Author's Note: What. A. Goddamn. PAIN. This chapter was. Seriously. I have been fighting with it pretty much since the last one went up. I knew what I needed to happen, but this chapter was seriously least favorite one EVER to write. I don't even know why. I think it's cause I'm looking forwards to the next chapter (Michael makes his debut - I'm excited). Also, that whump thing I mentioned in the story description? Totally this chapter. I don't think it's that bad - I would actually not even really rate it in the T section but some people are more sensitive than I am. AND BIG KEY THING! The reason why Constantine kept getting mentioned was because I need the audience to know that EVERYTHING possible in that universe is possible in THIS one. That means magic, spells, bindings, exorcists, etc. The show isn't very supernatural based, but this story is. So there's that.

Also - I'm sorry, but my inner Catholic is not accepting the show's canon of Amenadiel being the older brother. Or even the OLDEST brother. I'm sorry - no. Amenadiel isn't even high ranking in the comics on which the show is based - he's essentially a two bit thug that Lucifer continually outsmarts. In this world, Michael is the oldest. Lucifer the next, and then Gabriel and Raphael. I'm also going to warn you now, my reasoning for Lucifer not having an effect on Chloe is not going to follow the show. When I started writing this, they hadn't established it was a proximity thing. Also, I can't help but notice that aside from the first couple of episodes, Lucifer doesn't have an the same impact on women outside of "normal" reactions - women think he's hot, but they don't act like he's catnip anymore. I don't know if that's a writer's thing (from pilot to season episodes, a lot changes on most shows) or what. But if it helps to think of this as an A/U, go for it.


Onward!

"You can't know, or you would realize how incredibly stupid whatever plan you have is," Lucifer snapped, and without thinking, hit the barrier with his closed fist.

In fairness, he'd been aiming for Delilah, but she was faster than he gave her credit for and she was back on her protected side. Instead of breaking her cheek bone like he wanted, his fist landed millimeters from her face, stopped by the warding.

Delilah raised a delicate brow. "And what, exactly, do you think my plan is? What part of this do you think I don't understand?"

Lucifer took a step back in his unbearably small cell, allowing some slack in the chains as he tapped a finger to his lips in mock contemplation. "Oh, I don't know…perhaps you seek what a lot of people desire – one of God's perfect killing machines at your beck and call. Which, by the way, you have the wrong man, if that's your concern. Death is the official Reaper of Souls now. All of our nasty little purposes were created into Horsemen when my Father took them from us."

Delilah folded her arms across her chest, head tilted to one side as she studied him through gray eyes. There was something…off about her. He couldn't get a read on her, and it wasn't because of whatever she gave him. Most people had a certain…vibe to them, for lack of a better word.

She felt like the crime scene he'd stumbled upon by himself while out for a drive. A roiling black sickness in the air around her that reminded him of the Souls in Hell.

No, that wasn't accurate either.

She reminded him of Maze.

Or at least, the rest of her kind. So empty and hollow that all of the hurt in the world couldn't begin to fill that void.

"You really think I'm arrogant enough to think I can control the Angel of Death? An Archangel? I'm not sure if I'm flattered or insulted," Delilah said. "You think I'm stupid enough to even try?" She gestured to the small room. "Do you have any idea of the warding required to keep just a pieceof you hidden? I had to go through four hundred years of Californian history to find a place with enough residual spiritual energy that could manage to hide your presence for even a few weeks. I would never be able to sustain it."

Lucifer threw up his hands in frustration, clanking the chain links together. "Then what? I hate guessing games, so get on with it! You want to kill the Devil? Think that will eliminate evil in this world? Did I somehow wrong you personally, and this is some sort of revenge trip?"

Delilah's unblinking gaze met his, and Lucifer fought the urge to shudder. There was nothing behind those eyes. Not even a shred of evidence that there ever was. "Nothing so dramatic. I want you to do your job."

"Amenadiel is currently on the throne of Hell. Any customer service complaints will have to be brought to new management," Lucifer quipped. "Though I hear Remiel has been known to hold the fort while Amenadiel is topside with the rest of us."

Delilah's eye twitched, and he could tell she was losing patience, but bloody hell, so was he.

"Did I mention Hell? Did I mention I wanted you to go back there? Did I?" Delilah said. "This is about Samael. This is about the ruler of the fifth Heaven, not the Lord of Hell."

"Not possible," Lucifer growled, pacing back towards the wall, spinning on one foot and falling back against it with his arms folded defiantly.

"And why not?" Delilah demanded.

"Several dozen reasons come to mind, but namely because I don't want to. For all of the suffering endured for choosing free will over all the powers of the Heavenly Host, I get to say no," Lucifer snarled. "And just in case you missed it – no."

"Why not?" Delilah shouted, so abruptly and so loudly Lucifer almost jumped. "Isn't this," she gestured wildly towards Lucifer. "Exhausting? Pretending for years, for damned millennia to be something you're not? To feel something you don't? Isn't it maddening? You were designed by a divine hand for a divine purpose!"

Lucifer's temper flared, and he knew his nastier side flickered into existence. "You cannot make someone do something they don't want to do!" he shouted back. "Thus the basis of free bloody will!"

"You don't want to?" Delilah said, ignoring Lucifer's temper. He hadn't expected it to have any effect on her, not if she knew what he was, but he wasn't the most even tempered creature. Especially on the subject of freewill. "I find that hard to believe. You're still doing it, even if you hide your face and cower under the pretense that your Father makes you a torturer. Is that really what you are? A puppet in the Divine Comedy?"

"Nobody chooses to be a torturer," Lucifer snapped. "Nobody chooses to be the villain. No one chooses to be a Sin Eater."

"And yet here you are on Earth," Delilah said. She suddenly smiled. "Running around with your Detectives, solving crimes and punishing those who commit them. You didn't change at all. All you did was change locale."

"That's different," Lucifer protested.

"Really?" Delilah said, clearly disbelieving. "What was it that Samael did that you do not? All he did was carry out punishment on Earth. When you became Lucifer, you just waited for them to come to you, and you let them punish themselves. But apparently that wasn't enough for you, because you left, came here, and did exactly what you did as Samael."

Lucifer faltered. No he didn't. Did he? Is that what people thought?

"Hit a nerve, did I?" Delilah purred. "You know that in Talmudic lore, and in Gnostic legend, Samael carried out temptation in the name of God? Whispered in Eve's ear to take the Apple. Stole Adam's first wife and made her the mother of monsters. The modern equivalent, one might argue, would be to offer a place where mortals could indulge in Sin and be told that it was acceptable, and even good. Perhaps a place like a night club, one with a reputation of 'anything goes'?"

That made Lucifer bristle. He didn't need anyone to recite his personal history to him, he was there. Especially not if they were going to get the damned story wrong again. "You're getting it wrong, again. I have no control over what people do or do not do. You humans are acting like I advocate murder and rape and pedophilia and every other sin you've dreamt up in the past thousands of years. How many times do I have to tell you I'm not evil, I punish evil!" he shouted, abandoning any pretense of being disinterested in the woman's ranting. He'd spent thousands of years taking the blame for them and their stupidity. "You think I want you to commit sin? That I want you to wind up in Hell? What for? I hate it there, and I wouldn't have to be there if it weren't for people like you.

"Exactly my point," Delilah said, smiling. "You're not evil. Never have been. Death is the high cost of living, and death isn't a punishment. Otherwise there wouldn't be such a phrase as 'only the good die young.' I'm not asking you to go against your nature. I'm asking you to stop fighting it. You're still punishing people, aren't you? I just want a little less restraint, a little less 'let the law decide'. Is that really so against your newfound sense of morals? Bad people deserve punishment."

"Yes, you idiot, and they get it," Lucifer seethed. "In Hell."

Delilah clenched her hands into fists, and he could see the angry flush of pink in her cheeks. This was like arguing with Michael. Or worse, his Father. Nothing but endless circles until it eventually came to blows.

"It was only that way because people were actually atoning for their sins on Earth," Delilah spat. "People were afraid of your Father. They were afraidof Divine Justice because they actually believed in it. Threat of punishment only works if they think you're going to do it. No one believes anymore. Not in you, not in your Father, not even in something as basic as good and evil. Everyone thinks they can just run around and do whatever the bloody hell they want because they want to and that's good enough for them. Sodom and Gomorrah weren't even half as bad and they were razed to the ground in righteous fire. Eve at an apple and was cast out of Paradise for eternity. God slaughtered all the first born sons of Egypt in one night. And you're telling me that today, right now, we don't deserve worse?"

"You seem to know only the parts of the story that fit your narrative," Lucifer snapped. "You're also missing the part where my Father, in a show of mercy, promised not to send plagues and wide spread destruction upon the Earth – and not only did He promise it then, He made it between every generation to follow. God does not go back on His word."

Delilah suddenly screamed in frustration, whirling and slamming her hand into the wall of the crypt. "What is wrong with you?" she shouted, the perfect mask of indifference gone, replaced by apoplectic rage. She slammed her fist again into the wall, and a bright spurt of blood splashed across the mildewed stones. "You committed more horrific acts at your Father's side than you ever did beneath His heel. If God so loved you then, how could you say He does not prefer Samael to Lucifer? His Poisonous One to His Son of the Morning? Samael the Serpent wasn't cast out, it was His Light Bringer! If God makes no mistakes, then how do you fit into this? Was He wrong to create you the way He did?"

"My Father has nothing to do with how I am!" Lucifer shouted back. "You ignorant bitch, He didn't make me this way, I did! This is what I chose! I wanted free will and He gave it to me and I chose not to be His Sword! Just like I choose not to be the Archangel of Death, and I choose not to be the King of Hell!"

Delilah's lips pulled back in a snarl, any trace of humanity gone from her features. If he didn't know better, he would've thought she was something escaped from The Pit.

"Fine," she growled, in a voice that made his skin crawl. "If that's all the difference between you and Samael, I'll fix that easily enough."

She held her bleeding hand in front of her, the skin across her knuckles raggedly torn and split almost to the bone. Bright red blood welled from the damaged flesh as she squeezed her hand shut, and blood splattered onto the ground at her feet.

"Adiuro vos hic et nunc. Nunquam liberentur, utcunque non minime," she hissed and in a moment of clarity that was too late to be of any use, Lucifer remembered the blood sigils.

She knew blood magic. She knew how, and she was physically capable of it.

"No!" he shouted, charging forwards only to be brought up short by the chains and the barrier.

"Adiuro vos hic et nunc. Nunquam liberentur, utcunque non minime," she repeated, louder this time. As she chanted, she drew a finger through the blood pooling in her palm, creating the runic R shaped binding sigil. "Adiuro vos hic et nunc. Nunquam liberentur, utcunque non minime."

"You don't understand what you're doing!" Lucifer yelled, pounding on the barrier with enough force he felt his bones crack.

Come on, Dad, if ever there was a time to make yourself known… he cursed as he hit the barrier again. This time, he felt the warding give just a fraction. Delilah said she knew it wasn't strong enough to hold him for long, and but it was still going to be long enough. He hit it again the same place, felt his bones give beneath the skin even as the warding flickered.

"Adiuro vos hic et nunc. Nunquam liberentur, utcunque non minime," Delilah shouted, and just as the barrier gave way, she lunged forwards – blood covered hand outstretched – and with the wet sound of tearing skin and splintering bone, tore through his chest like a knife.

He couldn't even scream.

"So the Devil does have a heart," Delilah snarled, clenching her fist around it. "Is this the heart your Father gave you?" She squeezed violently. "Or was it that Detective of yours?"

Lucifer couldn't even breathe. Couldn't think. The entire world faded out of existence.

"No matter," Delilah said, her voice far away and all around him. "I need the Angel of Death, and if this is what keeps him from me, then I shall bind it from you!"

A vicelike grip that wasn't Delilah's seized his heart, and Lucifer threw his head back – he might've screamed, he didn't know. All he could hear was the roar of blood in his ears, and felt himself falling.

"I don't care what delusions and lies you've told yourself, Samael. You are the Serpent, the Accuser, and the Destroyer! The Beast of the Pit is what I seek, and that is what I shall have, even if I have to unmake you myself! Adiuro vos hic et nunc. Nunquam liberentur, utcunque non minime!"

)*)*)*)*)*)*)*)*

Delilah imagined iron manacles encircling his heart until it could no longer beat, blood pooling around her as it soaked into the knees of her pants as she kneeled over her fallen angel.

Lucifer threw his head back, arching off the ground in a seizure, bent, pushing against the ground with his heels and neck, a howl of agony and loss so startlingly human Delilah almost believed it hadn't worked. But as it went on, the pitch and the volume changed, and what began as a human cry of pain became the roar of the Beast, the anger reverberating off the nothingness and making the very earth move. And just as suddenly as it started, it was over, and Lucifer went limp, his body collapsing like a marionette whose strings were severed.

His fingers relaxed, curling gently over his palms, and his eyes slowly opened. For a moment, the brown lingered, before slowly fading to matte black, as if the ocean was evaporating leaving nothing behind but ancient and total darkness.

Delilah felt herself smile, brushing a stray strand of blonde hair behind her ear, ignoring the smear of blood across her face. "There you are, Samael. I knew you were in there somewhere."