The Story in Your Eyes
Summary: "The devil always has one more card to play. So the only question you need to ask yourself is, do you still trust me?" / In which Chloe and Lucifer search for strength. Post-2x12.
Disclaimer: Still don't own Lucifer. Still devastated. Title comes from The Moody Blues' song, which I definitely don't own either.
A/N: I swear, guys, I really am working on QPQD. In fact, I'm tantalizingly close to an update. But c'mon, these last few episodes … can you blame me? The plot bunnies practically ambushed me, so… yeah. Blame them for my distraction.
"How do you feel?"
She lifts her head to the figure framed in the doorway—or tries to. Starbursts of pain erupt with each attempt, threatening to tear apart what little holds her together.
Sighing, she settles for watching him from her prone cocoon of hospice sheets. Of all things, she is struck most by how out of place he looks surrounded by a prison of chrome and white linoleum. It looked wrong that first day, a lifetime ago, and it looks wrong now. Back then, she would venture that it was the absence of nightclub fanfare. Or his usual harem. Now, she knows it's not anything he's missing; it's that he belongs somewhere else entirely. Somewhere warm, open, soft sunlight teasing out his finer features. Ocean breezes banishing the ripe smell of latex and disinfectant.
"My mom's on her way," she offers because really, there's no delicate way to explain that it feels like her insides are racing to resemble the Jell-O sitting untouched at her bedside. As though the evidence tracked down her cheeks isn't damning enough. "Dan just left with Trixie. I didn't want her here when… when I…." The rest lodges deep in her throat.
Still the words fight, claw at flesh already made raw. Choke her more brutally than the poison bleeding the life from her.
He materializes beside her so fast, her vision lags. But as the kaleidoscope of colors swims into focus, whatever hope she has left dies when she reads the story in his eyes.
"Lucifer," the levee breaks. "There's something I want to tell you—"
"No." His voice is absolute, almost punishing. "Absolutely not. We are not doing deathbed confessions because you are not dying. Not for a very long time. Not when I can save you."
For such balmy prose, his expression still paints a wildly different portrait. She can't reconcile the lie with his character. Can't process the gratitude at his sacrifice.
Then her world tilts further off-axis when she feels him start to pull away.
"Lucifer." She catches his hand. "Please."
She has no clue what she's asking—to let her speak? save her? stay?—but desperation begets the desired effect. It halts him, tempers his gaze, smooths the lines of his face. Makes him kneel at her side.
"Detective, do you remember what I said the day we met?"
"You said a lot of things. Most of them really dickish."
His lips twitch, but remain resolute. "It was right after that maggot Jimmy shot you. You were bleeding out like a piñata, and you looked at me the way you are right now and told me—"
"I don't want to die," she remembers, "and you said you wouldn't let me."
"And as you well know, my word is my bond." Warmth pools at her hand, tangled in a sea of desperate fingers, and more than anything she wishes she could match him for strength. "But I can't do it alone. I need my partner to hold up her end."
"But the poison," she protests automatically. "There's nothing to slow it down, no antidote—the only person who knew the formula is dead."
If anything, that grim fact sparks fire in those coal-black eyes. "The devil always has one more card to play, Detec—Chloe. So the only question you need to ask yourself is, do you still trust me?"
"I always trust you." She doesn't know where it comes from, this sudden bravado, but she'll walk through the fire with him if only so he doesn't do it alone. So she doesn't have to be the one who snuffs out that light. "And you always come through."
Without warning his hand slips from hers, and like a phoenix he rises from her bedside. Once again the sterile stench of her surroundings assaults her senses. "Then the only thing I want you to worry about is whatever horrendously sappy thing you're going to say to your daughter the next time you see her."
"Lucifer," she calls to a retreating back, and it twists at the threshold. A million things to say, all boiling down to one. "No matter what happens, just… thank you."
That earns a smile, but as ever the eyes tell a different story. Like a long, lost prayer. It bypasses the wall of agony, invades her skin, chills her very bones. Utterly arrests her. It doesn't belong here, with them. She doesn't understand why until long after he sweeps from the room. For the first time, she isn't the one saying goodbye.
He is.
Fin
A/N: Guys, my predictions for the winter finale are pretty bleak. Someone save me from my own angst, I beg you.