i miss prothesis and mending souls

trample over beauty while singing their thoughts

i match them with my euphoria

when they say "je suis plus folle que toi"

"Doctor!" Lucifer hollered as he whipped the door of Dr. Martin's office open, sending enough force to shake the leaves of the fake tree behind it. "I've got a bone to pick. You see, the Detective says I need to be more sensitive now that-"

Linda's hard gaze was filled with fury as Lucifer realized he had walked in on another client's session without so much as knocking. The older man on the couch had been crying behind his hands until the interruption, which had shocked him into only sniffles. There was an uncomfortable silence until Lucifer assessed the situation and let out an overdramatic sigh. "Well this is bloody ironic, isn't it? Good one, Dad," he laughed dryly as he pointed up to the ceiling, then shook his head with a final chuckle. To the horror of Dr. Martin, Lucifer took a seat on the couch next to the crying man.

"There, there. Pull yourself together, mate. No use blubbering about," he rambled as he patted the man's shoulder, then looked back at the doctor. "Am I doing this correctly?"

There were few times in life when Linda Martin lost her temper, and the majority of those times had to do with Lucifer. However, with the patience and tone of a kindergarten teacher, Linda curled her fingers over her clipboard as she spoke. "Lucifer," she addressed, ignoring the utterly oblivious look on his face while he waited for his upcoming praise. "I am in session with another client right now. You need to go sit in the waiting area until I call you."

Narrowing his eyes, Lucifer considered asking why she couldn't just send this poor sod on his way and open conversation with him, but begrudgingly obliged nevertheless.

The crying man must have felt too awkward to continue on with whatever he was having a cry about, as it only took another minute or so before the door opened again and he shuffled out. "Chin up, mate," Lucifer reminded him with a smile that was much too cheerful, feeling good about how sensitive he had been in there. He stood once more and swooped in on the door, assuming the doctor had left it open as a silent invitation for him. He peered inside and knocked on the doorframe twice. "Doctor, have you freed yourself for me yet?"

"Lucifer, you are not my only client. That was completely uncalled for and violates-"

"Ah, yes, won't happen again," Lucifer rushed the acceptance as he patted the seat of the couch to make sure it wasn't wet with tears before sitting. He smiled pleasantly as he stared at the back of Linda's head until she turned around and resumed her chair. "Like I was saying, the Detective thinks I need to be more sensitive now that we were all practically murdered by a deranged cop, but I just find children so horrid-"

Linda put a hand up to slow him after the murder thing and interjected a "hold on." She tapped a pen against her clipboard while she grasped the concept. "You were 'practically murdered'? You and Chloe?"

Crossing his ankle over his knee and swinging it a bit impatiently, Lucifer waved a hand in the air as if swatting a fly. "A case gone awry, I'm afraid. Her daughter was present and my brother was stabbed and anyway, it's a long story ending in my being scolded over the child's 'feelings.'" Air quotes included.

As she usually did when examining Lucifer, Linda tried to strip down what she assumed to be a dramatic fabrication of a story and decided that the main point here was advice on how to be sensitive to children. "So you want to be more sensitive to appeal to her daughter's feelings, or because you were scolded for ignoring them?"

Tough one. "Bit of both, really," Lucifer put a finger against his chin as he pondered. "My existence is infinitely better being that I have no womb-born children and never will. However, it is important to the detective that her daughter be smothered with kindness after watching her mum shoot a lunatic in the chest several times, I suppose."

"And what's important to Chloe is important to you."

"Precisely. We're working on this whole 'trust' thing so that we can be proper partners."

"Partners?"

Lucifer's eyes flickered for a millisecond before his face melted down again into a smirk, getting what she was implying. "Partners in crime, of course. Quite literally, in fact."

Mulling it over, Linda realized she was now too absorbed in this conversation to relay it back to what she wanted to talk about, which was the dysfunction of his brother and how she had been unwillingly roped into their feud. She would have to bring that up again and work it out if she wanted to clear the air and remain professional, so she wrote "brother" at the top of her page as a reminder to herself. Then, falling to his whim, she returned to the matter of the detective and her daughter. "If you respect Chloe, then you have to at least try to respect her daughter. It's not like she'll be going away any time soon."

"I get that," Lucifer sighed, slumping back against the couch cushions and drawing a heavy breath. "I just don't know what to do with children. I hardly ever see one in Hell. Do they all watch dreadful animations and eat artificially flavored lumps of sugar?"

Ignoring the Hell comment Linda let out a laugh despite herself and nodded. "Basically. Children are easy to please. They like nice things and hate going to bed early. I think if you just try and make an effort to befriend her daughter, it will really make a difference in your relationship with Chloe as well."

"The partners in crime relationship," he clarified.

"Yes, of course."

Lucifer thought for a minute, wondering what he could possibly tolerate for very long that would also be acceptable for a child. Alcohol was clearly out of the picture, and he doubted she cared about his piano talents. "I don't even know where to begin with this effort, Doctor. I have no stomach for chocolate cake, or fluffy bunnies, or…" he froze as he trailed off, realizing how he could kill two birds with one sensitive stone. "That's it!" he reveled in his epiphany, jumping to his feet and heading for the door.

"Lucifer, we really should talk about…"

"Next time, dear."

Lucifer slammed the door of her office behind him and Linda took her glasses off, rubbing her forehead with the palms of her hands.

Not surprisingly, there was no Asherah Morningstar in any police database Chloe had access to. A part of her felt obligated to help Lucifer and it was a nag she couldn't stand. A proper explanation would arise for how he had survived that gunshot wound without a scratch, but that meant talking about it. She was still at the point where she wanted to let her anger out at him whenever she saw his stupid face, so until she could calm down, she could help him search for his mother for… well, the hell of it.

The precinct was quiet as eyes glanced at her and quickly looked away. Chloe kept her head up while walking to her desk, hand-in-hand with Trixie. Her stomach had been churning in a mix of anticipation and 'told you so,' but she could not find her voice to speak to anyone. Trixie immediately retreated under Chloe's desk when they arrived. As it was their first time in a public place, Chloe worried that she had felt the need to immediately hide. She would call around psychiatric offices tonight once Trixie fell asleep.

There were files on her desk from the entire case, starting with the very first murder of the Satanist. Chloe glanced through her preliminary notes, feeling sicker as they stopped with the murder of the priest and Lucifer's escape from Lux. She would have to relive from that point on, as she always put herself back in the scenario mentally to write a thorough report.

Dan's preliminary notes were also in the file, as well as his interview after turning himself in. When Chloe had finally turned her phone back on an hour before, the only message from him was days old and said simply, "don't worry."

Glancing through the interview was not helping the green in her face, so that was when she had decided to take a detour and search for Lucifer's mother, mainly just to say she had. She was switching from the databases to simply Google when she heard a "Decker" barked behind her and turned in her chair.

"Didn't expect to see you back so soon," it was the chief, cup of coffee in hand.

Chloe swallowed hard, trying not to look intimidated, though she was feeling like a tiny, sick mouse. "Just wanted to wrap up this case and get started on the next." With Trixie still under her desk, she was silently praying the chief would not mention Dan, or bring up-

"We still need to review your decision to succumb to the ransom of a suspect. Alone, on top of that."

Damn it. Chloe pretended to look very busy with her papers for a moment to steal a glance at Trixie. Finally, she nodded. "You're right. It was a rash decision." Her words collapsed in a sigh. There was really no justifying her decision, especially not with Trixie right at her knees.

The chief looked over her before his stare softened. "Decker, if you need until Monday…"

"No," Chloe snapped immediately. She had spent much too long making her name in the force for everyone to write her off as weak and shaken now. "I don't need any more days off. I'll have this report done tonight, and keep me posted for the next case."

Wordlessly, the chief gave a nod and a shrug and finally left Chloe in peace. Fueled with a new adrenaline to write this report, she flipped the file open and attempted to make use of an omniscient technique by pretending like it was not about her.

"Mommy?" Trixie piped up suddenly, finally taking her face out of the game she had been playing on Chloe's cell phone. "I don't need any more days off either."

Chloe looked down at her daughter with a tilted head and a frown. She couldn't really deny Trixie's request after the example she was setting. She sighed with the tiniest of smiles and brushed a bit of Trixie's hair off of her forehead with her fingertips. "You're my kid," she gave in with a nod. "Let me just finish up here. We'll grab dinner on the way home and pack your backpack for tomorrow."

Her bit of anger-filled adrenaline subsided and she was once again exhausted. Nonetheless, she picked up a pen and returned her attention to the file. Her visual focus was somewhere in the middle of an empty page as she backtracked her brain to the night at Lux. Following Dan's lead to the brewery, running into Lucifer, feeling guilty for the millisecond she considered him a suspect, Dan turning himself in, Trixie calling… gunshots…

Her heart jumped and she looked under her desk to make sure her daughter was still there, unaware of how long she had sat there daydreaming. "Mommy," Trixie chimed, looking up with a small, hopeful grin. "I like Lucifer. He's mean sometimes, but I think he's a good guy."

Chloe jolted out of her reverie again and had to keep from rolling her eyes out of habit. His charm even worked on children, it seemed. "I'm glad you think so," was the only polite thing she could think of as she closed the file again. Her focus and motivation was gone. She shook her computer's mouse to bring the screen out of sleep mode. The screen was still on Google and she quickly remembered her current favorite distraction.

'Asherah Morningstar' again yielded no worthy results. Backspacing, the first name only brought up a research page.

Asherah - Athirat - Ashtarath

Goddess of Motherhood and Fertility

Recognized as the consort of God.

Said to have created 70 children, most notably archangels Gabriel, Samael, Raphael, and Michael.*

"Can we have pizza for dinner?"

Blinking quickly to mentally absorb the information, Chloe exited the page when Trixie asked. "Let's go," Chloe said as she gathered her things, grabbing Trixie's hand as they left the cubicle.

"I'm going to start charging you rent if you continue to freeload on my couch," Lucifer warned Amenadiel the moment he walked into his apartment and found the angel exactly where he had left him. "I mean honestly, the rent here is already outstanding and now you're sapping the electricity as well."

"Electricity?" Amenadiel repeated, sitting up and turning the television off so it wouldn't appear that he was enjoying Judge Judy as much as he was.

Lucifer sighed and threw his hands up in exasperation. "Must I personally introduce you to every facet of human life in the 21st century, brother? Electricity, powering up your wonderful new pastime. If you're going to stick around on earth, you've got to start learning these things." Wandering through to peer into his bedroom, he turned toward Amenadiel again. "Anyway, where is Maze?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Amenadiel sighed and winced at a pain in his side. Though the wound was healed, demon weapons forged in Hell left lingering injury. Even worse was the mental anguish of showing pain and weakness in front of Lucifer.

"She didn't come up? She was lounging around on the pavement downstairs just this morning."

"No, she didn't. I figured you left to track her down."

Lucifer scoffed. "I don't 'track down' my employees." Though it felt strange to refer to her as only that, his brain made the connection to Lux for the first time in a few days. Perhaps she was hidden away there. Hopefully she was running the business. He made a mental note to also tip the cleaning staff handsomely upon his return, given that he did not find any remaining glass shards anywhere. "I was out investigating Mum's whereabouts while you were allowing your brain to melt into the plasma screen."

"You went to see the detective."

"Well, yes."

Amenadiel could not hide his smirk as he raised a brow, inciting a quick eye roll from Lucifer. "And how did that go?"

Lucifer battled the strange and sudden urge to pour out everything he was thinking by faking a toothy grin. "Business as usual, I suppose. She'll come through on a lead, I'm sure."

"Aren't you worried about opening that can of worms? Introducing her to… the family?"

Lucifer thought for a moment. He could literally sit Chloe down with the most stoic of expressions and explain every detail of his existence for the past millennia in grotesque specifics and she would still find a way to deny it. He had been resurrected in front of her, for father's sake, and yet that miracle had been overshadowed earlier that day by the fact that he had not knocked before entering her home. "It is what it is," he shrugged, hands in his pockets as he drifted toward the picture window to stare out of it dramatically. Out of every human emotion he had had a taste of, sadness was by far the most loathsome.

but i'm actually good, can't help it if we're tilted

i am actually good, can't help it if we're tilted

* biblical information may be altered or skewed for fictional purposes

"tilted" property of christine and the queens