Hey, everybody!

For anybody that might have missed it before:

***SEASON 4 SPOILERS!***

This has been an idea floating around in my head ever since I first finished season 4!

I've never written… well, anything, if I have to be honest, but the idea just seemed to be begging to be written. Here it is!

[Three months after the events of season 4:]

Daniel looked at Chloe as they sat in her car, waiting in the shadows near the parking lot of a shabby motel. He had noticed how she seemed to become more and more distant as the case went on, and was becoming worried.

For the past few days, they had been trying to find who had brutally killed a poor woman named Miranda Evans. It had ended up being a fairly straightforward case. Dennis, her husband, had killed her in a rage after discovering that she was planning on leaving him. He fled once he saw what he had done, and they were easily able to track him down to this motel.

Daniel didn't know exactly what had happened between her and Lucifer, but he could tell that this case was definitely hitting a nerve in Chloe. He decided that he had to say something to her about it, before she got herself hurt.

"You know… you don't need to go in there. I can handle this by myself, Chlo."

Chloe turned and looked at him, surprised.

"Wha - why?"

"I'm just worried that…well…," Daniel began to fidget, trying to find a way to say it without upsetting her. "I feel like this case might be hitting a little close to home with you. It might be good if you just... take a step back for now."

Chloe bristled, knowing exactly what he was referring to. "I'm fine, Dan." She wouldn't even look at him, instead focusing on a car going into the motel parking lot.

"I'm just worried that -"

"Look! He's going inside his room," Chloe was ignoring him, instead paying attention to Dennis Evans as he exited the car and, cautiously looking over his shoulder, entered his room. By the time Daniel was halfway through his sentence, she had already gotten out of the car and slammed the door. He could have sworn he saw tears in her eyes as she turned away to exit the car.

Daniel had an uneasy feeling about what might happen during the confrontation with Dennis, considering Chloe's current mood and Dennis's background of violence. He sighed and silently followed Chloe to the motel, pulling out his firearm as he went.

Chloe was waiting for him near Dennis's door, tapping her foot impatiently. As soon as he set foot in the parking lot, Chloe began to pound on the door. Daniel cursed and began running forward so he could be at the door with her if anything happened. What was wrong with her today?

"LAPD, open up!"

Thankfully, there was no response from the man inside, and Daniel was able to make his way over to Chloe without anything happening. The two windows were both drawn, and it looked as though there were no lights on inside. This made it so inside the room wasn't visible from outside, but the opposite was true. Dennis could have been aiming straight at Chloe with a gun, for all she knew! She ignored the glare Daniel sent her way, and continued yelling into the room.

"Come on, Dennis, we know you're in there! It'll be easier for all of us if you just come out quietly."

Still, there was no response from inside the room.

Chloe knocked on the door again. "Dennis, this is your last warning!"

When they still received no response from Dennis, she looked over at Daniel questioningly while pulling out her gun. He nodded, and went to kick the door open.

The door caught on a sheet from the room's bed that had been laid in a heap on the floor near the entrance, and as a result the door stopped moving when it was nearly two-thirds of the way open. The room was an absolute mess. No lights were on, so the only light in the room came through the light purple curtains that covered the windows. Everything not secured to the floor had been tossed around and onto the floor, and anything fragile had been broken or shattered. Clearly, this had happened before they arrived; they definitely would have heard the racket from outside the door. Had Dennis had another fit of rage, with nothing but the objects in the room to take it out on?

Though Dennis was nowhere to be seen inside the room, both Chloe and Daniel saw that the bathroom door was shut with its light on. The two of them carefully made their way into the room, keeping their eyes locked on the closed door. Neither of them dared to go open it. Chloe cautiously began talking to the bathroom door.

"Hey… Dennis? I want to talk this out with you, okay? We know about what you did to Miranda. We know she was about to leave you. What you did wasn't right, but," Chloe's voice had started to shake, and she paused to collect herself. "But I know why you did it. I understand. It… it hurts, a lot, when someone important to you wants to leave your life. I understand how it feels more than you know. Please, come out of there and we can talk."

Daniel quickly glanced over at Chloe to see that her eyes were starting to tear up after what she had said. As she let out a quiet sob, he heard a soft rustling of fabric from the direction of the entrance behind them. Daniel turned around quickly, before Chloe had even registered what was happening, to see the figure of a man hiding inside the dark shadow between the door and the window to one side of it. He was hiding on the opposite side of where the door opening, which ensured that neither Chloe nor Daniel would be able to see him when they walked inside unless they turned around and away from the bathroom they originally thought he was in.

In under half of a second, Daniel realized three things. First, the bed sheet that had stopped the door had likely been placed there intentionally in order to stop the door from bouncing off of Dennis and giving him away. Second, the closed, lit bathroom was only there as a distraction. There was probably nobody even inside there. Lastly, and most importantly, if Dennis let them in, then he probably didn't mean to let them out again. They had walked into a trap.

As Daniel made the last, frightening realization, he saw Dennis, who was still mostly hidden in the shadows, raise what looked like a shotgun, ready to fire… at Chloe. There was no time to stop him from shooting.

Before he could even really register what he was doing, Daniel jumped between Dennis and Chloe. The next thing he knew, he heard a deafening boom and felt a blinding pain in his stomach. He barely noticed as he fell backwards to the ground.

"DAN, NO!"

Chloe had no choice but to duck behind the bed in the room, knowing that she would be shot as well if she checked on Dan. She could barely think about anything except for the fact that her ex-husband, Trixie's father, was lying on the ground and the chances were high that he was bleeding out. She started shaking.

I can't lose you, too, Dan. Please, don't go…

Daniel was dying.

He had enough medical training to know that he was losing too much blood for anything short of a miracle to help him now, especially with the closest ambulance likely being at least three or four minutes away. He probably only had thirty seconds, or a minute at most.

He felt horrible, and not just because of the gunshot wounds. If Chloe was able to get out of this situation, where would that leave her? She had only recently lost Lucifer, and now Daniel was about to leave in a very, very permanent way. Not that he had been there much, through the marriage for her or for Trixie -

Trixie wouldn't have a father.

That realization hit Daniel harder than the bullets had.

It felt like whoever Daniel cared about, he ended up hurting. He had left Chloe alone against the entire precinct after the Palmetto incident, just to save his own skin. He was never there when either Trixie or Chloe needed him, so they divorced, which hurt those two even more. He had gotten Charlotte's attention back when she was still at at her old job, which led to her working with the LAPD. Eventually, her connection with the LAPD got her killed by Pierce. He was responsible for the deaths of people that he was never close to, and almost responsible for those of many that he considered to be friends or even family, multiple times.

If Heaven and Hell really did exist… which did he deserve?

As he felt himself fading away, his thoughts weighed down his soul and filled it with guilt and self-hatred.

He knew the answer.

Thank you to anybody that read this far!

Keep in mind that I'm learning as I go, so all feedback is welcomed!

I have the bulk of the story planned out already. I haven't put too much thought into how chapters will be divided, so I don't know exactly how many there will be yet. You can expect to see Lucifer next chapter, though! :)

I'm working with school, projects, and exams right now, so until that's all over I'll likely be taking up to a week with every chapter. I'll keep you guys updated!