It's funny how in times of absolute peril, fear, pain, or, in my case, a combination of all three, buried truths are yanked so far out into the open that they affectively shatter any and all opposing illusions in an instant.
Like now.
Because, trapped in the clutches of a sadistic serial killer, imagining what rescue would look like, I spare not a thought for Marcus Pierce, none at all. Instead, it's Lucifer I picture. Lucifer appearing, in a blaze of murderous intent, in the decrepit space of the run-down building, tearing apart everything in his path, that inexplicable danger in him—the one that sends suspects and murderers into fits of terror with a mere glance—unleashed in full on my captor. This is what I imagine. Unbidden and blatantly obvious like nothing else, it's Lucifer I picture. Lucifer raining unbridled violence down on my captor. Lucifer taking me in his arms. Even with Marcus and I going steady for months now, it's Lucifer. It's always Lucifer.
And if this imaginary rescue I conjure up is not telling enough, the real one most assuredly is.
I hear multiple footsteps and voices. I hear Marcus's voice, authoritative, barking out orders to search the area, much too calm and level, and it's less this fact than it is that I'm neither surprised nor able to find it in me to even care what it means. Because, lying there, battered and bound on the cold floor, amidst the lingering echoes of my perilous situation, it's not Marcus's voice I latch onto. It's Lucifer's. It's always Lucifer.
And so here it is.
In a single instant.
I know.
Months lying to myself, and it only takes a single instant. Just one.
I can't rearrange or reinvent myself, can't change it.
Because it's not Marcus I want.
It's Lucifer.
I struggle to pull myself upright with my hands bound tightly behind my back, pain radiating outwards from multiple locations.
"Decker." Marcus's hand lands on my shoulder and I fight not to recoil, not to search over his shoulder for the person I want. "Are you all right?"
I blink up at him but don't answer, because it's a stupid question and his voice is too formal, too calm, awkward even, as if he doesn't quite know what to do.
I feel a rush of humiliation, because in one of my altercations with our bad guy, my shirt met the business end of a knife and was ripped all the way open at the front, no doubt fitting with the MO of our killer whose hatred of women has him inflicting any and all level of humiliation on his victims. Worse still, my hands are tied behind my back and I have no means to try and cover myself, no means to restore some level of humility as several uniformed officers crowd around us, looking equally awkward, open-mouthed shocked, and useless. None of them, not even Pierce, make move to offer me something to shield my modesty, nor do they seem to remember to untie me.
It's at this moment that Lucifer is shoving his way between two unis, nearly knocking them off their feet, looking and sounding the very opposite of calm and level, and I feel an immediate burst of emotional instability, as if I'll come completely undone at any moment, and the urge to somehow pull myself upward and rush into his arms is staggering.
"Detective!" The look Lucifer gives Pierce is full of disapproval as he forcefully elbows him aside, and he's already shouldering out of his jacket when his knees connect with the floor in front of me.
"Lucifer," I croak, voice dry and scratchy, and I'm so grateful when he wraps his jacket around my shoulders to cover me from our audience that I might just have to forgive him for every single pain in the ass thing he's ever done, because, it's debilitating, feeling fragile and victimized under any circumstance, let alone in front of your own colleagues.
Lucifer's hands are at my wrists next, and, in one sharp tug that momentarily burns the bleeding flesh there, the rope binding my wrists falls away.
Lucifer's hands are clumsy and fumbling and panicky, yet somehow it's everything, because, at this point I already know.
Lucifer's eyes snap up to Pierce again. "Don't just stand there. Call a medic!" His eyes swivel to the unis crowding around the area. "And get them out of here," he adds with irked impatience, the unspoken words of they don't need to see her like this are clear, and I feel another rush of alarm and gratitude at his level of consideration. It takes Pierce much longer to catch on, but he eventually gets the hint and looks almost relieved to have something to do as he resumes barking out orders and clearing the area to give us space.
Lucifer's hands have resumed their fumbling exploration, pausing at my bleeding wrists, before moving up to my face, his fingertips ghosting over the bruised swelling I can feel around one eye, above my lip, and at my temple. He's muttering expletives, something about his father, more Lucifer-typical lunacy, but it's oddly comforting.
Or maybe not odd at all.
My fingers latch onto the sleeve of his shirt, and I recognize that my somewhat hazy state of awareness—no doubt an automated survival response—is beginning to fade, which is both good and bad.
Bad, because I remember the body.
The body lying several feet away now. The body of the young woman I was supposed to save.
No matter how many crime scenes I attend, or how many dead bodies I see, each one still manages to eat away at little pieces of my soul, something I always bury deep, lest it affect my ability to do my job. Yet Lucifer always seems to know. Of course, it might only be happenstance that he's positioning himself in such a way that he's blocking my view of the lifeless girl, but somehow I know it isn't.
"Never mind that," I hear him say, and his hands are holding my face.
Still, the scent of death fills my lungs, and this, combined with the sharpening pain-points from the beating I took are not helping the growing urge to vomit.
"Can you stand?" Lucifer asks.
My fingers fumble to grip his hand and I tell him I can, but it turns out to be a lie, because when he tries to pull me to my feet, I'm crying out in pain and doubling over to clutch at my ribs in an area I now recall as being on the receiving end of a particularly vicious fist blow.
Lucifer lowers me back down, appalled now as he takes in the moisture uncontrollably seeping out of my eyes.
"Sorry," I push out as I grip his arms a bit too tightly. "It hurts."
The anguished look on his face has a startling reaction on my heart, as if it's pressing upward against my chest cavity.
"Where?" he demands as he pulls open the jacket to reveal my mostly bra-clad torso, his fingers skimming over my ribs where my hand just was, and in a manner that has nothing to do with the pain in my ribs, my heart seems to go painfully fragile at the touch of his fingers.
This is when I know. This is when I know I'm in love with him, that I have been for a while now, and that no amount of reinventing myself with Marcus Pierce is going to change it.