Missing Person

FBI… further notice… with pay… so sorry…

Chloe heard the words. She understood them. She understood them as well as she knew how she got home. Drove herself. LA traffic, stoplights, 4-ways, home. That was how it always happened. That's how it must have happened. And then she'd gotten herself in bed. Trixie, dinner, bed. It couldn't have happened any other way. And now?

Oh.

She was staring at the ceiling. Because she'd been shot—yes, focus on that. That was why, nothing more, just the shock, just the bruise, better than it could have been. Better than dead, better than riddled by God (she giggled. God.) knows how many bullets f—no. Don't go down the rabbit hole. Don't eat the biscuit or drink the tea or challenge the queen. She giggled again. He was a king. Lucifer: the king of—

No.

Ceiling.

Boring. Good. Very good. Practically angelic. He's an angel. With feathers. White, glowing feathers. And third-or-worse degree burns. Because he'd fallen and—the pick up lines. He'd probably smite her if she ever tried one on him. Could he smite? Had he smited? Smote? Smoted? Smoot? Whatever. Down the rabbit hole, Decker. Hole in one. She couldn't see the ceiling anymore. She couldn't see the ceiling because her eyes were closed, that's why. They were on fire. Not his. They were on fire from tears.

Chloe slept.

She dreamed of hellfire eyes and ravaged skin. She dreamed of exposed sinew and white bone, of shiny red muscle and pain, burning, icy pain. She dreamed he called out to her, and she dreamed that she ran away, and she dreamed a nightmare. She dreamed she was falling, white wings immobile behind her, and she dreamed. She dreamed she died, the bullet in her heart, and she dreamed she stabbed Marcus, dagger twisting farther, harder, breaking bones and burying into him. She dreamed she killed Lucifer. When she woke—was she awake? Was she awake for the first time? Shadows on a cave wall. Lucifer was alive, Marcus was dead, and she hadn't run away. She hadn't… but she has. 1:04 AM. Chloe slept.

The shadows on the wall were shadows, and she was drawn past the puppet master's flame, but she refused.

She had not seen anything. There had been nothing there: tricks of the light, tricks of fate, tricks of irony and persistence and cruel fact. There was no puppet master or puppets. There was nothing besides the tangibility of the shadows and the tangibility that she was not at work. She needed to work. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed. No higher power, no lower; nothing in between. Just the dinge of crime and fatal trick and the perpetuity of common life.

But there was no work. There was crime, but no job; money, but no purpose. No murders she could track, no murderers to chase, no death to sharpen her mind and lead her focus to water. It was a normal day in common life, but when she picked up her phone to text Lucifer, her fingers froze and her mind drew back and her breathing drew thin and—

She was alone. Lucifer was… Lucifer was a normal club owner, with a normal business, and a normal constitution, and he really must be busy with all that rich club stuff, so she was alone. She was alone without a murder and without a purpose and without a partner. She was alone.

Her thoughts were cacophonous, thunderous roars in empty caverns devoid of life and decoration.

Truths were not truths, but they felt so real, as indescribably real as they were improbable, and those burning eyes and that twisted dagger, and there was Hell and there was Heaven, but there couldn't be—there couldn't be—for if there were, then—

Then nothing. Then there would be nothing. She needed answers. She needed answers, but her hands wouldn't cooperate. Her phone refused to dial him. Him. Him, with all his metaphors, and that wasn't what she needed. She couldn't take the regular, she couldn't take the face-value and normal. She couldn't go back to shadows. So she called his brother. She called his brother, but he didn't answer. So she called her roommate, but she didn't answer. And Chloe was alone. She was alone, and no matter how many times she tried Amenadiel or Mazikeen, no matter how many times she texted and called, neither answered. Gone. Gone, just like her life. Just like the shadows.

Chloe did not sleep.

She did not dream that Lucifer was who he said he was. She did not dream that Marcus was dead, or that she was falling, or that she killed her best friend. She did not dream, and she did not suffer, and this was good. She had no work, but she had work: no response in contact spread the course of the day meant incapacitation or missing. It wasn't murder (God, she hoped it wasn't murder) but it was something, and Chloe did not sleep.

Charlotte had been murdered here, and Amenadiel had gone missing. Charlotte had been murdered here by Chloe's almost husband. It wasn't fair. This whole world—it wasn't fair. Chloe had seen it. She'd seen the figures. She'd passed go. And if all that were real, if all of it were actually real and she wasn't absolutely mad, then what was the point? Charlotte had been trying. She'd been trying to be a good person, trying so hard, heart-achingly hard. She'd tried so hard to become anathema to her past, and she'd been killed, and the birds still had the gall the chirp and the leaves the will to rustle. If someone trying could die in an instant, if someone trying didn't have any protection from the figures, then what was—a dead end circle. Chloe was there for Amenadiel. She was there for the questions and the confirmations, not for the circles, but she was alone.

Amenadiel's apartment had an air of abandonment about it Chloe had only ever encountered with murder victims. He was neat, but there were still pans soaking in the sink and books in piles throughout the room. When she dared flip through some of them, they were in languages she had no hope of understanding, and some of the pages felt like dust beneath her fingers. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but immortals never cease. Immortal. Two 'm's. She was rifling through an angel's apartment because said angel wasn't returning her calls, and wasn't it funny how this new universe worked? She was in a whole new world, and there wasn't any way to go back, and how stupid was that? Chloe would give to go back. She'd give her dreams and her desires, just to have this be a long nightmare. So how about it, huh? Bring back on that mortal shield and let the immortals with-two-'m's deal with this, nightmares as payment? The ceiling did not respond, and Chloe's phone did not ring.

Chloe hadn't slept.

She couldn't sleep, not with her eyes burning from exhaustion, not with the darkness of her room, not with the chilling silence in her mind. It was real. That was it. There wasn't any going back. Marcus was dead. Lucifer was Lucifer. Everything she'd only gave passing acknowledgment to so as to satisfy her mother-in-law was real. God. Hell. Heaven. Angels. Lucifer. And she was an ant without any more tears to give. A plaything in the face of creation, Trixie's playdoh. And she was powerless. And everything was real. And everything was… real.

Chloe couldn't remember waking up, just as she couldn't remember getting dressed or driving Trixie to school or Trixie's concern about her. No. Actually, she remembered that. She remembered that, because this had gone on for too long. Trixie had dealt with too much. Inconsequential prisoners humans may be in comparison to everything she'd thought was pleasant and comforting hope, Chloe was sick of this and sick of what it was doing to her and sick of what it was doing to her daughter. She wanted answers and confirmation, and Amenadiel and Maze were both still gone, but she was certain that Lucifer wasn't. She hoped that he wasn't. God, she hoped. But for all her hope, Chloe still couldn't convince her fingers to cooperate with her phone. She still couldn't convince herself to call him, or text him, no matter how close each time she came. And she was sick of this.

She parked out front of Lux with every memory of how she got there and every intent to continue forward. Every action laid out and every desire acted upon. It was evening, and the line was already well formed, but the bouncer let her pass without question. The elevator opened without question. Lucifer's home opened without question.

And there he was. The Devil himself, sitting on his couch which probably had cost more than Chloe's rent, bottle of something not meant to be drunk from the bottle in hand.

Chloe sat next to him. She grabbed his sleeve when he tried to flee, and she pulled him back next to her, and she leant into him. He was warm. He'd always been warm—like a mug of hot chocolate.

"De… tective." He spoke like he was confused and unsure, and Chloe settled into the warmth, pinning him between the arm of the couch and her body. He wasn't a hugger; he held stiff. "I thought—"

"I'm not going to leave you." He was so predictable sometimes.

"But—"

"No." He quieted. This was nice, holding him, staring at his piano. He hadn't relaxed, but this was nice. Better. Getting better. "Charlotte?"

He didn't speak for a moment, and then he tried to escape again, but Chloe held fast. "In Heaven. Amenadiel flew her up." Good. And good. She supposed that was as good a reason as any to not be able to reach Amenadiel; no cell in Heaven.

"Maze?"

"With Linda. We are not on speaking terms."

Chloe nodded, finally realizing how smooth the fabric of his jacket was. "And you?"

"Likely returning to Hell once you've come to your senses."

"I just got my senses back." She removed her head from his sleeve to look at him. Circles beneath his eyes, stubble slightly more than stubble now, lips set into a grim line, but still the softest eyes. No fire at present. "I want you to stay."

"Even through I'm a monster?" A monster, he thought.

"That's the only thing you've said to me that isn't true." She pulled the bottle from his hand and set it on the ground at her feet. "You're not a monster. Not to me. Stay."