Heads up, I've got a general idea of what happens in season 4 and I Youtubed the very last scene, but at the time I wrote this I'd only actually seen up to ep 8, soooooo I'm drawing a couple of inferences.
I would like to thank mariadperiad20 and forgedinthebowelsofhell for providing motivation through their own stories. MP20, the scene may be short, but you made it clear how sorely it was deserved.
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The king was back, and order would be restored.
He'd been a big picture ruler before, but he had returned to control Hell and its demons, and he would know every crevice. You'd be going about your work, adding knots to a loop, then there he would be, no warning.
Hlokk said it was an act. This feathered king with spotless hands had gone soft on Earth. Fifty heartbeats later, the hands were no longer spotless, and Hlokk was cowering at the base of the throne. No limbs missing, no organs gone, body broken into terror with a fast and brutal efficiency. And he wasn't the last.
The others watched. Everyone watched.
The king never raised his voice any more. You had to stop your own throat, your client's throat, to hear what he was saying. Because you had to hear what he was saying.
Something about new ideas. Something about a plan.
"Which tenant today, my king? One of your old favorites, perhaps?"
He uncrossed his legs, leaning forward, painting a familiar smirk on his face.
"I have a few in mind."
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Rumors rose that he'd been on Earth to gain insight, to watch humans before death sheared off their freedom like the wings from a dragonfly. There were things you could learn about pain, about sin, up there that no secondhand story from a punishment loop could match.
He'd arrive, and the demons running the loop would freeze.
"What was the sin?" he'd ask.
"Killed his wife."
"Thief."
"Whore."
"Traitor."
He'd walk into the cell proper. Lazarene. Rack. The classics. A few new ideas he'd gotten his early years in Los Angeles. Electricity was just the start of it.
"Watch carefully."
Some demons decided to play along, act like they wished to learn. Some tried to prove he was faking. Or to outdo him.
No one ever could.
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A king of hell could never sleep. But for a short while each day, he would close his eyes.
They said he was listening for whispers of rebellion. He did nothing to dispel the idea.
In truth, he was trying to hear a very different voice.
"You first came to me because you were afraid you had changed since leaving hell. Now you're back. What is it you are afraid of now?"
He tried to pull up the scent of her office, the feel of eye contact.
"I'm only the memory of Linda. I only know what you know. And you know what will happen if you lose control of hell. To Los Angeles. To my son." He heard the click of a pen in her hand.
"To her," she added.
Lucifer felt his fingers flex against the black stone arms of his throne that was also the couch in her office. He remembered.
Control, then.
"Do whatever you have to, Lucifer. It's necessary." But she didn't say it would be all right.
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They were watching, so he got his hands dirty.
No more taking only the cases that broke the monotony. It was time to get into the thick of it. The cat of nine fit his palm like an old friend. And then there were his true tools. Desire. Regret. Regret felt sharp as a razor in his hand.
Some old habits hadn't died. Others clawed their way back up, all the more horrible for having been buried.
It wasn't enough to revisit his greatest hits, the quintessential Morningstar. He had to justify the idea that his time on Earth had been a sabbatical for the sake of learning new tricks. He had to show demonkind so much that they forgot they'd ever believed anything else.
"Let's call this one, 'broken doll.'"
"Learned this from a serial killer who liked to off phonies."
"No, stop, stop that tired nonsense. Here's something I picked up from a mob boss in Las Vegas."
"An imitation devil called the Sinnerman tried this once. We're going to perfect it."
"It's an act."
"It isn't."
Hitler was down here, and most of humanity's worst of the worst, but his adoring public had seen all that before. He had to show them something real, something terrible.
And being back did have its perks.
The loop froze as he entered the cell, if crushing, soot-black silence could be a loop. Two eyes, feral as a cat's, found him from the dark.
He felt a smile on his face.
"Hello, Malcolm."
The demons watching got a master class that day.
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He didn't always picture Linda.
"Don't go see Cain, Lucifer. Take it from a pro," his imaginary Maze flipped a dagger over her wrist. "Whether he taunts you about Decker or taunts you about Charlotte Richards, the only person getting tortured is you.
"He's here because he murdered Charlotte, which means his loop has a killer view of L.A." The dagger points flickered back and forth between her fingers.
She leaned across the throne, arm on the armrest, knee by his leg. "They're all watching you," she breathed in his ear. "For what we used to call weakness, you and me." She touched just the point of her blade to his chin, sweet as a caress when it came from her.
"Don't go to Cain," she said. Something in Lucifer's mind cracked like a glacier calving. "Not until you forget you ever thought that place was home."
But Maze was already smiling with every one of her teeth. "Then bring him hell."
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They watched. But he was listening.
"Ask him to do a cub. He won't."
The next moment, the whisperer was pinned upside down against the outer wall of a cell, rock spikes through three of his arms. The king had already let go, was already straightening his sleeves as white feathers, terrifying in their purity, flickered away into his back.
"Much as I despise the larvae these creatures call offspring, I," he said, crossing the uneven ground, returning to the demon he'd pinned with a dancer's grace, "refused to be manipulated by God."
Even the word—not even the true name—could sear demonskin when spoken here, by one who could fill the breath with memory.
Lucifer twisted the flesh as precisely as a piano wire.
"I will not be manipulated by you."
The real message was for the crowd: The king would give his full attention to whichever subject he pleased. His full attention was to be feared.
No one asked about Hell's children again.
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"That was a card you can only play once, Lucifer."
You're right.
"Have you figured it out yet? What ruling hell is going to cost you?"
What hasn't it already cost me?
Linda looked back. "I think you know."
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There was something missing, something he couldn't do without another minute. He thought it was Chloe. There was no point. She wasn't here, should never be here. But something felt like a hunch, like a lead. Why not follow it, if only for the habit?
The demons running the loop halted as the king entered the cell. The dust motes stopped moving in the light from frosted airport windows. The tenant turned around.
"You've drawn my special attention today, Phillip," he said without preamble. "You know you deserve to be here, don't you?" He paused for the demons watching.
"Now tell me why," he said.
The human's mouth gaped.
Lucifer held out a hand. The demon placed a knife, curved to a hook point, handle first. "Or do you desire a more straightforward punishment? We're all about tradition down here."
"I'm..." the tenant gulped stale air, hand brushing the buttons on his mid-range suit. "I'm a... with men— I would—"
"No."
The king leaned forward, hands nearly touching his knees. He tried not to let it show on his face, but there was something here. There was something. "Try again."
Something shifted behind the tenant's eyes. One of the demons made a shuffling noise as the loop changed, the dingy stalls of the airport bathroom dissolving as the scent of wood polish rose up from the floor of the state house, and the human was raising his hand in a vote.
There was a feeling, hot and quiet, like festered seawater coming loose from an ear canal days after the swimmer has made it back to shore.
"I persecuted other men who were like me."
A smile touched the king's face. "Better."
"Do I— Does that mean—"
"That you're done here? Oh no, Phillip." The king turned away from the tenant. "That should give you plenty to work with." He paused near the door. "Feel free to get creative."
He walked away before the confusion could show on his face.
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"What was that?"
"Relief?" asked Linda.
"You're not supposed to just tell me things."
"Then imagine me saying something different. Why don't you tell me what it was?"
"I don't know."
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He tried again, to see if he would figure it out.
Sometimes he would bring the whip down. Sometimes the words were all it took.
"Which today, my king?"
It was like holding his breath. He needed it like a human needed air.
The backseat of a car shifted into a road with no streetlamps at three in the morning. "I was a slut before I was married" became "I threw my daughter out when she told me she was pregnant."
All of these humans deserved to be in hell. It made no difference if they were wrong about why. The loops didn't get more or less sadistic. The screams were no quieter. It wasn't Chloe. It was the thing that had clung to her like an aura, followed her to every crime scene.
"I bragged about what I did in front of my little brother, the heists I pulled, the men I killed. He became a criminal because of me."
"I did know she didn't want me to."
"I made sure everyone thought she was crazy so I wouldn't get punished."
"I shouldn't have joined in, orders or no orders."
It should have made no difference.
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"What are you doing here? I was expecting Linda."
She looked up from her workbench. "You have to solve a case with the evidence you have," she said. "I might want a murder weapon, but if all I have is dust, you bet I'm gonna use it."
"The real Miss Lopez was never cryptic."
"Fine. What have you still got?" she leaned back on her heels. "You lost Linda. You lost Chloe. You lost me. And we both know you miss Dan more than you're going to admit. But what's still there?"
"Are you asking what ruling Hell will take or what—"
Lucifer's eyes jerked open at a sound from below, a crash. Four demons fighting over a new arrival. He felt his hands fist. It wasn't nearly so satisfying as breaking up fights at Lux, but he was allowed to really let go.
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The bees froze in the air as the hillside loop froze, just before the earth would have cracked open. The cliff was bright with wildflowers, sky like a jewel overhead. Usually, a group of other humans would come up the path, all screams and kicks. The tenant pressed back against the rock face.
"Tell me," Lucifer said, crowding toward the cowering human. "What was your sin?"
The tenant's lips moved, slipping against each other, soundless.
"...phat¬ēs..."
"A liar? You condemned yourself to an eternity of torture because of something every one of you people does nearly nonstop? No, I don't think so." He raised the whip. "Try again."
So this was all there was. This and looking for ...something.
He'd continued the changeups, as he'd done with Philip. So far, they were keeping the demons off-balance, but why fool himself that there was any more to it? Most of these humans deserved to be trapped in hell, even if they were wrong about why. After years in the freedom that flooded Earth like sunlight, doing work that actually mattered because he wanted to and with people he— Everything was ash.
The only relief came when he drew them to realize their true guilt. It was like setting a bone. For a split second, there was a sense of something almost worthwhile, the smallest hint of—
You are my enemy no longer.
The tenant flinched for a blow that never came. Lucifer's fingers shuffling along the handle like the first breath of a storm across a wheat field. Hellfire flared in his eyes as he drew a breath into his throat, his lungs, his gut. The tenant made a noise.
"Are you happy now?" he called out, voice echoing against the human's imagined cliffs.
No.
"I thought the whole point of this place was that it was out of your sight!"
There was no answer.
He turned back to the tenant. "Sorry, darling. Where were we?"
As it had in every loop before, the sun above the tenant's head went dark, the ground cracked open, and a hundred hands reached out of the ground to grasp and push that exhausted body into the waiting dark. Lucifer stepped back and let the demons savor the fear, frustration and pain like leeches on a submerged limb.
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"I couldn't have imagined it. The voice of God isn't something you think you hear."
"Then take it at face value. Your father spoke to you directly for the first time in millennia. What did he say?"
Lucifer's jaw tightened as he sat silently on the throne.
"That he's glad I'm back in the pit where I belong," Lucifer waved his hand bitterly in Linda's spectral office, his lips never moving.
"What were you doing when he spoke to you?"
"The exact same thing I've done a hundred times since I came back here. And it didn't even work."
"All right, let's explore something else," she was leaning forward. "Have you figured out what this is going to cost you? What you're afraid to lose?"
He scoffed. "What haven't I already lost?"
But she knew.
Which meant he knew.
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Time passed as it did in Hell, measured not in days or years but in the guilty punished and fresh sins committed.
He did not return to Philip or the woman in the dark street, but once or twice he came back to the one on the cliff. He told himself it wasn't to hear his father's voice, and it slowly became true. The echo of God's presence meant demons avoided the place, though they probably didn't know why. It was possibly the only place in hell that was not being watched.
The loop never changed. The tenant never gave a different answer. Wasn't much of a mind left, not after thousands of years in this place. Maybe he'd be that far gone too one day.
Things were shifting in Hell. Whispers were filtering through the waves of demonkind. The king wanted something different, and those who provided it would get the best assignments, the best rewards. Dullards had been pulled off the most satisfying loops to try their luck among dregs.
Some said he wanted creativity. Others said he was making his decisions based on design.
Demons who'd thrived under the old way seethed. The mutterings grew loud enough to reach the ears of the Lillim. When words festered and burst into action, the king and Mazikeen's sisters had a trap waiting and baited, a full feast of the old way, ready to pour down every rebel throat.
If they were plotting against him in Hell, then they were not looking earthward, he told himself. A rebellion was good, a brutal repression better. Let them hate him so much they forgot the light above, like sharks fighting each other over the last scrap of a whale.
Afterward, at a celebration to reward what passed for loyalty among the denizens of hell, he felt a feather drop.
Where there was one, there would always more.
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"How do I fool them? How do I pretend to be a monster?"
"You can't, Lucifer," said Linda. "If you act like a monster you will become one again. That's how it works."
"But if I do..."
"You have to, Lucifer," said the imagined Maze. "If you don't, you lose control of Hell, and then we all lose Earth." She leveled a dagger point at him. "You know how pissed off I'll be if some low-rent pit demon eats Trixie or our boy."
"Most people don't have to leave their home permanently to protect it," said Linda. "It is not fair. By now, you know what Hell will take from you."
"The man I became in Los Angeles."
Mazikeen's hand settled on Linda's shoulder. She nodded.
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It was on his mind when he went back to the cliffs, to the one who hadn't given up the secret. Every time, the client claimed "liar," and somehow this was enough for a human to believe they deserved to be pulled underground by a hundred grasping hands.
He was looking for something, he knew, something he needed more than oxygen.
Rule hell and become a monster. Abandon Hell, return to Earth, and become a monster.
It's not that simple.
The whip cracked on empty air and he spun around. He didn't see anyone, but there was no mistaking the presence.
"Was it worth it?" he called into air that wasn't really empty. "Breaking my heart?"
You remembered you had one.
"Don't act like this was about teaching me a lesson!" Lucifer threw down the whip, barely noticing the tenant flinch. "And what about her? I can still feel her hands shake. I can still see her tears!"
When the time comes, I will send her to you.
"You will not!" he rose, the words flaming out of him before he knew they'd sparked.
Do you order me, boy?
He could feel the fire eat away at his skin; he fought it back. "If you're going to do this, give me a face I can spit in!" he snarled.
Very well.
Movement, the shifting of the ground under new weight. A man stood with a touch of gray in his beard, skinny thumbs tucked into a belt with a very memorable buckle.
"Him?" asked Lucifer.
Brows went up over opaque blue eyes. "I'm sure Earl won't mind."
"The owner of that face apologized to me. We both know you never will."
"Should I?" He leaned back, head turning just a little to the side. "Heard you were making some changes down here. Came to take a look."
"Don't like it?" Lucifer asked, hand on one hip. "You should have thought about that before you put me in charge of the place."
He leaned back. "I suppose I should say you did a good job. The matter with your mother. Not how I would have resolved things," he said, "but that was kind of the point. You always were all about lateral thinking."
Lucifer sobered, "I didn't have much of that at hand when it came to Uriel."
Earl's face darkened. "No," he said. "No you did not." He took a long breath in and a long breath out. "Do you remember what Ella Lopez told you?"
"About you?"
"About the pituitary gland."
Lucifer blinked.
"Uuuuuugh, the human body is crazy, Lucifer. There's this gland, the pituitary—" she'd pointed at the back of her skull with her left hand "—and it has to talk to this other gland, the thyroid, which is like right here," she'd pointed at her neck with the other, pipette still stuck between two fingers, "and it's only like inches away, but there's no nerve or anything in between. So the pituitary floods your whole freaking circulatory system with thyroid stimulating hormone, like, your toes get a hit. The little pituitary could look directly at the thyroid and yell its glandy little voice off and nothing would happen. It's got to yell at the entire body or the thyroid won't get the message. And that's why the new lieutenant issued the whole department that memo about no using precinct megaphones for Nixon impressions even though you're the only one who did it. Because—"
"—the universe is inefficient," he finished. "Don't know why you brought that up. You're its architect, after all."
"Hey, I did make a perfect world. Then my son led a rebellion. The point is about getting the message." He nodded at something behind them.
Lucifer didn't turn around. "I can see how you'd do this to me—"
"Did I do something to you?" he asked pointedly.
"—but Chloe," he stopped. "She was..." he searched for the word. "She was yours."
"So are you," he answered. He crossed his arms. "Besides, what do you care? Chloe's only a—"
He spoke in the first language, the native tongue of the silver city, sound and meaning layered on top of each other like panes of glass, only forming a complete meaning when everything lined up.
dirt-crawl
eating
time
thief
catabolism/anabolism/zero-sum
beast
replicate
entropy
decay
burst-open
shame
"That's what you called them, remember?"
"It was a long time ago." He scooped up the cat of nine as if to get back to work. He stretched out the band and turned to the tenant. "Sorry for the distraction, darling."
"You like deals, don't you?" he called Lucifer's attention back, a narrow smile touching Earl's face. "I'll make you a deal. If you say, right now, that Chloe Decker is only a beast, I'll let you choose her fate—" Lucifer turned around. "—Silver City. Immortality on Earth. You could make her your consort here in hell if you want. Just say you still believe now as you did then."
His mouth went dry. He felt his heart pound a full five times before he answered.
"What is this?"
The man who wasn't Earl leaned back, folding his arms. "Maybe Chloe's too hard," he said. "How about Linda? Tell me Linda isn't worth your love or mine. Same winnings."
"Linda is—" he put up both hands. "I'm not playing this game."
"Still too hard? Ella, then."
"No."
"Trixie."
"Stop it."
"Daniel. You can't stand Daniel. My priest, Frank. You barely met him. Your flight attendant Jana. Pick a Brittney."
"Is this some trick to corrupt me further? You want me to become a liar?" he stepped closer. "I stopped blaming humanity for your choices a long time ago."
"Her," he pointed and Lucifer looked behind him. The tenant had tear streaks through the dirt on its face—and other fluids all the more repulsive for no longer being necessary to keep a body alive. It was mumbling randomly, as if there were no mind at all in the shell. "Say it about her, son," he said quietly. "Say it about her and I'll do whatever you want with Chloe."
A beast. Nothing but a vessel for shame. So mindless it couldn't even crawl toward the exit.
It wouldn't even be a lie.
Now with his anger dying down to caution, it was harder to resist the force of his father's presence. When the almighty wanted you to speak, you spoke. When he wanted you to kneel, you knelt. Rebellion of any kind was a supreme act of will, taking the magnets of your soul and holding them apart.
It took all he had not to answer.
"Whatever this game is," he said, "I'm not playing."
"Not even to keep Chloe out of these cells?"
He turned around sharply. "Chloe's not going to—"
"She betrayed the man she loved," he answered simply.
"Oh nice try. The Detective did not love Cain, and she was perfectly unconflicted about putting a stop to him."
God closed his eyes, running a hand over his forehead, and slowly eying Lucifer from underneath his palm.
A loop formed in Lucifer's mind, hot and vivid. Somewhere in the infernal plane, a cell came into being, lockless door ready to be opened. There was a table set with wine, a phial in the shape of an hourglass. This time, he would drink, and she would have to watch what came next, over and over. What was one little word to spare her that?
"I forgave her," he finished.
"Good," said his father, picking a pebble off the ground and examining it, "but it's not about you."
The cell in Lucifer's mind didn't disappear. It wouldn't, not until Chloe forgave herself.
She had a dangerous job. She lived in a world where death could come at any time, whether you were done working through your issues or not.
Lucifer stepped toward the tenant, turned his back on God, crouching down like a vulture eying a carcass that wasn't quite dead.
"What did you do?" he asked.
"Phat¬¬ēs."
"No," he said.
Two eyes blinked back, black within yellowed red.
"They called me a liar. They said I was lying." Slaps. Then kicks. Once society gave people permission, anyone could do anything and not feel one fiber of guilt. Someone had pushed her into the crack between the cliffs.
"You are a liar," he said. For a second, anger flared on that ruin of a face. "You're lying to yourself now. What did you really do?"
She shook her head, brown mixed with gray, chopped short. Behind them, there was a shift of boots on gravel, as if someone were watching.
"Tell me what you did," he said softly. "It will not buy you freedom from this place, but it will—" he stopped. What did it do? Punishing them for the right thing made a difference; he was sure of that now, but what?
There was a sound behind him, as if Earl's boots had shifted on the gravel.
"The only way to get over that pain," he said, remembering Linda, "is to go through it."
The tenant watched him.
"You're telling yourself you're being punished for something else, something you didn't do, so you don't have to face who you truly are, and something made you wish you'd died here."
The words came in a language older than Homer.
A dispute over property, with another woman she'd known since childhood. A feud that had festered until it turned sharp, no different from any other. The loop shifted as she spoke, as the open hillside in hot midday sun gave way to an early morning in a stream just deep enough for drowning. Lucifer stepped back, heard shouts like flint rock, saw two women tussle until one of them tripped forward into the water. The other hesitated like a mantis over a fly, then held her head down in the silt until she stopped thrashing.
It was an edge, a tipping point. If her heart had beat one second slower, she'd have left the other woman to drown or rise on her own. Two seconds slower, and she might even have helped her up.
"But your people didn't punish you for that," he said. "They took their revenge for something that every one of them did every day."
Her head moved.
His voiced dropped. If you were quiet enough, you could make anyone hear you.
"You're daring the universe to be just." It reminded him of Chloe. It had clung to her until it seemed to be in her pores. "I'd hate to admit it, but sometimes society gets it right. 'Don't murder people.' 'No microwaving fish at the office.' But you're waiting for someone else to say 'no, that's not it.'"
Something moved behind the tenant's eyes, the shadow of a creature swimming underneath dark water.
"The universe is inefficient. It will call your bluff every time. If you want justice, you have to take it. That they punished you for the wrong thing, if they punished you for the wrong thing, is their sin. This isn't about them. It's about you."
He pointed behind him. For the first time, he realized he wasn't sure the tenant could see the other man. "He gave you a will. And I'm giving you permission."
Lucifer stood up. "Now," he said. "Tell me what you did."
"I killed Evdokia. I didn't have to."
Part of his old smile came back. "And you need to be punished for that, don't you?"
Lucifer felt the moving of a will, the tenant's, his, hell itself. It did not matter. The loop reset. The early morning by the stream. He watched the woman's throat move, remembered his own fear, stabbing Uriel over and over again, the terror of not being able to control his own body.
He took two steps back, then another, as the murderer held her victim under the water. She looked like a villain, a sinner. But she no longer looked like a beast. Something had changed. As if the difference brought her some small understanding or meaning or—
Light.
He felt cold, like sweat drying after a fever. He looked over his shoulder. The man with Earl's face was still there.
"Well?" he said. "Do I pass?"
He folded his arms, watching the tenant. "Close enough," he said. "Name your prize."
Lucifer tucked the cat of nine into his belt, wishing he had a glass of scotch. "I can be a cliché," he said, "but two men bartering over a grown woman is too Biblical even for us." He looked Earl in the eye. "'Make her my consort,' Father? Really?"
He give him Earl's smile. "Sometimes," he leaned into the word, "sometimes I have to lay it on thick with you."
"Do I need to tell you?"
"Out loud."
"Chloe Decker chooses her own eternity," said Lucifer.
"Done." He nodded. "When her time comes, I will send her to you."
"No, that is not what I said," snarled Lucifer. "She will choose her daughter," he answered. "Minx though the Detective's offspring may be, she has a well-developed sense of right and wrong, and Chloe knows it. Chloe will go to the Silver City because that is where she will be." They'd be happy. They'd be safe. "Besides, I don't want her to—" he stopped before he admitted it. Something about his father actually being here, actually talking to him after so much silence was undercutting his reflex not to answer.
"You don't want her to see you like this?" followed his father. He turned his head to the side. "What she sees when she gets here is up to you. I didn't make you an inmate in this place, Lucifer. I didn't even make you a warden. I made you a king."
"This is Hell, Father," he said. "It's never going to be puppy dogs and rainbows."
Behind them, a woman was drowning someone who'd been as close to her as a sister, and it was the purest thing he'd seen all day.
"Couldn't serve its purpose if it were," he agreed.
"I can't rule this place if I push the demons too far," said Lucifer.
"You can't or it would be hard?" he answered, something like anger narrowing his eyes. He shook his head, pushing himself back to his feet, skinny hands against his thighs. "So I have a bit of a conundrum," he said. "Hell works because it's outside my presence. I can't keep coming to talk to you directly. But here you are making changes, and I can't let that go unsupervised," God counted on Earl's fingers. "I have to send someone to check on you from time to time."
"Well Azrael mentioned something about wanting to visit," said Lucifer, eying the new loop.
God rubbed Earl's hand over his face and just barely shook his head. "I'm the one who made angels," he muttered. "I must've wanted 'em dumb."
Lucifer turned around, "Juvenile taunts, now?"
"Next time you come by," he pointed Earl's hand toward the tenant. "You might want to ask her what she lied about."
Lucifer looked at the woman in the stream, then back to his father. "Why would there be a next—"
There was no one there.
"Typical," he muttered.
.
.
"I have no idea what the man's talking about," he paced back and forth, completely still on the throne. "He says he'll let me choose, and then he says he'll let you choose and then he's sending you here." He ran a hand through his hair. He kept perfectly still.
The image was silent.
I can't, he thought.
I can't put words in your mouth.
I can't decide for you whether you're going to yell at me or roll your eyes or—his fingers flexed on the arm of the throne—or tell me you love me.
His imaginary Chloe disappeared. Then a memory of the real Chloe streetside in L.A. A case.
"Going backwards isn't good, Lucifer, for anyone."
He opened his eyes.
"So what does forward look like?" he said. Out loud.
.
"...I wish I'd cared more about her than about what my neighbors thought."
"I should have kept my mouth shut around him."
"I should have left her alone."
"I should have taken it like a man."
"I should have stopped them. I should have let them shoot me before I did what I did."
.
.
Eventually, he came back to loop, by the stream.
The tenant still looked like a scrap of a thing, hands white with the cold of the water, the cold of her crimes. But it was still there. That difference.
"You," he called out.
She froze, cringing back until she fell into the bank, eyeing the stains on his hands from the last tenant.
"When last we spoke, you called yourself a liar. What was the lie?"
He watched her throat work as she swallowed raw air.
"I climbed up into the hills. I went to the cave reserved for the oracle. I ignored the offerings. I thought I could have my own vision."
She'd seen a woman enter the underworld and leave again. Descend and return, descend and return. Only it hadn't been the goddess. It hadn't.
"Tell me more."
He savored the words like something stolen. He heard the tenant describe strange clothes, height and build, words in a language she didn't understand.
"There was a sense about her. Something that clung to her like a breath..."
They'd called her a liar over. They'd punished her far more for what she'd seen on the mountain than for what she'd done by the riverbank.
He crouched down.
"She would descend to great welcome. And she would rise again. But she wasn't Persephone returning to Hades."
Lucifer watched the tenant's face. Suffering. And fear. And something else.
No human mind made it through Hell or even Earth without damage, but if you broke it in the right place, the light could flow straight through.
"No," he murmured. "No, it wasn't Persephone returning. But it will be winter in my heart until she does."
And if it was anything but her own decision, he and the almighty would have words.
.
.
The king was back, and there would be changes.
Subordinates were instructed, hell loops realigned. Whether the demons understood what they were doing or not was irrelevant. What this meant for demonkind, even humankind, had yet to be seen. And that meant time had meaning in Hell.
It wasn't an act, though the feathered king's hands were far from spotless. There were new ideas. There was a plan. He'd been to Earth and he'd learned so much.
"Which tenant today, my king? One of your old favorites?"
In his mind's eye, he saw Linda.
"The man you became in Los Angeles. He's still with you, isn't he?"
Ella said, "Don't give him up without a fight, Lucifer."
Maze's grin gleamed like her knives. "But give them Hell."
A difficult balance to strike. Not impossible.
He leaned toward the demon before the throne.
"Show me someone who lacks perspective."
.
.
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I am looking for a beta for a longer 'fic. Higher-level story ideas, research and flow (I'm reasonably content with my English mechanics).
I wasn't comfortable tagging this Chloe/Lucifer because face it it's not what people are looking for when they look for Chloe/Lucifer 'fics. Chloe doesn't even appear as an active character or even an active memory the way Linda and Ella do (though I tried to avoid sexy lamp; ptui! ptui!). But it is Deckerstar in its way.