For a moment, there's silence.

Then all hell breaks loose.

Despite the bandage around her stomach and the relative weakness of her legs after two days of bedrest, Chloe is quick — lightning quick — as she sprints behind the bar and shatters a bottle against the countertop. She hasn't seen her gun; not since she woke up, anyway, and she doesn't bother to look — she's staring at Michael like a feral cat and wielding the jagged neck of the broken bottle as he eyes her, bemused.

"Calm down," he says languidly, mouth upturned in a hooked half smile. "I come in peace." He lifts his hands in a mocking, lazy gesture of surrender. His eyes dart to her palms, no doubt searching for the Key to Azrael's Blade which had imbued her with such strength only two days prior. But there's no Key; only a bleeding palm where the glass of the bottleneck had shattered and torn across her skin.

"Lucifer is in the shower," she bluffs. The words come out quickly and disjointed, higher than her usual register and tinged with bristled fear. "He'll be out soon. Unless, you know, you'd rather just leave."

Michael laughs — not that same, barking taunt to which she'd grown accustomed — but a stilted, forced chuckle.

"I don't think so." He can see through her bluff — she's never been much of a liar, anyway — and his gaze relaxes slightly as he drags his eyes up and down her bare legs and billowing dress shirt.

Fire erupts in her stomach and shoots along the scar at her chest, burning her cheeks and searing her lips. Even without the Key, she's raring up to strike him, her hand balling into an angry fist at her waist.

"I didn't come here for you." Michael cuts through her scalding reverie. "I came for Lucifer." He spits the name like it's poison. "I need to know how he..." His head jerks back and his eyes are wild as he gesticulates towards his warped back. "How he got them back." The last words are nearly unintelligible and tinged with shame.

"Your wings."

A deep sense of satisfaction stirs within Chloe as she slowly lowers her makeshift weapon. Here, in the light of the penthouse and rid of his great, ashen wings, he's suddenly quite small. A flash of him wriggling under her grasp floods her mind and she can't help a smile from tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Yes." He's looking quite annoyed now, and the vaguely sympathetic look that had passed across his scarred face vanishes with mounting impatience. "My wings." He breathes in sharply and shakes his head, as if clearing the thought from his mind.

"I'll come back," he says, fixing her with a level stare. He shifts his weight to his other foot and tugs at the seam of his turtleneck sweater. His uneven footfalls resound through the quiet penthouse as he starts for the elevator, then turns with renewed interest to face Chloe once more.

"Before I go." He pauses, and his gaze flickers. "You had the blade against my throat. You should have killed me. Any one of you humans would have killed me, and none with greater reason than you. I mean —" he pauses, and snickers as he waves a hand toward the bandage peeking through her shirt. "I did kill you, after all. Eye for an eye, and all that."

It's almost enough to laugh. She stifles a snort and fixes him with a steely glare. "Yeah. Well, I guess we're not all as deranged as you."

Michael laughs; that same, hollow chuckle. He's not smiling; in fact, his earlier declaration of peace seems to dissolve into thin air with the look he affixes to her. "You should have killed me," he repeats, deliberately. "You should have cut my throat when you had the chance. Because you, Chloe Decker, are the reason I'm here — here to grovel to a man who should be rotting under his old throne."

"I'm not a sore loser," he continues, throwing up his hands and looking pointedly to Chloe, as if waiting to gather a public consensus on the declaration. "But a human? And not just any human," he grins, flicking his tongue out and running it swiftly across thin red lips. "But a pet. The Devil's girlfriend. Made just for him. Did you ever think — if you hadn't interfered, if you hadn't insisted on following him like a lost puppy — maybe he wouldn't have had to risk his life. I would be God, and he would be — well…" Michael looks around with purpose at the empty room. "Here. Now. With you. Instead of…where is he, anyway? Gone?" He smiles with feigned sympathy. "Where'd he run off to this time? Responsibility too much? Not enough hours in the day for God's greatest gift?"

Her heart is pounding. She regrets dropping the bottle to the floor, where blood from the cut on her hand is pooling around the broken glass. It's just fear, she thinks on an exhale. He wants you to crack.

She's strong, but so is the insidious fear that Michael so deftly sows, preying on the doubts that had burnt and smoldered on her mind and extinguishing the flames.

"It's not gonna work on me, Michael. I know Lucifer. It's over." She's gauging the time it would take to reach down for the bottle; sizing Michael up, wings or no wings. He seems to be doing the same; weighing his options, seething with unbridled celestial anger and fixing her with a leering, rancid smile.

Their standoff is interrupted as a roaring woosh breaks the tense silence of the penthouse. Chloe's eyes break from Michael's at the sound, and she turns toward one of the picture windows just as it shatters and glass rains down across the couch and the table and the Italian marble floors.

Lucifer is standing, panting, in the puddle of broken glass by his feet. His wings are still out; no doubt he had come in a hurry, and his hair has been worked into a frenzied curl. There's no flaming sword in his hand, but he looks more imposing — more frightening — than he had when he had taken up his father's mantle only two days prior. Facing Michael in the center of his home, frantic and panicked and fueled with hot, searing rage, he looks every bit the Lord of Hell.

"Get away from her," he spits.

The fear on Michael's face betrays his hurried sneer. Chloe's eyes widen and her heart beats erratically against her chest — she wants to run to him, to fold into his arms, but the look on his face is venom and there's a low growl in his throat as he picks his way across shattered glass and comes to stand in front of her, shielding her completely from Michael's gaze.

His eyes trace the blood splashed across the floor and land on the smashed bottle, now nestled limply against a leg of the piano. He rolls his shoulders — slowly, deliberately — and his wings fold in with a soaring hum.

"What have you done?" The lyrical lilt that shades his voice is gone; extinguished, replaced with a low, steely register that seems to shake the room. It's not a question — more of an observation — as he towers over his twin.

"I…" Michael swallows, hard. Without wings to frame his hunched proportions, he stands pitifully under his brother's withering stare. "I was just waiting for you. Chloe and I were just talking." He puts his hands up for the second time, a show of listless deference.

Lucifer crosses the distance between them with supernatural speed. He has Michael by the collar, his fist bunched in his brother's sweater, and in another second he slams him, hard, against the bookshelf opposite Chloe. Rusted knives and ornate artifacts clatter to the ground with the force of his impact against the shelves, and Shakespeare's signed Hamlet lands beneath Michael's dangling feet.

"Don't say her name." He shoves an elbow against Michael's throat and pins him, choking, against the shelf. "Don't look at her." He shoves the point of his elbow from his brother's neck and releases his hold, allowing Michael to sink to the floor as he gasps for air. Lucifer is breathing just as hard, if not harder; he draws a trembling hand to smooth back the loose curls that have fallen in front of his eyes.

"Did you hurt her?" This time, the words are softer; imploring, even, as he searches Michael's face. His voice tears and catches along the words.

"No."

The sound of Chloe's voice whips him around and he straightens, loosening his grip on Michael's sweater and fixing her with deep brown eyes as the red flickers and fades away.

"I'm fine, I—" she gestures haphazardly to the bottleneck and to her bleeding palm. "It was just in case. He said he just wanted to talk. I mean —" she plows ahead, "You know, then it did seem like he might actually attack me, which was good timing on your part, I mean, since I sort of dropped the ball on the bottle plan, but…" she trails off at the sight of his face, dark and shaded with impenetrable emotion. He's furious, she knows, and suddenly the events of the last two days hang dense and heavy over the deathly silence in the penthouse. Lucifer, cradling her, crying, grasping at the blood pouring from her stomach and screaming — pleading — with the empty air.

There are no tears now as he returns his stare to Michael, slumped against the wall. There are no impassioned screams; no frenzied sprint as dread seeps into his chest. He's calm; deadly calm, as he walks back to his twin and looms over his crumpled form.

"I just wanted to talk," Michael is pleading, his hands still upturned in pathetic submission. "I just wanted to talk to you." A pause, and he says the words — quickly and quietly. "Please."

"I gave you a second chance." Lucifer exhales slowly and steps back from his brother, closer to where Chloe still stands behind the piano. "I won't give you a third."

Michael stands with some difficulty and shuffles backwards, shifting his gaze from Lucifer's. "You're God now, brother," he says, with a curious glint in his eye. "I knew you'd be merciful."

Lucifer meets him at the doors to the elevator, covering the button with a steady hand. "This isn't mercy." He hisses. "If you come here again — if you hurt her, I will kill you myself."

He releases his hand and the doors fly open. Michael shrinks into the elevator: in the tiny space, illuminated by the soft orange lights, Chloe thinks he looks like a beetle in a terrarium, scrunched and burrowing for cover.

The doors slide shut, and they're alone.