Chapter 1

"It's true. It's all true." Chloe stared at him, horror and fear etched across her face as she stood there, utterly and completely motionless, like a frozen rabbit staring at a slathering wolf about to eat it.

It was an odd, confusing reaction. Cain lay on the ground, dead, obviously by Lucifer's own hand. He could understand her having some reaction to that, as she had once been about to marry the murderous cretin, but her focus wasn't on the body. It was on him, his face.

Lucifer moved toward her, cocking his head slightly in confusion, "Detective?"

Nothing. She didn't move, didn't speak, just stared at him, paralyzed, like he was some kind of… monster. It was the same catatonic reaction Linda had had when he showed her his devil face. But Chloe couldn't be seeing that. That was gone, wasn't it?

The angel hesitantly glanced toward a large metal plate nearby, fearful of what he might find there, then recoiled as his gaze met burning dark orbs set deep in a horrible red mask. It was back.

Many emotions ran through him in that moment: A familiar shiver of horror and deep-rooted self-hatred, the thought that he had killed a human Oh bloody hell he had killed a human That was still sinking in, fear, defiance Cain needed to die, besides it was self-defense, why the hell should he be punished, more horror, but mostly an overwhelming knowledge that Chloe had seen his devil face, the worst part of himself, the absolute last way he ever would have wanted her to see it. As soon as he knew it was there it was gone, shoved down and hidden along with his self-hatred, but it was too late. She had seen it and she wasn't saying anything. She hadn't even moved or looked away.

The thought of what that might mean terrified him.

They stood there for seconds, staring at each other, the human paralyzed with fear and the angel utterly lost as to how to approach his precious broken pet.

"LAPD!" Police swarmed in around them, a sea of people that finally broke their gaze. Cries for a medic rang through the space as someone realized Chloe had been shot and was in shock. Lucifer could only watch as she was pulled away outside, his own unacknowledged shock stretching it all into slight slow motion. Years later he could still recall her traumatized face, the exact words the medics yelled as they moved, the swing of her ponytail as she was pulled through the crowd.

He stared after her until she was gone.

Dan's vengeful voice next to him pulled him back to reality, "Well, there you go. Ashes to ashes you bastard. Hope it's warm where you are." Dan stood over the body, then as if wanting to do something, anything to hurt the man it had once contained, he kicked it.

"Daniel-" Lucifer wanted to reassure the grief-stricken human, let him know that Charlotte was in heaven, finally at peace, free of her trauma and crippling fear, and Cain was most definitely gone and suffering in Hell. That empty vessel couldn't hurt anyone ever again.

"Forget it man. I'm fine." Dan turned to face him. His short tone and tight face belayed his statement, but Lucifer had learned long ago that humans did not appreciate it when others challenged such statements in times of emotional distress. Accordingly, he decided not to call him on it.

"What happened?"

It took Lucifer a moment to get his story together. He wouldn't lie, of course, but there were certain details that needed… vagueness. Thankfully Dan didn't seem to be a in mood to question much. He could probably say rabid squirrels had shown up out of nowhere and killed Cain and poor dear Daniel would have just nodded along.

"Well The Detective and I came to the address that Peirce's lying goon provided… to protect his sister as you know. It was a trap. Peirce was waiting –" Lucifer gestured broadly to the injured men slowly being gathered, arrested, and loaded into waiting ambulances "- With all these miscreants, to kill us." He paused, gathering emotional strength for what came next. Chloe was shot. "I of course rushed her out as soon as the shooting started, but she was already…" He trailed of, unable to continue despite his preparation. He desperately wanted to race to the hospital to make sure Chloe was okay, like all the other times he had kept vigil by her bed until she awakened, but he couldn't. This time his presence would only hurt her.

That was his fault.

Dan broke into his thoughts, gesturing around them, "Yeah, I know. So, uh, if you two left, how did all this happen?"

Of course. The police needed the rest of his statement. "Well, I deposited The Detective a safe distance away and then returned. We knew too much and Peirce had made it quite clear that he would hunt us down. Loose ends and all that. He needed to be apprehended."

"And all these guys?"
"They got in the way." Lucifer replied mildly.

Dan nodded with only slight incredulity. He had seen Lucifer in enough fights not to question how he could have subdued multiple gunmen alone and unarmed.

"What about Peirce?" He peered closer at the blade sticking out of the corpse's chest; more specifically at the rather distinctive etched handle. "Is that Maze's knife? Where did all these feathers come from?"

YOU KILLED A HUMAN The words knelled in Lucifer's brain, accusing. YOU SENT HIM TO HELL, ON PURPOSE

He chose not to answer the second or third questions. 'I don't know' would have been a lie, and anything else would have only prompted more questions. "He drew a knife. We fought. He attempted to stab me and we struggled over the knife. It all- It all happened so fast-" The voice in his head wasn't accepting excuses, but that didn't mean he couldn't try.

Dan nodded as he finished writing. "Okay, self-defense. Sounds good. We'll probably have to ask you a few more questions, but you know. It's probably fine. Hey, good job. That son of a bitch got what was coming to him." As he shifted to move away Dan slapped the angel hard on the back, out of a comrodic habit more than anything else.

To the human's surprise Lucifer released an involuntary scream, nearly collapsing to the ground in blinding pain. The only thing that kept him from hitting the ground was Dan, who caught him while yelling for a medic and an ambulance, and "Dammit, you're bleeding! Why didn't you tell me you were bleeding?!" when his hand came away red from the back of Lucifer's suit jacket.

"I'm fine, Daniel." Lucifer forced out.

"Where is it coming from?! Where the hell were you shot? MEDIC! WE NEED A MEDIC OVER HERE!"

His bullet-riddled retracted wings had been excruciating all along, but something about the sudden impact had nearly made him pass out. It was worse than the time Dan slapped him on the back immediately after he had amputated his wings a year ago. Why did the Douche keep doing that?

Dan, meanwhile, had found the bullet holes in the front of his shirt, as well as the complete lack of corresponding wounds, with a soft muttered, "What the hell?" and was now trying to direct the medics in their job.

"I'm fine, Daniel. I just need to go home." Yes. Go back to the penthouse and drink, do some drugs. He had several large bottles of laudanum remaining from a questionable source that would help with the pain. That stuff worked. If he downed enough to kill a human, he would either be mostly pain-free or too high to care. He would likely be in agony for a few days and sleeping on his back was out of the question, but at least there wouldn't be x-rays or blood tests or any number of other things that would send Amenadiel into conniptions over proof of divinity.

Right. As if Amenadiel would ever be back.

There was another scream of pain as the EMTs tried to lay their uncooperative patient flat on his back on a gurney. Accordingly they flipped him onto his stomach and carefully wheeled him out, yelling some medical nonsense he didn't understand. Lucifer started to protest again as they loaded him into the same ambulance with Chloe.

"NO! Damn you!" The words escaped him before he could stop it. He was quite certain Chloe's proximity was the reason his wounds had reopened with Dan's actions, the reason he could feel the bleeding worsening under his skin each time he was jostled. If they would insist on looking him over he needed a different hospital, let alone a different ambulance. He hadn't planned on saying it out loud in front of her though.

It didn't seem to change anything. He watched her as much as he could on the way to the hospital. Her entire demeanor had changed the second he appeared. She sat there, huddled as far away from him as she could get, staring in abject terror with eyes as large as saucers. He felt his expensive suit jacket and shirt being cut off him so the paramedics could work, listened to the confused reaction to the strange internal swelling and exclamations of 'where the hell is this coming from' as blood leaked from the invisible openings where his wings came out, but his focus was entirely on Her. Chloe didn't even glance at the bustle or express concern at his distress, which was entirely unlike her. She just sat there, petrified, as if the slightest movement might result in death.

Their staring contest continued the entire way to the hospital.

Chloe had cowered away as much as she could as her recent partner was loaded in with her. She wanted to scream, to grab Trixie and run and run and never look back. Every instinct, every fiber of her being yelled at her to escape. The fear was something deep, primal, a bullhorn screaming in her face to get AWAY. It wasn't much better at the hospital, even after they were separated and she lay alone in a hospital gown, still frozen in a cold sterile bed in a cold sterile white room, that face hovering in front of her vision.

Her thoughts swirled, moving in sputters and loops through her traumatized brain. Each realization brought on others, branching spiderweb cracks in her shattering mind.

Lucifer had been telling the truth. He was Lucifer. THE Lucifer. The actual Devil who she had always regarded as a myth. She had kissed the actual Devil. Multiple times. She had loved him. She couldn't love him.

She had dreamed about taking the actual Devil to bed. Many, many times. That had to be some variety of mortal sin or other.

Yep. Dream about sleeping with the Devil, one-way ticket straight to Hell. Going through with it was probably worse. Which meant most of LA was definitely screwed.

This coming on the heels of learning that Peirce, her precinct's lieutenant, the man she almost married, was a serial killer and head of a criminal empire. No, wait, everything Lucifer had told her was true, which meant he was Cain. Which was worse, and insane. And he was an immortal who only cared about dying, which was also insane. There was a sickening moment as she recalled the time Peirce told her the Sinnerman killed his brother, and she had commiserated with him. That would be Abel, who according to Genesis got his head beaten in with a rock. Not a quick or clean way to kill someone, and it spoke to Peirce's coldness.

How old had they been when that happened? Many pure psychopaths got their first taste of violence abusing family members after all. Had he ever felt the slightest bit of remorse?

Why was her taste in men so insanely bad? First Dan, who was a dirty cop, a murderer, and had let her think she was crazy for a year, then the actual Devil, then actual Cain. Why couldn't she find anyone normal? Was there something wrong with her, that she was attracted to such bad choices?

If Lucifer's identity wasn't a metaphor that meant everything else was true too. Not just Peirce's identity, everything. Amenadiel was an angel. Lucifer's oft-mentioned father was God. Trixie's favorite babysitter, her roommate, was an actual demon from Hell.

Okay, that one made sense. Explained a lot actually. Didn't make it easier to think about Trixie being left in such a creature's care, but it wasn't any worse than when she had just been… Maze.

Who was she? Why would Chloe Jane Decker, out of everyone on earth, get personal attention from the Devil? Didn't he have more important people to damn? Was this some weird Faustian plot? Was that it? Was he just after her soul for some weird reason and she was proving extra difficult? But why would he care about her soul? She was nobody.

"I'm the devil."

"No you're not. Not to me." Then she had kissed him. Oh dear God, was she really that much of an idiot? That was two days ago. Strange how much could happen in two days.

"Hey." Dan's voice pulled her slightly out of her ongoing crisis. She had missed him entering the room. His face was somber and he had his hands on his hips. Still, his expression betrayed how much of a toll the last couple of days had been. He looked down before speaking, relief and misery battling for control on his face. "So, I talked to your doctor. They- They're saying you weren't actually shot. I- I mean you were, but somehow the bullet just left deep bruising without actually penetrating your chest." Dan paused, "He called it a miracle. Like you – Like you somehow just spontaneously healed or something."

Chloe's hand instinctively moved to touch the place. 'Miracle.' She was pretty sure she knew who had healed her, and it definitely wasn't any miracle. 'Satanic Act,' maybe.

'You're safe. That's all that matters'

Dan cleared his throat, still not meeting her eye, "There's more. Lucifer was hurt somehow. They're trying to deal with it but he won't cooperate, which is just typical."

Normally she would have taken umbrage with Dan's resentful tone - she had thought he was past this sort of petty anger after all – but right now she just couldn't summon the energy to defend Lucifer. What did it really matter anyway if Dan called the Devil uncooperative, when he had almost certainly committed horrible atrocities? She couldn't help remembering Lucifer's callousness, his utter and complete desensitization to every depth of cruelty and wondered how many times he had inflicted similar 'punishments,' both in Hell and out of it. How many times he might have done such things just for fun.

"Chloe? Did you hear me? Lucifer's injured. He's bleeding from god-knows-where and his back is weirdly swollen. It just keeps getting worse." Dan gestured towards his own back demonstrably. "I mean it's… awful. The doctors say internal bleeding like that shouldn't even be possible in that area. He won't let anyone close enough to properly examine him and he keeps trying to check himself out… and… and…" Her ex-husband finally sighed, dragging himself out of his surprisingly worried tirade, gathered himself up, then got to the point, "He says he'll talk to you. Only you."

That broke through the haze. She shook her head in desperation, releasing a gasp that was almost a sob. "No."

Dan ran a hand through his hair, pacing in a circle. "Chloe, normally you can't get enough of him. What happened in there? Did that bastard hurt you somehow? Was he working with Peirce?"

"No no, of course not." She really was sobbing now, tears rolling down her face. "You can't ask me to do this." She had a newfound understanding of all the suspects they had found cowering on the floor in front of their consultant. That horrible irrational fear had filled her again at the thought of him, that terrible pure horror like there was something waiting in the dark. The worst part was that she couldn't give any real reason for it. Whatever his cultural reputation as the Devil, whatever personal reasons he may or may not have had for his actions, however terrifying that face had been, he had always been kind to her. He had helped her, supported her, even risked his own life to protect her. Even with her newfound knowledge it was difficult to think of him as anything other than Lucifer. Her Lucifer. And the fact remained that her Lucifer needed her now, had begged for her attention, and she couldn't go. Just the thought of seeing him again was paralyzing.

Dan eased himself into a seated position on the edge of the bed, carefully taking her hand. "I don't know what happened in there, or why you're suddenly scared of him, but you're the only one that can help. You just have to talk. Convince him to accept medical treatment, then you can leave. I'll be there, right outside, if you need me. Please. The staff need this."

Slowly, eventually, she nodded.