Chloe focused on placing one foot in front of the other, her thoughts jumping from Lucifer to Trixie to Dan and finally to the blood-soaked bottom of her gown and the awful thing she had seen in the corner of her hospital room.

My... son?

She couldn't stay on any thought for too long because everything began to collapse inside when she did, so she took her measured steps, allowed each thought to rise and fall away, and kept moving.

She was in a park. One with thick trees and bushes and no clear line of sight to anything that wasn't another tree or bush. She had absolutely no idea what park, though it had to be one of the bigger ones, for the same reason.

At least she could tell she was still in LA - the air had that hot flatness to it, even under the trees.

So a large park, in LA, perhaps close to where the hospital was?

The problem was, she wasn't sure what hospital it was. The room hadn't exactly had a giant sign that said 'Welcome to This Specific Hospital, Don't Forget Because You Might End Up Being Dumped Somewhere By An Angel Who Looks Like Your Dead Lover But Isn't'.

Chloe closed her eyes tightly, took a deep breath, then looked down at her feet as she took another step.

The nurse had had a badge though, hadn't she? Her name was Samantha... she'd seen that badge. What had it said?

Pausing, she closed her eyes again. Taking a slow, even breath, she brought up the memory.

Having a photographic memory was fantastic for police work, but awkward at times when images she wished weren't in there got burnt in anyway.

Like Lucifer's dead face, staring up at nothing.

With a pained noise, Chloe shoved the image down quickly, then forced the other image back up.

Okay, the badge had a logo on the top left, with the name of the hospital underneath.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

She opened her eyes again.

"Great!" she said, her rough voice breaking the green quiet around her. "Now I know where I'm not!"

God, this was so frustrating and awful and she didn't understand any of it!

"HELLO?!" she yelled at the trees, desperately needing someone to answer. "Anybody around?!"

Nobody answered, but she felt the faintest nudge in a certain direction. A small inner push that had no apparent source.

She could work with that.

She was going to get out of this goddamn park, she was going to get back to the hospital.

And she was going to grab Trixie and just run.

It wouldn't even matter where. She'd just pack everything in a car and drive.

Dan would be angry. He'd probably run after her.

That was fine too.

Tears welled unwanted, blurring the mass of green about her.

She wiped them away almost angrily, looked down at her feet again and kept walking.

But the thoughts would not leave her be.

Trixie was at the hospital wasn't she?

She had to be, right? With Dan?

But why had Dan said that he didn't know her?!

Chloe shook her head sharply. She didn't like where that chain of thought led - to something speaking through her, something playing with the ring...

She looked down at her hand.

The ring was still there. The dark stone sat in its silver seat against the skin of her thumb, with no reflection of form or texture to show its shape, only its bounds contained within the metal. If she raised it, she could see its flattened shape just above the silver, but otherwise it just looked like a black spot.

A void.

She'd said that, hadn't she? When she'd been talking to the nurse?

No.

The other thing said it.

The child.

The bloodied figure flashed in her mind.

Hi, mom.

Chloe clamped her hand over her mouth with an anguished noise, squeezing her eyes shut so tight they hurt.

No! Not thinking of that now!

Clearing her throat violently, she marched again, her mind set on the ground ahead of her bare feet, and only on that, until the soft swell of voices reached her from the top of the small slope she was climbing.

And finally she emerged at the edge of a wide meadow, dotted with people in small groups and large; chatting, laughing, reading books, playing Frisbee with their dogs. Beyond them, a windscreen flashed in the sun as a car negotiated the far parking lot.

A small strangled sound brought her attention back again.

A family of four sat on a blanket on the edge of the meadow a few yards away.

The two women stared at her, frozen, their jaws open, their wide eyes rising from her blood-soaked gown.

There was a period of awkward silence.

Finally, the little boy spoke, pointing at her with the bright plastic toy in his hand.

"Zombie, momma?"

Chloe snorted with an awful sounding laugh.

And she kept laughing.

And she wasn't sure she was ever going to stop.


Hi everyone. :) I hope you're all staying as safe and as sane as can be in the midst of this pandemic. Sorry for the big gap in posting. I was really sick for a week (flu, apparently, they didn't do a test for the other thing), and it took another week to get down from some hefty anxiety to be able to get back into the swing of things. Going to be writing some more tonight.

The timing of events in some of the chapters to come are actually concurrent to some events that have already happened. Hopefully it won't get too confusing ;) I think the sentence I just wrote is possibly more confusing than the timing jumps themselves, so yay me! %) They can't be any more confusing than The Witcher's jumps, so there's that.

Take care of yourselves, hope to post another chapter soon! If anyone is bored and wants to just talk Lucifer or anything, feel free to shoot me a message.