Open post | Lucifer Morningstar

[hisfavoriteson]

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post season 3 finale~

[thevulnerability]

It has been a few days since she's seen him. With everything that happened--Pierce's death, the following investigation, Charlotte's impending funeral, not to mention Lucifer--Chloe was completely overwhelmed. It hadn't been easy to turn her back on Lucifer's real face, but she had, long enough to find him gone when she came back to herself. He hasn't reached out, either, which is for the best, really, because she isn't sure if she'd have the guts to pick up the phone.

The reality of everything still hasn't sunk in, but Charlotte's funeral is planned for the next day and as much as Chloe has on her plate between trying to be supportive of Dan and consoling a heartbroken Trixie, Lucifer is never far from her mind. There is a lot left unresolved, so much left unsaid, and Chloe isn't one to let sleeping dogs lie.

Her foremost fear is, strangely, that he will disappear again. That he will up and leave like he did the last time, that he will run away from his problems instead of confronting them. Seeing her partner as the devil he truly is didn't feel real, but none of what happened over the last few days has. In a way, as much as Chloe needs to find some resolution with him, she also needs to prove it to herself - that it isn't all in her mind.

Coming into Lux again knowing what she does, it seems changed. Everything is exactly the same, but there is something more to it now, something almost existential, like that feeling you get when you stare into the stars for too long. She makes her way up to the penthouse, trying to mentally prepare herself to find it abandoned, but when the door opens it seems the same. She steps in, as she has a million times before but, again, it all feels new. Bigger, maybe. More complex than she remembers it.

"Lucifer?" Her voice comes out in a near squeak and she grits her teeth, already annoyed with herself for sounding so unsure. After clearing her throat, she tries again. "Lucifer? Are you here?"

[hisfavoriteson]

He had wanted to show her his true self on his own terms, had even tried it twice without success. So while he hadn't cared that she had seen his devil face, that wasn't the way he had wanted to it to happen. Remembering how Linda had taken the revelation, and the fact that for so long the most important thing had been Chloe's choice, he had left before things got more complicated. The only way to know what her choice is, is to let her make it.

Besides, she doesn't really need his help solving murders. And he has his own business to tend to. Mostly involving avoiding thinking about how Amenadiel had been right.

He's glad to hear her come in to the apartment, and everyone would probably have a thing or two to say about that, too. He had expected that it might take longer than a few days, but then, he also knows that Chloe isn't like other humans.

"Detective." He's coming out of the bedroom, fully dressed save for a jacket, adjusting a cufflink. "Would you care for a drink?" he asks as he crosses to the bar. No doubt she has questions, but until she asks them, he'll act like it's any other day.

[thevulnerability]

Chloe didn't experience quite what Linda did or, at least, she didn't experience it the way she did. Her own revelation on the rooftop had perhaps primed her, or maybe it was the acceptance that she'd known for a long time, somehow. Maybe she hasn't believed it since day one, but Chloe also knows there was a reason she threw away his blood sample. At the time, she justified it by thinking proving him wrong wasn't as important as giving him her faith, but now she wonders if she's just a coward.

She stands near the bar, her hands gripped together, twisting nervously as she watches him appear from the bedroom. He looks the same. He looks normal. It almost makes her wonder if she did imagine it.

"Yeah," she says, a little too quickly. "I mean, no. No, I don't want a drink." She's mixed up enough as it is, there is no point in throwing alcohol in the mix. "Lucifer, we need to talk about this."

[hisfavoriteson]

He's about to pour himself a drink when he sets the bottle back down instead. With his supernatural metabolism, he doesn't usually have to worry about being anything more than tipsy, but if she makes him vulnerable in other ways, she probably makes him susceptible to alcohol too, and this is not the time to find out for sure.

He motions to the couches. She's welcome to have a seat if she wants to, but he won't if she doesn't. "Where would you like to start?"

[thevulnerability]

She doesn't sit, not yet. Somehow it is easier to hover next to the bar, to watch him from a distance as if being near the door will give her the ability to bolt for safety if need be.

Which is silly, because she's not afraid of him. She's never been afraid of him. Lucifer has made her feel a lot of things--anger, annoyance, disappointment, love--but never fear.

"I..." Any confidence she might have grasped at falls away again, and she shifts to the side, taking a breath before she is able to level her gaze at him once again. "Why didn't you show me before? You could have proved it to me ages ago."

[hisfavoriteson]

He's always been pretty good at knowing what people want even if they don't tell him in words -- instinct, like she called it -- because how could he punish them with their desires if he doesn't know what they are? But he still can't with her, so he has to settle simple for watching her seem to make some sort of decision.

"I wanted to." For whatever it turns out to be worth, he's never lied to her. "That was what I meant, when I left you that message. I meant to show you, and then I was kidnapped and dumped in the desert and woke up with a my wings and without my devil face." Thanks for that, Cain. You couldn't have picked a worse time. "Which is what I discovered the second time I wanted to show you, and after that I couldn't."

[thevulnerability]

"Your wings. You could have shown me your wings."

Even as she says it, she knows exactly why he didn't. Although she hasn't entirely made sense of every single "metaphor" he'd shared with her during their time working together, it's all been slotting together somewhere in the back of her mind. The scars on his back, where he'd cut his wings off, when he grabbed her wrist to hold her back from touching him. He hated his wings. Of course he wouldn't show them to her.

"Wait, if you..." She pauses again, trying to think of words for things she's never imagined that don't sound ridiculous, but there isn't any, so she ventures on. "If you lost your devil face, how did you get it back? I saw it."

Clearly, she realizes now, not by his choice. He'd seemed just as baffled as she had been in that defining moment between them. It's only then that she realizes he didn't know he had it back.

[hisfavoriteson]

Oh. That. He hadn't been as relieved at finally having an answer as he thought he would be, because he hadn't liked the answer.

"Amenadiel had this ridiculous theory." Just because it turned out to be true doesn't mean it's any less ridiculous. "He thought that it wasn't our father's doing that he lost his wings and I gained mine and lost my devil face. He thought that we did it to ourselves. He deserved to lose his wings, so he did." With the opposite meaning for him, as much as he doesn't want to admit it.

"He turned out to be correct." He reaches for some hidden spot behind the bar and pulls out a gray-tinged feather, too large to be from any bird, which he sets in front of her. "I found that at Charlotte's crime scene. Amenadiel got his wings back because he felt that he deserved them again." If he ever sees Amenadiel again, he has a few questions about that night.

"I got my devil face back because it's who I am. It's where I belong."

[thevulnerability]

She hesitates again.

Only moments before she saw his devil face, she's told him she didn't see him that way. She's never seen him that way. As long as she had known him, he had insisted this is who he was. On the best of days, it made him charismatic, fun, outgoing. On his worst, it made him a monster.

At least, to him. What Chloe said was true - when she looked at him, she didn't see a monster. Even now, somehow, she still doesn't.

"No, you don't." Her voice is quiet and even. She looks down at the feather, her heart jumping in her throat. That meant Amenadiel had been there when Charlotte died. She'll have words about that, but not yet.

"If all of this is true--and believe me, I really wish it wasn't--but if it is..." She had told him they would be having a serious talk about all the things he hid from her. This isn't how she had expected it to go. "You stopped believing that was who you are. Why would you start again?"

She honestly doesn't know. Lucifer has come a long way since she met him. Apparently, a long enough way to believe himself back into being an angel. What would make him change his mind?

[hisfavoriteson]

He's starting to wish now that he had poured himself a drink, but he's been a bar owner long enough to know that that would be the best way to make this worse than it already is.

"People blame me for a lot of things. 'The Devil made me do it.' When all I really did was let humanity know that they had choices." Which had been his whole point from the start, with his siblings, and the events in Eden had had the added benefit of messing with his father's beloved creations. "Everyone who ends up in Hell does so because of their own choices, and their guilt over those choices. They believe they deserve punishment for their choices, and that's where I come in. Or used to." After millennia he hadn't wanted to stay there anymore, and the inhabitants don't really need him. Their guilt does as good a job at tormenting them as he ever did.

"It is -- was -- my job to punish those who deserve it, and that includes me. I don't lie, I don't steal, I don't take pleasure in punishing people, but killing, that deserves punishment."

[thevulnerability]

"Because you killed Pierce?"

She looks completely baffled. Granted, Chloe didn't condone murder and she didn't even particularly like killing, even if she had before. But what happened there was different.

"You did it to protect yourself. And me." Her breath catches as she stares at him, thinking about how just the night before it all happened she had kissed him, so eager to reclaim what they had lost. But they never really lost it, did they? It had always been there, no matter how much they tried to ignore it.

Knowing what she knows now, though... That should change things. It should.

"He said himself you'd never stop until you caught up with him. And he made it clear that he was going to kill me if I stood in the way of it." Whether he loved her or not--and she believed he had, in his own way--he loved himself more. Of course, she used to think that about Lucifer. "He murdered Charlotte, and God knows how many other people. He deserves Hell, he deserves to be punished. But you don't, not for that."

[hisfavoriteson]

He shakes his head. "Not him. The world's first murderer. He won't be missed." Even if Lucifer hadn't promised Cain that he would find a way to kill him, he would have sworn to do it anyway when Cain started messing with Chloe.

Even if he'd spent so much time ignoring why she matters so much.

"I killed my brother." Is this something he should be admitting to someone who investigates murders? Maybe not. But does it count if Uriel had never really existed on Earth in the first place?

"Uriel. I didn't intend to do it, and it's a long story, but he showed up and threatened to kill you if I didn't let him take Mum back to Hell. Which I had no intention of letting him do. That car accident that you were in? It wasn't an accident. It was a warning to me."

He doesn't like the fact that there's someone who makes him so vulnerable, not just physically but emotionally, too, but what's worse is that others have figured it out, because that puts Chloe in danger.

"He wasn't there to return Mum to Hell. He had Azrael's Blade, which would have wiped her out of existence entirely. No Heaven, no Hell, nothing. We fought, Maze showed up, Uriel tried to use the Blade on her. Then he threatened to kill both you and Mum."

Clearly he took this threat seriously. "The only way to stop him was by using the Blade on him. So I did. I wiped my own brother out of existence."

[thevulnerability]

Chloe stares at him. She wonders briefly if this is just too much for her scrawny human brain to process, or if she just didn't have enough information to completely follow. Would she ever have enough information, though? A few days ago, she didn't even believe in this stuff. Now she's wondering if she needs a degree in theology to follow anything Lucifer is saying.

She finally moves away from the door and drops onto the couch, staring straight ahead. Standing is making her dizzy.

"Wait, your mom... You said Charlotte was your mom. You told me Charlotte is in Heaven." That's the most basic thing she can grasp onto right now. It makes sense, even if he had finally told Chloe that Charlotte was his step-mom, it didn't take a genius to work out the truth behind that cover story. But Charlotte being in Hell? That she can't wrap her head around.

But that wasn't even the half of it, was it? She turns her head to look at him, her eyes wide in confusion. "You wiped your brother out of existence to save me? Lucifer, how many people have you killed trying to protect me?"

She can't help the edge of anger in her voice. The anger is mounting as she thinks about the last year, all of the things that happened to her that she shrugged off as a normal part of life because she didn't know she was wrapped up in a world of angels and demons. Lucifer had been making decisions on her behalf all this time, and she didn't like it.

[hisfavoriteson]

"Only two." And the memory of one of them is waiting for him in Hell if he ever goes back there. Which has been too much of a possibility lately.

He moves from behind the bar to stand by the balcony doors, closing the distance a bit but still giving her space. "All of that about Charlotte was true. At some point in the last several millennia my father sent my mother to Hell, as a resident, and she escaped. She..." How does he put this delicately? "She needed a recently-deceased body, and she found Charlotte Richards, who had died in that hotel. I had no idea until she showed up here," he makes sure to tell her, because not everything that happened there was his doing.

"My mum was Charlotte, but Charlotte was not my mum. Mum...refused to back to Hell, wasn't allowed back in Heaven, but needed to go somewhere. She's in a universe of her own now, no one and nothing in it unless she created it. She left, and Charlotte woke up on that beach. Everything before that point was Mum. Everything after was Charlotte."

He doesn't know if that makes it any easier to understand. But it's the full truth now, not a half-truth designed to get around telling an outright lie. "I don't know exactly what happened with Charlotte was shot. What I do know is that Amenadiel is back in Heaven, and I assume he took her with him."

[thevulnerability]

It's not easy to understand, but she does look visibly relieved, her anger quelling for the time being. Working off the understanding that, as hard as it is to accept, Heaven and Hell are real, then Chloe finds comfort in knowing Charlotte has made her way to Heaven.

That thought doesn't heal the hurt but it does help, somehow, in a way that Chloe can't explain.

"I hope you're right." Her voice breaks slightly. As if her friend dying wasn't enough, now she has to learn to accept all of this. She didn't want to. She wanted to be with Lucifer and grieve Charlotte together, but not like this.

"None of this makes any sense." Or maybe it makes too much sense. Everything Lucifer has said is slowly falling together and it all seems so big, so much bigger than her.

He should have told her sooner. He should have shown her sooner. But he didn't, and Chloe has to accept what's done is done.

"Your brother trying to kill me... Is that why you left? After what happened when I was poisoned?" Little does she know how much more complicated that makes everything.

[hisfavoriteson]

"I can ask Amenadiel to be sure." If he comes when called, which he has never failed to do. If it's important to Chloe, he'll do his best to find out.

There's nothing he can do to help it make sense, either, other than let her figure it out on her own. So far she's reacting to it better than Linda had, and maybe it helps that this time he'd left it on her terms.

"Uriel had nothing to do with that." This is one of the things he knew that he would one day have to tell her if he went down this path, but that doesn't make it any easier to admit. "I don't know if your parents ever told you that they had trouble having a child before you were born?" Now he's gone and gotten her mother involved in this, but he doesn't think there was a way around that.

"My father sent Amenadiel to bless your mother so she could have a child, and you were the result. My father wanted you to exist, and he put you in my path, and anything that happened after was not real, because it wasn't your choice. Or so I thought at the time." It took him a long time to understand human emotions, and there's a lot he's still learning.

"I had just been to Hell, discovered what's waiting for me if I ever go back there, and both of my parents were manipulating me in different ways, and using you to do. The only way to stop that was to put distance between us."

[thevulnerability]

"Using me. You thought how I felt--how I feel--about you was just your parents using me to get to you?"

She doesn't believe that, not for a second. Her feelings are her own, and she knows them. Chloe has never been more sure of how she's felt about anything in her whole life.

"You didn't give me a choice in any of this, Lucifer. You didn't even give me the chance to make my own decisions. You've been protecting me, doing all these things, things I've never asked you to do. Can you even begin to comprehend how unfair that is?"

That anger is rising again, and she can feel the burn of tears threatening to come forward.

"How dare you think that I'm some kind of pawn in your family drama."

[hisfavoriteson]

"You were for Uriel." It is possible, sometimes. "It's what my family does. Pierce did it, and he wasn't even family." That's a different case, but it ties in to his main point. There are a few more things she needs to understand first before he can get to that.

"Humans are...never going to mean as much to my family as they do to me. Or to Amenadiel, I suppose, although he did choose to go back to Heaven. There are rules about what we are and are not allowed to do with humans, and I've broken most of them." At first because it was a way of rebelling against his father from exile, and later because he discovered that he enjoyed it.

He sits down on the end of the couch she's not sitting on. "You make me vulnerable. I can, and have, be injured or die when you're near. I know that, and yet I don't stay away. It's not just physical vulnerability. If there's something they want from me and they think using you will get it, they will absolutely do it. The only way to stop that is..." To end his association with the LAPD and never see her again, and even that might not be enough.

"I may have been wrong about some of it, but whatever choice you make, whatever happens in the future, there will be times that my family will meddle. They won't care what happens to you."

[thevulnerability]

She looks away from him again, heaving a sigh. Hearing him talk about the future, well, she knows there is the implication of their future. Beyond all the confusion and anger she can feel that things haven't really changed. But he's still the devil, actually the devil. What kind of future can she have with him?

Still.

"You've stayed all this time even though you could die being near me?"

It isn't what she expected, and it probably isn't the most important part of this conversation, but it's what she zeroes in on. Chloe knows they were getting somewhere together, especially after the talk they had, how he had opened up to her in a way he never had before, even on the beach. They don't have the safest job, and she can't even count the number of times they've almost died. And yet, he stays.

"Lucifer..." She feels the tears coming again and tries to push them back, her gaze meeting his again as she draws another breath. "What kind of future could we possibly have together?"

[hisfavoriteson]

"Of course." Because of reasons he only recently was willing to admit, but apparently have been obvious to everyone else for quite some time. "It was better than the alternative." It's as simple as that to him. Anything for her safety, even at the risk of his own.

"I don't know," he admits. "This is the first time this has happened." He has no problem with uncharted territory, having navigated it most of his life, but he knows it's not the same for her, and there's more at stake for her than there is for him. "That would be one of the rules I wasn't supposed to break."

[thevulnerability]

"You didn't seem to mind breaking it when we met. You weren't exactly..." What is the word she's looking for? There's really only one. "You were kind of a slut."

It's true. Lucifer seemed to have no problem letting loose and enjoying the company of women--and men--whenever he got the chance. Surely what he has with her isn't much different.

Except it is. It means something, something a lot more than drinking and drugs and sex.

"I guess, what I'm asking is, after all of this... Is it really worth it?"

[hisfavoriteson]

"That was a different rule." No less serious of an infraction, of course, but definitely not the same. "I never cared if I saw any of them again."

He knows, now, how bad it sounds as he says it, but there's nothing he's can do about it now. "It's been happening a lot less recently." Because, when it comes down to it, the people he picks up in his club or in some random place aren't really the ones he wants to spend his time with.

"When you were poisoned, the only way to save you was to get the formula for the antidote from Professor Carlisle in Hell. Only without my wings, I couldn't fly there, so the only way to get there was to die. Which meant risking staying that way. Thankfully it worked out." He really prefers not being dead, for one thing, and he prefers her not being dead, too.

"Why do I keep showing up even though I could die? If there's some way to keep you safe, then whatever happens is worth it to me. The world needs you more than it needs me."

He belongs in Hell. He'll just get there a little faster this way.

[thevulnerability]

Chloe's eyes widen. He died for her? To save her life? She can't even wrap her head around that, that this man who she could barely stand risked returning to the one place he never wanted to be again... For her.

She takes a breath and stands up, moving towards the couch he's sitting on. She doesn't get too close to him, but the nearness makes her feel better. Safer.

"Maybe. Maybe there are parts of the world that need me, but..." Chloe turns her head towards him, although her eyes are avoiding his gaze. "I need you, Lucifer."

The words come out easily, and even she is surprised at herself for saying it. This is the devil she's talking to. Satan. The fallen angel who is warned away by religious men, who is condemned simply for who he is. He tempts those towards evil, but does he really? She's seen him pull desires from people with just a look, but he hardly forces their hand to make them act on it.

And he hasn't done it to her, has he? What she feels belongs to her, and her alone.

"I understand that you really are who you say you are... That you really are the devil. But I meant what I said before." She finally looks at him. "You're not to me."

[hisfavoriteson]

I need you. That's the first time anyone has said that to him, at least when they meant it in that way. There have been those who needed his help -- his mum, Amenadiel, Cain -- but needing him just for him? It's a new feeling for him, and if he were to think about it, then the reason that he puts so much effort into making sure nothing happens to her is that he needs her too, even if he doesn't know how to articulate that.

"That's why I did it. I can't think of a world without you in it."

He wishes he could see himself the way Chloe does, but the recent return of his devil face has showed him that he doesn't, because he's not that kind of a person. He's been the Devil for so long that he doesn't know how to be anything else, or what he would be instead.

"Why not?"

[thevulnerability]

She shrugs, not sure how to respond. Putting into words what she thinks of Lucifer is impossible. He's childish and selfish, and sometimes incredibly frustrating. But he also cares, really cares, even if he often does all he can to not show it. She sees that with each of the cases they work, with how he interacts with Trixie, how he looks at her.

Chloe has never met anyone who makes her feel the way that Lucifer does and it has nothing to do with him being the Devil.

"Because I see you," she finally breathes, leaning forward, her eyes cast upwards to meet his. "Because who you are to me has never had anything to do with your devil face or the way you look at yourself. It has to do with your actions. And you're a good person, Lucifer. Not because your father wants you to be or because I want you to be but because you choose to be. Being good doesn't mean being perfect."

He's far from perfect. But that doesn't matter to her.