Chloe does wake up — eventually. The sun is high in the sky when she opens her eyes, wincing slightly as she rolls onto her side and stares at the sun outside the window. There's a dull ache in her stomach — Michael, she groans inwardly.
"Asshole," she mutters.
There's a lazy rumble at her back and Lucifer appears at her elbow, gazing down at her with mussed hair and twinkling eyes.
"I beg your pardon," he quips, fixing her with a soft smile. Her breath catches, hitched on the word.
"Lucifer," she breathes. She blinks at him, incredulous, then lifts herself up with a groan and looks beyond him.
"Are we…" the words linger and die in the open air. "I don't remember anything after….you…" she looks at him, uncertainty building once more. It tumbles out. "Are you — I mean, are you God?" She's suddenly very aware that she's here, in Lux, in bed with him smiling down at her. Is he God? Did she just wake up next to God? Oh, god. Does he know she's thinking this right now? Can he read her mind? Wait. Does he know what she's going to say next? Does she even know what she's going to say next?
She pauses, staring at him, as if waiting for him to finish her thought for her. He tilts his head, eyes glittering in amusement and obvious relief at her flustered line of questioning.
"I haven't turned into my dad, if that's what you're afraid of," he smiles. "I won't be hanging up the Prada for a cardigan anytime soon, it seems." There's a shade of uncertainty behind his eyes, and she realizes — he doesn't know. There was no burst of light when he held up the sword; no booming clap of thunder imbuing him with godly gifts as his siblings knelt before him. He's no different; at least not now, here, with her. A wave of clarified relief crashes over her and she falls back against the pillow, fixing her eyes to the ceiling. She has so many questions, and she wants to turn and ask him — Is he in charge now? How does this work? Does he commute from Heaven? Where's Michael? But she can only manage a loaded exhale. She's tired. A blurred image of Trixie floats in front of her half-closed eyes, and dread soaks into the silk sheets and into her skin as she thinks of Dan, alone in Hell somewhere, and Trixie without a father —
"Detective," Lucifer says softly. He's watching her with dark, searching eyes, and he brushes a finger along her lips, catching the faint sob that escapes there.
"Trixie," she asks, and he nods assuringly.
"With your mother. And Dan—" he rushes ahead, and though he's not omniscient he knows she's thinking about him and he's longing to fix it, to make it right, to save him and to help her. "I'll make it right," he finishes, quietly. "I swear it."
She wants to know how. She wants to ask him to tell her. But her throat is heavy again and her eyes are half-shut and her chest aches with the weight of her heart and the heat of her scar and he never lies.
She trusts him.
When Chloe wakes again — for good, this time — she's splayed across the center of Lucifer's bed, wrapped in the silk bedsheets with a fresh bandage pressed tightly to her stomach. The deep, throbbing ache that had filled her chest is gone; replaced with a fuzzy, dull annoyance that seeps from her navel to her throat.
His absence is the first thing she notices. The right side of the bed is still indented with his shape; she traces a curious finger across the crumpled sheets and buries her face in his pillow. It smells like him: like sweat and Scotch and cologne.
For a moment, her heart snags on a thorn. There's a pang in her chest as she looks around, groggy at first, then wide awake as his absence fills the room and spills through the windows, out into the morning air.
I choose you, Chloe.
She sits up, letting the sheets shrug from her shoulders and leaning back on her palms.
I love you.
Does he remember? The doubt is seeping in; that same, insidious doubt that had bubbled up and out so many times before. Did he come back different? Changed?
I'm incapable of love.
She swallows, hard, and disentangles herself from the nest of blankets and pillows surrounding her. Her bare feet hit the cool marble with a cold, hollow smack that echoes through the empty penthouse.
If I ever said those three words to you, it would be a lie.
She shakes her head, and her hair falls forward and masks her eyes.
I choose you, Chloe. I choose you, because…I love you.
She wants that Lucifer. She wants to scream at the doubt that's boiling over inside her throat and swallow it whole, but he's gone. He's left her, standing alone at the top of the bedroom stairs in an oversized button down and thick white gauze wrapped like a vice around her reminder of Heaven. She's steeling herself for the inevitable — for the voicemail from Vegas, for the fourteen hookers to waltz through the elevator doors, for the rushed explanation that Words in Heaven are only exactly what you want to hear, Detective, it is paradise after all — when the glint of black onyx at her side draws her gaze down.
For a moment, even the drafty silence in the penthouse goes still. She lifts her finger; slowly, tenderly, as if the ring that now rests comfortably on her finger might leap forth and fling itself from her. Where it had been jet black on Lucifer's finger, it's now swirling with veins of milky white — a product of her rescue, no doubt. But if the ring had diminished in power, its beauty had certainly met the opposite fate: where it had previously glittered oily black it was now coiling and swirling with breaths of fog against her fingers.
The sight of the ring is enough to jolt her from the trepidatious stupor that had propelled her to the top of the bedroom steps. The flash of Lucifer outside the precinct — incapable of love Lucifer — flees as quickly as he had come. The ring is still on her finger, even now: even after she was safely back at Lux and tucked into his bed. He had left it with her; on her.
It was real.
She's still staring at the ring, half-naked and with the beginnings of a smile pulling at her lips, when the crash of glass causes her to start. She takes an involuntary step back, and her calves make contact with the edge of the mattress and threaten to break her balance.
"Maze," she croaks, in a voice thick with sleep and obvious relief. "Jesus. You scared me. What are you — have you been here this entire time?"
Maze is standing in front of the piano, facing Chloe and panting lightly like a dog on a scent. There's a trail of glass and splattered liquid littered across the floor where she had leapt from her seat in a frenzied hurry.
"Decker," she says, lifting her chin in an effort to quell the obvious gladness that's seeping across her face. "I uh…I heard a noise. I thought you might be in danger."
Chloe blinks. She's suddenly very aware of the gauze wrapped around her waist; of the somewhat shoddy, yet altogether thorough job of her bandaging. A warmth spreads through her chest.
"Thanks, Maze." She gestures awkwardly to her stomach, and then to the rest of her. She wants to say more — to thank her for the demon-forged-hell-spawn-celestial murdering-blade, for watching over her, for being her friend — but Maze is already looking uncomfortable with the slight enunciation of affection and so she steps forward, wincing slightly, and folds into Maze's surprised grasp.
The hug is met with some protestation, but is readily returned — there's a gruff exhale and a brief sniffle and she's shoving Chloe away with amicable force. "I missed you, Decker," she says, averting her gaze. "You know. When you, uh, kicked off for a few seconds. I was worried." Her eyes drop to the ring on Chloe's finger, and an impassable look crosses her face. Chloe notices her looking and drapes her other hand in front of it with sudden shyness.
"He gave it to you," Maze muses, half to herself. The look passes, and she lifts an eyebrow with a peevish smile. "Huh. He must like you."
Chloe is smiling now — she can't help it — but still her heart is aching at the gaping swath of nothing where he should be. "Where is he?" She asks, suddenly. "Do you know where he went? He was here, earlier — I saw him —"
"Relax, Decker." Maze laughs; that cool, easy laugh that flashes white teeth. "He hasn't left your side for two nights. He's like a puppy. I told him you needed space, to heal. He slept out there when he wasn't staring at you." She nods to the couch, where the spare sheets are still draped across the leather. Chloe follows her gaze, and for the second time a reassuring warmth spreads from her chest and burns up the last dregs of doubt on her tongue.
"I finally convinced him that I had this under control." Maze gestures vaguely towards Chloe, who is now looking very small in Lucifer's white dress shirt, dwarfed by the twin pillars of Assyrian stone on her either side. "He said he needed to do something. He only left, like, twenty minutes ago."
A sigh. The worry melts and she looks past Maze, to the empty boxes of Chinese takeout that are resting on the coffee table and the discarded robe that hangs off the bench of the piano. She's never seen the place so disorganized — save for the mess she had made at her birthday celebration here, sans Lucifer, a few years prior — and her heart swells with affection at the sight.
"Maze," she says, returning her gaze. "Thank you. Again. But…I think I'm good now. You should go. You should be with Eve."
There's a flicker in Maze's eyes, and Chloe knows that's all she's thinking of. She won't leave her side, though — not without Chloe repeating herself another four times with continued and ardent assertion.
"I promise," Chloe insists, finally, offering a marked glance toward the elevator doors. "Go. I'm sure she's waiting for you. Lucifer will be here soon." The thought catches in her chest and rattles her heart against her ribcage.
Maze agrees — finally, and begrudgingly — and raps her remaining dagger across her knuckles as she does one final sweep of the penthouse. Then, satisfied that Chloe is well and truly alone, and mounting in obvious excitement for her impending reunion, she throws Chloe a coy wink and steps into the elevator.
"Later, Decker," she calls, as the doors slide shut.
She's only alone for a second, standing in the center of the penthouse and bathed in light from the picture windows — when the doors open with their telltale ding.
"What, did you forget the whips and chains—" the jab dies on her lips and hangs heavy in the air.
"I'm afraid I'm not really in the mood." The words suffocate hers and sharpen a cloying silence.
Michael shuffles from the elevator into the center of the room, hunched and hobbling with pronounced profundity as he labors under the searing ache between his shoulder blades.
"Hello, detective."