She stared at him, dazed and confused. Why would he ask her that? Her heart began to beat faster and shallower. She could feel each beat hum throughout her body, working its way up her temples, around her head, and echoing into her eardrums.
"So, what do you think?" Dan furrowed his brow, trying to read his ex-wife's face. Even though they had only been married for a couple of years, and she was the mother to his only daughter, there were still many times he could not read her. But the one thing evident to him was that her wheels were turning. She was thinking of something in that head of hers.
"Dan, I-" Chloe sat up more alert and cleared her throat to find a stronger voice. "I already have a partner." He looked down at his feet, taking in a deep breath to prepare himself for what he was about to say.
"Look, Chloe, these past six months, working together, I forgot how great of a team we are. So maybe we don't solve as many cases or as fast as you did with Lucifer-" Chloe couldn't meet his eyes at the name. She fixed herself in her office chair uncomfortably, wanting this discussion to end.
Dan reached his hand out onto her desk to grab her attention once more. "I know you two had this thing, this dynamic. But, Chloe, he's not here. He hasn't been here in a long time."
Chloe stood up to grab the evidence box on the edge of her desk, grabbing the pocket holes tightly. "He's probably off somewhere random in Europe, sleeping his way up the coast. It's what he does. He never took this place seriously; you know that. He got bored and left." She sucked her lips in, biting them closed. She knew exactly where he was, and it was not Europe. He was not having fun, but she let Dan continue.
"He's not coming back. When are you going to accept that?" The breath she breathed in through her nose felt thick and unmanageable. Her insides began to turn and twist as the skin around her body tightened. She was standing tall while her body caved in on itself. Releasing her lips from their hold, she released a deep, hoarse voice.
"He's my partner." Dan began to shake his head, not understanding how Chloe could be so blind to the fact that this man was gone for good.
"Partner? A partner wouldn't just get up and leave without a trace. No answering phone calls or texts? Maze hasn't seen him; his brother hasn't heard from him. That is how careless and selfish he is. I knew what kind of man he was the moment he walked into this precinct, and he's yet to prove me wrong."
A heavy, burning weight worked its way up through her stomach toward her head. She could feel her face radiate a steaming heat and wondered if Dan could see how burning red this feeling felt. Her jaw clenched down as she tried to avoid the stinging sensation in her eyes.
Why was today so hard? All she wanted was to be alone with her thoughts, but Dan was making that difficult lately, especially now. Especially today. Chloe painted on a tight smile, and from what she could manage, sincere eyes. "Maybe you're right. Us being partners- It's just something I have to think about. Can I have some time?"
She now focused her attention on the evidence room beyond Dan's shoulders. If she could just get there and close the door, she could take a deep breath and release whatever was building up inside of her. Just as she stepped to the right of her desk, Officer O'Connell appeared at her side. "Do you need me to take care of that, Detective?"
Dan took the box out of her hands and gave it off to the officer, who was collecting other case files for filing that night. The change of guard was beginning to take place. The night crew slowly crept in, taking their place at their desks as others wrapped up their things for the night. Chloe had been docking more hours these past months to keep herself distracted- more than enough hours that she could leave a little early today.
"I think I'm going to head out for the night, I guess." The car. Yes, she can be alone in her car. Blast the music she wanted, singing at the top of her lungs while she took the scenic route home. And then once she was back at her home, she would check herself in the mirror, wipe away any lasting tears, pinch her cheeks and put on a big smile for Trixie. She just wanted to go home.
Chloe gripped the steering wheel tightly as she sat in the dim lighting of the parking garage. Dan wasn't a fan of Lucifer; everyone knew that. The longer he was away, the more sense Dan made. Her heart felt like it was going to drop out of her chest at the idea of moving on- accepting that he was gone. But maybe it was time to find her way to acceptance.
Chloe randomly selected an evening drive themed playlist on Spotify and pulled out of the garage to join the other citizens of LA in their evening commute home. Light guitar strokes with a soft drum beat began to play out, but soon Chloe's shocked eyes darted to her stereo as the Beatles sang out, "She's got the devil in her heart, but her eyes they tantalize."
Feeling her shoulders tighten, she pressed the next song. Upbeat distant drumming began to pick up with faded screams. Her eyes scanned back to the radio to read Sympathy for The Devil by The Rolling Stones skim across her screen. Chloe released a long sigh through her nose, trying to focus harder on the road. A mix of nerves and guilt turned in her stomach as she remembered her morning.
For the first time in a very long time, she did not dream of him last night. Most nights, she dreamt of that night on his balcony. Sometimes, he changed his mind, and he stayed with her, and sometimes it was left with her standing alone, looking over the night sky of LA. If she didn't dream of that night, then she didn't dream. It was just darkness.
But last night she had dreamt that she was walking through tall walls of black ice. Snow fell slowly around her as she walked barefoot through the darkness. The ice walls had doors sporadically placed apart, but she knew she could not go through. One door was wide open but completely blocked by the ice. Chloe touched her hand to the wall. It was so cold it created a burning sensation on her skin, but she did not remove it. She saw her friends in her living room alongside her daughter. Linda held her new son tightly against her chest as he slept. Trixie and Ella practiced a dance they saw on Tik Tok as Maze watched in disgust, filing her nails into pointed daggers. She wanted to be with them, but there was no way through the thickness of the ice.
Clicking noise from around the corner took Chloe's attention away from the door. Continuing on her dark path, she came face to face with a large German Shepherd dog waiting for her patiently. He turned his back to her and began down a split path as his nails clacked onto the iced floor. The dog stopped a few paces down and looked back for Chloe to follow.
The longer they walked, the warmer she felt. Her feet slowly began to sense small, coarse beads between her toes, and just like that, she was submerged on a beach in bright daylight. She squinted her eyes at the intense sun beating down at her, and when she adjusted, she realized what beach she was on. Chloe stood only a few inches away from the shoreline, confused. The water was still and glass-like, the beach was deserted, and she felt like she was stuck in slow motion. When she tried to move any part of her body, it felt weighed down by large sandbags. An out of place breeze swept through her hair and brought with it a feeling of warmth, safety, and peace.
Chloe laid in the middle of her bed wide awake, staring at a small notch in her ceiling as her fingers fiddled with her gold bullet necklace. She was always a woman of facts and knew not dreaming of him was nothing to be worried about. Since Lucifer had been in her life, he unlocked this mindset of listening to your emotions and following your intuition, even when the facts said the opposite. And right now, she couldn't help but feel scared that she was starting to forget him. She tightly closed her eyes, trying to remember the shape of his face, his smile, his eyes, anything—just darkness.
Coming down the stairs, Chloe watched as Trixie ran out from her bedroom, throwing her backpack over her shoulders and quickly tossing her hair into a high ponytail. "Hi, Mom. Bye, Mom." Chloe picked up a bowl with an inch of milk and two cheerios lingering on the coffee table in front of the blaring TV.
She double looked at an episode of the Powerpuff Girls that was left on. The sisters were fighting a villain called HIM, but one could easily see it was the devil. This past year had been eye-opening for her. But she finally understood the weight Lucifer had on his heart. She realized how wrong people were to see him as evil or blame him for their actions. He was living in the narrative society placed on him.
Picking up her remote, she flipped a channel up to continue the background noise as she gathered her things for the day. A rerun episode of Supernatural came back from commercials, and before she could step foot into her kitchen, she heard, "Sam is Lucifer's vessel." Spinning on her heels, she picked up the remote once more and flipped to CNN.
The reporter with a navy blazer and hair that contained too much hairspray to give it the effect of plastic spoke out with a nasal voice. "A pastor in Iowa who was arrested for administering death threats to three women in his church is saying 'the Devil made him do it.'"
And with a simple click of a red button, the tv was off. Her commute wasn't any better. The only two times her commute was slow was in front of two separate billboards. The first billboard promoted a hockey game this weekend between the LA Kings and the New Jersey Devils. The electronic board burst into hell's flames to incinerate the other team's fate. Chloe took a deep breath. These were starting to become too coincidental. "It's just a hockey game. I'm reading too much into it."
The second stretch of traffic was unexpected. She typically cut through a neighborhood to avoid the busy transit, but this morning a crew was on site to fill potholes. This forced her to take a turn she typically wouldn't, and traffic was not forgiving that morning. No one was letting her in. She leaned back, frustrated, and looked up at the second billboard that morning. A local church promoted their congregation with the psalm "He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings, you will find refuge. 91:4."
Her hair stood up on her arms, and a chilling prickle worked its way down her spine. She immediately remembered the day she saw Lucifer's real face for the first time. Pierce's ultimate betrayal had caused her to be unconscious, but she remembered a faint glimmer of white surrounding her as he held her. And then they were magically on the rooftop. A car hammering down on their horn to grab her attention took her out of her trance.
Chloe finally concluded that these were no coincidences during her weekly lunch with Ella. Ella was the only person capable of eating a turkey sub and testing DNA simultaneously. She was comparing two sets of DNA from potential suspects Chloe and Dan had met with recently. When she closed the top cap of the machine, the digital numbers at the base began to malfunction. "Just needs a little love tap, that's all."
Ella turned the machine toward Chloe and shook the chord in the back and pounded her fist twice in the base. The digital numbers stopped rotating and began to flash 666 in three blinks. Chloe dropped her salad slowly to the counter and got out of her seat, staring hard at the three identical numbers. "Did you see that?"
Ella popped her head back out from the machine and looked down. "See what?" The numbers rotated once again in think mode and came to clearing at zero.
"There it is," Ella said triumphantly. A small hum vibrated from the machine as the samples spun quickly in circles. For the rest of her lunch, Chloe stared at the machine waiting once more, but the numbers never appeared again.
Chloe had finally reached home and stared at the movement from inside her house. She dropped her car's sun visor and put on a big smile to see how realistic it was. It was good enough to pass Trixie and Maze, but maybe not Linda. Shutting off her ignition, Chloe stared curiously at her phone. There was a 100% chance she was just going insane and seeing what she wanted to see, but it couldn't have been a coincidence that all of this was happening today. She'll play one more song. That's it. All Day and All of the Night by The Kinks.
Her shoulders sank disappointed, and her bottom lip naturally came out to pout. Maybe she was just seeing things. Walking into the front door, Chloe was taken back by the guests in her house. Trixie was texting friends in one hand and eating a cheese stick in the other at the kitchen counter with Maze, who sucked on the rim of a bottle of red wine. Linda was on the couch, doing Ella's make-up in bright blues and purples. "Hey…"
Maze gave Chloe some warning eyes before she walked deeper into her home. "What's going on?"
Linda popped up from her seat with so much energy, and it made Chloe take a step back. "Surprise girls night!"
Ella admired her overdone make-up in a hand mirror. "It was hard not saying anything at lunch."
Linda rushed forward, taking Chloe's bags and jacket. "Lux is having a throwback Thursday night."
Chloe looked over at Maze skeptical. "Lux does that now?" Maze kicked her combat boots off from the counter and joined the group in the living room. "It does when the club owner's friend won't stop breathing down her neck for one." Maze took over full ownership of Lux in Lucifer's absence and dropped her bounty hunter leads down to a few a week. It was harder, in the beginning, to visit the nightclub, but Maze was hard to say no to. So hard that when Chloe woke up one morning, she found her living room packed with Maze's boxes. She moved in overnight with no discussion. It only took a couple of days for Maze to get back into her old routine with them. When Chloe asked why she decided to make the move when Linda had just had Charlie, all she could say was, "He would want it this way. You and Trixie will be the safest with me. I'll make sure of it." And they were roommates again.
"I don't know if I'm really up for a girl's night, honestly." Ella jumped up from the couch with more energy than Linda. "No! You have to. It's been ages since we all went out together. And I mean all together." Even though she was trying to rally the group, there was an obvious hurt in her eyes when she looked back at Maze.
Maze had not been the best influence on Chloe these past couple of months. They found comfort and solace in drinking together. Both were hurting at the loss of a friend and partner. Although they did not always see eye to eye or had a lot in common, they shared their relationship with Lucifer. He had left Maze behind when he traveled back to the underworld, but she was not as upset as she thought. Maze knew the hard decision he took on leaving everyone behind, but she knew she had to stay and protect. They didn't know if there was going to be another rebellion with his return; or if some followers stayed on earth waiting for his return to have their own fun. But on their impromptu private nights out, they could both release their weight of loneliness and enjoy their time with someone who could understand without talking about it. Linda would want to talk about it. If Ella were aware of everything they were experiencing, she would want to talk too.
Linda put on two oversized hot pink earrings excitedly. "There's going to be a mix of 80s and 90s music. We can just dance and talk in normal people's voices. No baby talk. And I mean no baby talk. Charlie does not exist tonight, okay? Got it?"
"I don't know if I can leave Trixie tonight." Trixie's head shoots up from her phone. "Yes, you can. I have to redo my paper on Joan of Arc, so that's my exciting night." Chloe walked into the kitchen to see the F on her daughter's paper. "How did you get an F. You put so much research into this." Trixie looked a little resentful at Maze. "Yeah, well, Maze read my paper and had some edits." Chloe looked back to Maze for answers. "I just told her what really happened back then."
Ella looked confused. "Wait, what really happened?" Linda held her hand up to draw attention back to her while she closed her eyes tightly, raising her voice. "Stop! We are doing girls night tonight. I pumped all day just so I could have a drink. A drink! Do you know how much this angel baby drinks? More than a human can even produce."
Ella held her hands to her heart in awe of Linda's words. "Awe, your baby is an angel." Linda ignored the fact Ella didn't understand the full context of her frustration. "I have only been around my baby and patients. My head is going to explode. Explode! We are going!"
Maze took another swig from her bottle of wine and turned to Chloe. "I plan to drink double my weight in whiskey tonight." And that's what clicked with Chloe. "Okay. I'm in then."
For a Thursday night, there was actually a great turn out for the TBT night. Linda and Ella danced in circles in the middle of Lux's dance floor. Linda's hands motioned like crazy in the air, and Chloe laughed from the bar watching Linda in her element. Maze filled up Chloe's shot glass for the third time from behind the bar.
"I have to give it to Linda. Throwback maybe a Thursday regular at Lux," Maze said, looking impressed with the crowd. Both cheered their small glasses, slammed it to the counter, and threw the whiskey back. Chloe knew she was one more shot away from that light and careless feeling. The feeling she started to look forward to on her hard days, like today. Her lips tingled as she placed her glass down for another refill.
"Can I ask you a question?" Chloe screamed over the bar as a remixed version of Whitney Houston's I Wanna Dance with Somebody began, and the girls dancing cried in victory. "Do you believe in signs? I mean- I know you don't believe, but are signs a thing?" Maze filled their shot glasses again. "Signs?"
"You know, like things are placed in someone's path from… you know who." Chloe awkwardly pointed up to the ceiling. Maze's grin already told Chloe the answer she didn't want to hear. "Oh, those signs." She released a hard laugh before throwing back her shot. "People give that guy way too much credit. Do you honestly think he has the time to place small messages in random places for everyone? No. People just want to see what they want to see. Simple as that. You, humans, are always looking for the meaning behind something. Just take things for what they are."
Chloe slowly nodded, accepting that her day was merely that. She was reaching for something that wasn't there. She stared down at her shot, trying to ignore the feeling of a broken heart. Maze watched her cautiously. Through all of the times they've gone out together, they've never really talked about what's brought them back together. Even though Maze was better at masking her pain, it was evident to her that Chloe was drowning. The night Lucifer left, everyone soon learned of his departure from Chloe coming down from the penthouse suite and joining the group at the bar with tears in her eyes. All she could say is that he was gone and that he left to protect everyone, but the group could tell more happened that she was not planning to share.
Maze pushed the shot closer to Chloe. "What have you been seeing?" Chloe threw her shot back, shaking her head in denial. "Nothing. It's nothing." Maze knew there was more but didn't want to have that conversation here. A girl crying at the bar was bad for the business she told herself. She quickly filled the shot glasses for the last time. Maze raised her glass to cheers Chloe's drink, "To us." That made Chloe smile a little as she accepted it and felt the comforting warm liquid run down her body.
The DJ transitioned the music to I Think We're Alone Now by Tiffany. The upbeat synthesizer moved Maze to take her leather jacket off and come from around the bar. She rubbed up on Chloe, trying to her to move to the beat with her. Chloe finally gave in and began to bob her head to the side. "We're doing this." Maze took Chloe's arm and pulled her onto the dance floor and threw her to Linda and Ella jumping up and down in the middle. They screamed and hugged each other as if they had been long distant friends seeing each other for the first time.
Chloe closed her eyes and just moved to the music, not thinking of how she looked or what people thought of her. Her arms glided up into the air, and her hips swiveled around in circles. The stress from her day slowly vanished. By the time the next Spice Girls song came on, Chloe felt light with numb cheeks. She laughed, watching Maze jump around playfully with Linda. Ella became her new dance partner and reenacted the Wannabe dance.
As they moved around the floor, Chloe found herself not where she started but didn't mind being closer to the DJ. She felt a shock through her body as the lights dimmed, and a dusty rose hue filled the nightclub. The comfort of whiskey disappeared, and she felt her body wake from its trance. She felt like she was stuck in slow motion as the crowd danced around her and cheered at the next song. A slow synthesizer rang out its three chords, and the crowd slowed it's dancing, grabbing their nearest friend.
Linda screamed out, "I love this song" and grabbed hold Maze tightly, forcing an even sway back and forth. As much as Maze hated this, she leaned her head down on her friend and allowed the sway to happen. "Looking from a window above, it's like a story of love." Chloe felt a sting in her eyes as she closed them tightly. When she opened them once more, everyone was gone.
An open hand appeared before her waiting for it to be held. She didn't need to look up to know who's hand it was. She slid her fingers into his, and he pulled her close to him. Tears streamed down the outside of her cheeks, and as she looked up at him. Every detail about him came into place so easily. She tried to hold in her sob as his lips parted into a smile. She didn't forget him. She couldn't. Her fingers traced the back of his black velvet suit, and she accepted this moment with him and rested her chin on his shoulder, closing her eyes. Like waking up from a good dream, Chloe continued to feel the tears stream down her cheeks, and the song continued as she opened her eyes back to the crowd.
Ella watched as Linda and Maze swayed to Only You by Yaz and wanted a dance partner. Looking around the thick crowd of slow dancers, Chloe was nowhere to be found. "Where's Chloe?"
The elevator doors opened to a dark penthouse suite with a single stream of light from the moon on the center floor. Every piece of furniture was draped in white cloth- abandoned. The glass bar that was typically light in amber light was empty and colorless. The bookcases were beginning to collect a noticeable inch of dust on the edges. But Chloe ignored all of this and headed straight to the balcony to view the rolling lit hills of LA from above.
She gripped the balcony railing harder and took in a deep breath as a breeze passed by tickling her shoulder blades with the tips of her hair. She licked her lips and cleared her throat, looking up at the night's sky.
"I've been seeing things today, and as much as I want to believe Maze, I can't. I can't believe that it's all a coincidence. Before I knew the truth, Lucifer always talked about how his dad had a plan for him. A plan he refused to follow. But he still ended up down there- the last place he wanted to be."
Chloe took her pointer finger to the curve below her eye to wipe away the pool of tears.
"I don't know if this all part of the plan or if you can even hear me. But if you're up there, God, I need a favor. I need you to find a way to bring him home. He doesn't belong there, not anymore. He sacrificed himself to protect everyone. For so long, I fought with myself over what kind of man he was, but now I understand that he did so much to protect me, protect a lot of people. Please, bring him home."
She didn't know what she was looking for, but she waited. The longer she stood in silence, the angrier she became. "You owe me! You cannot keep taking away the people I love. You took my father from me." Chloe grabbed her stomach as she released a small sob. "It's not fair you take Lucifer too. You owe me this."
She stood her ground, staring at the night's sky. The tears finally stopped, and her face grew cold from the breezes that passed through her wet cheeks. Chloe was defeated and drained, but she stood in the silence anyways. There was just silence.