"No."

The word is soft, spoken inches from the curve of her lips, but its finality is unmistakable. The breeze that seeps through the penthouse quells with the totality of his refusal.

"No?" Chloe leans away from him, brushing the hair from her face as she fixes him with a questioning stare. "That's it? No?"

"No," he repeats, drawing a breath against the blank space she leaves as she pulls back. For a moment it seems like deja vu; like a stunning replica of the conversation they'd had only a week prior as they'd stood over Remiel's shoddy grave, when Chloe had insisted on fighting. But it's different, now. It's not the same. Nothing is the same.

The resistance he'd put up that night had crumpled on the heels of a single refutation from her lips; his resolve kneeling to her without so much as a spirited fight. Now, though, his refusal manifests in one, unwavering word and holds stiff against her.

"Lucifer. Seriously? Can we just talk about this? This might be our only chance, I —"

She quiets when he stands suddenly, towering over her as she sits with knees bent beneath her. He stares at her for a fleeting second, and there's something indecipherable in his gaze — something broken.

"We are not talking about this," he murmurs, glancing away from her as the scars on his heart rip open anew. "There's nothing to say. You're not going."

Chloe scoffs. "Right, well, I didn't realize I had to get your permission—"

"My permission?" He growls, eyes glinting as she, too, clambers to her feet and stands opposite him with arms folded. "How exactly did you think you'd get to Hell? You didn't have wings last time I checked, Detective, and you're not—" he falters, stumbling along the words. Not dead.

"I just got you back," he says quietly, neglecting the rest of the sentence.

Her guard drops. "Lucifer," she whispers, sinking on the anchor of his words. He shakes his head and blinks determinedly at the ground.

The stalled silence forces her attention, pulling her to his wounded gaze as his tone softens. "You're not asking for my permission," he breathes. "You're asking for me to take you there myself."

Her second attempt at convincing him is devoid of any heated rebuttal. The words are gentle, imploring.

"You're God now," she murmurs. "I know — I know you don't have your dad's powers, or whatever, but…you're still God. All your siblings, they chose you to lead them, Lucifer. All of this—" she waves a hand about the penthouse and nods to the sky that twinkles just beyond the open doors. "It's your responsibility. Whatever happens to Earth, to Heaven, to Hell — to anyone, anywhere — that's on you now, Lucifer. You took that on, powers or no powers."

He only looks at her.

"Forget about me," she begs, with ghostly insistence. "Just for a minute, just…pretend it's not me asking you. You told me I got another chance to do my job when you brought me back. Now you have the same chance to do yours. Lucifer, you have to let me go. If I can help Dan, if I can save…all of this — you have an obligation to every person on this earth — every person in this universe — to let me try."

"You know it's the right thing to do," she pleads. "And you always do the right thing. Always. And if something happens —" she speeds past his stricken look, "If something happens, we know where I'll wind up, right?" There are tears in her eyes. "And you can — you can go there, now. To Heaven. You can come with me, when you're ready — we can be there together."

When he looks up, finally, there are silent tears tracing his cheeks. He makes no move to wipe them away.

"You won't go to Heaven," he whispers. "Not if something happens to you. Not if Rory has anything to say about it."

There's a pause as she remembers — as the weight of an eternity of nothingness breaks over her. She shakes the thought with a forced sniffle. The next words are harder to summon; weighted with the truth of his declaration, but she speaks them with steely conviction all the same.

"Even…if that's true, even if I—" his eyes flit to hers, wet with tears and fading into blackness in the wake of her insistence. "Even if that happens, I owe it to everyone to at least try something, Lucifer. I owe it to my friends, to — to the father of my child, to…to Trixie." She pauses, breathing against a shuddering inhale as she fights the tears pricking at her speech. "You owe it to them. You have a job to do, Lucifer, and I promised I would help you do it. You can't choose me over being God, that's not how this works—"

"Says who?" Lucifer snaps, choking on a sob. The hand he raises in emphatic gesture falls limp and trembling to his side, and he laughs without amusement. "God?"

He covers his hand with his other palm in an effort to quell the shaking that now racks his entire frame. Chloe takes an instinctive step toward him and he slips just out of reach, panting raggedly against the ghost of her touch.

"That is exactly how this works, Detective," he breathes, his eyes hard. "Because I said so. Because I do choose you. Because nothing—" the words come out snagged, mangled by the tangled mess of tears throbbing at his throat — "Nothing matters except for this. Except for you."

"It doesn't matter if we save Dan. It doesn't matter if we stop Rory. It doesn't matter if we save the whole bloody universe, Detective, because there is no point to any of it if you're not there. If you're not — if you're not here."

This time he makes no move to escape her touch. He's too tired; too limp in the shadow of his words to pretend he doesn't want the warmth of her against him. She reaches gingerly for his hand, brushing his fingertips with her own before he breaks the tentative stillness and folds her palm in his. Her pulse flutters against his fingers, trapped in his loose grip.

"You saved my life," she breathes, stepping closer as his fingers trace absent, pleading circles against the underside of her wrist. "More than that. You gave it back to me."

He stiffens. The fingers that float up and down her wrist pause in their lazy movements.

"This chance we have — this chance I have, to make it right — you gave that to me. I'm here, now, because of you, Lucifer. Because you brought me back. And I—" her resolve breaks, finally, and the same sob that had captured Lucifer's words now trails like a stray thorn along her own. "I don't want to lose this. I don't want to lose you again."

She sniffs, biting back the sob that wells up and threatens to overtake the first. The pulse that beats against Lucifer's petrified touch is racing, threatening to throw his fingers off-course.

"I'm not asking you," she whispers. "I'm telling you. I'm telling you to take me. Because if I don't do this, then what's the point? Why did you bring me back, if I just have to lose everyone — lose you — again?" She stares at the fractured, blackened stare that rises to meet her. "I promised you forever, Lucifer. So let me keep my promise. Please. Let me at least try to give you forever, even if it's…even if it's just one more night. You have to let me try." She hangs her head as the tears spill and sink her gaze. "You have to."

—

He knows, then. Knows that she's won.

There was never really any arguing with her. She'd made up her mind before his first, hardened No could even settle about the room. And she was always right, after all. She had always known better than the Devil; now she wrests a conciliatory nod from God.

She slips her hand from his own, sliding it into the folds of his jacket instead as she rests her forehead against his chest. His breaths are shallow beneath her, and the palm that meets the small of her back quivers as he exhales in a botched attempt to calm his nerves.

"Partners, right?" She murmurs, her lips caught in the fabric of his shirt. He pulls her closer, lost in the smell of her hair and curve of her body as she folds into him.

"Til the end," he agrees, smothering the words in the shape of her.

When Chloe breaks away, finally, Lucifer's breathing has evened somewhat. He's unwilling to let her go completely, and so he holds her wrists with loose, gentle insistence as she steps back and lets the silence expand between them.

"How?" She shrugs, slightly. "How do I…how do we get down there?"

He's quiet for a long, searing moment. When he does speak, each word is like pulling teeth — more reluctant and far more agonizing than the last.

"It's never been done before," he replies, "At least, not that I know of. But Eve walked out of Heaven, and Maze crawled out of Hell, and I'm — well, I'm God. I suppose I can bend the rules a bit." He rolls his shoulders, and her lips tighten — she's come to recognize the nervous tic.

"There's never been a living person in Hell before. I can fly you, Detective, but once we're down there…I'm not sure how you'll be received. Even if we manage to avoid Rory — the demons…they've only ever known tortured souls, for millennia on end. I don't know how they'll react to someone who doesn't belong. Someone…pure."

She nods, the movement more assured than she feels.

"I never wanted to see you there, Detective. I would have done anything to keep you from that place. And now, I'm…" he looks down with a hollow smile, letting her hands fall from his own. "I'm the one taking you."

There it is again — that broken, stumbling stare — and she wishes she could swipe it from his eyes with the same insistence that had stolen his refutation from his lips.

"I know," she whispers.

He sucks in a heavy breath, blinking in the brief clarity that comes with it. He swallows back the last remnants of pining that hang on his words as he settles in his resolve.

"We'll need to be quick. You'll stick out like a sore thumb, and whatever bit of Dad's bloody tree is floating around inside you can't help matters. You'll be bringing God's light to the darkest corner of the universe; we can't expect you to stay hidden for long."

"Maybe we could split up?" She ventures. "I can find Dan, and you could, I don't know, hold off your sister? Or the demons? Maybe they'll listen to you —"

"You're not leaving my sight," he says, and this time she makes no move to argue with him. "Rory will be looking for me. And anyone she finds along the way…" he shifts, uncomfortably. "Is expendable. I wouldn't be surprised if she's managed to recruit some stragglers. Maze and Michael stopped her from procuring an army, but she can't have walked away empty-handed. Maze has betrayed me half a dozen times on the promise of a pipedream. I imagine a few of her weaker siblings will have fallen prey to Rory's bribery regardless of what Lilith had to say."

She nods, again.

"Detective," he breathes. He furrows his brow and tries again, the words firmer this time. "Chloe."

Her gaze lifts, and the thoughts that sprint across her mind clear with the quiet urging that follows her name. "Promise me something, please."

He's sworn to her — so many times before; countless, intangible vows made in the blurred mess of the past week. But this is the first time he's begged the impossible of her; pleaded with her to swear to a future she can't possibly foresee.

"Whatever part of me you see — whoever I am, while I'm down there — promise me that you won't think differently of me. Of this."

Of us.

"Lucifer—"

"I'm serious, Detective. I ruled over Hell for millennia. It made me a monster, it — you saw what I became. Who I became, when I let it consume me. It's not how…it's not how I want you to remember me."

"Remember you?" She smiles, in a vague attempt to dim the finality of his words. "What are you talking about? We're both coming back, Lucifer. Partners, right? Plus, you're my ride." The forced lightness of her tone fractures on the edge of his pleading stare. He's only looking at her, lost in the gaping blackness of his own gaze.

"Please," he breathes, "Just say it, please."

She doesn't want to promise. Swearing to him feels too final: feels too much like goodbye. But he's begging her, staring at her like she's a fading lighthouse on the blackest night at sea.

"You brought me to Heaven, Detective. I don't want you to remember me in Hell."

Whatever was broken in his eyes shatters completely now, and the darkness of his stare threatens to spill into the hollow space between them. She shakes her head, reaching out for the hand he had let slip from hers. This time she doesn't let him fall limply away: she grabs his wrist with unshakable insistence.

"Lucifer, there is nothing that I could see that would change the way I feel about you. Nothing. You have to know that by now." She keeps on at his look of continued uncertainty. "Besides. You are not that person anymore, Lucifer. I know you. You've been by my side, every day, for the past five years. I've watched you change, I know you've changed — you tell me I'm all good, but so are you. You always have been. You just…needed someone to show you the way."

Slowly, imperceptibly, the shadow that masks his stare recedes, driven back by the waving torch of faith her words ignite. She saves him the labor of a choked response and steps forward, loosening her grip on his wrists as her fingers trail lightly up his forearms. Her breathing hitches inches from his lips and she could swear he shudders under her wandering touch, hanging tattered as sudden desire laps at the silhouette of staggering fear.

He doesn't speak when she nudges the jacket from his shoulders, or when she undoes the buttons on his dress shirt and lets it fall to the floor. He only watches her, careful not to blink as her hands run along the shape of his chest — as if he's terrified the fleeting darkness would deprive him of even the briefest moment of being loved by her.

He tenses, slightly, when she pushes gently at his side and urges him to turn, casting his muscled back in the yellow light of the bar. She touches a tentative finger to the scars that mar his shoulders, mottled and vicious even despite the divinity that lies beneath them.

"Show me," she says, softly. Her finger runs the length of one of the scars and starts on the other, drawing a shredded sigh from him as he faces away.

They'd moved in bits and pieces, when it had come to his wings — they'd come a long way since her first attempt to touch him, when he'd stopped her with a trembling grip and a pained, heated hiss. And then that night, only a week ago, now — when he'd knelt at the edge of the bed with his back to her, offering up his scars if only to reassure her of her own. But she'd never touched him like this: fully in control and standing on even ground and willing him to open up to her. Willing him to show her all of him, all at once and only for her.

He obeys: still silent, still making a valiant effort to refuse the urge to close his eyes against her touch. He can feel her breaths at his back, shallow and tinged with weightless anticipation as he rolls his shoulders and allows his wings to unfurl with a ruffled swell.

"I'd hoped to fly you somewhere slightly more romantic, for your first time," he murmurs, silencing the small gasp that meets the sight of him. She's tempted to step back, to take in the fullest picture of him, but she steps closer instead and lifts a hand to hover just above the ivory feathers.

She's seen his wings plenty of times — trembling alongside the rest of him as he had left her that night on the balcony, when he'd returned to Hell; battering with heavenly ferocity against Michael's jet-black pair as they'd fought. But it's different, seeing them like this. She's watched them shiver in fear, seen them arc across the sky in the heat of battle, but she's never seen them as they are, now — splayed before her in all their brilliance like a divine offering.

"Can I…"

The hint of a smile plays at his lips and urges her cautious fingers forward.

He puffs out on a soft exhale when she touches him, trailing a gentle finger along the seam of a single feather. It's a foreign sensation, even after millions of years and a comparable number of partners: he's never let anyone so much as drift across them, and the feathers that hang just beyond his own reach have gone untouched since the day they appeared. Maze is the only one to have even come close — she had brushed against the underside of his wings each time she'd put a palm to his shoulder to brace against the searing swing of her blade.

That's the only touch he's ever known: that solemn, rough hand that had shoved his feathers aside and sliced them from his shoulders time and time again. It's no small wonder, then, that he tenses when Chloe's fingers meet his wings, and it takes every ounce of self-control within him not to writhe away from the contact.

She's different, though. It's different. The hand that traces his feathers isn't rough, or laced with hateful intent. It's soft, and it's gentle, and the palm that lays flat and warm against him is bringing a thrumming, golden heat to pale wings.

The sensation is a new one — utterly new, and he nearly balks under the brambled moan she draws from his lips.

"Detec—Chloe," he whines, folding into her touch as she separates untouched feathers with deft fingers and smoothes sections of long-forgotten tangles.

"This is what I remember, Lucifer" she says, lowering her lips to the piece of divinity that flutters beneath her touch. "When I think about you. This is what I remember. Not Heaven. Not Hell. Just…you. All of you."

"Chloe," he murmurs again, arching into her palm as she drifts a hand along the ridge of his back, between his wings, and leaves him aching for her touch. Her name dies on his lips before he can summon it again, lost in the low moan he stumbles against instead, but it drums against the blurred corners of his mind all the same.

Chloe, Chloe, Chloe.

"But I don't ever want to have to remember," she whispers, her breaths quivering the weightless tips of milky feathers. "And right now…" Her hand slips from his wing and traces the back of his arm, urging him to turn and face her fully. The stare that burns into her isn't broken anymore, but his expression is still unreadable, still indecipherable — though this time it's brimming with unmistakable devotion. "Lucifer, right now I just want to forget."

It's still pitch black outside, save for the eternal, undying flame of the Sunset Strip, when he wraps her in a tangled mess of ivory wings and heated, wandering hands and meets her lips with frantic need. There's no rush, though, despite the urgency of his kiss — not so long as the sun remains tucked quietly away. Hell can wait until the morning; the universe can wait until the morning — everything can wait, until the morning.

Everything but her.

They leave when the morning comes.

There's nothing further to say; nothing more to discuss. They've exhausted themselves on words, and anything they couldn't bring themselves to say has been answered in a different way, buried in the crook of her neck and raked along his back in the blackest hours of the night.

He carries her to the balcony when the sun rises, pulling her from the black silk sheets and the white wings that sheathe her in soft security. She doesn't protest when he wakes her from a half-sleep; she only folds into his weighted grasp and allows her head to bump softly against his shoulder as he scoops her from the bed and pads across the stone floor.

He hasn't reined his wings back in; not since she'd urged them to take the place of his scars. Now, shielded from the early morning by their shaded curve, she could swear the feathers that had rested pale and chalky against her sleeping form now glint golden under her heated stare and the dawning light.

He doesn't ask her if she's ready. There's no use, not when they're already standing on the precipice, and not when this is their last chance. Not when he's uncertain of his own answer.

"Close your eyes, Detective," he urges, softly.

She looks at him instead.

"Lucifer," she whispers, the words sinking against the side of his throat. He shifts, slightly, and she slips closer to his neck as she tips in his grasp.

I love you.

She doesn't say it. It feels too final; too lost in the gaping expanse of orange sky that stretches before them. And so she thinks it, instead — wills it to him, prays he'll let her share with him as he had shared his own desire with her. She presses her lips to the side of his neck, sealing the thought against him.

"I love you too," he rumbles, his voice jagged. He steps forward; to the edge of the balcony, and if he notices that she hadn't actually spoken the words he makes no mention.

—

She doesn't scream when he steps off the balcony, or when they plummet toward the empty street below with terrifying speed. She only gasps, slightly, against the biting air that fills her lungs and quickly turns cloying as the street disappears and gives way to tumbling, crimson clouds and greying pillars of ash.

Hell.

He doesn't put her down — not right away, at least — when he lands on the cracked, warped earth and drums up an angry cloud of red-tinged dust. He holds her for a protracted moment, determined to keep her from setting foot in Hell for as long as humanly — or celestially — possible.

She shimmies from his grasp and hits the ground with a dull thud, brushing the thick ash from her jeans even as it settles in her hair and coats it a sickly silver. He takes a tentative step toward her as she stares in muted silence at the labyrinthian walls, tilting her head to gape in rapidly-escalating disquietude.

"Dan," she mutters to herself, a desperate reminder of her rapidly-fading purpose.

"Detective," he whispers, reaching a cautious hand to her forearm. She starts slightly at the touch, and a wounded look flashes in his eyes. "Remember. You don't belong here."

She's not sure if it's a reassurance, or an ominous reminder. Neither answer does significant wonders for the sinking, sticky mass of dread curling against her stomach at the misery that stretches before her.

"I—I don't know what I had pictured," she murmurs, reaching for the hand that she'd flinched away from moments before. He relaxes, despite the looming Hellscape before them. "But, Lucifer, this is…"

Hell, seems to be the only appropriate response. The ash that rains from the sky is thrown off course by the piercing, distant wails that drum against the lifeless pillars and echo in her chest. He exhales sharply and quickens his pace, and her heart shatters at the thought of him roaming this hall alone: dwarfed even in his impressive stature by the unending maze of tortured doors and the looming, jagged spires that mar the sky.

"I'm here," she blurts. The words seem silly, spoken in the massive, never-ending expanse of sprawling desolation that lies before them. She's not sure why she says them, or what good they do as they stand together in the bowels of the universe. But they're not silly — not to him. He's gripping her hand with tightened insistence at the phrase, and she's realizing — with a tearing, searing pain — that he had wandered these same halls for millennia waiting and pleading in desperate isolation to hear her say just that. To return to her side.

Of course, this isn't how he'd wanted her to stand by him. Nothing is as he'd wanted; as he'd pictured during all those lonely years. But she is here; guiding him through the same halls he'd ruled over for an eternity with a warmth in her touch that spreads between the two of them and combats the frozen desperation of his eternity here.

For once — for the first time since the Fall — he doesn't walk through Hell alone.