Hello everyone!
So...
Normally, it's only a short story. This scene came to my mind after the second episode from this season 3. I hadn't planned to post it on but Kittendealer told me to do it, so here I am! ^^
DISCLAIRMER: The characters didn't belong to me but to Lucifer serie from FOX.
This scene would be placed in the episode two, before Lucifer's meeting with Linda at the end. Maybe spoilers for those who haven't seen this episode yet.
Happy reading !
FEATHERY CORRELATION
Chloe was done with this routine.
She was done with feeling this very particular annoyance towards a very particular person. She was done with standing in this dark elevator. Done with seeing her reflection, her features hardened by anger so easily imaged through this black metallic surface.
And Chloe was quite simply done with Lucifer and his neurotic interference.
She tapped the floor with her foot, eager to reach the last privatized floor and her partner's devious den to strongly express her annoyance to him, whether he wanted to listen to her or not. Oh, he'd listen this time. The detective would make sure of that. Even if she had to tie him up to a chair and shouted every syllable in his plunged ears. Lucifer would listen and understand these basic and clear words. Anyone would have understood them.
Anyone.
But not Lucifer Morningstar. Of course, not. This man was worse than a child. When she told him "no", he seemed to hear a loud and booming "yes". When she told him that the Sinner Man was only, and this until proven otherwise, a lousy urban legend and that he had to avoid bothering her superior with these fanciful stupidities, what was Lucifer doing? He hastened to shout loud and clear the existence of this criminal - who was a complete fabrication – to Pierce's ears while Chloe wasn't around.
She let out a deep sigh and glared at her vague reflection, this one obviously giving her back the same look.
Chloe wouldn't probably have known anything about this if she hadn't met Daniel from the precinct. He had then told her about this strange interview between her partner and her superior. Daniel having been quickly sent away from his own desk by Marcus, he hadn't been able to hear what it was all about, but Chloe didn't need this information to guess the content of this more or less discreet talk.
Again and again this Sinner Man.
She spoke clearly, though. She enunciated properly, pronounced simple and basic words...
Why on earth didn't Lucifer understand them?
The Sinner Man didn't exist! Period. It was an invention cleverly hiding the misdeeds of lower criminals, if we really could use this denomination in this context. The Sinner Man was an excuse. An excuse for criminals who didn't assume their mistakes.
An excuse for Lucifer, too.
An umpteenth excuse for an umpteenth unkind action from him. As always. It was logical, actually. Lucifer was like this. Always hiding behind something or someone not to take responsibility. And the current situation didn't change anything. He didn't take his message on that he had left her before disappearing for two days. He didn't take his cowardice on. His fear. Lucifer didn't take anything on. And he'd probably never take anything on in his life. The best solution was then to invent this so-called kidnapping engineered by the cruel and dreaded Sinner Man. A man so dreaded that no one knew who he really was or what he could look like. Whatever. As long as it was his fault and not her partner's.
As much inventing an imaginary enemy as to face the reality and the consequences of his childish actions.
" … But I am done hiding... "
Well... It didn't work.
Lucifer kept hiding behind this huge screen, this constant rejection of the blame on others. He'd never stopped doing it, whatever Chloe might have hoped sometimes. Whatever he could have make her believe, Lucifer had never stopped hiding.
It couldn't continue like this anymore. She couldn't keep doing this anymore.
The situation became out of control. Lucifer became out of control. Maybe he wasn't so different in his behavior, in impartial introspect. And maybe the detective had just reached her limits with her partner. A critical bursting point that no longer tolerated any of his faux pas or sneaky evasion.
Chloe sighed once more, placing her hands on her hips as she took a step into the confined space.
Yes, she couldn't take it anymore.
It was the umpteenth straw that's broke the camel's back. This secret interview with Pierce had certainly pushed the right spot inside her to reach that breaking point, but it was Lucifer's behavior in the lab that had undoubtedly crossed the line. She felt her anger increased significantly and warm her limbs up by just thinking back to that moment. She clenched her teeth and held back her tears that burned her gray eyes, unwilling to give Lucifer that power on her.
She wouldn't cry for him. She wouldn't cry because of him anymore.
Chloe had felt so stupid. So embarrassed.
She'd thought he was finally opening to her. That he finally agreed to trust her. She did. And Lucifer's odd behavior had increased this absurd naivety. He looked so... anxious.
His speech, his shifty eyes, his awkward gestures...
All this made her think that he was finally lowering the thick wall between him and her. That he was finally ready to tell her the all truth. A seemingly difficult truth, even for him. This truth, which would undoubtedly have helped Chloe to finally understand Lucifer, to understand him completely. This man remained a mystery to her in so many ways. A mystery that could have been solved, that could have marked new solid basis for their partnership. For their relationship.
But no.
Of course not.
For a moment, a brief moment, Chloe had forgotten about who it was all about. She'd forgotten who Lucifer Morningstar really was. A man who played fast and loose with everything. A man who made fun of everything and everyone, no matter how much damage he caused on his path. As long as it was fun. As long as he could get distracted. The detective's discomfited expression must have been the icing on the cake for him.
So much hope in her gray eyes, so much expectation and compassion to him...
All this sharply swept with this ludicrous prank. His own consternation had been very convincing, as always. An additional playacting that made the initial joke all the more odious. His behavior, his drama, his words... Chloe would never have thought Lucifer capable of such cruelty to her. And that was the problem. She had to stop seeing good in him, seeing more than he really was.
The detective had to accept this reality. She had to impose real limits to Lucifer if they still wanted to collaborate in the future.
Simple limits vital to any good partnership.
He had to learn to show respect for her. He had to listen to her.
No more lies. No more trickeries. No more evasions. And no more secret meetings with her boss without informing her first.
It was simple.
But Lucifer never was. And probably never would.
Anyway, the detective had to get things perfectly clear and try to make him understand her point of view about the current situation. It was like trying to teach Latin to a shark...
The elevator finally stopped its endlessly ascent and the doors opened on penthouse of the shark in question. Chloe stepped out of it quickly and glanced around her. Once again, her partner's huge and furnished living room was dimly lit by the diffuse lights at the ceiling and more natural setting sunlight from the balcony. The doors of the elevator closed just as silently behind the detective as she walked to the middle of the room emptied of any other presence than hers.
" Lucifer? "
No answer, of course.
He should be around, however. Chloe turned to the bar, scanning with her fair eyes the rather impressive exposure of the many bottles on the mural shelf before stopping at a lower point. She came closer to the stools neatly aligned in front of the marble counter and took in her hands the black shirt left on one of the seats. She stroked the silky fabric with her thumb before sighing resignedly and rolling her eyes. This kind of clothing desertion could only mean one thing. First of all, Lucifer's obvious partial nudity, who was still hiding from the detective. And secondly, the undesired presence of another conquest surely as naked as he was, given his main and single pastime.
The young woman shook her head gently, annoyed by this shirt and its likely meaning, and also annoyed by her own reaction.
She shouldn't be annoyed by this kind of things.
Not anymore.
Whatever had possibly happened between them, whatever she could have hoped to happen was behind them now. And behind Candy. Lucifer had made it clear about how he cared about her by coming back married to this young exotic dancer. It couldn't be clearer than that, could it? They were partners. No more, no less. So, she had no reason to be annoyed by this creased shirt.
None.
If reason had a place in this kind of emotional dilemma.
Whatever.
She wasn't there to discuss her mixed up feelings and this possible attraction she could have for Lucifer. She put his short down on the stool and turned again to the living room, keeping watching every corner of the empty room.
" Lucifer? ", she tried, speaking a little louder than before. " You're there? "
Chloe moved up to the couch, which occupied most of the space offered by the main room, joining her hands together with a usual nervous friction. She saw something behind the leather back, frowning while shifting to the side to see better. She widened her eyes from disbelief and slowly walked around the couch, kneeling then in front of the object responsible for her increasing confusion. She just watched at first the curved blade left on the floor at a reasonable distance, not knowing what to do or what to think. She seemed to recognize the blade, though.
Didn't it belong to Mazikeen?
The detective stretched her hand and cautiously grabbed the strange blade, watching it from every angle while questioning her partner's dubious practices in the sack. She knew he was rather open and free concerning carnal activities, but sadomasochism... It was quite disturbing for her to hold such an unusual object in her hands. Something told her that it couldn't be that, she couldn't say exactly why. Her intuition was quickly proven by the sight of a fresh stain of blood along the dark blade, which was difficult to notice at first, given the dim light inside the room.
" What the hell?! "
Chloe scrutinized the black floor at the exact spot where was the knife, noticing a little further away a smear of blood. Her own blood turned to ice as her eyes scrupulously stared at every inch of the ground. The first smear of blood – which was more a little pool of blood, actually – was followed by smaller others. Her analytic mind concluded that the presumed wounded individual had managed to move to the bedroom, blood also staining the few steps leading to it.
A shadier version of The Little Thumb...
Except for these bloody traces staining the floor here and there, no other element of the room seemed to implied an altercation following by a dramatic end. There was no obvious trace of struggle.
Chloe was to this point of reflection when a cry of pain made her start. Clearly identifying her partner's intonation in this disturbing verbal expression, the young woman dropped the blade that fell on the floor with a slight jingling as she quickly straightened, her hand on her gun.
" Lucifer? ", she called him, keeping posted.
Once again getting no answer, the detective took her gun out of her holster and began to move cautiously towards the bedroom. The silence filed the suddenly suffocating space of Lucifer's penthouse, accentuating Chloe's tension. She pointed her weapon before her, slowly climbing the few steps stained with blood. She secured the blind spots, still walking slowly to the bedroom. The door leading to the bathroom was closed, but she could easily see from where she was standing the light of the room filtering under the little space between the door and the ground. Being about to knock at the door, Chloe gave up nevertheless this idea while her right fist was only a few inches away from it, her eyes caught by a completely different thing.
Something that concealed everything else.
She lowered her gun slightly, scrutinizing briefly this thing before approaching it slowly. She stretched a shaky, hesitant hand to Lucifer's bed, stroking the gleaming bottom of the white feather with her fingertips. She never had seen something so beautiful. At least, that was how she felt since she'd looked at this silky feather. It was like this simple feather was capturing all the brightness of the bedroom, vibrating with a subtle energy that tickled almost immediately the detective's skin when she ventures to touch it.
It was really odd. Unusual.
The unusual part wasn't the nature of the feather, but its size. It was far too big to come from any kind of bird. And way too silky to be a reproduction.
Then what was it?
It was a really good question. A question which she wasn't sure to want an answer. Something was wrong, Chloe couldn't exactly tell what, but... that something really made her uncomfortable.
Chloe shook her head slowly, puzzled. She turned to the closet just behind her and leaned forward, frowning. The same bright white feathers poked out from its wooden door, seemingly stuck in the opening. Holding her gun with one hand, the detective straightened up and once again stretched her hand to this plausible source of questions. She didn't want to see what was hidden inside this closet. Not really. Yet, whatever her rational mind could cry to her right now, nothing was stronger than this need to know. A need going far beyond her own will. She grabbed then the iron handle with her hand and slowly opened the doors of the closet, hastily stepping back, her eyes widening with stupefaction. Her legs stumbled against the bed, her sudden wince making her fall into an unwilling sitting position. She stayed like that, breathless as she had run a very long distance when she didn't. She'd have preferred running than seeing that kind of things in her partner's closet.
She'd have preferred anything than this.
She couldn't turn her gaze away from these huge wings stuck as far as possible in this confined closet. The end of each wing was pointed towards to bottom of the piece of furniture while the rest of the limb had been rudely folded with an odd angle to close the doors properly and avoiding any lucky discovery. A ludicrous hidden place. Who would have thought hiding such things in the closet could be a great idea? Surely Lucifer, she couldn't help but think from habit, the rest of her intellectual abilities grabbed by this unprecedented vision.
There were wings as huge as a man struck in Lucifer's closet.
Wings.
These seemed oddly familiar, though. They reminded her the same wings that Lucifer had asked her to look for a year ago. Were there these so special wings? Hadn't he said that he'd moved on to more important things? Everything suggested that he'd gotten rid of them, but...
No.
They were different. Significantly different.
More dazzling than those exposed during this auction sale. More... real? The curve of both wings seemed oddly realistic. A perfect reproduction of a common muscle movement. You couldn't inflict this kind of angles to copies.
That was impossible.
Impossible.
This word was coming over and over again in her mind since this surprising vision from which she no longer seemed able to free herself. Unable...or unwilling. Looking at these wings was a strong desire echoing through her body and mind, almost paralyzing the thread of her more or less coherent thoughts. Thoughts trying to rationalize the impossible. Trying to find a logical explanation for other elements just as unexplainable as the rest.
Like this piece of flesh at the foot of these glowing appendages.
It looked like skin incised of rather butchered without further ado, furrows of blood running alongside this piece of sliced flesh. The detective couldn't help but shudder as she looked at the skin ripped off from-….
From where could it have been ripped off?
Her mind was screaming at her the strong and almost stifling contradiction of that moment, of those abandoned wings covered here and there with fresh blood. She tried in vain to find a logical explanation for what she had right in front of her eyes like, for instance, fake angel wings to satisfy Lucifer's passion in cosplays or that this flesh violently sliced was just a false limb covered with make up just as realistic as the feathered appendages. It was Los Angeles, right? This supposition was as good as another.
But, unfortunately, Chloe's professionalism played against her.
She had seen too much blood in her career not to recognize human blood when there was some in front of her. And that was human blood.
That was...
" Agh! Bloody Hell! Fuckin-…! ", shouted her partner's flustered voice in the bathroom, another cry of pain quickly following.
Her instinct taking priority over her disordered thoughts and the rest of her body, the young woman straightened up quickly and pointed her shaking gun to the still closed door leading to the bathroom. She saw the handle turning too slowly to her taste, unable to announce her presence to her partner or doing anything else than pointing her gun in front of her. This weapon in her hands; hands with almost uncontrollable tremors now, as uncontrollable as her heartbeats inside her chest. The rough touch of the butt against her sweaty palms was the one and only link remaining between her body and mind.
The door kicked open, slamming against the bathroom wall as Lucifer muttered a few insults as he walked out of the room. He raised his head and froze, surprise replacing the obvious folds of pain marking his perfect features. He was shirtless, a thin film of sweat covering his abnormally pale skin. The detective's sharp look could easily notice the slight tremor that ran through his limbs. A tremor that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature of the room, she was sure of it. Her partner's whole body was expressing a shooting pain that was difficult to contain. A pain that she couldn't define the origin.
Not yet, at least.
" Detective? I wasn't expecting to see you here, I-… ", he finally said, uncomfortable, squeezing in his left hand a white bath towel covered with blood.
He offered her a forced smile, not knowing what to say or what to do in this situation that he didn't seem to have anticipated. Of course, how could he have anticipated that his partner would come to his penthouse at that precise moment and find out all these stains of blood and those things hidden in his closet?! He glanced cautiously and undecidedly at the young woman, probably waiting for her to speak or react somehow to find a passable way to justify his disturbing state and all those unusual elements in his penthouse.
And God knew that Chloe have liked to be able to react somehow.
She'd have liked to talk, scream or even whisper something to Lucifer. She would have liked to be able to move, to lower her gun, the rational part of her mind constantly telling her that it was her partner in front of her and not a potential threat.
But she couldn't.
She could only stare at this much too visible spot over Lucifer's tensed shoulders.
Not a spot.
A reflection.
Her eyes couldn't deviate from this huge mirror placed on the wall of the bathroom. Facing Lucifer's back.
His back.
She just saw that. Only his back. Only this reflection offering to look at his scars between his shoulder blades. These two marks so similar and yet so different from those she had already seen before. No scar tissue this time. Only those open wounds revealing skinless flesh from which the blood kept running slowly, reddish furrows running along his skin.
The more she stared at them, the more her mind shouted at her this evidence that she tried so hard to deny.
These marks...
" Detective? "
Her gun trembled more between her hands. Chloe felt her breathing speed up, unable to calm down, to calm this suffocating tension throughout her body. Unable to blink. Unable to stop this instinctive correlation in her mind.
A simple and terrifying correlation.
The size of theses wounds was much too similar to that of the sliced flesh on the wings. They were even identical.
Identical.
" What ? Ow, no ! No, no ! That's where I cut my wings off. "
His wings.
" Something horrid happened to me and I woke up in the desert with my bloody w-…! "
His wings. His bloody wings.
" My angel wings. "
His angel wings.
An angel. Lucifer was...
Chloe finally managed to look at her partner in the eye. He was still watching her with concern. Shuddering from top to bottom now, she slowly lowered her weapon to the ground, still staring at Lucifer with wide eyes. Lucifer opened his mouth to say something, but quickly closed it, all the more worried to see the young woman so shaken. He stopped looking her in the eye for a moment, his own dark eyes stopping immediately on the open closet and the white feathers previously locked inside. She saw a peculiar gleam crossing his irises before he turned his attention back to her, his posture becoming suddenly tenser than before and his face – so likeable in circumstances – becoming totally inscrutable.
They looked at each other. For a long time.
Probably less than that, but time seemed have been removed from that moment. Just the both partner's breathing, one holding his breathing waiting for a reaction from the other.
Finally, after a while, Chloe gulped and managed to articulate more or less clearly a few words.
Words that would change everything.
" Y-You... really a-are the...Devil, aren't you? "
Absolutely everything.
TBC.
Here was the first part of it. What did you think about it?
I have to write the next chapter in French then translate it in English, so it could take a while, sorry. I don't if I'll write about Lucifer's POV for the part two or continue with Chloe. Tell me what you'd prefer ^^
And of course, let a little review : it's always and forever appreciated.
Until next time guys!