A/N: I had considered ending this fic with one last chapter of happy happy joy joy or something ... then I thought better of it.

I realized that I wasn't quite done with Lucifer.. I wanted to play with him a little bit more. Just a wee bit.

So let's see where this new direction takes us, shall we? I do hope that you enjoy... I really do ...

Not bored yet, right?

~~oooOOOooo~~

Lucifer's long nimble fingers danced across the piano keys as he gently tapped out a haunting melody; his version of a song that had swayed through the charts for a time in 2014. The lyrics were suggestable and could be interpreted in whichever way the listener wanted to, but he didn't much care to analyse it. Words were words and chords were chords. If he could hit the notes and let the lyrics flow, he couldn't care less about their meaning. Whatever meaning the lyricist had meant for his song, Lucifer couldn't be bothered working out.

Not tonight at any rate.

His version of the song was slow and somewhat melancholy. It allowed him to close his eyes, lift his head, and howl out the words that seemed to strike a chord within him.

"Take me to church," he crooned without any visible emotion. ""I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies. I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife."

His eyes opened to a slit as he caught the scent of a woman who had dared take a seat on the bench beside him. His chin remained high, but he let his eyes follow her movements as she reached up to place her tall glass of something quite obviously fruity on top of the piano beside his three empty tumblers. His fingers paused on the keys as he slowly lowered his chin to regard her properly.

"Oh don't stop," she breathed with disappointment. "I was really enjoying that song." She turned to him with a flick of her long and wavy chestnut hair and fluttered impossibly long lashes over deep whiskey-brown eyes. "I've never heard it played quite like that before."

Lucifer twisted in his seat and leaned away from her somewhat. He leaned one arm along the lip of the piano keyboard, and then reached across himself to pick up one of the three glasses from the top of the instrument. He tried to play suave as he drew the glass to his lips, and even gave her a somewhat slurred waggle in his brow.

"Oh," she sang through pursed and glossy full lips as she shook her head and put her fingers on his glass. "That might not be a good idea."

He allowed her fingers to grip at the very top of his glass and didn't bother to question just why she seemed so eager to take his drink from him. Instead he merely raised a brow at her and tipped his head to one side. "You have a problem with alcohol?" He released a small chuckle. "Teetotalling church-goer, are you? Well, you've obviously wandered into the wrong town." He flicked one brow. "Not to forget walked up to the wrong man."

She hummed her own chuckle and shook her head. "Oh it's not that," she purred gently as she took the glass from his hand and held it up to his face. She tilted it lightly to show him the contents. "I just figured you didn't want to drink cigarette butts with your whiskey." Her smile shifted to something unsure and she tipped her head at him curiously. "Unless, of course, you wanted it that way? I'm really not sure how people here drink their alcohol. I mean, each to their own, yeah?"

She handed him back the glass. "Sorry. I really shouldn't have assumed. Where I'm from people don't drop cigarette butts into alcohol with the intent to drink it after." She shrugged and tipped the glass to him with an urging for him to take it. "But here. Who knows, right? Perhaps you like your whiskey with the smoky aroma of tobacco ask. Perhaps it's the in thing with the Prime crowd." She made an expression of distaste and shook her head. "But not my cup of tea, ta."

Lucifer's brows pinched together with slight annoyance as he took the glass from her and then flicked it to toss its contents on the carpet behind them. "Thank you …I'm sorry, your name?"

"Oh," she sang with her eyes lighting up and a light bounce in her seat. "That's right." She held out her hand. "I'm Elizabeth, but everyone calls me Liz."

"Liz," he purred with a suave purr as he held out his hand in a request for her to place hers in his palm. "I'm Lucifer."

"Oh," she giggled as she winked and took her glass from the top of the piano. "I know who you are." She pursed her lips over the straw and drew back a small sip. Her eyes glistened as she swallowed and then licked at her lip. "I've heard quite a bit about you."

He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and let out a sharp huff. "I wish I could tell you that it was all lies," he said solemly as he dropped his eyes toward a passing and very scantily-clad waitress and flicked his fingers in a request for another drink. "So are you here looking to make a deal, or to share my bed and crow to your friends that you slept with the Devil?"

Liz coughed on another sip of her drink. "Oh. Oh, no! No no no no no. No. Absolutely no. Absolutely and positively no with a capital N and a gigantic O."

He slid his eyes to her and lifted a brow of curiosity. "I'm honestly not sure if I should take offence to your vehemence against spending a romantic few hours with me, or be thankful because I'm not in the mood to make it any good for you."

She shook her head quickly. "I'd be more concerned about the fact that you even put the offer on the table," she warned him with a conspiratorial whisper. Her eyes flicked from side to side as though to ensure they weren't being heard. "Because if my brother heard that offer…" Her eyes widened and she blew out a breath. "Man. Well. He'd go pretty much psycho on you for it. And then when he was through with you , then Mum might have a go, and then Dad … or…" her brows pinched. "Or is he my uncle? Step Dad? Family friend?"

She tipped her head curiously at him. "What do I call the clone of my father? I mean once upon a time, they were both the same man. And they both love my mum. But. But Dad's gone now – gone nearly a year and a half – and while Mum'n him haven't really gotten together yet, it's pretty inevitable that it's going to happen one day." She rubbed at her chin and looked absently across the club in thought. "At least that's what he's hopin'. And me and Jamie, too, if I'm going to be honest. Mum's being a bit bullheaded about the whole thing, but we know it's what she wants, too."

She looked back to Lucifer with wide eyes of question. "Well? Do you know?"

His jaw gaped. "Do you typically sprout off nonsensical garbage in a deliberate attempt to not be understood?"

Her expression fell, and she quickly fidgeted at the stem of her glass. "I don't really get out much," she admitted quietly. Her shoulders tipped up and she sipped her head low. "And I certainly don't often get the chance to be able to sit down and talk with handsome men. At least," she admitted timidly. "At least not without Jamie standing sentinel behind me."

Lucifer's eyes widened and then narrowed at the suddenly very unconfident demeanour of the woman beside him. Although she looked to be deep inside her twenties, she seemed to be carrying herself off more of an awkward teenager than a young woman.

"Tell me," he questioned curiously as he finally allowed himself to look harder at his attractive companion. He smiled toward the waitress as she handed him a drink with a wink and a kiss in the air, and then drew the lass toward his lips. He looked over the back of the glass toward her. "How old are you, Liz?"

"Well that's a bit personal, don't you think?" she asked sharply. She waited until he looked appropriately chagrinned and then offered him a smile. "I'm 67 years old, will be sixty eight in six months."

Lucifer half-gagged, half-choked, and damn near drowned on a mouthful of whiskey at her answer. His eyes were blown wide with disbelief as he wiped whiskey from his lapel. "I'm sorry, did you say that you were in your sixties?"

"Yes," she answered with wide eyes and a nod of her head. "Late sixties, actually." Her wide eyes fell back to a more relaxed openness. "Well, that's age relative to humans, of course. I know that would officially make me a senior citizen on this planet – and if you could believe it, I actually had a senior's discount card back in the parallel world." She opened up her mouth and laughed a brilliant sound of glee. "Noone would let me use it, mind. They didn't believe me. But, yeah. I've got some years on the old odemeter."

Lucifer's eyes were wide with disbelief, but his mind ticked with the information she was providing him with, and slowly he began to make sense of it.

"Now," Liz said with a more sobered tone of voice. "For my species – I guess you can say – I'm still only an infant. A young girl if you will." She tapped at her lip. "Not real sure just what the Gallifreyan equivalent is just yet. I never really thought to ask. But Dad always told me that I wasn't allowed to date until I was 200, and Jamie's making damn sure that I stick to that rule." Her eyes widened again and she sifted her head around with thought. "So. From what I've heard from other dads is that they say their daughters can't have boyfriends until they're about 40. So if I work it out using the mathematical equation of: 200 divided into-"

"Oh," Lucifer cut in quickly with a wave of his hand. "Don't bother with the math. Really."

"No?" she queried with surprise.

"You're a Time Lord, aren't you?" he asked her in a rather flat tone.

She blinked. She nodded. She shook her head. "Well. Yes and No. You're half right, of course. I'm the daughter of a Time Lord – or at least a half-human version of one – and a once human now Time Lady. And because I'm a female, I'm technically a Time Lady myself…"

"I think I got it," he interrupted with a rise of his hand. He set his glass on the piano and pulled a package of cigarettes from the top. He tapped the pack against his palm to eject a single stick. "And I'm going to guess that your father is a Time Lord known as the Doctor."

She nodded eagerly. "That's right. Well. The clone version of him anyway. Although the fully Time Lord Doctor is working hard at trying to take the place of my dad, both with me and Jamie and with Mum – which is where my confusion to his title comes in. He is. He isn't. He might be."

He shook his head with disbelief and amusement. "You really do have quite the gob, don't you?"

There was a shift in the air beside him, and another attractive woman took up place on the bench opposite to Lis.

"She does," Rose Tyler agreed with a smile as she squared herself in front of the piano keys and let her hands hover over the top as though planning the best place to splay her fingers. "And so you are very well aware, Lucifer Morningside, that gob of hers is, and only ever will be used for eating and for talking." She shot him a warning stare. "So don't be getting no ideas."

Lucifer quickly rocked his head to look toward her, and gasped when he took in her full lips, square jaw and casually put together appearance. For a moment his breath caught in his chest at her friendly, yet cautious expression.

…It he'd had three more glasses of whiskey, he may have been forgiven for believing she was the Detective. He held himself short of remarking on the similarities between the two women and made do with forcing out a one word question.

"Rose?"

She didn't look at him, instead focusing on the keys as she slowly began to play a song unfamiliar to anyone but herself and the Doctor.

"He mentioned me, then?"

Lucifer settled his nerves somewhat by drawing back deeply on his cigarette. He exhaled and watched as she focused on the sequence of keys underneath her fingers.

"To suggest he merely mentioned you, Rose, is a gross understatement."

She leaned forward and looked down the length of the keys as Liz tinkled the same tune played by her mother, only in the lowest register. She offered her daughter a smile and then looked back to her own set of keys. "If I was informed correctly," she said quietly. "Deals were made in my name."

"Actually," Lucifer began as he dropped the remains of his cigarette into an empty whiskey glass. "Any and all deals were made in my name, with a vow of honour from the Doctor. Your name's involvement in the deal was…" He chuckled. "Well, it was the wager. The pendulum of enticement for me to get what I want." He passed his eyes between the two sets of hands striking out a tune either side of him. With a nod of his head, he settled his fingers on the keys and followed along with them.

"Tell me, Rose," he asked gently. "Are you happy?"

"Moreso that you appear to be," she answered somewhat sagely as her eyes focused on the movement of her fingers across the keys. He felt the hitch in his breath more that she heard it. "But yeah. I'm in a good place I suppose."

"Still in love with your Time Lord, then?"

Rose had to chuckle at that. "I always will be," she confirmed with a smile. "No matter his face, his body, or whether he was the full or half Time Lord – I'm going to be in love with the old man." She laughed at a squeak from her daughter and the kissing sounds she made in response.

"I'm just not quite ready to be all that he wants me to be right now." Her smile faltered. "I spent nearly seven decades as the devoted wife to a wonderful man who selflessly gave himself to me, no holds barred." She looked up to Lucifer. "The Doctor – I mean the full Time Lord one – he's not ready yet to completely open himself to me. And until then, I will simply be his loyal and devoted companion."

Lucifer hummed thoughtfully and continued to play the keys in front of him. "Perhaps he's not ready because you don't appear to be," he offered thoughtfully. "Ever think about that?"

Rose lifted her chin and laughed a deep and throaty laugh. "Oh, I don't have to think about it," she answered hoarsely. "That man doesn't know how to give himself completely. He's so closed off…"

"Scared," Lucifer corrected quietly. "Scared so much of how deeply he loves you that he tries to run from it."

"That's ridiculous, and a very poor excuse if you ask me."

Lucifer immediately stopped playing and twisted in his seat to face her. His eyes were hard with annoyance. "Do you have any idea about the man and the state he was in when we met – not once, but twice?"

Her mouth gaped and she shook her head.

"He walked in my club on that first night, all full of arrogance and a poorly put on air of self-righteous indignation to the ideas of love and pleasure." He inhaled deeply and cooled his voice. "Until he saw an image that was the ghost of you." He passed his hand up and down in the air at her side. "He saw a woman who reminded him of the one he lost, and the cracks in his carefully plated armour began to show."

He turned back to the piano and looked at his hands as he settled his fingers back on the keys. "How do you think I was able to tempt him to deal with the Devil, Rose? Do you think he did it because he wasn't desperately in love with you and knew he was nothing but a shell of a man without you?"

"I never really thought about it," she admitted pitifully.

"No," he barked. "You women don't, do you? You see only what you want to see and refuse to see it for what it truly is – even when it's lit up in neon signs in front of your face." He let out a long breath and blinked his eyes slowly. Slowly he drew in another and held it before he spoke again in a voice low and almost reverent. "When he came back to me the second night. The Doctor. He was unrecognizable against the man I'd dealt with earlier. He was disheveled, distraught, angry at the world – at me – and the universe as a whole."

"What had happened to him?" she asked in a tone that suggested she already knew.

He snorted a rueful laugh. "He'd just had to say goodbye to you again, didn't he? He left you on a beach with his clone. He came to me all piss and vinegar, accusation and sorrow. His hearts were shattered, and he truly didn't believe he'd be able to pick up all the pieces and go on."

"But he did," she offered with emotion in her voice. "Like he always does."

"No he didn't," he countered quietly. "At least not the man I met. He changed, and more than just his face and body, he changed into something completely different. He became the exact opposite of the person he had spent hundreds of years carefully cultivating. He broke his own vow – the promise he made to himself when he called himself Doctor."

Rose blinked tears from her eyes and inhaled a wet sniff. "How? How do you even know this? In your timeline it's been only a few months…. It's been centuries for him."

Lucifer snorted. He actually smirked. "I'm Lucifer," he clarified sternly. "The Son of God. The Devil. A celestial being who can see beyond today…"

Liz shifted in toward Lucifer and looked across his chest toward her mother. "It's actually quite legendary, really. I was reading some texts on the TARDIS from this time period about the fall of the Time Lord." She remained leaning forward, but raised her eyes to Lucifer, who looked down at her with an arched brow. "Celestial being my butt. Anyone who can read knows that."

His own brow flicked and he let his eyes glow red with eternity burning deep inside them with the intent to give her a small fright. He grinned cheekily when she squeaked and scrambled backward.

Rose swallowed hard. Her voice was weak and broken. "I – I didn't realize," she stammered.

"Love and broken hearts can certainly mess someone up," Lucifer murmured with a curl in his lip. "Losing love because of interfering and relentlessly selfish outside sources … Well … well, that can destroy even the strongest of men."

"You sound like you've been there, yourself," Rose noted empathetically.

His nose scrunched and his eyes flared as he drew in a rough breath through his nose. His exhale was a rippling growl, which he silenced by snatching his whiskey glass from the piano top and draining the entire contents in a single swallow.

"I'm Satan," he growled. "I don't fall in love – and especially not with a human." He grunted with a terrifically curled lip when he felt both women stroke his arms in a supportive manner. He shrugged away from them both. "I'm above such whimsical fancies. Why would I want to settle down with one woman when I can bed a new one every hour?"

"Because," Rose offered sympathetically. "Because everyone wants to love and be loved, Lucifer. Even you."

"And yet you don't believe that your Time Lord is capable of loving and being loved?" he questioned sharply. He continued before she could argue. "If you're so eager to assure me – the Dark Lord of Hell itself – that I am capable of being in love, then you'd be a hypocritical and blind fool to think that your Lord of Time isn't capable of the same."

She stared at him solidly, but didn't speak.

"I can assure you of his affections, Rose Tyler. I saw it for myself." He inhaled and looked up to the ceiling. "I didn't get it, mind. Didn't fancy myself a fool for love or anything that whimsical."

"Until it happened to you," she ventured with a small smile.

"I have only one heart," he said sadly. "And when it was cruelly ripped from inside my chest and then stomped on, well. Well I got it, didn't I?" He slapped his palm on the front of the piano and growled. "And fuck me if it isn't the most searing pain I've ever felt – that I've ever even inflicted on another soul." He turned his head to her and let it hang sideways as he looked to her. He steadied his breathing. "Your Time Lord has two hearts beating inside his chest. By the sins of my father, don't break them."

Rose stared at him with an unreadable expression for a long moment. Her eyes were locked on his, and her mind railed a mile a minute as she battled to accept what Lucifer was telling her.

After a long moment, she stood up and brushed one hand along her thigh as she held the other out toward Lucifer. "Come with me," she told him firmly.

He looked to her hand and then up to her face. He made no move to take her hand. "Where do you intend to take me," he queried suspiciously. "If it's to my room, then let me assure you that while I may be a powerful force in this universe, I won't bed the mate of a Time Lord."

"You only wish," she sang as she flicked her fingers to request his once more. "I've got no interest in messin' about with Heaven's Lothario, so don't you worry about that." She dipped to snatch his hand and tugged to pull him to a stand. "But. But I think that you need a break from here. Take a vacation. Bring your shattered heart along with you, and we'll see if we can't find some way of helping you put it back together."

"And just what, exactly, do you have in mind then?"

On the other side of him, Liz was swaying side to side as she played a simple tune on the piano and sang underneath her breath. She stopped singing a moment, but kept playing. "I think Mum's offering to take you on a bit of a vacay."

"I'm already on vacation. I live in Hell, remember?"

Liz chuckled. "According to Mum on a good day, they're both one in the same." She looked away from the keys and pushed herself up to a stand with both hands. She hooked her long hair over her ear and gave him a wink as she sashayed behind him to stand beside her mother. "So, not really a vacation after all, yeah?"

He looked to Liz, and then to Rose. He tried to be nonchalant, but was too much hope and excitement in his eyes to be able to fully pull it off. "You're suggesting a trip in the TARDIS?"

"To say thank you," Rose answered with a nod. "You know, for … for giving me back what I'd lost."

He shrugged. "Well. I did get something out of the deal as well, you know."

She tugged him into a walk. "Well. If you don't want to…"

"You're kidding me, right?" Lucifer shot back with a laugh. "I'd be a fool to knock back an offer like that."

Rose curled her hand around his and leaned into him as they walked through the club toward the exit. "There's just one thing you have to know before I let you across the threshold of my beautiful ship," she warned lightly.

"Okay. A rule, I expect," he said with a shrug. "What is it?"

"The pretty brunette is off-limits. Don't touch. Don't flirt. And certainly don't attempt to make any deals with her." She looked up at him and let her eyes sparkle with gold. "Am I perfectly understood?"