Something - everything - is wrong.
But it feels right. It feels easy, and heavy, and lethargic, like there's a blanket wrapped about her throat, suffocating her with wicked softness.
She can't see properly, but there's no urgency - no panic - that accompanies the muted revelation. It's like she's standing in a fog, grey and thick and choking out the wayward thoughts that rage against her muffled mind.
She can't see. She can't focus. She can't hear her own thoughts as they strain against the haze in her head. All she knows - with absolute, definitive certainty - is that she's angry.
She's furious, actually. Savagely, irreparably furious.
He's going to take it away.
He's going to take it away.
It's the only thought that manages to breach the surface of her smudged mind, and it plays on a loop like a mangled mantra as she rushes toward him again.
Her hand clamps around the hilt of the blade, relishing in the surge of power that zips along her racing heart. She doesn't stop to look at Lucifer before she swings again - if she had, she might have seen the look of utter terror in his eyes.
Not for himself. Not for the life that flashes before him in a glint of celestial steel. He looks terrified for her.
But she doesn't look - and even if she had, she wouldn't have seen. There's nothing to see, save for the red-hot haze searing the edges of her vision and turning his pleading stare to ash.
He's going to take it away.
He holds out an arm, rigid despite his trembling brow, to ward off her latest advance. She's back on the offensive, panting like a caged tiger as she prowls with the blade raised. He won't hit her - not willingly, at least. He's taken the brunt of her beating thus far, only shoving her away when Azrael's blade had come dangerously close to shaving off a finger.
Chloe is a quick study, though, and whatever skills the combined efforts of the LAPD and Maze have instilled in her are made ten thousand times more potent under the influence of the blade. She ducks beneath his arm with lightning speed, trailing an arc of steel in her wake.
He draws back with a surprised grunt, stumbling just out of reach as the sharpened point laps at his shadow.
"Chloe," he splutters, raising an open palm to the space between them. There's a feral glint in her stare, fractured only by the strands of golden hair that have come undone and fallen over her eyes.
There had been a time, not long ago, when the simple sound of her name on his lips could jar her from the deepest reverie. Now, though, the summons only serves to add fuel to the fire - and the cosmic irony of it all is hardly lost upon him in the split second before she lunges again.
"Don't," he begs. He doesn't want to touch her, to hurt her, but there's only open space between them, now, and she's coming at him with wild eyes, yanked forward by the blade in her hand, and-
He doesn't have a choice. His hand connects with her chest, landing with a hollow echo just above her heart. It's a defensive maneuver - he can't bring himself to go further than that, even if it means subduing her - but it's enough. The super strength afforded to her by Amenadiel's necklace and spurred into nefarious action by Azrael's blade still pales in comparison to the archangel that stands lost and helpless before her.
The force of his palm sends her reeling. She lands in a crumpled heap beside the elevator, gasping out tattered breaths as she lifts her head from the floor. There's blood pouring from her nose, dripping past her lips like crimson tears where she'd crashed head-first into slick stone. The blade is still hanging from her loose grip, but for a fleeting, burning moment the fog that had possessed her seems to clear. She looks at the knife in blinking confusion, and when she lifts her stare to Lucifer, standing miles apart with hands braced against the sofa, it's she who looks terrified, now.
He recognizes her immediately. The unnatural fire that had flickered at her eyes and turned blue into black dims, and he catches the hint of her in those precious seconds.
He murmurs her name again, broken this time as he closes the distance between them and sinks to the ground beside her.
"I'm sorry," he sobs. His eyes are wide, his gaze utterly adrift, and his hands are roving over her to assess the damage he's done. "I'm so sorry. I'm - I'm so sorry."
Her hand latches around his, stopping his fevered quest to wick the blood from her lip.
"What's happening to me?" She whimpers. Tears spill over her cheeks and mix with the blood that drips down her chin, leaking weak red across the ground like a watercolor.
"It's not your fault," he whispers, tangled on the words. But even as he speaks her eyes are hardening, again: glinting like burnished steel as the blade in her hands shakes the surprise of Lucifer's blow from its pointed memory.
He registers the change in a half-second. The film of desperate tears that had marked her moment of clarity shed away as blue eyes turn to hardened grey.
"Chloe," he says, urging her to stay even as her stare warps like heated steel. His hand is still covering hers, pressed to the space above her breast where he'd shoved her back. "Chloe, you're not in control. It's not your fault. It's the blade, it's - please." His voice drops. "Please."
His hand leaves hers, and he extends an open palm for the blade that still dangles from her grasp. Without his touch to hold her in place the last dregs of clarity drown in the fog that consumes her once more.
He's going to take it away.
"No," she chokes.
He doesn't have time to dodge. Even if he had; even if he'd had the foresight to roll to the side and leap to his feet, he's not sure he would have seized the opportunity. He's paralyzed by her side, staring at her bloodied face with wide eyes and lips parted in panting anxiety.
She lunges for him seconds after his hand falls from her own. The blade that had hung loose in her grip tightens with sudden purpose, nestling between his ribs with a sickening crunch. Her hand is still on the hilt when she drags him to his feet by his collar, shoving him against the nearest wall with one palm on his shoulder and the other wrapped around the knife.
"It's okay," he breathes, gasping as she frees the blade from his stomach with a wrenching hiss. "It's alright."
He's comforting her. Even here, even now, as he's stopped from sliding down the length of the wall by her rigid hand on his shoulder and even as steel curls about his insides like a serpent. There's a mess of blossoming crimson staining his shirt, and his hand grazes his side in a pathetic attempt to staunch the flow.
She shoves him back again, harder, and blood splatters the golden stone where his back slams against the wall. Her breathing is shallow, marred by tilted panting, and for the first time the blade she lifts wavers in her trembling hand.
She shouts when she presses the steel to his neck, drawing a thin line of blood from his throat. The sliver of her thoughts that still belongs to her - untouched by the celestial fog clouding her mind - summits to a fever pitch, slipping free of its chains with a shuddering gasp.
"Oh my god," she whispers, blinking back tendrils of suffocating grey as blue eyes come into petrified focus. "Lucifer. Oh my god."
She stands frozen for a moment, stock still with the blade searing into his skin. It's not the first time she's closed the distance between them with biting steel. She'd pressed that axe against his chest what seems like a lifetime ago, and summoned forth the same ghostly streak of blood that now trickles down his throat. But she'd been in control, then. She'd held the axe steady over his heart and let it fall from her hands with the weight of dawning understanding.
She doesn't understand anything right now. All she knows is that she's shaking, and he's bleeding, and the blade that quivers against his neck is glued to her own hand.
She opens her palm and the blade clatters to the floor. The fist bunched in Lucifer's shirt goes limp and she stumbles back with a strangled whine, wringing her hands as if in fevered prayer.
She can see him - really see him - for the first time, rid of the hazy, insidious fog as the blade skits across the stone. He's staring back at her, breathing heavily as he touches a ginger finger to the thin red circlet about his throat.
"No." Her gaze lands on the gaping swath of blood at his stomach, creeping over ivory cotton and spilling through his fingers. "No. No. I didn't -" Tears leap to her eyes and threaten her newly-restored vision. "Why did I do that?" she whimpers.
She takes half a step toward him, reflexively, before she catches herself and falters. Without the weight of her palm holding him in place his legs fold beneath him and he sinks to the ground, slumped against the wall. He's staring at his hand, slick with blood and sealed against the ragged hole in his side, but his head lifts weakly to look at Chloe as she stands shivering before him.
"Come here," he says, his voice paper-thin. "Please."
She stands frozen, eyes fixed on the blade that lies limp and teasing beyond her grasp.
"I don't want to hurt you," she whispers, her voice hollow.
"You won't." He winces, and the beads of blood around his throat drip to his collar like a ruby necklace. And then, again - "Please."
His pleas prove more powerful than her trepidation. She closes the wary distance between them, and when she kneels at his side he lifts a hand to wick the blood from her chin.
"Chloe," he rasps. Her name slogs to his lips. He stares at her blood on his hand, smudging his fingers together in a desperate attempt to blot it from existence even as his other hand darkens under the incessant flow of his own wound. He lifts his gaze to her. "I'm sorry."
He's sorry. He's still sorry. He's buckled against the wall, scrabbling at the wound she's inflicted, and he's sorry for the trickle of blood that drips from her nose like an afterthought.
"The first aid kit," she says, suddenly, jarred from the numbness that anchors her to the floor. "Lucifer. Where is it?"
He blinks at her, long and drawn and framed by a tired smile. "No, thank you," he murmurs, tipping his head against the wall. His curls had come undone over the course of their fight, and a single tousled strand hovers against his forehead. He puffs it aside with a flagging breath and reaffixes his stare.
"What are you talking about?" Her voice wavers. "We have to do something. You're hurt. I -"
She casts another look to the blade, and the pieces of her shattered heart burn with frozen, roiling dread. "I hurt you," she says, clasping pitched hands to her mouth.
"Come closer," he whines, nodding weakly to the space carved out within the crook of his arm. Even kneeling beside him she's kept her distance - kept her hands balled at her own chest as if she doesn't trust herself not to lose control again even with the blade lying mute on the floor.
"Don't make me beg, Detective," he murmurs.
He drops the hand that splays across his stomach and extends it to her, instead. Her resolve wanes and she accepts his offer, dyeing her pale palm crimson as it tangles with his. His head slips from the wall and falls to her shoulder, and her fingers roam frenzied over the gaping tear in his stomach.
He drapes a hand over her fingers, stilling them into deeper silence, and when he speaks his breath is hot and broken against her neck.
"I'm fine," he grins, even as it warps to a wince. "Takes more than a knife in the gut…to kill the Devil," he groans.
She's not convinced. His head lolls forward against her shoulder as he trails off, and the spark in his dark eyes is replaced by frigid, settled blackness.
He would be dead right now, if she'd slit his throat. If she hadn't woken up before stepping off the precipice. It's only by the saving grace of her shoddy stabbing job that he's still clinging to the fringes of life. He closes his eyes as she holds him to her breast, smoothing fevered hands and fervent prayers through his hair, and when he opens them again a familiar - if exhausted - rush of air breaks the haunted stillness. Lucifer's wings unfurl where he sits, sending shards of Assyrian stone crumbling from the wall and draping he and Chloe in a shield of blinding white.
He raises his hand with a low growl and rips a single feather free. The sound is sickening, torn and wet as hot blood pools in its absence. There's a panicked sort of relief crashing over her: he can heal himself against the damage she's done - but as the thought settles the thorn in her heart wedges deeper. She can't heal him, can't even help as he sits gasping with a piece of divinity in his hands.
But he doesn't lower the feather to his stomach. He lifts it, trembling between his fingers as it grazes past her jaw.
"Lucifer." She wraps a hand around his wrist. "What are you doing?"
He shakes his hand free and brushes a thumb across her cheek, marking her with a reddened smudge. The feather trails close behind, skating past her mouth and chasing his fingers.
"You first," he smiles.
He's intently focused, even through the dimming light of his stare. The feather curves against her lips and rests on the bridge of her nose, and when he draws it back the ringing in her ears has quieted and the distant throbbing has lifted. There's no blood leaking from her nose, anymore.
He blinks, contented, and sighs back against the wall. The feather falls through his fingers and flutters to the ground - plain now having expended its brilliant light - and sinks in the crimson puddle at Lucifer's feet.
You first.
His eyes slip shut before he can reach for a second feather, and his wings curl limply about his and Chloe's huddled forms.
"Lucifer." She nudges the head that lies listless against her shoulder. When he doesn't respond she tries again, and the words tumble out frantic and disarrayed. "Lucifer."
He doesn't move. She reaches for his wings herself, twisting around and brushing a hand over shimmering ivory. She's never touched them like this - never touched him like this, running her fingers through the swath of untouched whiteness and scrabbling for a hold on a single feather.
"I'm sorry," she whispers, pushing past tangled tears. She doesn't want to hurt him; to draw blood from his broken body again. But he needs her - he needs her, now, and the simple fact instills in her the control she'd lost.
She squeezes her eyes shut shen her fingers find the vein of a single, silken feather. She tugs hard and it falls into her hand, showering her palm with splattered droplets of red as it wrenches free.
"Please," she murmurs, eyes cast to the ceiling. She's not sure who she's praying to - she knows the plea is falling on the empty ears of Heaven. She doubles down regardless: wills him to answer her prayer even as he's forgone the throne of Heaven to bleed beside her. "Please, please, please."
He's still awake - barely - and his fingers reach for hers when she presses the feather to the bloodied space between his ribs. His wings flicker in vague annoyance at the contact, and he grumbles softly.
"Ow," he mumbles. "Stings."
The sound of his voice is enough to summon a broken chuckle from her lips.
"Quiet," she urges him, batting his roaming fingers away as they prod the feather and paw at her hand. Whatever power lies within his wings is searing her palm as it seeps into his wound, but she's grateful for the distraction: grateful for the burning heat if only to drag her thoughts from the blood on her hands.
The feather blazes with golden, thrumming light, shuddering in her grasp, then falls with ruffled contentment to join its spent companion on the floor. She peeks nervously at his stomach. There's only smooth skin where the ragged slash had been, coated in the congealed remains of drying blood but healed all the same.
His gaze follows hers, and he looks with glazed curiosity to the sealed wound.
"I forgot," he murmurs.
She nudges him gently. "Forgot what?"
"Forgot where I keep the first aid kit," he muses, grinning against her neck as he nuzzles back into her shoulder.
"Good thing you were here to save me," he smiles.
He looks up when she doesn't return his soft laughter.
She's not laughing at all. She's crying - not the taut, unsteady tears that had slipped past in her brief moments of clarity. She's sobbing, spurred into keening, breathless action at his words and the sudden calm that's descended about the room. She wriggles away from him, crawling out of his reach as she sits with knees drawn to her chest. The blade winks at her, glinting in its forgotten corner.
"Save you?" she whispers. "I didn't save anything, Lucifer, I almost killed you, I —" the words catch in a strangled whimper. "I tried to kill you."
"No," he murmurs.
"You have to take it," she begs him, and he lifts his palms in a vague attempt at placation. "I need - I want you to take it from me."
He nods wordlessly and reaches for the blade. It comes away from the stone with a teasing screech and hangs powerless in his grip.
"Okay," he says, softly. "Alright."
When it's secure in his grasp he reaches for her, still on his knees. She recoils further, slinking back with a whine like a cornered cat. She's panicking, shaking as she rocks on her heels.
"Tell me to go," she breathes.
He stares at her.
"It's my fault," she sobs. "I lost control before I took the blade. I did — I did this to you." Her lip trembles. "Tell me to go, please," she pleads, shaking her head. "I wo—I won't leave you, if you don't say the words, Lucifer, and I—I don't want to hurt you again, so please, please, just tell me to—tell me you want me to go."
She doesn't have the energy to evade him for a second time. It's taking all her concentration to even out her tattered breaths, and she can't see him properly through the warbling film of tears that pricks her eyes. Her breathing picks up when his arms fold around her, heavy and warm and clinging to her with unmatched desperation.
She cries into his shoulder - cries like he's never seen her cry, soaking through the cotton of his shirt and filling the trembling silence with muffled screams.
"I don't want you to go," he says, and his voice cracks.
When he stands he takes her with him, scooping her into his arms as if she weighs nothing at all. Her head bumps softly against his chest, and when he pads up the steps to his bedroom but forgoes the bed she can't even summon up the words to ask him where they're going.
The backs of her legs connect with something hard, and smooth, and freezing cold. She lifts her head from his neck as he sets her down on the edge of his marbled sink, bracing his hands beside her hips. His forehead falls gently to hers, urging her breaths to match his own as her shallow panting slows.
"It's alright," he says, again, pressing a kiss to her forehead as he draws away for a brief moment. She'd begged for him to send her away; but now, even in the split second of his absence, her throat runs dry and her breathing quickens.
The shower roars to life in her peripheral, and when he returns to her the mirror at her back is already fogged with steam.
"Come on," he murmurs. His hand slides around her, to the small of her back, and he pulls her gently from her perch on the sink. He doesn't bother with his clothes, torn and disheveled and stained with blood, nor does he stop to help her out of her own. He only guides her to the shower and leads her under the heated stream, folding her into his arms as she leans her soaking head against his heart.
They stand like that, fully clothed and clinging to each other under the rushing water, and whether it's for seconds or minutes or hours she can't be sure. The restless pounding of her heart slows beneath the roar of the shower head, and the waterlogged arms encircling her weigh her down and pin her to the present. To him.
When she finally disentangles herself she's stopped trembling, and the few tears that still resist her better efforts at composure are made insignificant by the rushing water. He runs a quiet hand across her jaw and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, wicking away the last stray remnants of blood that had been too stubborn to drown.
He bends, and presses his lips to the shell of her ear. "Better?" he asks, his voice low.
She doesn't trust herself to speak, and so she only nods. He reaches behind her and turns the handle, stopping the water, and she pines instantly for its enveloping warmth. He leads her out by the hand, and this time he does stop to undress her in the dim light.
It's a bit backwards - she'd stepped into the shower fully clothed and now lets him undress her with gentle, reverential hands - but she's too tired to note on the absurdity of it all. She's exhausted, and with each clinging piece of clothing he discards she sinks nearer to oblivion. He pauses to graze his lips over every inch of skin he uncovers, pressing damp kisses to her collar and kneeling to capture the shallow dip in her hips as he shrugs soaked denim past her waist.
There's no urgency to it; none of the all-consuming desire that so often stretches their nights into breaking dawn. There's only soft silence, marred every so often by the rumpled sigh of his hands as they trace her back. When her jeans are lying crumpled on the floor, and he's tugged the last, sopping sock from her foot with devout care - his palms slide past her skin and come to rest on her stomach. He's still kneeling, and his forehead joins his gentle hands, leaning against her abdomen with tousled, dripping hair and his nose pressed to her skin.
"I don't want you to go," he repeats, bowed to her, breathing the words against her body like a sacred altar. "Chloe. Don't ever go."
She stares down at him, running absent hands through his hair. She manages a small smile.
"I choose you," he murmurs. His hands are huge against her, covering nearly the entire surface of her stomach and laying claim to the life he can't help but pray is already stirring inside her. "I choose us."
Everything slips away. The frenzied fever that had threatened to swallow her whole dissipates beneath the softness of his declaration. There's nothing, save for him, and her, and the the promise of their daughter beneath his touch.
"I love you," she whispers, tracing a thumb across his cheek and urging him to stand. She lets him scoop her up, again: folds into his grasp and buries her lips in his collar as he carries her to bed. And when her body is draped in black silk and covered by his own, she says the words a thousand times more before she lets sleep claim her.