Chloe rediscovers the voicemail fourteen days after the world was pulled out from under her feet.
In the wake of Pierce's death, all of her active cases are reassigned to other detectives. They can't fire her yet. Because that's as good as admitting she did something wrong or that Pierce was corrupt. Instead, she works long abandoned cold cases, chasing years-old leads while chained to her precinct desk.
First order of business though, she cleans and reorganizes everything. Whether at home or at work, she throws herself into the ritual like it will be enough to purge the chaos from her life. After tackling the contents of her work desk, she turns to her digital file system. That is when she finds it: an audio file labeled "Lucifer's voicemail - May 29, 2017".
Against her better judgment, she plugs her earphones into the computer and hits play.
"Detective."
Her breath hitches at the sound of his voice.
"Hello, it's me. Lucifer. Um, I just wanted to apologize for being, well, for being so elusive. But I also wanted to say that I am done hiding. So I'm coming over now to tell you the truth about me. 'Cause I think it's time I finally opened your eyes as to why strange things sometimes happen around me. Why my brother's so saintly and Maze is so... not. And I'm so... well, magnetic. No, but seriously, I... I want to tell you everything. No more going backwards."
The voicemail is one minute and twelve seconds long. He left it for her months and months ago. He wanted to tell her, or so he claimed. But then he didn't. Why?
Because Lucifer had been kidnapped, dumped in the desert, and returned ten-times as self-absorbed. Every case afterward became another opportunity to blame his parents—another exercise in paranoia testing Chloe's waning patience. But was it really paranoia if your parent is truly all-knowing and all-powerful? Had God intervened to prevent Lucifer from telling her the truth?
"Chlo?"
She yanks her earphones out, pulling several strands of hair at the same time. Arms weighed down with case files, Dan hovers at the perimeter of her desk and personal bubble.
"Maybe you should ask for a few personal days, you look—" he cuts himself short, uncharacteristically unsure. "You look like you could use the rest."
Sleep eludes her of late. She lies awake in bed, staring at the ceiling until she can't take anymore and takes up a vigil by Trixie's bed instead. Those long nights left their mark in the bruises underneath her eyes and her pale complexion.
"I'm fine. Everything's fine," she recites.
Dan, of course, doesn't believe her. But he looks as rundown as she feels. Ergo, glass houses and throwing stones.
"I could say the same for you," she says. Her words come out more unkindly than she intends.
"We're swamped. With you and Lucifer both out of commission for the near future, the department needs all hands on deck. The asshole is annoying as hell, but the two of you close cases at twice the rate of any other detective in the precinct. It's a lot of slack for the rest of us to pick up."
Chloe tenses at the sound of his name. Some part of her is convinced that the mere mention of his name will summon him. The saying "speak of the devil" must come from somewhere. Lucifer does not poof out of thin air even though he can. He must be able to if he can deposit her on a building's roof after Marcus's henchman shot her.
But Lucifer is incommunicado. Again. No texts. No phone calls. No breaking and entering her apartment. It's been two weeks of radio silence.
Dan juggles his files and deposits a sheaf of paperwork on her desk. "Speaking of which, I need your signature. It's related to the Reina Markova case."
She nods absently and Dan leaves her. Reina Markova was the murdered prima donna in the last case she and Lucifer had worked before her engagement. They solved it four weeks ago, not a lifetime ago like it felt to Chloe. There isn't even a court date set for the murderer's trial yet. Dan has annotated the signature field with a helpful "Sign Here" sticker. It comes at the end of a three-page arrest report for William Sterling, charged with illegal possession of a firearm and public endangerment for firing the said weapon in a crowded theater.
Instead of signing, her mind whisks her back to that darkened theater, her pulse pounding as Lucifer steps in between the murderer and another would-be murderer. He always took unnecessary risks like that.
"Because I was afraid." Miguel's breathy admission was almost inaudible under the hum of the theater's central air.
Lucifer stood gutted on stage.
Chloe reels herself back to the present, signs her name, and drops the stack in her outbox. The voicemail remains open in the audio player on her desktop. She starts a new folder and moves the audio clip into it. Then she renames the folder: "Truth."
Books, movies, and the internet is all hearsay. She will find the evidence in her old case files. His voicemail is his testimony—one of many she'll revisit in the light of recent revelations. With those, she can piece together the truth.
After her shift ends, she drives straight to Office Max and buys the largest cork-board she can manage.
-x-x-x-
She now spends her nights chipping away at her new case. The day job she zombies through, using it as an opportunity to smuggle copies of her old cases out of the precinct. She listens to the voicemail repeatedly until she can recite it word-by-word in her sleep. After putting Trixie to bed, she retires to her bedroom, pushes all the clothes in her closet to one side, and rebuilds her understanding of the world piece-by-piece behind a locked door.
She vacillates between anger and grief as she fills out the cork-board. A screenshot from the video of Lucifer shoving Joe Hanson through a window here: superhuman strength. Repeated blurbs from interview transcripts of Lucifer asking suspects what they desired: she writes "mind control" in a moment of weakness before quickly blacking it out and replacing it with "desire mojo." But the more blanks she fills in and mysteries she teases apart, she ends the night with more questions than she had at the beginning.
It's exhausting, and it brings Chloe no closer to answering the question that matters most.
Motive.
Why.
Flopping down on her bed, she hits play on the voicemail again. His low tone fills the room like the quiet din of murmured prayer in a church. She turns her bed to one side and considers her Lucifer-board. Or was it a Luci-board?
If he had told her earlier—on his own terms, would it have made a difference? Would she have listened and believed if he didn't offer proof?
A woman of logic, Lucifer had called her. They sat facing each other in Ella's lab with the blinds drawn close. Even then, he glowed with an indescribable light welling from somewhere deep inside.
Lucifer: the Lightbringer. The Morning Star. And Lux is light itself. That is the name he chooses, rechristening himself in the wake of a failed rebellion. It's not the kind that inspires fear or terror, except maybe in demons. But Chloe knows even less about demons than she does angels.
Lucifer doesn't sound like a name that a monster would choose for himself.
"I want to tell you everything. No more going backwards." His voice declares, and the playback ends, plunging her room into silence.
"And then you didn't tell me anything," she says accusingly to the air because the damnable man is not here. "And you still aren't."
-x-x-x-
Trixie asks after Lucifer. She never stopped asking after him even after Marcus came into their lives. Chloe keeps her bedroom locked at all times, regardless if she's inside or not. Trixie must have noticed. The concern weighs her daughter down visibly.
She forces herself to take a break. She reminds herself that this isn't how police-work goes: alone and furtively in the dark. But who can she turn to for backup?
Linda delivers Maze to her door on a muggy Tuesday night. The heat is unbearable, and Chloe is this close to praying for a break in the temperature. Trixie excuses herself and retreats behind her own bedroom door. Chloe doesn't miss the flash of regret on Maze's face, but the demon hides it well.
Linda does not stay long, reminding Maze to call when she headed back to Linda's. Apparently, Maze had been staying with her since the Incident. Chloe finds herself at peace with what Maze is. She had lived with Maze for the better part of a year and learned to compromise around all of her more extreme quirks. But she can't invite Maze to move back in until Maze has absolved herself in Trixie's eyes.
She tells Maze that last part.
"I know." Maze's gaze drifts to Trixie's shuttered bedroom door. Then her dark eyes flicker back to Chloe. "But I'll talk to the little human some other day. I'm here... I'm here to apologize for the wrong I've done you, Chloe."
Chloe gestures for her to continue. She's dying for a glass of wine to distract herself with.
Maze grits her teeth. Her body tenses in that way right before she throws her knife. Maybe that's because Maze doesn't have a fight-or-flight response like humans. She may be all fight.
"I pushed you toward Pierce even though I knew you would end up hurt. Emotionally that is. I didn't think he would try to physically hurt you. I may be a demon, but I don't knowingly torment the innocent. I'm sorry." She sags, and the fight drains from her as her eyes slide to the floor. "I just wanted to go home."
"To Hell." Chloe finds strength in saying it out loud. The truth galvanizes her when she forges it into a weapon to take up against the insanity that is now her life.
Maze whips her head up and stares with unblinking eyes. Lucifer does that too—stares without blinking for so long he plummets straight into the uncanny valley. "You know."
Chloe knows, yet she doesn't. She knows Maze is a demon, Lucifer is the Devil, and her ex-fiance was likely the world's first murderer. She knows but still doesn't understand. She wants to understand so badly.
She jerks her head and signals for Maze to follow. To her surprise, Maze complies without complaint. They climb the stairs to her bedroom. When she invites Maze to enter, the demon hesitates at the threshold. Chloe re-locks the door behind them and throws open her closet.
Maze takes one look at her board and shakes her head. "This is messed up, Decker. The wedding murder board I almost get, but this?"
Chloe hugs her arms tighter, digging her fingers into her biceps. "I need to understand, Maze. He doesn't tell me anything. None of the really important stuff. So I'll do all the digging on my own if I have to. It's what I do for a living."
With eyes fixed on the board, Maze fishes a post-its pad and a sharpie off the rug. "I can try to fill in some of the blanks, but it won't be much. I may have known him for longer, but we weren't joined at the hips. I am my own demon." She juts out her chin and meets Chloe's gaze with defiance.
Chloe nods. She can recognize Maze's offer for what it is—an olive branch. What she won't acknowledge is the familiar hurt of being left behind that Maze mirrors.
-x-x-x-
Maze returns several nights in a row to plaster her board with new insights. They chart out a celestial relationship map on a broad sheet of butcher's paper: everyone from Amenadiel to Charlotte, the woman that formerly housed "Mum," to Uriel, an angelic sibling whose mere name causes Maze to adopt a fighting stance.
Guilt stabs at Chloe and she wrestles it into submission. She is forcibly exhuming all of Lucifer's secrets hoping the evidence will... will... Will what? Chloe's not sure anymore.
They sit cross-legged on the floor of her closet with the witching hour fast on the approach. She's run out of room on her cork-board and had to resort to the closet walls themselves. It's getting unmanageable. Everything wrinkles every time she shifts through her clothing on the hangers.
"Why are you torturing yourself with this, Decker?" Maze knocks back the bottle of vodka she'd brought for the evening and gulps like a fish drinking water. Now that Chloe knows she's a demon, she doesn't have to worry about her former roommate's liver like she used to.
"Why are you helping me then?" Irritation crawls up Chloe's spine. She doesn't need anyone questioning her choices right now. She's doing a fine job of it for herself.
Maze shrugs. "Demon, remember? Helping people torture themselves kinda comes with the territory."
"I'm not the only person you should apologize to."
"I'm working on the little human. She won't talk to me," Maze all but pouts.
"I meant..." Chloe's eyes drift back to her board but she doesn't say his name. "You were going to frame him for murder and implode his life here."
She waits for Maze to make an excuse—to toss the blame back at his feet somehow. All that time with Linda must have worked miracles. Instead, Maze thins her lips and toys with her vodka bottle. Even though she doesn't want to, Maze still cares in her own rough and jagged way. Chloe can relate.
Chloe continued, "I get that he hurt you too. But you're going to wait an eternity if you're waiting for him to be the mature one."
Maze and Lucifer have known each other since long before Chloe ever came into this world and they would endure long after she's gone. They can spend a literal eternity giving each other the silent treatment. The thought is so unbearably sad.
Maze looks her dead in the eye and volleys back, "Right back at cha'."
-x-x-x-
The texts, as brisk as the demon who sent them, land in her phone early morning.
talked to him he's thinking of leaving can't say i'm surprised he's being a fuckin' pussy whatever, not my problem
It's now or never.
She fears the never. Loathes it even.
But first thing first, she calls Dan. He doesn't need much convincing to take their daughter for the rest of the weekend. He's so obviously heartbroken over Charlotte that her own heart occasionally aches in sympathy. But she's been preoccupied. She's been a shit friend while turning her case over and over in her head, polishing it to an impossible sheen like a rock in a tumbler. It's another reason for her to confront this head-on.
She needs to move on.
After seeing Trixie and Dan off for their weekend of daddy-daughter bonding, she goes to her room and extracts the cork-board from its hiding place. She makes sure that each piece is firmly affixed and takes it out to her car. She shoves it into her backseat, paying it no mind that the top half blocks the line of sight out her rear-view window.
It's still early morning when she pulls into Lux's underground garage. It's early enough on a Saturday that she risks interrupting Lucifer in the middle of someone or someones. That's fine. She'll collect their clothing off the floor, encourage them to dress, and escort them out of the penthouse. She'll storm the castle ramparts and expel the interlopers with nothing but the authority behind her LAPD badge.
The elevator ride to the top floor drags like an eternity. Five floors. Ten floors. Fifteen floors. The doors slide open with a cheerful ding, rolling open to offer passage into Lucifer's home. Lucifer sits perched at his piano, plucking a melody that falters when she crosses the threshold. He half-turns on the piano bench, offering only a view of his face in profile as one eye tracks her like a predator.
Chloe drags her cork-board into the penthouse. She wields it, not like a shield, but like a presentation poster that Trixie prepares for the science fair every year. A gust of wind sweeps across the floor from the open balcony windows and ruffles her meticulously compiled evidence. As she approaches the man—no, the angel at the piano, she leaves a trail of paper and photos across the floor.
Lucifer flinches but covers it up by reaching for his glass on top of the piano. He throws his long legs over the bench and spins to face her. He doesn't climb to his feet as if his full height might threaten her. His carefully maintained stubble is thicker and his hair carries a hint of curls like he's taken a drive up the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down. But Chloe knows for a fact he hasn't left Lux in days—like a king under siege.
Like a monster imprisoned in a tower.
She drops the board with a clatter. The sound is a gunshot echoing off the high ceilings and cold marble floors. The sound is her opening salvo.
She's been hedging all her bets on the evidence. She's been processing. But now that she's done, she finds that the only faith required is that which she's had all along.
Faith in him—Lucifer Morningstar: partner, eccentric, and all-around pain in her ass.
She swoops on him like a bird of prey because she must be sharp enough to catch him first. She throws her arms around his neck, buries her face in his hair, and refuses to let go. He smells of whisky and cigarette smoke, neither of which she takes special pleasure from. But it's him.
He locks up, stiff as a board, and trembles. "Detective?"
Her spine curves around him, and she allows her sharp angles and ragged edges to soften. His shoulders sag in the slightest bit, but they remain as hard as rocks. His hands come to rest on the small of her back. The fabric of her shirt bunches in his fists. She counts the breaths rattling through his body: one, two, three, four...
He reaches back, takes a firm grip on her wrists, and untangles them. "What are you doing, detective?" His words are as chilly as the mask he dons.
She doesn't buy it and hefts her verbal icepick to chip away at his facade. "I'm here to collect. You owe me."
He flashes a smile with too many teeth. "And what, pray tell, are you owed?"
She reaches into her jean pockets. Lucifer stiffens as if he expects her to draw her firearm. Chloe is unarmed. She didn't even think to bring her gun along. She doesn't believe she'll need it. She pulls out her phone and opens the music player app. With a jab of her finger, his voice fills the gap between them.
As the voicemail plays, Lucifer's face runs through an interesting gamut of emotions: wistfulness, regret, anger, fear, and despair. One minute and twelve seconds where he fixes his gaze on the phone cradled in her hand, eyes bright and chest heaving without every breath drawn. He looks at it like it's judgment itself.
She brings one hand to his cheek, cradling it and reveling in the hair prickling her palm. She thinks back to the burned and scarred visage of the Devil and presses closer. His skin is warm and unbroken now. He is whole and safe. Still, she wants to know those secret pains and all his faces.
"You said you were done hiding," she mutters.
His dark eyes snap up, roving over the planes of her face like a lover's caress. He must have expected to never see her again. For all his bluster, Lucifer is a creature bred in abandonment, birthed in exile, and reared in isolation. Chloe wants so much more for him.
For them both.
"Please tell me everything," she begs then adds. "It's not too late."
He offers her a hand, palm upturned as an invitation. She drops her hand from his face into his grip. Lucifer rises, curls his fingers around her, and leads her to the sofa. They sit together with knees bumping into each other and her hand on his thigh. She'll make him stay if she has to.
"I am the Devil," he recites—a continuation of their forestalled conversation from the balcony.
With a heart full of light and renewed faith, she responds, "Not to me."