Lucifer had given up on removing the burden from his back, since every time he'd done so, they had grown back. Which he now knows, thanks to Amenadiel's ridiculous theory, was his own fault. But now he's ready to be done with them for good. He has his Devil face back, so he should be able to get rid of the wings for good. Once more be free of who his father wants him to be.
Tonight is as good a time as any. Better, in fact, because Chloe has plans and won't be dropping in. She won't know about it until it's done. No one will, because once again he's not asking Maze for help. He has to do this himself, before he doesn't do it at all.
His wings are healed now, with no evidence that they'd ever sheltered anyone from a hail of bullets. Spread out in his bedroom like this, they take up most of the space from wall to wall. Soon enough that won't be an issue.
He clutches the Hellblade in one hand and reaches behind him, slowly, then presses the edge of the blade against the spot where feathers meet skin. He clenches his other fist and closes his eyes -- against the pain, he tells himself -- and takes a deep breath as he prepares to begin to cut.
She stopped announcing herself after a while. There wasn't really a point; walking in on him half-dressed wasn't exactly an issue nor was she concerned with finding him in a compromising position with another woman. So far, Chloe had made herself quite at home in the penthouse, stopping short of leaving a toothbrush in the bathroom because that might still be a little much for Lucifer to deal with.
After girls night fell through (Ella got tickets to a concert she was dying to go to and Linda had the flu anyway), Chloe figured she'd already lined up the babysitter and might as well use the excuse to drop in on Lucifer with a surprise dinner. With paper bags of burgers and fries in hand, she pops out of the elevator and into the penthouse, moving in to drop the bags onto the bar top. From that vantage point, she can clearly see Lucifer, his wings outstretched in the bedroom, and she pauses for a moment, half hypnotized by them. Understandably, Chloe has never got a decent look at them, and since Lucifer never expressed any interest in showing her, she doesn't ask.
She's about to open her mouth when she sees what is in his hand - one of Maze's blades, hovering over his shoulder and towards the joint where those magnificent wings meet his back. It dawns on her suddenly and she lurches towards the bedroom, nearly tripping over the piano as she goes.
He's used to people just walking into his penthouse by now; his friends (which he's still surprised he even has) have been doing it for awhile now, and it's not like he has a door he can lock to keep them out. Even so, he hadn't been expecting anyone to do it, what with Chloe and Linda having plans with each other and Amenadiel up in Heaven unless he has a reason to come down to Earth. So when he hears his name, it takes him a moment to realize that it's Chloe who said it.
He lowers his hand as his wings droop behind him, but he doesn't drop the blade yet. "I didn't think you were going to be here tonight."
She moves closer to him, her hands raised in front of her. It's an instinctive behavior now, trained into her by encountering too many deranged criminals with weapons, and she lowers them slightly when she realizes how it's probably coming off. She isn't worried Lucifer would do anything to her, but she obviously should have been concerned about what he might do to himself.
"Linda and Ella canceled. I figured I'd come by for dinner." She shifts her weight, her eyes narrow and wary. "Good thing, too, because I am not going to let you do this."
There's a flash of something in his eyes -- not his Devil eyes because those are reserved for those who deserve punishment, but anger. The kind of anger that was behind his rebellion in the first place. Anger that few people have seen since, and only when someone wants him to be something he doesn't want to be.
"You couldn't stop me." Except that she could, because right now he's as vulnerable as she is, and even though his strength isn't diminished, they both know he'd never use it on her.
And of course he can't really be angry at her, and it doesn't last. He loosens his grip on the blade but doesn't let go of it yet.
The watches his hand around the blade, her heartbeat pounding in her ears even as she observes him loosening his grip. She knows the only thing holding him back right now is the fact that he'll bleed out in her presence, but what about when she leaves? She can't stay in his penthouse forever.
He might never hurt her physically, but what he says does hurt. Chloe knows she's risking herself being with him, against odds that she isn't even entirely clear on. Of course this has to do with her.
"Just stop and think about this," she says, keeping her voice even and her eyes on his. "You're with me now, Lucifer. The things you do will have an effect on me, whether you think they will or not. Please... Let's just talk about this."
Talk. What good does talk do? But there's no other way to tell her why this has to be done.
He sits on the edge of the bed, blade still in his hand, wingtips brushing against the mattress. "My whole life, my father expected certain things of me. Same as he did of all of his children. I could never be the son he expected me to be. I tried, until I couldn't try anymore, and I was banished from the only home I'd known up to that point and sent somewhere I never wanted to go in the first place."
He glances back at the wings with a look of disapproval. "He gave me these. Gave them to the son he wanted me to be. The one I can never be. That's not who I am."
She steps towards the bed, her gaze moving over his wings. The idea of him throwing away something so beautiful is baffling enough, but for him to hurt himself to do it? She remembers the scars on his back, the way he grabbed her wrist so tightly to stop her from touching them. That felt like years ago, now.
"But he didn't give them back to you," she points out, taking another step forward. "You have them because you changed, Lucifer. Because you're starting to see yourself the way I do. Your father didn't give you your wings. You gave them to yourself."
She shakes her head, lifting her hand to gesture to him weakly.
"Why would you want them gone again?"
They are the sign of how far he's come. He may not be an angel, but he isn't completely devil anymore, either.
He can't answer that question. Or at least not in any way that she will understand. It's just something that he has to do in order to have some control over his life. Something rooting him to the person he knows he is, because as she's just reminded him, he's becoming less of that person every day, and he doesn't know what to do with that information. If he's not an angel, and he's not the Devil, then who, or what, is he? There's never been anything else.
"Without them, I'm sure of something." He knows, somehow, that she won't accept even that explanation, won't understand it, but it's the only one he has to give.
He stands up from the bed and tucks the wings away, the issue dropped for now, and walks past her and out of the bedroom to the balcony, in search of fresh air, or at least however much of it he can find in the heart of Los Angeles.
He's right. She doesn't understand. Chloe takes a breath and follows him out onto the balcony, her initial anger now replaced with concern. Lucifer is so complex, so deeply broken, sometimes she's not sure they can make this work.
"Sure of what?" She comes up next to him, staring out at the city for a long moment. She finally turns her head to look at him. "Lucifer, please. Don't shut me out again."
He had thought, not that long ago, that telling her the truth about himself, and about how he felt about her, would be the hardest thing he would ever have to do. He hasn't just become physically vulnerable because of her, but emotionally, too, and he never learned how to deal with either of them.
Which makes this even harder than anything he's done before. He doesn't know how to be vulnerable in this way, to deal with the hurt that could come with it.
He can't look at her when he answers. That would make it even harder. "Sure of what I am without them." The Devil. "With them, I don't know what I am." Angel wings and Devil face. What does that make him?
"You're you," she says, refusing to look away from him. This might be a difficult conversation--knowing him, maybe even downright impossible--but Chloe isn't going to back off. This is too important.
"Being the Devil, or being an angel... Neither of those things have to define you." She moves a little closer to him, slowly, not wanting to make him feel crowded but not wanting him to feel adrift, either. "You can be both."
"They're opposites." That's been clear for millennia. By his family, by believers, by those who wrote the book. It's as established as the difference between night and day. "How am I supposed to be both?"
"Opposites doesn't have to mean mutually exclusive," she points out, letting out a slow breath of air as she tries to think through this. "People are complicated. How we feel, the things we do, it doesn't always make sense."
Look at them, after all. A good girl with a pure heart and the Devil himself, and yet, they're finding ways to make it work. Chloe knows he's changed, but she has, too. And they're both better for it.
"Being an angel and the Devil is part of who you are. You don't have to erase one just to make room for the other."
Two things opposed to each other. That's what it means to him. How can it be anything else?
"That doesn't make any sense." He still doesn't understand humans, or their emotions, despite years spent living among them. He doesn't know how to be more than one thing at a time.
She stops herself short, turning her head away from him to look out over the city again. Maybe Chloe doesn't quite understand where he's coming from, but he doesn't seem to understand her, either.
"I'm worried about you, Lucifer," she mutters, shaking her head gently. "I know how hard this must be on you. But I can't watch you hurt yourself just to make a point."
He's not used to having anyone feel that way about him. Just like he's not used to feeling that way about anyone, either. He's never been the best at navigating new waters, but this time he wants to try.
If he can't make his point that way, maybe he can do it some other way. "I tortured people for millennia." It doesn't matter that he was forced to do it after being kicked out of Heaven, or that he hadn't enjoyed it as much as his demons had. He'd done it, and he'd been good at it.
"I killed my brother." And Pierce, but he doesn't regret that, and he never will. They both know he was justified in doing it. "What have I done to earn angel wings?"
Chloe turns to face him again. At least this is something she has an answer
to.
"You saved my life. A few times over if what you've told me is any
indication. You've helped the LAPD put dozens of killers away, you've made
the world a little safer and saved lives by making the world a better
place. You don't just punish people anymore. You protect them, too."
She takes a step closer to him, resting her hand on his forearm gently. "I
know I don't always give you a lot of support. But you are so much
more than a consultant now. You've become a pretty decent cop. One that I
am proud to work with... When you aren't making penis jokes."
Not saving her life was never an option for him. The alternative had been unthinkable. The moments when he thought he'd never see her again had been the worst of his life.
"Of course I saved your life. It was the -- " Right thing to do. All of it had been. He hadn't thought of it that way when he did it. He just did it. Apparently some part of him had seen it that way though.
"I...had no reason not to do any of those things."
"You didn't really have any reason to do them, either," she points out. "A lot of people wouldn't. There's plenty of people who don't care, but you do. You don't do it because you think you'll get something out of it, you do it because you're good."
Chloe takes that moment to move closer to him again, her hand sliding down his arm to take his, to make him acknowledge that she is there. And she isn't going anywhere.
"You've started to see that in yourself. That's how you got your wings back, right? Because you can see all the good you've done. Why would you want to throw that away?"
He still only half believes what she's telling him, even as he knows it's true, it must be, because he wouldn't be burdened with his wings if it weren't.
He finally turns to look at her, to focus on the good thing he still isn't sure he deserves.
She shutters a deep breath. In a lot of ways, there is a vast divide between them. They are two very different people who have experienced very different things. But in a lot of ways, they are very similar, too.
"Maybe it would be easier if we could just forget the things that hurt," she tells him, averting her gaze for only a moment before she musters up the nerve to look at him again. "But everything that happens to us--for better or for worse--that's what makes us who we are."
She thinks briefly about her father, how little she talked about him for so long because of how much she missed him. As if avoiding bringing him up, even to her own daughter, would somehow erase the pain of having lost him.
"I know I'm never going to understand everything you've gone through but... That much, I do know."
He's been trying to forget the things that hurt, but of course he can't. Which just leads to trying harder, or ignoring them. He doesn't want to hurt anymore.
He knows that what she's saying makes sense. At least about how he ended up who he is. The disgraced son, banished from his home, who hasn't seen most of his family in millennia. The outsider. The convenient villain.
He doesn't want to go along with it anymore.
"My father wants me back in Hell. If I don't have my wings, I can't go back there."
"If you do have them, you can choose whether to go back there or not," she counters. "Lucifer, I know this is probably going to sound insane, considering, but you don't have to let your dad control you."
Sure, his dad happens to be God, but if He really wanted Lucifer back in Hell, wouldn't He have done it by now?
Chloe grabs his hand with hers, tightening her grip around it. "I know I have no right to ask this, and I know you're going to make your own decisions at the end of the day but..." She sighs, staring up at him. "I'm asking you not to do this."
It's not an ultimatum, but that still doesn't mean what he does won't affect her, too.
Choice. That was all he'd wanted in the first place. Why he'd started a rebellion in the first place, one that got him nowhere but banished. The rebellion that had been doomed to fail from the start, because his father had effectively destroyed the one thing that could help it succeed.
And it was why he had left Hell and settled in Los Angeles. Because he had chosen to.
He still doesn't like his wings, and nothing Chloe or anyone else says about them will ever chance that. It had been another form of defiance to cut them off. Could it also be defiance to keep them? Defiance of what everyone expects of him? No, probably not really.
He looks down at Chloe's hand around his. He doesn't understand why she's asking him this; there are a lot of things he doesn't understand. Nor can he deny that they did come in handy recently. Perhaps one day they will again.
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timeasmymeasure
For thevulnerability
Date: 2018-12-25 03:39 pm (UTC)Tonight is as good a time as any. Better, in fact, because Chloe has plans and won't be dropping in. She won't know about it until it's done. No one will, because once again he's not asking Maze for help. He has to do this himself, before he doesn't do it at all.
His wings are healed now, with no evidence that they'd ever sheltered anyone from a hail of bullets. Spread out in his bedroom like this, they take up most of the space from wall to wall. Soon enough that won't be an issue.
He clutches the Hellblade in one hand and reaches behind him, slowly, then presses the edge of the blade against the spot where feathers meet skin. He clenches his other fist and closes his eyes -- against the pain, he tells himself -- and takes a deep breath as he prepares to begin to cut.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-25 09:48 pm (UTC)After girls night fell through (Ella got tickets to a concert she was dying to go to and Linda had the flu anyway), Chloe figured she'd already lined up the babysitter and might as well use the excuse to drop in on Lucifer with a surprise dinner. With paper bags of burgers and fries in hand, she pops out of the elevator and into the penthouse, moving in to drop the bags onto the bar top. From that vantage point, she can clearly see Lucifer, his wings outstretched in the bedroom, and she pauses for a moment, half hypnotized by them. Understandably, Chloe has never got a decent look at them, and since Lucifer never expressed any interest in showing her, she doesn't ask.
She's about to open her mouth when she sees what is in his hand - one of Maze's blades, hovering over his shoulder and towards the joint where those magnificent wings meet his back. It dawns on her suddenly and she lurches towards the bedroom, nearly tripping over the piano as she goes.
"Lucifer!"
no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 02:58 am (UTC)He lowers his hand as his wings droop behind him, but he doesn't drop the blade yet. "I didn't think you were going to be here tonight."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 06:29 am (UTC)She moves closer to him, her hands raised in front of her. It's an instinctive behavior now, trained into her by encountering too many deranged criminals with weapons, and she lowers them slightly when she realizes how it's probably coming off. She isn't worried Lucifer would do anything to her, but she obviously should have been concerned about what he might do to himself.
"Linda and Ella canceled. I figured I'd come by for dinner." She shifts her weight, her eyes narrow and wary. "Good thing, too, because I am not going to let you do this."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-26 09:59 pm (UTC)"You couldn't stop me." Except that she could, because right now he's as vulnerable as she is, and even though his strength isn't diminished, they both know he'd never use it on her.
And of course he can't really be angry at her, and it doesn't last. He loosens his grip on the blade but doesn't let go of it yet.
"This has nothing to do with you."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 05:39 am (UTC)He might never hurt her physically, but what he says does hurt. Chloe knows she's risking herself being with him, against odds that she isn't even entirely clear on. Of course this has to do with her.
"Just stop and think about this," she says, keeping her voice even and her eyes on his. "You're with me now, Lucifer. The things you do will have an effect on me, whether you think they will or not. Please... Let's just talk about this."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 06:04 am (UTC)He sits on the edge of the bed, blade still in his hand, wingtips brushing against the mattress. "My whole life, my father expected certain things of me. Same as he did of all of his children. I could never be the son he expected me to be. I tried, until I couldn't try anymore, and I was banished from the only home I'd known up to that point and sent somewhere I never wanted to go in the first place."
He glances back at the wings with a look of disapproval. "He gave me these. Gave them to the son he wanted me to be. The one I can never be. That's not who I am."
They're angel wings. He's not an angel.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-27 06:14 am (UTC)"But he didn't give them back to you," she points out, taking another step forward. "You have them because you changed, Lucifer. Because you're starting to see yourself the way I do. Your father didn't give you your wings. You gave them to yourself."
She shakes her head, lifting her hand to gesture to him weakly.
"Why would you want them gone again?"
They are the sign of how far he's come. He may not be an angel, but he isn't completely devil anymore, either.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 01:28 am (UTC)"Without them, I'm sure of something." He knows, somehow, that she won't accept even that explanation, won't understand it, but it's the only one he has to give.
He stands up from the bed and tucks the wings away, the issue dropped for now, and walks past her and out of the bedroom to the balcony, in search of fresh air, or at least however much of it he can find in the heart of Los Angeles.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 02:59 am (UTC)"Sure of what?" She comes up next to him, staring out at the city for a long moment. She finally turns her head to look at him. "Lucifer, please. Don't shut me out again."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 03:13 am (UTC)Which makes this even harder than anything he's done before. He doesn't know how to be vulnerable in this way, to deal with the hurt that could come with it.
He can't look at her when he answers. That would make it even harder. "Sure of what I am without them." The Devil. "With them, I don't know what I am." Angel wings and Devil face. What does that make him?
no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 04:23 am (UTC)"Being the Devil, or being an angel... Neither of those things have to define you." She moves a little closer to him, slowly, not wanting to make him feel crowded but not wanting him to feel adrift, either. "You can be both."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 04:57 am (UTC)Look at them, after all. A good girl with a pure heart and the Devil himself, and yet, they're finding ways to make it work. Chloe knows he's changed, but she has, too. And they're both better for it.
"Being an angel and the Devil is part of who you are. You don't have to erase one just to make room for the other."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 05:30 am (UTC)"That doesn't make any sense." He still doesn't understand humans, or their emotions, despite years spent living among them. He doesn't know how to be more than one thing at a time.
"Why does it matter to you?"
no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 06:06 am (UTC)She stops herself short, turning her head away from him to look out over the city again. Maybe Chloe doesn't quite understand where he's coming from, but he doesn't seem to understand her, either.
"I'm worried about you, Lucifer," she mutters, shaking her head gently. "I know how hard this must be on you. But I can't watch you hurt yourself just to make a point."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 01:54 am (UTC)If he can't make his point that way, maybe he can do it some other way. "I tortured people for millennia." It doesn't matter that he was forced to do it after being kicked out of Heaven, or that he hadn't enjoyed it as much as his demons had. He'd done it, and he'd been good at it.
"I killed my brother." And Pierce, but he doesn't regret that, and he never will. They both know he was justified in doing it. "What have I done to earn angel wings?"
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 02:07 am (UTC)Chloe turns to face him again. At least this is something she has an answer to.
"You saved my life. A few times over if what you've told me is any indication. You've helped the LAPD put dozens of killers away, you've made the world a little safer and saved lives by making the world a better place. You don't just punish people anymore. You protect them, too."
She takes a step closer to him, resting her hand on his forearm gently. "I know I don't always give you a lot of support. But you are so much more than a consultant now. You've become a pretty decent cop. One that I am proud to work with... When you aren't making penis jokes."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-29 03:00 am (UTC)"Of course I saved your life. It was the -- " Right thing to do. All of it had been. He hadn't thought of it that way when he did it. He just did it. Apparently some part of him had seen it that way though.
"I...had no reason not to do any of those things."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-30 06:12 am (UTC)Chloe takes that moment to move closer to him again, her hand sliding down his arm to take his, to make him acknowledge that she is there. And she isn't going anywhere.
"You've started to see that in yourself. That's how you got your wings back, right? Because you can see all the good you've done. Why would you want to throw that away?"
no subject
Date: 2018-12-30 02:39 pm (UTC)He finally turns to look at her, to focus on the good thing he still isn't sure he deserves.
"They remind me of things I want to forget."
no subject
Date: 2018-12-31 08:32 am (UTC)"Maybe it would be easier if we could just forget the things that hurt," she tells him, averting her gaze for only a moment before she musters up the nerve to look at him again. "But everything that happens to us--for better or for worse--that's what makes us who we are."
She thinks briefly about her father, how little she talked about him for so long because of how much she missed him. As if avoiding bringing him up, even to her own daughter, would somehow erase the pain of having lost him.
"I know I'm never going to understand everything you've gone through but... That much, I do know."
no subject
Date: 2019-01-01 04:34 pm (UTC)He knows that what she's saying makes sense. At least about how he ended up who he is. The disgraced son, banished from his home, who hasn't seen most of his family in millennia. The outsider. The convenient villain.
He doesn't want to go along with it anymore.
"My father wants me back in Hell. If I don't have my wings, I can't go back there."
no subject
Date: 2019-01-01 10:15 pm (UTC)Sure, his dad happens to be God, but if He really wanted Lucifer back in Hell, wouldn't He have done it by now?
Chloe grabs his hand with hers, tightening her grip around it. "I know I have no right to ask this, and I know you're going to make your own decisions at the end of the day but..." She sighs, staring up at him. "I'm asking you not to do this."
It's not an ultimatum, but that still doesn't mean what he does won't affect her, too.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-02 01:48 am (UTC)And it was why he had left Hell and settled in Los Angeles. Because he had chosen to.
He still doesn't like his wings, and nothing Chloe or anyone else says about them will ever chance that. It had been another form of defiance to cut them off. Could it also be defiance to keep them? Defiance of what everyone expects of him? No, probably not really.
He looks down at Chloe's hand around his. He doesn't understand why she's asking him this; there are a lot of things he doesn't understand. Nor can he deny that they did come in handy recently. Perhaps one day they will again.
"Fine. I won't."
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