A/N: There are references from several episodes of season 3 up to 3.21 (Anything Pierce can do, I can do better). I wrote this as a fix version of mine for that episode before watching 3.22.

I am not a native English speaker, so I'm sorry if there are still a lot of mistakes.

I do not own any of the characters. This is fanfiction and not for any profit.

A really, really big thank you to Sop12345d for the great beta!

In

It seemed like yesterday when they had been dancing at LUX. She was wearing this stupid and really unstylish pink sweater – definitely not befitting a prom night and, as usual lately, so very… dull. This woman had no sense of fashion anymore, for whatever reason that might be. But still, it had felt so… so perfect. He could not, for the life of him, say what she was doing to him, but whenever he was with her, he did feel something. Even though he couldn't fathom what it was, it seemed… like a tingling feeling, like strange bugs crawling in his guts.

Sometimes, it felt close to torture. Maybe he just was a masochist after all - it felt too sweet to walk out on it. Not that he hadn't tried to walk out on her, several times so far. He even came up with some scheme to put some more distance between them by getting closer to others as well. Hadn't worked all that well now, had it?

Whenever he'd tried to run away, he only ended up running right back.

He couldn't stay away from her, could he now? There had been a time when he knew himself to be walking heroin. Nowadays, he would call himself more of an addict. Addicted to her, for that matter. And as much as he had wanted to get back to his… easygoing nightlife, he couldn't. Something kept pulling him back towards her – without any second thoughts. Which only made matters worse.

Looking at his reflection in the mirror, he snorted at what he saw. This pathetic… shadow staring back at him was nothing at all like who he used to be. He'd once thought that he managed to survive the biggest fall of them all. But looking at his reflection right now, he wasn't so sure anymore if he hadn't just managed to open up the floor below himself - and stumble down another floor.

Walking away from the pull he felt towards her hadn't worked. And bloody hell, had he tried to get away from that pull!

Just remembering this terrible Axara case… He couldn't stop trying to shake the memory off. Another memory he didn't want to think about ever again. Shots being fired and Chloe throwing herself at the young singer instead of taking cover herself. Stupid, mindless… selfless woman!

Always thinking of others first, his dear detective. The thought made him smile but it faded as quickly as it had appeared.

The Axara case had showed him much too clearly what he hadn't wanted to admit. He couldn't stay away from her – not for good, anyway. Well, how could anyone, for that matter? Dan was still around as well, wasn't he? Her ex could have walked out on her after all this time. At least when he got demoted, he could very well have switched departments. Getting a clean slate, once again on the go. But he didn't. Probably couldn't. Just like Lucifer couldn't.

Axara's deranged friend had just showed him how much he actually needed to be there. To protect her. Even if he knew he also had to let go of her, in a way.

At some point – not much later - something had changed and Lucifer couldn't quite grasp yet when it had actually happened. Sometimes, he wasn't sure if maybe it had indeed already started when he woke up in the desert with his bloody wings back on. Or was it when he finally understood that Pierce had been getting much closer to his detective than he would have wanted to admit? Pierce had played a game he himself had willingly gone along with until Lucifer had finally realized where this would lead to.

It had been hard enough to watch them getting closer, even if he kept telling himself that it was only to make dear old dad go crazy over it. Her seemingly coming out of that hole, which he now suspected she had put herself in just to make sure that… well, that she wasn't getting any closer to anybody anymore. It had gotten harder and harder to play a part in this.

In the end, it didn't really matter, did it now? It was over. When he'd thought it couldn't get any worse, everything went south… again.

His memory of when he stood in that damn interrogation room a few weeks later and tried to explain to her how he was going crazy over lack of sleep was somehow fuzzy. He knew where to get the good stuff. Or, better put, the good stuff knew where to find him. So, any other day this might have led him into saying something he wouldn't want to say. Only this time, he actually had wanted to blurt it all out. To finally put it all out for her to see - the truth about… just everything. Finally telling her that bloody, lying Pierce not only was the biblical version of mankind's first murderer, but also the bloody biggest liar out there as well! He was the man behind the Sinnerman, after all.

Only, she wouldn't listen! She never listened to him!

She just walked out on him when he needed her; when his sleep deprived, drug hazed mind was driving him crazy. Not to mention the bugs crawling inside his gut that seemingly wanted to eat him up from the inside out – probably a remnant of his, in retrospect, rather… foolish drug abuse. And there it was again… this emptiness that he'd felt all his life. Only, before he had met her, he never knew about it being there. He'd just lived with it and never felt bad about it.

Not until he'd realized that there was something missing in his life.

And it took him even longer to realize what it had been. Even though he now suspected that it was something Linda had tried to tell him all along. At least… well, at least for some time now. But that wasn't the point!

The point was that bloody Cain had gotten the better of him! Made a fool out of him and his plan to finally defy his father. Or…

His breath hitched, still staring at his rumbled reflection.

He just hadn't wanted to accept it, had he? Always trying to figure out what his father had in mind. Not thinking once that maybe, just maybe, dear old dad hadn't done anything. Well, it was hard to imagine that none of this had been good old dad's doing. This whole mudball and every living fiber on it had never been anything more than daddy's favorite playground anyway. How could anybody believe this wasn't some part of his plan?

And on top of it all, Lucifer's most loyal soldier, his very own first demon… she had betrayed him. Had had some plans of her own, that little…!

His hands clutched at the basin, and for a second he wanted to crush it with his bare hands. He wanted to tear this whole penthouse apart. What use was it anyway?! There was nobody left standing by his side now… It was over! Even Maze had betrayed him! And didn't that just make everything even worse. She had exploited what she knew was his biggest weakness. Had used Chloe against him, driving him crazy - to the brink of insanity.

How much of this had really been his dad's plan? Any of it at all? Or had it all been Mazekeen? Cain? Had there ever been something like God's Plan in all of it? Had it simply gotten out of hand or had it been supposed to play out like this? To hurt him like this?

Had breaking Chloe's heart been part of it? And why hadn't he, Lucifer, snapped Cain's neck just then and there when the bastard had quit on her like this? He should have done it! It would have spared him so much trouble, so many nightmares.

So much… pain.

So what if he had been immortal? Lucifer could have broken him again and again and again… and maybe this would have been enough to someday make it better. Maybe this… crawling feeling in his gut would have gone away.

But something had stopped him, and again, the question was… what made him stop?

Oh, he knew quite well what had made him stop. Dad's bloody rules, of course! Now that the curse was lifted, Cain was a mortal, a human. He wasn't allowed to kill the bastard. Not even for what he had done to Chloe.

And how ironic was that?!

The bastard's plan played out, the plan where he used his dear detective to overcome the old man's curse, hurting her on an unspeakable level… and his bloody father decided that it would be best to finally turn him mortal – just so that Lucifer wouldn't be able to tear the bastard apart for what he had done.

Bloody hell!

But it didn't end there, though, did it now? No, how could it have ended there? It would be too easy to just call it an end there, dad. Right?!

His hands were already clawing at the basin and his eyes darkened when he remembered the last couple of days. With clenched teeth, he played through it like re-watching a DVD, only to see himself make the same mistakes over and over again.

He'd thought it would all go back to status quo when Cain became mortal. But the bastard didn't jump off the next cliff or shoot himself or… well whatever he'd had in mind when he decided to die in the first place. No, bloody Cain stayed and even tried to make good on his dear detective.

And she fell for it, she didn't even realize how hard he himself had tried to pull her from Cain. Only to ultimately fail. Why hadn't she seen what he had tried to tell her all along? They used to understand each other so well, didn't they? They'd had… moments there. Didn't they? So why had she been… offended by everything he'd tried to do to win her back, to get her back on his side?

He was trembling now, not able to look at this sad excuse of an angel that was staring back at him from the mirror. Well, he hadn't been an angel for quite a while now, had he? Fallen from the grace of his father and now fallen from the grace of her as well…

Snorting, he shook his head. Yeah, that was it, alright!

Seemed as if there was never an end to his father's antics. No, he had to put insult to injury, digging the proverbial finger into an already bleeding wound. He just had to make Cain propose to her!

No, that wasn't it. That wasn't what had driven him over the brink of sanity. For once, he had to be honest to himself. It hadn't been anything about the smug, lying, bloody bastard kneeling down in front of her. Cain could have done this a thousand times and Lucifer couldn't have cared less because before this evening he would have been sure that she would've slapped him across the face for this insult.

Only, she didn't. And that was the moment Lucifer had felt the knife slowing being pushed inside his gut. Twisted around for some good measure – just to make sure it really hurt.

She stood there and nodded. She bloody nodded! Accepting this farce, this lying bullshit!

That was when he slipped over the brink, when whatever had been left of his sanity after two bloody weeks without any sleep and another one trying everything to make her look at him as she used to… it all finally got the better of him. Seeing her, falling for all those lies Cain had fed her, for all these… pathetic mind games of his. The bastard actually dared to call this love when all he did was grab the first available woman when he finally became mortal. The one he had played with, betrayed, hurt. And Chloe believed all this, all those lies.

While she hadn't believed him one bit when he, Lucifer, had told her the real truth.

But she had never believed him. She had always assumed he was telling some stupid metaphor, some depraved mind game he played to impersonate something that was actually engraved into his very being. While he had never been the one to play mind games on her. Never her! Not that it would have worked on her anyway.

How often had he told her he was the devil? How often had he told her about his father? But she never believed him. So why had he expected her to believe him when he told her about Cain? Had he really expected her to finally understand what he had always been telling her?!

He did not lie! Ever! Period!

She didn't get it though, did she? No, she had to run to bloody Cain instead.

Falling right into his crooked arms, when everything she should have done is shoot the guy! At least… do some serious harm, somehow. But she sure as hell wasn't supposed to forgive him for what he had done. What was wrong with her?!

Scratch that… what was wrong with himself?!

Getting angry, he turned around in his bathroom, grabbed the first item he could find and threw it against the wall. He didn't feel better now, but at least some of this built up tension was let out. Maybe he should tear this all apart. Maybe then, he would feel "normal" again. Well, as normal as one could feel being the devil.

Or even better, maybe then he would stop feeling again – return to the place where he wouldn't care anymore.

Because that was the problem, wasn't it? He still cared. After everything she had done to him,or didn't do, for that matter. After she had left him without even thinking about it… He still couldn't get her off his mind - couldn't stop thinking about how he could finally make her see what Cain was up to. What he had really done, and why. It wasn't supposed to be like this! He wasn't supposed to… to feel like this.

A sob escaped his throat before he could stop himself.

It hurt. It damn well hurt! Worse than this bloody bullet she had put into his leg all that time ago. More than the flames he had carried her through. More than the knife he took to the chest for her. All those… had just been pain. What he was now feeling was much closer to agony.

Turning around, he faced himself once again in the bathroom mirror of his penthouse.

He looked like hell. And oh, what an irony this was, once again. The devil, bare his actual devil face, instead sporting re-growing wings he couldn't get rid of… What a pathetic sight! The fallen angel that wasn't all that fallen anymore, but still not an angel. Neither devil or angel. This wasn't him anymore! Nothing of this sad sight was like him!

And she had done this to him.

No! No, she hadn't, he reminded himself. This was his father's doing, not her's. If not, Cain's, who initiated this charade – as well as Maze who had been an all too willing accomplice. Chloe had just been another pawn. One he, himself, had willingly succumbed to, but… it wasn't her fault. Everyone's but her's.

Maybe it was even his own fault as well.

He tried to push this thought away, but like quicksand, it started to pull him in again and again. It had been his own decision to stay in LA, and to stay with the detective as well. He could have ran away when he found out that she made him vulnerable. But he didn't. He stayed and stayed and stayed… And not just out of curiosity.

Even when he first found out that his father had put her in his path long before he had even thought about taking a longer vacation on Earth. Hell, he had been to Earth long before she had been born and the humans' lifespan was all too short. So, his father must have had a pretty tight schedule there.

It had needed nothing more than for him to turn his back on her two years ago, maybe sooner and nothing of this would have happened.

Cain probably wouldn't even be here if it hadn't been for him. Hadn't he come to LA because he had heard about her track record gone high after she started working with "the devil"? So, if he hadn't been here, Cain wouldn't have shown up as well. Chloe and Dan might be divorced by now but she would never have fallen for that bloody bastard Cain.

There was a sound of something breaking and suddenly, there was a crack in the mirror in front of him. Frowning, he stared at his reflection, now split in half. What was this? What was going on here?

His mind started to blank out, and for a second, he wasn't sure if he was merely running out of anger or if this was an aftermath of those drugs he had put into himself to deprive himself of sleep. Most unlikely, though since that had been more than a week ago now.

This emptiness was also different from what he had felt just a few minutes ago. Still, it somehow felt familiar. Strangely so. But he couldn't quite put his finger on it. Something was off. Was this still his father's doing? The final straw to break him? Was this what his father had ultimately planned for him? To turn his little… insurgence of staying on Earth into just another hell for him?

Because this was surely starting to feel like his very own personal hell…

Another splitting sound and a second crack broke his reflection once again.

He raised himself up to his full height and stared at himself in the broken mirror. Broken just as he felt. There hadn't been an earthquake, so how… ?

"This is my very own personal hell…" he whispered, just to see the mirror crack even more, until his face was barely recognizable anymore. Every other part split in a way where it would distort the image just a tiny little bit. But all together, they formed a totally different picture altogether.

Fear grasping at his heart, he turned around and stormed out of the room. But there was nothing else to be seen – well, nothing other than his penthouse. The same way as it had always been since he had moved in here. Something had to be different, though… There was always something! He had always put in something that didn't fit in.

Quickly, he stormed back into the living area and checked it out at well. But everything was how it was supposed to be. Was he finally going insane over this? Had he fallen this low? Lost every sense of reality?

"Lucifer?"

Surprised, he turned around once more, only to see his "little doctor", as Maze used to call her, again. Hadn't she left after he took off to Chloe's?

"What are you doing here?"

She hesitated for a moment and his somewhat hazy mind told him that she had been sizing him up before she finally answered, "I could ask you the same question."

What?

"What did you think would happen, running off to your dear detective?"

He frowned and he could actually feel his heart beating vigorously against his ribcage. What the hell was she talking about? Hadn't she been the one to send him to Chloe? To finally tell her the truth he hadn't been able to admit before this evening?

"Well, even if Pierce hadn't been there, she still wouldn't believe you now. Would she?"

This couldn't be true!

"She never believes you."

The smile on his "friend's" face transformed into something more like a grimace. Even "smirk" would have been the wrong word for it. As if somebody tried to smirk but didn't know how to move the muscles all together. This was wrong!

"Oh my poor, poor Lucifer…"

"You're not Linda…"

"Finally!" The figure impersonating his doctor shot out, hand flailing when it got closer.

Fear started to grip even harder at his heart when finally the realization fully got to him. This wasn't his penthouse – not really. This wasn't LA. And he was very, oh so very, very sure that this wasn't even on Earth anymore.

"How can this be?"

The Not-Linda stepped closer, this time the smile back in place, but there was nothing fond in it anymore. It was more of a leer now, making Lucifer sick to the stomach when he thought about how he had trusted this… creature for the last couple of months. Years?

"Since… since when?" he stammered but he didn't get an answer because the figure in front of him just smiled without giving another answer.

When he got shot and died? The time when he had thought his dad had sent him back to catch his mother? Had he ever returned from that? Or… even sooner and the whole LA experience had been part of it? But hell loops weren't usually this long. This couldn't have been an imagination all this time. Right?!

"Answer me!" he howled at Not-Linda, stepping firmly into her personal space. But the smile didn't falter as if she was sure he wouldn't do her any harm.

Unfortunately Not-Linda was very, very wrong about that because now that he finally had an idea of what was going on here, he was pissed. Royally pissed!

So, his hand shot out and he grabbed her by the neck. Next thing he knew he was holding her upright against the wall, her feet dangling somewhere around his midside. A croaking sound was all he got as an answer but at least this bloody smile was gone now.

"Stop. Impersonating. Her." he hissed between clenched teeth.

A/N: Please take the time to review. Thank you.