A/N: Hello hello! Just a few more days till S6 airs and I am slowly but surely feeling the bees and ants inside of me making me all jittery! :D

In that regard, I have some important information in the A/N at the end of this chapter, so please make sure to read it.

Now, until the release and until we're all busy devouring that last and final season again and again, I am presenting to you another chapter of this lovely (evil) story! I hope you are ready! Sit back, have a drink, maybe have some popcorn at the ready, and enjoy the read!

Recommended Songs:

Little By Little - Happy Republic

Methods of Madness - Secession Studios

Heart of Darkness - Secession Studios

Chapter 16 – Convergence

[Little By Little - Happy Republic]

The list of decamethonium buyers had shrunken down from originally fifty-eight to a flat twenty once they had crossed out the facilities that were not equipped with materials for emergency surgery. Some of the addresses that were still left on the list now they had visited before, but none of them had mentioned anything of interest regarding their purchase of the substance.

With merely sixteen facilities left to work through, Lucifer and Chloe were sparked with new determination and drive for success. One of them just had to be a hit.

"Alright. Number seven. Here we come," Lucifer said with a loud exhale, taking two steps of the stairs at once with wide strides. Opening the front door of the main building of the USC Medical Center, he gentlemanly let her step inside first.

Navigating straight towards the reception, Chloe showed her badge in a movement that she wasn't even doing consciously anymore, but that had become a subconscious habit. "LAPD. I'm Detective Decker. We would like to talk with someone who's got an overview over your purchases of equipment and medications and take a look at your inventory list."

Standing behind the counter, a young man, mid-twenties, awkwardly slender and still showing issues with pimples in his face, stared back at her open-mouthed and visibly overcharged with the situation. At a loss of words, his mouth opened and closed as he looked between Chloe and Lucifer back and forth.

"Oh bloody hell," Lucifer sighed, stepping at the counter and leaning close on the plexiglass shield that enclosed the front of the counter. Lowering his voice, lacing it with softness, he looked at the man with a penetrating gaze. "Tell us…" he began, taking a glimpse at the name tag, "Brian, who's the head nurse, hm?"

Enthralled, the man, Brian, blinked and smiled. "I… erm… That... That would be Mrs. Purnell. I- I can call her if you want," he answered insecurely but obviously taken by Lucifer's irresistible charm.

"Please do," Lucifer all but purred, smiling.

After Brian had called the head nurse via pager, a few moments later, a woman in a light mint green casaque and white clogs stepped up to them. Her curly, copper hair was pinned with a little clip towards the back and her brown eyes inspected them with the care and professionalism you would see from a nurse that had many years of experience and a certain calmness about her presence. "You wanted to speak to me?"

"Yes. LAPD. I'm Detective Decker, this is my consultant Mr. Morningstar. Mrs. Purnell, we're investigating a murder in which the substance decamethonium was used," Chloe explained. "We're aware this hospital made a purchase of it this month, so we would like to see your entries for any check outs as well as who signed in the new purchase."

"Of course, Detective. Follow me." Leading the way through the main corridor of the hospital, Purnell took a left turn and then stopped at the third door on the right with a sign reading Authorized Personnel Only. Instead of a handle, the door just had a knob. Reaching into her casaque's pocket, she retrieved a small bundle of keys and a chip sensor. The electronic lock system buzzed open as she held the chip sensor against the knob and the door clicked open.

"Who of the personnel has access to this area?" Chloe asked as they followed the nurse through yet another corridor.

"All of our nurses and doctors, and security, of course. Trainees and cleaning personnel don't have direct access. Trainees need to get access from a nurse and the cleaning personnel get theirs from the security," she explained, coming to a stop in front of a wider door on the left and pushing it open. "Here's it."

Stepping inside, a big room with rows of cabinets and drawers stretched out in front of them, all filled with medical supplies ranging from the tiniest needle, drugs and bandages, surgical instruments up to metallic surgery components. Directly to their right side was a small clipboard hanging on the wall with a chart.

"Here's where the check out of drugs gets filled in and on the page after that you see recent purchases," Purnell said, flipping the page herself in the means to show them, but as she turned the page and looked at the chart, she frowned. "Wait, what? That's… Ugh! I don't believe this!"

Sharing a look with each other, Chloe and Lucifer rang simultaneously, "What?"

Purnell shook her head and gazed back at them, bewildered. "According to this, there had been an unauthorized removal of decamethonium as well as some instruments and surgical components." She let out an upset groan. "Christ! I didn't know! I just came back from my vacation!"

"Can I take a look please?" Chloe asked, taking the clipboard from her and reading the entries. Every removal of equipment was meticulously taken note of on the first list, but on the second list, the one used for restocking, a note had been made about material that appeared missing without authorization. The note stated a detailed list of all the things missing, a mention that a police report had been filed, and that the missing material was set to be ordered again for the next bigger purchase of equipment.

"Well, would you look at that…" Lucifer mouthed surprised. "Decamethonium, syringes, scalpels, an amputation knife, a bone saw, various titanium plates, you name it. Looks like this was his bloody hardware store, Detective."

"Yeah…" she breathed, equally surprised and shocked. A rush of adrenaline immediately began to pump through her at the hit they landed. "This states that the items were reported missing two weeks ago. So, our guy stole the material about one week before your kidnapping," she went on quietly, not wanting to have the nurse listen in. "There must've been other material, like that trolley, that he had acquired in another way. Stuff that was too big to walk out of here without being noticed."

"Maybe he just bought the rest online… It's not like the other stuff is hard to come by if you've got Amazon Prime, right?" Lucifer muttered with a nod.

He was right. All the items listed weren't big and could easily be hidden in a bag. "Mrs. Purnell, we need to see your security footage of that day."

"Of course. I'll bring you over to Marc. He's having his shift right now," she said, grumbling to herself about the insolence of what had happened during her absence, and led the way to the security room.

The security room, a five by five meter cave with one wall covered in ten small monitors, was occupied by a corpulent man, who's eyes routinely went from one monitor to the next before resting back on the contents of a camping magazine. "Hey Marc," Purnell greeted. "I just found out that we've had thefts going on in the storage while I was on vacation."

"Oh hey Meggie. Apparently not several. Just one. Doesn't look like the police can do much about it though," he sighed, grabbing himself a chocolate cookie from his stash on the side of his desk.

"Oh really?" Chloe asked with a sarcastic tone, brushed her blazer aside and revealed her badge. "LAPD. Why would you say that?"

The security guard's eyes widened and in an instant the man threw aside his magazine, wiped the cookie crumbles from his shirt and sat up straight. "Oh, erm, sorry, I, erm… Well… I mean, I showed the police the footage of that day, but they said it wasn't helping, because the guy wore a cap and clearly avoided being spotted by the cameras."

"Show us what you showed to them," Chloe countered tersely. She wasn't particularly mistrusting her colleagues' decisions, but two fresh pairs of eyes plus their deeper knowledge on the case was enough to justify another close look at the footage.

Nodding, the guard opened a drawer from the desk and fished out a DVD that likely contained the recordings from the said day. After some fast forwarding, he stopped the footage. The time stamp on the top right corner read 11:26pm. The camera pointed at the entrance of the door they had both walked through with the help of Mrs. Purnell's chip sensor. In the frame a nurse could be seen walking along the main corridor, past the door, and one taller figure standing at the locked door. From the posture and choice of clothing, the figure certainly appeared male - broad shoulders, dark chinos and coat jacket, a small backpack, but most significantly, he was wearing a base cap that concealed his face from the angle of the camera. He looked oddly misplaced in the hospital, especially at the personnel only door.

"Okay. Let it run," Chloe murmured, her eyes glued to the screen. The guard obliged and the footage continued to roll, showing the man at the door looking briefly left and right. His arms moved slightly up and the door opened. Swiftly slipping into the corridor behind, the door closed and the man was gone.

"He must've had a chip sensor…" Lucifer muttered, watching the screen, mesmerized and pensively. They were so close. He could feel it. This was the man. The imbecile who had hired Zak to kidnap him. The lowlife who had drugged and butchered him, and had him be dumped in that forsaken warehouse to be stabbed and gutted like a pig.

The fact he was getting so close to finally finding out about the bastard who took his wings made his skin crawl. Not only that though. With their hunt being so close to a breakthrough, his anger began to boil its way up into his system again. The pain and suffering he had endured sprinkled into the ember, fuelling the raging beast that yearned for revenge. They were thoughts so dark he would never dare sharing them out loud, knowing that the Detective would think of him evil.

"There he is again," Chloe said, pulling him out of his dark abyss. The screen showed the man re-appearing out of the door, his head tilted downwards. He looked left and right, his one hand holding onto the strap of his backpack, and then headed down the corridor. "He's not heading back to the main entrance. Where's he going?"

Switching the selected camera, the guard showed the new path of the man. "Emergency exit. And outside of there, we don't have any more cameras. This is all we've got. That's why I said, your people can't do much about it. We don't have more on the guy. Nobody could recall seeing him."

Chloe watched as the man rushed along the corridor and ran out through the side exit. It was true that the footage didn't give much away, but there were things about it that helped with their investigation. "Okay, thank you, sir." Turning to Lucifer, she leaned in towards him, lowering her voice. "He walked through the hospital like that, this late, looking like that and nobody recalled seeing him."

Nodding, Lucifer thought on her words, the years of working with the Detective having rubbed off on him making him come up with a sound conclusion. "Nobody looking like that would stay under the radar, unless… he didn't have to."

"He is a regular here," she agreed. "Lucifer, if this is true, then he is working here."

"Yes…" he mouthed with a dangerous undertone, his teeth grinding. Oh, he was so close… so close...

"We need to look at their personnel files. If the guy is a doctor here and we get an image of him, you might recognise him. And we can also have you listen to their voice, to help with the recognition." Taking a deep breath, she sighed. "But in order to do that we need an official search warrant."

Lucifer's eyes widened. "What?!" he hissed, feeling his prey slip away from under his nose. "You've got to be joking, Detective!"

"I know how it is with hospitals, Lucifer. They're never gonna just let us look at their files. Too many risks involved for them," she tried to reason with him. "I'll order a warrant. It will just take two days, maybe three." She knew this wasn't what he wanted to hear, not by a long shot. She could tell he was trying to stay composed, doing his best to help the investigation move forward, but that at the same time, he was holding back his anger. The need to catch this guy and bring him behind bars was something personal she could relate to quite a lot from when she had worked on catching her father's killer. It was only natural that Lucifer was upset and fuming with a feeling betrayed and of being treated unjustly. "I'm sorry, Lucifer. There's no faster way." She knew that was not necessarily true. Not if you took into account that there were faster ways that were shady, but she couldn't risk making a mistake, now that they were so close to get a grip on the guy.

As Lucifer scoffed and stepped out of the security room, grumbling, she silently cursed at herself. After asking the security to send her a copy of the footage, just in case, she thanked both him and Mrs Purnell, and went to check on her partner.

He rested back against the wall, his hands tensely clenching and unclenching at his sides in attempts to somehow channel his anger. It did hardly help him contain the need to punch the wall though. "We're so close! SO CLOSE!" he hissed, shaking his head in disbelief over the situation. "He's out there, Detective, and you and I both know that he's probably not done with his sick plan, whatever that is. Amenadiel is in danger, hell, other humans are in danger, if that bastard is gonna just pick another person to screw wings to their back!"

Reaching into his jacket's inside pocket, he took out his flask. Anger needed something harsh to be accompanied by and the oaken taste of bourbon was as good of a method as a cigarette. The liquor burned in his throat and settled with a tickling rush in his stomach. He saw Chloe giving him her typical 'Come on, really? Here?'-look, completed with her ever so lovely eyeroll, and returned it with his own mimicking response of raised, daring eyebrows and pouty lips that say 'What are you gonna do about it, hm? Try me.'. Of course he knew she wasn't gonna make a scene.

It was even more a kick in the balls - which he was sure was done by the foot of his almighty Father - when suddenly he was the one to make a scene, triggered by a young man rushing past him, dressed in a light, mint green casaque, his mouth and nose covered by a medical mask. Stumbling sideways, his vision blurring, he released a low groan. "Bollocks-" he was barely able to breathe, before everything around him slipped into darkness.

[Methods of Madness - Secession Studios]

~o~

"See? That wasn't so hard now, was it?" the man laughs and pats on his cheek with his right, nitrile gloved hand.

He hates it. The condescendence in his tone, the callous laugh, the pejorative pat. He wants to snap at the man's hand and bite off those blue fingers, but he feels too exhausted to move still, not to mention that he isn't sure if he could move much at all with the straps spread all over him, keeping him locked to a hard surface against his back.

"Please… Don't… Don't hurt them…" it rolls off his tongue and he is surprised how he speaks without thinking. It feels strange. He tries to think of what he meant with 'them', but his mind feels blank.

A scoff rumbles from the man who steps up close to him, so close that his face is just an inch away. He stares into icy blue eyes, narrowing from thick brows that come down in a dangerous frown. The light blue medical mask wrinkles and deflates at the deep inhale of the man and he can hear a soft squeak of texture as the man reaches left and right behind his shoulders, supporting his stance while he leaned in. "Oh, but I will. You and the rest of them deserve nothing else than to be eradicated."

"W-w-why?" he croaks and swallows subconsciously. Immediately tasting blood, saliva and something acidly, he coughs and grimaces, feeling the need to retch and throw up.

The man leans back a little at his coughing, but looks completely unimpressed otherwise. "Why?" he laughs, his cold eyes sparkling with malicious glee. "I guess since your intestines will soon be spread out across the floor and you'll go back to hell for all eternity, there's no harm in letting you know. Besides, it might make it even more painful for you to know."

He tries to grasp the words being said to him, the fatality of them, the gruesomeness, but it doesn't really settle in, they don't make much sense. "W-why…" he asks again, rasping, and again he feels like his tongue moves without his decision.

"Because I've made a mistake before and this is how I will rectify it. I did the most selfish thing there is and God was not pleased. As you should know."

That resonates within him. His chest aches from an old, scarred wound. No. God had never been pleased with him. He had always seen him as selfish, a disturbing nuisance in the otherwise so perfectly harmonic Silver City. The bitter taste in his mouth mixes with the bitter memories that wash through him and only the sudden movement in front of him is able to pull him back into the moment.

The man steps back and starts pacing and moving his arms in elaborate, meaningful gestures, looking like some kind of admiral who is talking nostalgically of a heroic battle. "I will bring Him the sacrifices necessary to redeem myself. He will forgive me. And then He will allow me into His holy kingdom. He won't reject me again."

A strange lightness rumbles through his chest and an awkward, hoarse chuckle gurgles past his lips that curled in a small, sheepish smirk. "You think… He will… reward you?" he croaks between heavy breaths, his smirk widening with another, more condescending laugh blaring from his lungs. "You think… killing… is gonna please Him?" he asks sardonically and grunts. "You'll end up in hell… no matter what."

"SHUT UP YOU FILTHY LIAR!" the man roars and with a swirl, faster than he could comprehend, he closes in on him again.

With his arm lunged out, the man slams his fist against his cheek. The impact is brutal and comes with such force that he hears something cracking. His head spins to the side and his already blurry vision fills with sprinkled, dark dots, threatening to spread and darken his field of view completely. He feels like sinking to the ground, but the straps around him keep him fixated and staying upright. Nonetheless, everything around him spins.

"Time to be quiet again, Devil." the man hisses dangerously low.

He can see him move to the side, something metallic clatters and then he can sense the man's presence right next to him, inches away, leaning in on his ear.

"But this time, forever," he adds and for a brief second there is a pause of nothingness.

It's a moment of silence, of tension and expectation that makes his blood run cold. Then, out of nowhere, something sharp sinks into his neck. A burning rush spreads out from the spot and his vision goes black.

~o~

"...You said this has happened to him before?"

"Yes… It's happening more frequently at the moment. They're flashbacks from a trauma. Returning memories. Quite... impactful. But usually he comes around after a few seconds..."

"Here… this should help him come around. Some vitamins and fruit sugar to help his circular flow… Good thing he didn't have any cramps and hurt himself..."

"Lucifer? Hey… Can you hear me? Open your eyes…."

The muffled voices around him became clearer, less distant, and the dark haze began to lift from his foggy mind. Tiredly moving his tongue in his mouth, he cringed. He still had a strange aftertaste of blood and acid on his tongue, but then noticed there was something new, something sweet and fruity. It helped to cover up the gross taste and clear his last bits of vertigo. As he blinked and took in his surroundings, he found that the angle of the hospital's corridor looked strangely warped. When he looked up, seeing the distressed face of his beloved Detective though, he realized that he was on the ground, hence his odd perspective.

"Hey," Chloe said again, this time in a relieved tone, a small smile on her lips.

He swallowed the sweet drop from his tongue, thankful the bitterness was fully gone, and pushed his palms on the ground, rising to a sitting position against the wall behind him. "How long?" he muttered, knowing that she would understand.

Shortly biting her lower lips, she took a deep breath, reaching for his face to feel his forehead and then gently cup his cheek. "About thirty seconds."

Thirty seconds… bloody hell.. Still lasting so long… He gritted his teeth, the man's words ringing in his head, vibrating with a dangerous unease that wouldn't lessen. There was more to the man's words, he knew it, but he couldn't think and make sense of them. Suddenly his head was turned to the other direction. A thumb and index finger reached above and below his right eye, forcing his lips to open further, and a pointed light shot into his iris. "Bloody hell!" he grunted and pushed away the nurse's hand.

"I'd say he's alright," Purnell commented, putting away her tiny flashlight. "Recovering memories is a very difficult process. Be sure to not be too harsh on yourself. When a flashback hits you like it did now, always make sure to take things slow. The brain needs time to really process and sort what it remembers. That can take more than a few minutes, hours, sometimes days."

"I don't have days to sit around and ruminate over my memories," Lucifer groused, but he knew she wasn't far off from his current condition. There was so much information in his flashback and he felt as if the cogs in his brain were crunching as they moved forward. It was difficult to think, to analyse what he had seen and heard.

Chloe's heart ached as her partner snapped back and seeing his pensive, lost look, immediately reminded her of his former flashbacks that had been more difficult to go through. Gently reaching beneath his left arm, she guided him up, careful to support him and watch his balance. "Come on," she quietly pulled him out of his thoughts. "There's a bench over there. Let's sit and we go through what you recall."

Nodding reluctantly, he followed her along to the white, nearby bench and settled down with a huff. The memories from the flashback were still fresh and crisp, brutally vivid, but it had been so much that stuck with him, that it was now difficult to hold onto and take a closer look at. Feeling Chloe's warm hand on his cheek, he locked eyes with her.

"Easy, Lucifer. You're shaking…" she breathed, looking him over with affection and concern. "You heard the nurse. You gotta take it slowly."

"On that note, Detective, I have to take care of some work schedules. I'll be up the hallway, at the reception of this wing. If you need anything else, you can find me there," Purnell excused herself and offered her a smile before turning towards Lucifer. "Get well, sir." With that she headed through up along the hallway and disappeared behind the left corner.

"I don't want to forget anything…" Lucifer murmured, closing his eyes. He evoked the images of his memories and tried to get to the beginning of the flashback so as to go through it step by step and not risk leaving anything out or mixing things up. "It's a lot…"

Sitting down next to him, she leaned closer, glad that the corridor was not particularly busy. The security guard had retreated back into his room and she could see only two other nurses from her position going about their business, providing her and Lucifer with some much needed privacy. "Okay… I understand, Lucifer. Just take a deep breath and then begin wherever you like."

"Them," he uttered with a trembling voice, his chest feeling as if it was constricted with iron strings.

"Them?"

He nodded, hearing the man's cold voice echoing in his head. "Yes… He asked me something, that's when my previous flashback ended. And now, it continued after I answered. I told him…. I begged him not to hurt them." Diving back into his memory, he replayed the scene in his head, recalling the words the man and him had exchanged. "He said that me and the rest of them deserve nothing else than to be eradicated."

"You and the rest of them," Chloe repeated quietly, thinking. "So he meant other angels?"

Feeling his throat close at the thought of his siblings being in danger, he nodded again. "Yes. He said he wanted to be redeemed by God, because he's apparently made a mistake… Said something about having committed the most selfish thing and now he's trying to come into His favour and not be rejected."

"Well, we knew he had a religious motive of some sort, but wow… that's… totally fucked up. He thinks killing angels and humans and then grossly creating new angels is gonna do what? Cleanse his soul?" Chloe scoffed in horror and disbelief.

It was true. It was fucked up. It was totally nuts. And it made no sense. Why kill angels only to create some dead, fake, propped-up angels through a human's corpse? How did that seem like it would please his Father? How would God ever find something like that appealing? He could feel there was more to it, something that was lurking just beneath the surface of his memories, but he could just not reach through the dark, sticky substance to grab it and pull it up to the cleansing light.

"What else do you remember?" Chloe softly asked, brushing a loose strand of hair from his forehead and making him focus back on her.

As he went through the events of his flashback again, his lips tugged into a small smile and a tiny, but still humourous laugh, huffed over his lips. "You were right," he simply stated, gazing back into her ocean-blue eyes, drowning in their beauty. When her brows twitched in wonder, his small smile widened a fraction. "I did defy him. I've told him he's gonna end up in hell for what he did, which is why he yelled that I'm a liar and then punched me in the face."

Lips curling at his brave move, she leaned in even closer and placed a chaste, quick kiss on his lips. "See? I told you. You're not weak at all. Quite the contrary. You're so much stronger than you think. Even at that moment."

Taken aback from her swift, lovely kiss, he blinked, momentarily speechless and flabbergasted. "I… erm… Thank you…" Nervously looking down he smiled before quickly composing himself again so as to not look like a complete fool. "So, erm, anyway…. After my face said 'Hi' to his fist, he injected me with something and I blacked out."

"Wait." She paused, thinking. "He injected you and you blacked out?"

"Yes. That's what I said. He leaned towards me and injected something into my neck and then… nada. Why? What's so interesting about it?"

"Well, it seems that at both times, when you were kidnapped at Lux and at that moment you just described, you got injected with something and then you blacked out. But during that whole… you know…. procedure, it seems you hadn't been additionally injected." She thought about Ella's blood analysis from Lucifer. "Remember when we had that theory that you might have been hooked to an IV for the decamethonium? I think we were right. You were continuously drugged and when he needed you to talk or... out he jabbed you with something else."

"The GHB made me talk…." Lucifer murmured, piecing together her information and what they had learned. "So… I was injected with another, a third drug. To knock me out." He gritted his teeth, at the humiliation of having been treated like such a guinea pig. "Miss Lopez couldn't find any other remains of drugs in my blood though. Not that my celestial metabolism and anatomy hadn't made that a Möbius strip to untangle anyway."

"True. Maybe it was your metabolism… Or maybe it's just a drug that's really quick in disappearing in lab results," she pointed out with a suggestively raised eyebrow. "Guess we gotta ask Ella about that now that we have an idea what we need to look for. Come on. Let's get back to the precinct."

Steadying him with an arm wrapped gently around his waist, they headed further up along the corridor and to the left, the reception the nurse had mentioned coming into their view. Mrs. Purnell was sitting behind the counter, deeply in thought over sheets of papers with charts on. This wing certainly looked a bit more busy. Two visitors walked along the hallway, and, telling by the little bouquets of flowers in their hands, were searching their way to a patient's room. One personnel was moving an empty bed to another location, the bedding still covered with a plastic sheet. And as they reached the height of the reception, a double winged door to their right opened through the electric mechanism and two men rushed past them.

Lucifer looked after them with a sudden wave of confusion rushing through him. "Blue," he simply stated and cocked his head towards the right in wonder.

Chloe offered him a curious glance. "What?"

"The man's medical clothes. They were blue. But the clothes from those folks here are mint green," he explained, clearly recalling that the butchering bastard's attire had been a soft blue, fitting to the medical mask, cap and nitrile gloves.

Lifting her eyes from work schedules, the head nurse looked at Lucifer. "Oh, we've had a change in medical attire. We've had those typical blue ones before, but since the administration wanted to get away from that very clinical look, we've changed the stock to mint green about two months ago. Gotta say I'm quite happy about that. These casaques are so much more comfortable and fashionable than the ones we've had before. Damn seams were itching like hell after a while."

"Thanks, Mrs. Purnell. That's helpful," Chloe said, surprised how easy information sometimes made it to the light of day. At least it was one less riddle to solve in the big pile. But she felt confident. Much more confident the more Lucifer remembered and the more they managed to reveal. They were getting closer to their goal, closer to solving this insane case, she could feel it in her guts.

They had been able to gather lots of information and once they'd be able to get a hold onto the clinic's personnel files, she figured that they would finally have the snare snap tight around the butcher.

[Heart of Darkness - Secession Studios]

"So? What do you say?" he asked with a smooth voice, hiding the malicious glee that roared inside him. He knew he sounded nothing but friendly, supportive and honest to her, exactly what he needed to gain her trust.

"Wow! What a surprise from Lucifer! It sounds great," the woman replied with a cheerful smile that could be heard through the phone. "I'm so excited!"

His tongue slid joyfully along the inside of his front teeth. "Perfect," he agreed, taking down some notes of the things he needed to prepare and think about. "So if you could arrive around midnight, that would be great. I'll pick you up and show you what we've found in the observatory. It's truly magnificent." His lip curled back in an unnoticed sneer as he thought of the deception she was pulling off. Of course she wouldn't use the airport to get to him, even though she would make it look that way.

"That's amazing. I'm really excited! You sure I shouldn't call him though?" she asked a little doubtfully.

"Oh no, better not. He's currently in a very dangerous sting operation and cannot risk having his identity being revealed. Best don't call or write him anything. I'm sure he'll call once he's able to do so without blowing his cover," he explained with a dark shimmer in his eyes.

"Right.. Okay then. Best not to blow his cover. So, I'll get on my way and l see you when I get out of the airport?"

"Wonderful. Until then." Hanging up, he stretched himself and put the cell phone into his pocket. Stepping up to the mirror, he looked at his reflection. He still looked rather tired from his previous endeavours. One day of rest had only helped so much, but it had all been worth it. He could feel the omnipresence, feel His happiness shine down on him with the presents he had offered. An offer for amends.

...We told you, your resurrection was a gift…

He knew now that it had been wrong to reign over his own life - or rather death for that matter. He should have known better. His parents had taught him that when the time would come, God would make sure to take him from this earth. Attempting to do the job for Him, had been his biggest mistake. Now that he got a second chance though, he did everything he could to make things right again, to win back His grace and benevolence in order to see her again. Oh, how he missed her. Yes, he was gonna get back into His graces and his first two presents had been only the beginning of his exertions to do so.

...You are pleasing Him…

He looked down at his notes and released a long breath. Ten names. Twenty presents in total. The present itself had worked and had been a perfect gift. Behind the first name though he had added a question mark. As for the next on the list, he would personally make sure that there would be no question mark again. Especially now that he was doing it all by himself.

It had been so easy to deceive her with all the information he got. In general he was not a man to lie. He had always tried to stick to god's rules, after all. But his endeavour of redemption called for drastic measures and it wasn't as if he was lying to an innocent anyway. Oh no. She had fallen from God's graces a long time ago. She was beyond saving, beyond hope. And she had no chance of ever gaining back His favour. Unlike him. So it was perfectly fine to use her, to lie and to lure her into his vicious trap.

...Just continue… Your path for redemption is clear… And then you will see her again...

Smiling to himself, he nodded, agreeing with the voices. But now he had to get going. Many things needed to be prepared. Everything needed to be perfect for tonight and the next day.

A/N: Ohhh…. Well look at that! I wonder if you know what's going on. :D I left tiny bits and pieces, but not too much. Maybe you can solve the puzzle already? Let me know what you think is up with our dear Mr. Butcher. What is he planning to do? Hope you enjoyed the chapter folks!

As the 6th and final season of the show is so close, this story will go on a bit of a hiatus. Not because I won't write on it - I most certainly will - but mainly because people will be focusing on S6 content after the season. I say that without offence, because I probably will have my own S6-related content that I will publish while everything is still fresh and we all need to "recover". So you will see content from me for sure and I will announce when I publish the next chapter of Butchered via Twitter. If you're not on the platform, make sure to follow/subscribe to this story, so you get an update that way.

I hope to see you around, whether that is on this story, another one or on Twitter! Now, enjoy the final season of Lucifer, and I'm sure we'll see each other back in the realm of FanFiction where the show and story of Lucifer will continue to exist! :)

- Luni