So in the Bible, you get called 'The Father of Lies.' Care to comment?

You're passing your time reading that slanderous rag?

Doing my due diligence. Background research.

Well, you should stop right now!

Why?

Because it calls me 'the Father of Lies,' for a start. Also it's screamingly dull.

Why does it call you that?

Because 'Father of Inconvenient and Uncomfortable Truths' just doesn't have the same ring to it in Hebrew.

Jokes. Great. That's helping your case enormously. Look, you're asking me to trust you . . . and you being what you are, trusting you even a little means trusting you with MY DAUGHTER'S LIFE . . . and the one independent source I can lay hands on says you're a pathological liar.

I can't be held responsible for what self-absorbed patriarchs from three thousand years ago choose to blame their problems on. They wanted to worship a God who was FAIR, and unfortunately for them, they got landed with my dad. So they decide that everything good in their lives came from him and everything unfair, arbitrary, cruel or generally sociopathic could be blamed on me. You know the concept of a 'scapegoat'? That's the system we're working with here. I was given dual functions in this universe: the punishment of sinners, which is honorable and necessary work at which I am very adept, and to be the whipping boy for all of humanity, which I'm less content with. Come now, Detective. You're a DETECTIVE. Witness accounts are only one aspect of a case, and they have to be weighed against the evidence. So what does the evidence tell you? The evidence of your own eyes?

My own eyes tell me that you're almost unbelievably self-absorbed. That you don't forgive other people and you don't expect them to forgive you. You take the people closest to you for granted and have no respect whatsoever for other people's privacy. You expect money and sex to let you get away with pretty much anything. But, in fairness, I've also seen you be breathtakingly generous when the mood suits you. You're a pain in the ass on crime scenes but you're good at identifying people's motivations and putting clues together. You haven't ever hurt me physically or told me a direct lie. And you are an excellent pianist.

Leaving aside the very obvious joke about my excellent pianist, that's hardly a fair summation. I do NOT take the people closest to me for granted. Name one person I've taken for granted.

Maze.

Maze doesn't count.

See, you walked right into that and you don't even realize you walked into it.

No wonder you prefer exile, if that's what you think of me. We established years ago that you deserve better than me, so that's not really the debate. The debate is: have I ever done anything that would indicate I meant you or your offspring any harm?

You break into my house REGULARLY. You made a duplicate key to my car without telling me. You slept with my captain to get assigned as my partner so I couldn't avoid you without losing my job. Just for some examples.

I hardly think that a little B&E between friends constitutes a threat to your safety.

On this point, Lucifer, what YOU think is not important.

Point taken.