smelt like a homeless man, but he didn't. He smelt as good as he always did. She wondered if this was a perk of being an angel.
She tugged at his shirt, were a bullet hole was "What happened?"
Lucifer looked at her, finally "I thought you were here because you already know?" it was supposed to offend her but to Linda it just emphasized his hurt.
She smoothed his shirt a little and took his hand in hers "I want to know what happened to you."
Lucifer snorted "I ruined everything and for once I have no one else to blame but myself. We had a moment, she leaned that I knew Pierce… Cain was the Sinnerman all along and she still wanted … she still wanted me around. Than Cain had to pull a final trick and I had to kill him. I just had to… and my real face came back…"
"Why do you keep calling it your real face?" Linda had to make him understand that he was not two different entity's but one with different sides just like every human. Before he could answer Linda went on "It's like with Superman." Lucifer looked stupefied "Linda, have you lost your mind?"
"No! Think about it. Neither Superman nor Clark are fully his true self, both combined make him, define him. He is both, the man of steel and the farm boy from Kansas." Linda was really out of the book at this one, but she had to make him see somehow.
Lucifer shook his head, human's tendency to imagine heroes really started to unnerve him. But he liked Linda, so he tried to reason with her "Linda, I am not a 'tights wearing' Superhero who uses glasses to cover up his true identity. Because you see, the face you see now is the mask." He summoned his devil face "This is what I truly look like."
Linda was prepared to see his other face, so she could keep her fear and shook in check. "Are you trying to scare me away? Cause this won't work. I'm not scared of you…" she could not finish because Lucifer had stood up and raged "But she is!"
Linda got up too and nodded cautiously "I see." She slowly walked around the bench to him and looked straight at his red burning eyes "but I don't think she really is. I think she's afraid of the unknown. You just have to show her that you are not only the Devil who punishes evil but also Lucifer who runs a nightclub and works with the LAPD. Show her that you can be made of steel and still be the farm boy. Just… take your glasses of for her." While Linda's little speech Lucifer's face had returned to his handsome club owner face.
Of course, he was still not convinced that he was some kind of hero but he got what Linda was trying to get across with her little, although absurd analogy.
Could it be true? Could he be the Lord of Hell and her Lucifer at the same time? For her, everything had changed although in reality nothing had. He was who he had been before (Who he had always been?). Except now she knew that he meant every word about being a monster. She now knew that all the times she thought he was being quirky, every metaphor, everything he ever said to be true. Nothing had changed, except for her veil of nescience that had been lifted.
Linda saw that Lucifer was actually thinking about what she had said. I guess miracles are a thing, she thought. "You should go to her, talk to her."
Lucifer shook his head smiling sadly "I can not do that. I am sure she does not want to see me… maybe not ever."
Linda reached out for his phone that lay on top of the piano amidst empty bottles of bourbon, gin and vodka. She knew Lucifer so well, this sight did not even surprise her. She took it, wiped some ash fluffs off it and held it so him "Are you sure?"
Lucifer took the Phone from Linda and sure enough after he had unlocked it, he found several missed calls. From Linda and even Maze and, heaven and hell be damned, from his Detective. But he also noticed that the calls from her had happened in a close proximity to each other and non for two days…
"Maybe I am not only the Monster, clearly you do not seem so see me as such, but I am also not her hero (or anybody's for that matter) … why is it that you do not understand that she was made for me. Designed by my father to be immune to my charms but at the same time she is truly the only human I want to charm, to say it bluntly. He ups torture to a new level, nay to a new scale even. To him, she does not matter, her soul, her live but it matters to me. I want her to choose freely, to be who she wants to be and with whom she wants. I want her… not be a pawn in his game. I do not even want her to be made for me. I just want her to be free…" while saying that Lucifer had put the Phone ins his suit pocket and stood bevor Linda now with his hands in his pockets, a true picture of defeat.
It seemed that the time had come to work all his issues together and maybe succeed in making him see. Linda grabbed his shoulders firmly "Oh I understand Lucifer, but I also understand that you choose to ignore a hard fact. That it does not matter whether she was made a miracle for you or not. Because frankly we don't know why god chose to make her birth possible, but we do know that it made her immune to your… thing." Linda looked at him hopping he would make the final step himself.
"Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. She was made to be immune to my charms. She vexed me, caught my interest and I could not make her mine!" Lucifer was really losing his composure.
"You are one giant pessimist! And are you trying to ignore half of this story on purpose or do you really not see? She was made immune to your charms, ok. So you had to actually get to know her to charm her. And you know what happened? You did charm her, but that is not the problem either. The thing is… she charmed you too." Linda was exhausted. This kids where worse than Joey and Pacey… damn she really should stop watching so much TV in her breaks.
Lucifer looked at her wide eyed, like this had never occurred to him. Linda took his face in her hands softly, looking straight into his eyes "Chloé is immune to your supernatural charm, she is not immune to falling for you as a person, Lucifer. No matter what your father planed, there is a connection between you too that has nothing to do with your Devil Mojo. Your personality made this connection, the fact that you listened to her, tried to really get to know her and that you where there for her… that you really wanted her too." Linda caressed his suppled cheek once and let go of him. She believed in him, that he would do what was right this time. She turned around and walked towards the elevator.
Lucifer just stood, rooted to the spot, mind racing.
Before the door closed behind Linda she called "Take a chance, Lucifer."