A/N: I am going to preface this one with the following statement: If you are particularly sensitive about religion please DO NOT read this chapter. I am not writing to offend anyone, but I am not certain that this won't offend. I am writing a fictional piece and using a little bit of artistic license that just might cause a little offense to those of you who don't like questions being raised about the Holy Father and his motivations.

Lucifer has been pretty blunt about his Father in the TV show and used some pretty remarkably harsh words to describe him. I am running with that. I am also running with the Doctor and his own questions of blind belief. I am in no way insulting anyone's faith... And if you read past this and do get offended, then please don't ask me for apology or kick up a fuss about it because you have been warned. (of course I know that is inviting the trolls... but what can you do?)

Just remember that we are dealing with the Devil here ... he's not exactly going to be saying wonderful things about the Holy Father, is he?

But off that ... Thanks for the terrific reception to this story ... I certainly hope that I keep you entertained!

~~oooOOOooo~~

"I'm not up to date on the current social scene," the Doctor said with a disinterested shrug. "So you will have to forgive me if I have to ask you again. Just who might you be, then?"

"Lucifer," he answered as he extended a hand in greeting. "Lucifer Morningstar." He grinned widely at Martha's hitched breath. He leaned down with a cheeky smile. "You are welcome to consider me the Devil if you wish."

"Nah," the Doctor drawled with a dismissive wave of his hand as he looked away with disinterest. "Already met him, ta. Middle of a planet orbiting a black hole. Interesting fellow, really. Red skin, big sharp teeth, great big and curled goat horns."

"Really?" Martha breathed with fascination. Her eyes were wide and full of curiosity. "When was this?"

The Doctor shrugged. His bottom lip jutted out just slightly as he swallowed hard. "Oh." He cleared his throat and looked down at the tips of his Converse. "Long time ago now."

"Okay," she breathed curiously.

"Me and Rose," the Doctor continued with his demeanour picking up slightly with the retelling of an adventure. "Managed to land the TARDIS on a sanctuary base on a planet that was orbiting a black hole. Krop Tor. That's what it was called." He scratched at his sideburn as he blew out a breath through pursed lips. "Krop Tor," he repeated slowly. "Quite an adventure we had, me and Rose."

Martha exhaled a long breath, managing to disappointedly mutter a single syllable word that always seemed to clench at her heart.

"Anyhow. Long story short. I lost my TARDIS, fell down a hole, and ended up face to face with the Dark Prince of lore. I destroyed the prison that was holding him in place. Rose sent his consciousness into a black hole." He looked toward Lucifer with tired and somewhat judgmental expression on his face. "So you'll have to forgive me if I don't consider you the Devil." He pursed his lips and then broke out into a smile. "Unless you're hiding a set of horns, ravenous fangs and crimson skin underneath that expensive designer suit of yours."

Lucifer snorted with disgust. He quickly hid that behind nonchalance as he brushed his fingers along the cuff of his sleeve as though to flick off dust. "Perfectly humanoid, thank you." He lifted his eyes to the Doctor and tipped his head to one side. He allowed a rather coy smile to shine through slightly parted lips. "Made in the image of himself, you see."

"Ahh," the Doctor hummed through an open mouth. "Referring to your God, I presume."

"My father," Lucifer corrected shortly. "And I prefer not to refer to him by that name if you don't mind. He is a celestial being, I'll give him that much. A Dictator, perhaps. An all-powerful and selfish bastard if you ask me."

The Doctor was intrigued. Perhaps this evening might have a redeeming facet to it after all. May as well engage. It had been far too long since he had been able to discuss divinity and religion without inadvertently offending someone…

…Humans were so very easily offended, weren't they?

"So," he queried curiously. "You're suggesting that the creator isn't quite as divine as the texts will have us believe?"

"Quite the opposite," Lucifer offered with a waggle in his brow. The waggle shifted to a pinch at the centre of his brow. "The old testament might have been more accurate than the nonsense written from the newer books. Not really one for forgiveness, my Dad. He leans far more toward the side of punishment and damnation than even I've been credited with."

"Well," the Doctor purred as he leaned his elbow down onto a round cocktail table and pressed his fist into his cheek. "This is quite fascinating. Do go on. I love to hear individual opinions and interpretations of religion and the Holy Father."

Martha rolled her eyes with annoyance. "Are you really going to do this, Doctor?"

He hummed and rolled her eyes toward her. "What's that, Martha?"

She flicked her finger in between the two men. "A religious discussion. Doctor. You know that two of the most dangerous topics in this entire universe to broach are Politics and religion. And no one is more dangerous to engage in a conversation of that magnitude than you are."

"Well," he defended with a bluster. "One: I can think of several more topics far more dangerous to discuss than politics and religion. Two." He frowned in thought a moment and then shook his head. "Never mind. There wasn't a second point. A moot point. A point not worth mentioning, then."

Martha inhaled a deep and long suffering sigh. But despite her attempt to make him think that she was annoyed, she smiled warmly and shook her head. She pushed her empty martini glass across the table with her finger and then curled her hand around his glass. "If you're not going to drink this…"

"Go right ahead," he offered with a wink and a smile. "Enjoy your night, Martha Jones. You deserve it."

"You're right. I think I do." She brought the glass to her lips and drew back deeply on it even as she held out her hand to him in an obvious request for money.

"No need," Lucifer ground out smoothly as he took that hand in his and rubbed the pad of his thumb along her knuckles. "Go to the bar and Tell Maze that I'm taking care of your tab this evening."

"Maze?" she panted out awkwardly as she desperately tried not to lift her other hand to fan away the blush that was creeping up her neck and into her cheeks.

"She's not hard to miss," he assured her smoothly. "I expect that she's already preparing you a drink. Martini. As dirty as a Babylonian whore. Three olives?"

Martha shuddered as she nodded in the affirmative. Her breath drew in deep and long. Vaguely, she thought she may have heard the Doctor speak her name in worried question, but she ignored him in favour of looking into the eyes of the man who held her fingers so tenderly inside his. "I. I think. Yes. Yes."

Lucifer's mouth stretched into a smile. His voice purred out long. "Oh, but you have some secret desires inside you, don't you, Martha Jones. Desires not quite suppressed, but certainly sheltered behind your own insecurities."

She swallowed thickly and nodded with jerked movements. Her thoughts was captured within his heady gaze and she found her mouth suddenly dry. "Yes. Yes, I do."

"Mmmm," he hummed with a smile. His voice lowered deep and almost dangerous to her ears. "And what is it, then, that you desire most? What is it that drives you, Martha? What do you want more than anything else?"

"A-Anything?" She stuttered past a dry tongue, riveted by his gaze.

"Name me one pleasure that you want above all else," he pressed smoothly with a lick at his lip.

"Oh and I think that's just about enough," the Doctor barked as he slapped his hand down on the join between Lucifer and Martha to separate them. "I didn't bring Martha here to have a cheap penny-store telepath try to get in her head."

Martha backed off from Lucifer, but was no less enamoured by him regardless of the Doctor's words. She managed to lick the roof of her mouth to moisten her tongue and swallowed shallowly.

Lucifer, however, while not particularly affronted by the Doctor and his apparent possessiveness, levered the Time Lord a somewhat heated glare. "I am not a telepath. I would thank you to not make an accusation like that again." He rolled his shoulders and then shuddered with obvious disgust. "You really don't need to be a telepath to know what's running around in the minds of humans, anyway. They are pretty much all wired in the same way." His mouth stretched into a toothy grin. "And I must say, I do like that they are all so very singularly wired inside their heads. It does make for an interesting lifestyle."

The Doctor took a step forward and narrowed his eyes. He lifted his chin and drew his glasses from his breast pocket. "One that you've no doubt settled on yourself," he remarked as he slid his glasses up along the bridge of his nose. He lifted his chin to regard Lucifer with an analytic look. "Pleasure. It is a very strong driving force, isn't it?"

"Oh," Lucifer purred through a smile. "It certainly is." His smile turned to a parted lip expression of intense question. "It's what drives us all, Doctor. Even you."

The Doctor scrutinized him through non-prescription glass lenses for a long moment before he responded to Lucifer's remark. He let his jaw hang as he pressed the tip of his tongue against the back of his teeth in concentration and just. Looked.

After a moment, he pulled his head back and whipped his glasses from his nose. "Nope," he stated with a jovial pop to his p. "Well. That isn't to say that I don't routinely let myself be led by pleasurable whims here and there." He slid his glasses into his breast pocket and then flicked his long coat open the thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. "Not pleasure in the way that you're alluding, of course."

Lucifer stepped back and deliberately mirrored the Doctor's pose. His expression was of curious fascination. "And what is it that you find pleasure in, Doctor?"

The Doctor didn't miss the way that Lucifer's eyes flared somewhat sanctimoniously when he spoke the word "you". He also caught the way he sharpened the pronunciation of the syllables in his name, with exaggeration on the end of the word.

He wasn't going to let it goad him, however. Instead the Doctor merely took a short stride backward and gave the Prince of Darkness one of his trademark, smart-aleck grins.

"What pleasures the Doctor," he answered almost breathlessly. "Well. That is a very long and detailed list. Travelling through time and space really is at the number one spot of my lists of pleasure." He swallowed and rolled his eyes off to the left as he rocked himself forward slightly. "Stepping onto a new planet. New ground beneath my feet. Different sky above my head. Oh," he sang with a glint in his eye and a smile upon his face. "Now that. That is unspeakably pleasurable."

He started to walk cautiously around the table, and around Lucifer. His hands were still deeply ensconced in his trouser pocket. His eyes darted guardedly around the venue. "I take pleasure in the small things that surround us – like the morning song of the gravadirol on Episolia, or the trill of the trunkike in the early evening."

"Boring," Lucifer belled out much like a warning gong on amateur night. He strode toward the Doctor with a fairly menacing grin across his cheeks. "Utter garbage."

"I think not," the Doctor barked in reply.

"I'm not referring to the minor pleasures that give you a little flutter of something in your chest." He flicked his fingers against his chest to punctuate his words. His hand then snaked down along his belly the poke his thumb into the waist of his trousers. He leaned forward with a sneer. "I'm talking about the carnal desires that drives all of mankind. The pleasures of the flesh. The thumping, pounding, raw and unbridled passion that threatens to rip your soul apart if it isn't sated."

The Doctor watched Lucifer with a brow seated high and arched on his forehead. He seemed rather indifferent to the stalking passion rippling from the posture held by Lucifer. "You're talking about sex," the Doctor answered blandly. He waited for Lucifer to react before continuing.

"You got it in one," Lucifer cheered with a pump of his finger into the air toward the Doctor's chest. "I'm talking about the desires that make my dad blush." He grinned and passed a look toward Martha, softening his voice to a purr. "Or make a worthy female blush at any rate." His eyes shifted back to the Doctor. He kept his voice at a low purr. "Surely you aren't so repressed that you have no desire-"

"I really don't," the Doctor interrupted with a shrug in his shoulders. "Superior biology and centuries of training at the academy by equally repressed professors does give way to a rather persistent lack of interest in the opposite sex for anything other than friendly companionship."

"Oh," Lucifer choked out as he jerked slightly backward. "Oh, I would hate to be you, then."

"Sometimes I hate being me, too," the Doctor admitted with a shrug and a smile. "But I am what I am, and I don't intend to change myself anytime soon."

"No no no," Lucifer peppered out with a disbelieving shake in his head. "I can't believe for one second anything that you're saying. No man has the ability to completely shut off the physical drive to seek out his own pleasures." His brow knitted together and his eyes pinched in analysis of the pinstriped conundrum standing ahead of him. "I wouldn't be here if it was that easy to condition yourself to ignore the carnal urges."

"What about the priests that take a vow of celibacy…"

"Oh, well. They are the most easy to corrupt," Lucifer finished with a grin. He waggled a brow and tipped his head with arrogant self-congratulations. "It's so easy to corrupt them that I've lost interest in even trying."

The Doctor narrowed his eyes and turned his head to look at Lucifer with a sideways glance. "Why would you even want to try?"

Lucifer's face brightened with a gleeful smile. "Because it's what I do," he declared proudly. "Tempt those who should not be tempted. Find out your ultimate weakness and desire." He grinned darkly. "And then exploit those desires in the most illicit and sinful manner." His smile of pride fell and he let out a tired breath. "Well, such is my reputation anyway. Temptation being the pathway to evil, which then leads to Hell, and to my front door." He rolled his eyes and shrugged with obvious boredom. "And let's face it. I can understand the reputation. Things would get pretty boring in Hell if I didn't have any sinners to punish for all eternity."

The Doctor's narrowed eyes pinched further. "With the Holy Father being so full of forgiveness, I would think that Hell is rather sparsely populated right now."

"That statement is wrong on several counts," Lucifer corrected quietly. "Full house, and not as much forgiveness as you think there is. It's much harder to ascend than it is to fall."

"Don't I know it," the Doctor murmured to himself. "I believe the universe holds me to a debt with an amortization that extends well beyond all eternity."

Lucifer snorted. "Then it's a good thing for you that my family only watch over this insignificant rock, isn't it?"

The Doctor flicked his eyes sharply toward Lucifer. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"Well," he drawled. "You have the haughty air of superiority that belongs to the heavens, yet you aren't a celestial being. You aren't human – despite appearances." His head tipped to one side and his eyes flared wide and almost manic. "You travel through time and space, which is in direct defiance to my father's laws – not that I've ever obeyed any of them, so my respect to you on that."

"I'm an alien," the Doctor admitted with a shrug. "From Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous."

"A Time Lord," Lucifer realized with a widening grin. "Oh. I've heard plenty of rumours about your kind."

The Doctor's expression fell to wariness. His body tensed and his hand shifted to seek out Martha's. "And just what kind is that?"

Lucifer looked thrilled. "The kind that uses Dad's list of commandments as a guideline of what to do rather than what not to do." He bellowed out a laugh. "The Shadow people who farmed the universe looking for playing pieces to engage in the blood sports of your people? Time Scooping innocent people to the Death Zone to fight each other to death … for the viewing pleasure of your people."

"That was a long time ago," the Doctor growled.

"Death and destruction with complete disregard to anyone who wasn't born within the Time Lord Empire," Lucifer continued. "And the people here call me the monster!" He shook his head and then folded his arms across his chest as he leaned his hip on the railing. "I am not the monster," he warned. "I may be the punisher. Oh I might even enjoy raining down the most extreme of punishments on the demons that get sent my way. I get quite a thrill out of it if I'm going to be completely honest." He inhaled deeply and softened his voice. "But I would never actively seek out innocent souls and destroy them for destruction's sake. No. That is the act of the real monsters."

"I'm not one of them," the Doctor said softly. "The history of my people isn't glorious. I know that. To most of us, it's an embarrassment. The new order worked hard to change the perception and the reputation of my species."

Lucifer nodded knowingly. "To pardon the somewhat religious pun, you are preaching to the choir. I've never been one to routinely punish a soul because of the actions of their ancestors. Very little point in that, really." He flicked his hand upward to snatch a tumbler of whiskey from a passing waitress. "It doesn't tend to give anyone any incentive to behave, now, does it? Not if I'm going to burn them in Hell for the rest of eternity because their great great great grandfather committed some atrocity back around the same time that Noah took his last shit. Yet…"

The Doctor lifted his eyes to stare at Lucifer through his brows. "You really do believe that you're the Devil, don't you?"

Lucifer leaned forward, yet was still able to draw a sip from his whiskey. He kept his voice low, and smiled dangerously. "That's because I am."

The Doctor's brow arched high. "Then why are you here, on Earth, instead of torturing the sinners in Hell?"

"Why are you here on Earth, and not on Gallifrey Lording yourself over all of Time?"

The Doctor pursed his lips and rocked back on his heels as he looked off to the side with guilt. "Would you believe that I'm on vacation?"

"Only if you believe that I am." He waited for the Doctor to look toward him and continued to speak after taking a draw from his glass. "Escaping is what it's really called, Doctor. I found an opening and ran from the pits of Hell to embark on a new life up here on the surface of the planet. And I expect that you are engaged in something rather similar to that." He grinned. "Am I right? Oh tell me I'm right."

"Close enough," the Doctor said with a shrug. "Except rather than living a hedonistic lifestyle of excess and debauchery, I'm travelling the universe acting as champion to time and saving what civilisations need my help."

Lucifer tipped his glass to that. "And you've saved this rock more than once. Thank you."

"I wouldn't have to if God…"

"Oh don't start with him," Lucifer groaned. "He's a creator, not a caretaker. Trust me on that."

"Trust the Devil?"

Lucifer's nose scrunched up with amusement. "I really do have a rather unfortunate reputation, don't I? My word is my bond," he advised firmly. "I have never and will never go back on my word. If I say it will be done, then so it will be done."

"As is mine," the Doctor said with a sigh as he slumped onto the rail beside Lucifer. "So I have to ask. Red skin. Big teeth. Goat horns. Forked tail?"

"I swear to my father that when I found out who spread that lie, I will personally drag them into hell and drive a spike up their arse and plant it at my doorstep. I will make sure that they are ruthlessly tortured for all eternity – I will make it my personal mission to punish them for the rest of time." He folded his arms across his chest and let his tumbler hand precariously from his fingers. "He made me in his image, as he created the human race, Doctor. He wouldn't give the form of a red-skinned goat monster to his favourite son."

The Doctor let out a confused sound and looked to the laces of his Chucks. "Then I wonder what beast I encountered on Krop Tor." He lifted his head to look into the crowd. "It certainly did represent the image of Satan quite remarkably."

Lucifer turned his head to look at the Doctor. "When you work it out, let me know. Somehow I'll work the true identity of that creature into the texts so they can stop thinking that's me."

"And in the meantime you'll poke and prod these mere and mortal humans to reveal to you their deepest and most hidden desires, hopefully to exploit that to sate your own needs and desires."

Lucifer shrugged. "Well. Right now I'm working on compelling a Time Lord to admit to me his own desires so that I might exploit them for my own gain."

"Good luck with that."

Lucifer grinned and waggled his brows. "Oh. I don't need luck, Doctor. I doubt I'd even need to try to compel you to admit your most wanton desire." He bit at his glass with a grin. "I'm sure it'll all be revealed sooner rather than later."

"I'm a Time Lord. I have no desires worth poking and prodding for." He thrust his hands deeply into his trouser pockets and exhaled a long breath as he looked through the crowd. "At least not any more."

"Well," Lucifer purred. "That is interesting. That suggests that once upon a time there was a nasty little pleasure that you did want to take for yourself." He danced his shoulders just slightly as he drew back a sip of his drink. "Just what, or who, did the mighty Lord of Time desire so deeply that its loss tore away his natural born hedonistic desires?"

The Doctor didn't speak. In fact he wasn't even breathing. His eyes were locked on the crowd and on a woman who had just walked into the club. Though she was hidden in the shadows, he could see the pronounced angled shape of her jaw, the curvature of her chin caused by the swell of plump lips that set naturally into a juicy pout. Dark brows arched over large eyes. Blonde hair tied into a tail draped limply down over her shoulder.

His face fell and he swallowed thickly as the resurrection of desire exploded within him.

"Rose."