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my_own_advocate"Listen, about everything that you said last night..."
The Detective was wearing some horrendous beige thing with a neck scarf. Ignoring it was a second lost before Lucifer could actually say, "Doesn't matter," but he got there in the end.
She blinked. "Uh," she said, "I really think it does."
He waved a hand to disabuse her of the notion. "I'm way beyond that, Detective. You see, I've made a breakthrough."
She blinked. "Really? What is it?"
He beamed. "I hate myself," he said.
There was another moment of silence, and-- "Well, I'm not quite sure what to do with that, but it doesn't sound like a good thing," the Detective ventured. Ah. Cleary she wasn't getting the point, here.
"Well, of course it is, Detective. All my time with Dr. Linda has been about exploring the denial that I'm in, but I've overcome that now. I've had a... an honest-to-Devil epiphany." He grinned more. "Now all my problems should just, you know, go away."
They had a new case coming in, which would hopefully distract the Detective from wherever she wanted to take this. Lucifer hummed softly to himself-- "Oh, good morning Miss Lopez," and turned towards the briefing room--
"What's wrong with your hand?" Miss Lopez asked, frowning.
Confused, he looked down, and found... red, mottled skin across the back of his hand. It felt rough to the touch.
"That is the worst case of psoriasis I have ever seen," Miss Lopez said.
"This is impossible," Lucifer whispered.
"I have some creams in my lab," Miss Lopez said. "I'm gonna go get those for you!"
---
Lucifer nabbed evidence gloves on his way onto the crime scene. Just in the past half hour, the patch had spread, and he felt increasingly self-conscious about it. What was happening to him? That came out of nowhere!
"Since when do you voluntarily evidence gloves?" the Detective asked him, confused, as he walked onto the property.
He froze. "Detective, it's, um-- well. I."
"Oh, this is about the other night, isn't it?" she sighed. "Lucifer, I don't want you to feel like you have to be someone you're not when you're around me. And if this is part of the reason you hate yourself--"
"Oh, no," he interrupted her. "No need to worry on that front, Detective. All my self-hatred is also self-inflicted. No one to blame but myself on that."
If the Detective had anything else to say to that, well, they were interrupted by Miss Lopez and her ill-timed MC Hammer jokes - "Come on, she was killed with a hammer!" - and an explanation of the crime at hand. Apparently the victim was a famous realtor, who used to do business with her twin sister.
"Her sister Moira was found standing over the body, hammer in hand, but she bolted after eyewitnesses saw her. We have a BOLO out but no luck finding her so far," Miss Lopez said. "The realtor who found the body was the twins' younger sister, Beth."
"And according to interviews, Beth wasn't aware of any tension between the sisters," the Detective mused.
"Sometimes there's a darkness waiting just under the surface, waiting for a chance to emerge," Lucifer muttered.
They did a bit of poking around the crime scene, with Lucifer having to field questions about why he was suddenly responsibly wearing evidence gloves now, and it was a pain.
Then Maze drove up on a motorcycle with Eve on the back, and things got a bit weird. What were those two doing together anyway?
"Heard you got a suspect on the run," Maze said, as they walked up to the scene. "We'll catch her in no time." She crossed her arms and smirked at Eve.
What on Earth? Lucifer really didn't have time for this right now. "'We'," he echoed. "What, are you two working together now?"
"Yeah. We're partners," Maze said, smirking. "She's got a natural talent for hunting bounties."
"Don't you need an actual bounty to be put out?" the Detective asked, equally confused.
Right. Time to nip whatever this was in the bud. "Eve," Lucifer said, and dragged her off by the arm. "There's no need to make a scene at my work."
"I'm not," she protested, her gaze dating to Maze for a second for some strange reason. "Listen, Luce. What you said hurt. A lot. But I really think that the breakup was the best thing that's ever happened to me."
He blinked. "Really?" That made things easier.
"I'm having more fun than ever with Maze," Eve said, grinning, "And I think it's exactly what I needed."
"Well, that's wonderful news," Lucifer said sincerely, if... still confused.
Maze called her back, and the two of them got back on the motorcycle together. Driving off to go find the bounty they didn't have yet, Lucifer presumed, though he was already turning his attention back to the case and his bloody hand, and so didn't overhear nor see Eve whispering, 'I bet he's still looking!'.
Or the way her face fell when it turned out he wasn't.
---
"This is all your fault. You and your epiphanies!" Lucifer barged into Linda's office without warning, but frankly, she'd earned the scare. "Turns out self-help is actually self-harm!"
Linda carefully settled her hands over her journal and looked up at him warily. "Lucifer, it's okay to be afraid," she said gingerly. "That's how we know we're making progress."
"Oh, we're making progress," Lucifer snapped, ripping the leather glove off his hand so she could see the full monstrosity of it: red, and tipped with nails that might as well be claws. (Did she have any idea how much he'd paid for his most recent manicure?) "In precisely the wrong direction!"
Linda's eyes went big and she rose from her desk. "Oh, Lucifer," she said. "What's happening to you?"
"Exactly what I'd like to find out and quickly," he said irritably, futzing with the glove. "'Cause I can't walk around like OJ bloody Simpson forever!"
In response, Linda groaned loudly in pain, and he spun around.
"Thank you for feeling my pain, I mean, at least it's not my wanking-- please tell me you're not giving birth to that child now," he said, staring. Because she was making noises. And puffing.
"God, no," she panted, "I'm not due yet. It's just Braxton Hicks contractions." Breathe. Breathe-- "Doesn't mean they don't hurt like a son of a," she muttered.
Okay.
"Better," she said, rising back up from her seat. "So... we know, subconsciously, you control what happens to your own body." She made a motion with her hands. "So, some part of you is reacting to this revelation."
"Yes, and it doesn't seem thrilled," he said, raising his devil hand, "So if you could just de-enlighten me, that'd be lovely. Thank you."
Linda sighed. "Lucifer, I think you need to step forward, not backward," she cautioned. "You need to dig deeper. If you really hate yourself, you need to figure out why."
Figure out why? Well.
Lucifer supposed he knew at least one person who could help with that.
---
"Daniel," he called, rolling up to Detective Douche's desk on one of the fun rolling chairs they had around the station. "I've had a realization."
The Douche barely spared him a glance. "I really don't care, man," he said.
"I hate myself," Lucifer announced.
And now the Douche was looking at him. "What's the punch line?" he said.
"Well, me, apparently," Lucifer said. "Because I haven't the foggiest idea why." He waved at his body with his gloved hands. "I mean, look at me. Why would I ever hate me?"
"I might have some ideas," the Douche said with a shallow laugh, spinning his own chair around to face him.
"Which is exactly why I've come to you," Lucifer agreed. "So please, tell me more."
"Uh, well, you don't take anything seriously, you get away with everything, you make everything about yourself, you're egotistical--"
So it turned out Detective Douche had absolutely nothing to contribute but things he already knew, and some nonsense about his dead ex-girlfriend, whose death he apparently held Lucifer responsible for. Not his fault.
But how was he going to figure this out?
---
The case was the next possible option. One twin, killing another? You really needed to hate your own face to do that, didn't you? Lucifer had good hope that their next lead, an accountant that Moira had been in contact with, might help get him some answers.
He and the Detective hurried to the man's office, and...
Eve and Maze were making out in the doorway.
... well, that was pretty.
"Hi," the Detective said from behind him.
"Hi," Eve echoed, smirking directly at him, her gaze sliding down his body.
"Mhhmhmhm!" said the poor accountant from right to their left, where he sat tied on a chair.
Lucifer spared Eve and Maze one last glance before hurrying over there. He ripped the gag out of the man's mouth.
"Thank you!" he yelled. "These two maniacs barged in here and tied me up!"
"Yes," Lucifer said dryly, "I see you've had a most unpleasant time." He lifted the man up out of his seat. "Okay, I need you to focus. Tell me, why did Moira hate herself so much?"
The accountant blinked. "Hate herself? She didn't hate herself."
"Well, she must have. She literally killed a mirror image of herself," Lucifer pointed out. "But I need to understand why. We know she killed you after the murder, what did she want?"
"That's the thing," the accountant said. "She called to accuse me of killing Megan."
So that was spectacularly useless, as well. Lucifer backed off while the Detective took over the grilling. The man really didn't seem to have any reason to want Megan dead, but there were financial files missing. Specifically a thumb drive that had been delivered to his office not long before Megan's murder.
Someone had to have stolen it.
Somewhere midway into the process, Lucifer left the Detective to do what she did best. Eve seemed to think it was a great moment to latch on to him to tell him all about her new relationship with Maze, but the way she told him... it kept feeling like she wanted a reaction out of him.
"I just want you to be happy," he said finally. "Really."
And then there were hands around his neck, tying the Detective's ugly-looking scarf around it. "Detective, I know I'm wearing gloves, but it's actually rather warm--"
"No, no," she said. "It's best you stay covered up."
Oh. It had spread even further.
---
"I had to go home to replace your ghastly scarf," Lucifer announced to the Detective, "Because one thing I refuse to hate about myself is my style--"
Wait. That wasn't Chloe wearing the ugly beige thing. It was... Eve?
"Oh, did you think I was Chloe?" Eve said, batting her eyelashes. "Easy mistake, I guess. We're both thoughtful, smart..."
"Okay, where's the Detective?" Lucifer interrupted her. She was behaving extremely erratically, and he was thinking about that conversation with Duke and how alarmed he'd sounded, and, well. "You haven't murdered her and assumed her identity, have you?"
"Lucifer. No," she sighed. "Maze and I brought in the runaway twin. I believe Chloe is interrogating her as we speak."
There were more things said, Lucifer was fairly sure, but he was busy escaping from Eve so he could face their self-hating murderer on head on and demand--
"Tell me, Moira, did killing your sister make it go away?" he said, sinking down into a chair.
The pretty, sad-looking brunette in the opposing seat blinked. "What?"
"Your self-hatred, of course," he explained. "And if so, do you think if I made a dummy of myself and brutally murdered it, it might work for me as well?"
Sadly, it turned out Moira had not murdered her sister Megan. What had been going on was some kind of financial fraud or irregularity, with overdrafts showing up on their business account that Moira couldn't place. She'd wanted to go to Megan about it, but by the time she'd finally had the opportunity, well.
She'd found Megan dead.
So their focus shifted to Megan's husband, Arnold. He'd had access to the accounts, and... that was as much as Lucifer picked up on, because the Detective shoved him in a corner and forced some files into his hands.
"Lucifer, look at this," she said.
He blinked, lowering the papers. "Detective, please. We both know I'm not a 'paper trail' kind of crime solver," he protested.
"Is something wrong with his eyes?" Moira asked, alarmed, and suddenly it dawned on him.
Oh no.
No no no.
There was no stopping this, was there?
---
By the time they found him some sunglasses, Lucifer's focus was entirely shot. He managed to run over all the pertinent details about the husband with Chloe, which left them with a working theory but no evidence. Not that it mattered. This hadn't been a murder of self-hatred, so what possible enlightenment could it offer him?
No, he was stuck. Changing.
Turning into a monster.
"Whoever stole the thumb drive was obviously covering their tracks," Eve was saying, doing her best Chloe Decker impression. "So clearly there's something in that file that can help us catch the killer."
"But Willie never made a copy of the thumb drive," the Detective pointed out. So they couldn't access it.
"But what if he did?" Eve said.
The Detective blinked. "He didn't," she pointed out again.
"What if he did?" Eve pressed.
"Well, he didn't," the Detective argued, and then realization sunk in. "But if we claim to have a copy of it, and then stage a sting, you know?" A plan blossomed as she spoke. "Have Moira tell the family that she's selling off the company to a wealthy buyer. And then we have Moira present the fake copy of the financials to Lucifer at a party at Lux..."
And they would sit back and wait for the husband to steal them.
"You know, that's a very good idea, Eve."
"Thank you."
"Thank you."
"Thank you?"
"Thank you?"
Lucifer really hoped Eve dropped the 'trying to be Chloe' shtick, and soon.
[[ part 1 of 2! taken from Lucifer episode 4x09, 'Save Lucifer'. ]]
The Detective was wearing some horrendous beige thing with a neck scarf. Ignoring it was a second lost before Lucifer could actually say, "Doesn't matter," but he got there in the end.
She blinked. "Uh," she said, "I really think it does."
He waved a hand to disabuse her of the notion. "I'm way beyond that, Detective. You see, I've made a breakthrough."
She blinked. "Really? What is it?"
He beamed. "I hate myself," he said.
There was another moment of silence, and-- "Well, I'm not quite sure what to do with that, but it doesn't sound like a good thing," the Detective ventured. Ah. Cleary she wasn't getting the point, here.
"Well, of course it is, Detective. All my time with Dr. Linda has been about exploring the denial that I'm in, but I've overcome that now. I've had a... an honest-to-Devil epiphany." He grinned more. "Now all my problems should just, you know, go away."
They had a new case coming in, which would hopefully distract the Detective from wherever she wanted to take this. Lucifer hummed softly to himself-- "Oh, good morning Miss Lopez," and turned towards the briefing room--
"What's wrong with your hand?" Miss Lopez asked, frowning.
Confused, he looked down, and found... red, mottled skin across the back of his hand. It felt rough to the touch.
"That is the worst case of psoriasis I have ever seen," Miss Lopez said.
"This is impossible," Lucifer whispered.
"I have some creams in my lab," Miss Lopez said. "I'm gonna go get those for you!"
---
Lucifer nabbed evidence gloves on his way onto the crime scene. Just in the past half hour, the patch had spread, and he felt increasingly self-conscious about it. What was happening to him? That came out of nowhere!
"Since when do you voluntarily evidence gloves?" the Detective asked him, confused, as he walked onto the property.
He froze. "Detective, it's, um-- well. I."
"Oh, this is about the other night, isn't it?" she sighed. "Lucifer, I don't want you to feel like you have to be someone you're not when you're around me. And if this is part of the reason you hate yourself--"
"Oh, no," he interrupted her. "No need to worry on that front, Detective. All my self-hatred is also self-inflicted. No one to blame but myself on that."
If the Detective had anything else to say to that, well, they were interrupted by Miss Lopez and her ill-timed MC Hammer jokes - "Come on, she was killed with a hammer!" - and an explanation of the crime at hand. Apparently the victim was a famous realtor, who used to do business with her twin sister.
"Her sister Moira was found standing over the body, hammer in hand, but she bolted after eyewitnesses saw her. We have a BOLO out but no luck finding her so far," Miss Lopez said. "The realtor who found the body was the twins' younger sister, Beth."
"And according to interviews, Beth wasn't aware of any tension between the sisters," the Detective mused.
"Sometimes there's a darkness waiting just under the surface, waiting for a chance to emerge," Lucifer muttered.
They did a bit of poking around the crime scene, with Lucifer having to field questions about why he was suddenly responsibly wearing evidence gloves now, and it was a pain.
Then Maze drove up on a motorcycle with Eve on the back, and things got a bit weird. What were those two doing together anyway?
"Heard you got a suspect on the run," Maze said, as they walked up to the scene. "We'll catch her in no time." She crossed her arms and smirked at Eve.
What on Earth? Lucifer really didn't have time for this right now. "'We'," he echoed. "What, are you two working together now?"
"Yeah. We're partners," Maze said, smirking. "She's got a natural talent for hunting bounties."
"Don't you need an actual bounty to be put out?" the Detective asked, equally confused.
Right. Time to nip whatever this was in the bud. "Eve," Lucifer said, and dragged her off by the arm. "There's no need to make a scene at my work."
"I'm not," she protested, her gaze dating to Maze for a second for some strange reason. "Listen, Luce. What you said hurt. A lot. But I really think that the breakup was the best thing that's ever happened to me."
He blinked. "Really?" That made things easier.
"I'm having more fun than ever with Maze," Eve said, grinning, "And I think it's exactly what I needed."
"Well, that's wonderful news," Lucifer said sincerely, if... still confused.
Maze called her back, and the two of them got back on the motorcycle together. Driving off to go find the bounty they didn't have yet, Lucifer presumed, though he was already turning his attention back to the case and his bloody hand, and so didn't overhear nor see Eve whispering, 'I bet he's still looking!'.
Or the way her face fell when it turned out he wasn't.
---
"This is all your fault. You and your epiphanies!" Lucifer barged into Linda's office without warning, but frankly, she'd earned the scare. "Turns out self-help is actually self-harm!"
Linda carefully settled her hands over her journal and looked up at him warily. "Lucifer, it's okay to be afraid," she said gingerly. "That's how we know we're making progress."
"Oh, we're making progress," Lucifer snapped, ripping the leather glove off his hand so she could see the full monstrosity of it: red, and tipped with nails that might as well be claws. (Did she have any idea how much he'd paid for his most recent manicure?) "In precisely the wrong direction!"
Linda's eyes went big and she rose from her desk. "Oh, Lucifer," she said. "What's happening to you?"
"Exactly what I'd like to find out and quickly," he said irritably, futzing with the glove. "'Cause I can't walk around like OJ bloody Simpson forever!"
In response, Linda groaned loudly in pain, and he spun around.
"Thank you for feeling my pain, I mean, at least it's not my wanking-- please tell me you're not giving birth to that child now," he said, staring. Because she was making noises. And puffing.
"God, no," she panted, "I'm not due yet. It's just Braxton Hicks contractions." Breathe. Breathe-- "Doesn't mean they don't hurt like a son of a," she muttered.
Okay.
"Better," she said, rising back up from her seat. "So... we know, subconsciously, you control what happens to your own body." She made a motion with her hands. "So, some part of you is reacting to this revelation."
"Yes, and it doesn't seem thrilled," he said, raising his devil hand, "So if you could just de-enlighten me, that'd be lovely. Thank you."
Linda sighed. "Lucifer, I think you need to step forward, not backward," she cautioned. "You need to dig deeper. If you really hate yourself, you need to figure out why."
Figure out why? Well.
Lucifer supposed he knew at least one person who could help with that.
---
"Daniel," he called, rolling up to Detective Douche's desk on one of the fun rolling chairs they had around the station. "I've had a realization."
The Douche barely spared him a glance. "I really don't care, man," he said.
"I hate myself," Lucifer announced.
And now the Douche was looking at him. "What's the punch line?" he said.
"Well, me, apparently," Lucifer said. "Because I haven't the foggiest idea why." He waved at his body with his gloved hands. "I mean, look at me. Why would I ever hate me?"
"I might have some ideas," the Douche said with a shallow laugh, spinning his own chair around to face him.
"Which is exactly why I've come to you," Lucifer agreed. "So please, tell me more."
"Uh, well, you don't take anything seriously, you get away with everything, you make everything about yourself, you're egotistical--"
So it turned out Detective Douche had absolutely nothing to contribute but things he already knew, and some nonsense about his dead ex-girlfriend, whose death he apparently held Lucifer responsible for. Not his fault.
But how was he going to figure this out?
---
The case was the next possible option. One twin, killing another? You really needed to hate your own face to do that, didn't you? Lucifer had good hope that their next lead, an accountant that Moira had been in contact with, might help get him some answers.
He and the Detective hurried to the man's office, and...
Eve and Maze were making out in the doorway.
... well, that was pretty.
"Hi," the Detective said from behind him.
"Hi," Eve echoed, smirking directly at him, her gaze sliding down his body.
"Mhhmhmhm!" said the poor accountant from right to their left, where he sat tied on a chair.
Lucifer spared Eve and Maze one last glance before hurrying over there. He ripped the gag out of the man's mouth.
"Thank you!" he yelled. "These two maniacs barged in here and tied me up!"
"Yes," Lucifer said dryly, "I see you've had a most unpleasant time." He lifted the man up out of his seat. "Okay, I need you to focus. Tell me, why did Moira hate herself so much?"
The accountant blinked. "Hate herself? She didn't hate herself."
"Well, she must have. She literally killed a mirror image of herself," Lucifer pointed out. "But I need to understand why. We know she killed you after the murder, what did she want?"
"That's the thing," the accountant said. "She called to accuse me of killing Megan."
So that was spectacularly useless, as well. Lucifer backed off while the Detective took over the grilling. The man really didn't seem to have any reason to want Megan dead, but there were financial files missing. Specifically a thumb drive that had been delivered to his office not long before Megan's murder.
Someone had to have stolen it.
Somewhere midway into the process, Lucifer left the Detective to do what she did best. Eve seemed to think it was a great moment to latch on to him to tell him all about her new relationship with Maze, but the way she told him... it kept feeling like she wanted a reaction out of him.
"I just want you to be happy," he said finally. "Really."
And then there were hands around his neck, tying the Detective's ugly-looking scarf around it. "Detective, I know I'm wearing gloves, but it's actually rather warm--"
"No, no," she said. "It's best you stay covered up."
Oh. It had spread even further.
---
"I had to go home to replace your ghastly scarf," Lucifer announced to the Detective, "Because one thing I refuse to hate about myself is my style--"
Wait. That wasn't Chloe wearing the ugly beige thing. It was... Eve?
"Oh, did you think I was Chloe?" Eve said, batting her eyelashes. "Easy mistake, I guess. We're both thoughtful, smart..."
"Okay, where's the Detective?" Lucifer interrupted her. She was behaving extremely erratically, and he was thinking about that conversation with Duke and how alarmed he'd sounded, and, well. "You haven't murdered her and assumed her identity, have you?"
"Lucifer. No," she sighed. "Maze and I brought in the runaway twin. I believe Chloe is interrogating her as we speak."
There were more things said, Lucifer was fairly sure, but he was busy escaping from Eve so he could face their self-hating murderer on head on and demand--
"Tell me, Moira, did killing your sister make it go away?" he said, sinking down into a chair.
The pretty, sad-looking brunette in the opposing seat blinked. "What?"
"Your self-hatred, of course," he explained. "And if so, do you think if I made a dummy of myself and brutally murdered it, it might work for me as well?"
Sadly, it turned out Moira had not murdered her sister Megan. What had been going on was some kind of financial fraud or irregularity, with overdrafts showing up on their business account that Moira couldn't place. She'd wanted to go to Megan about it, but by the time she'd finally had the opportunity, well.
She'd found Megan dead.
So their focus shifted to Megan's husband, Arnold. He'd had access to the accounts, and... that was as much as Lucifer picked up on, because the Detective shoved him in a corner and forced some files into his hands.
"Lucifer, look at this," she said.
He blinked, lowering the papers. "Detective, please. We both know I'm not a 'paper trail' kind of crime solver," he protested.
"Is something wrong with his eyes?" Moira asked, alarmed, and suddenly it dawned on him.
Oh no.
No no no.
There was no stopping this, was there?
---
By the time they found him some sunglasses, Lucifer's focus was entirely shot. He managed to run over all the pertinent details about the husband with Chloe, which left them with a working theory but no evidence. Not that it mattered. This hadn't been a murder of self-hatred, so what possible enlightenment could it offer him?
No, he was stuck. Changing.
Turning into a monster.
"Whoever stole the thumb drive was obviously covering their tracks," Eve was saying, doing her best Chloe Decker impression. "So clearly there's something in that file that can help us catch the killer."
"But Willie never made a copy of the thumb drive," the Detective pointed out. So they couldn't access it.
"But what if he did?" Eve said.
The Detective blinked. "He didn't," she pointed out again.
"What if he did?" Eve pressed.
"Well, he didn't," the Detective argued, and then realization sunk in. "But if we claim to have a copy of it, and then stage a sting, you know?" A plan blossomed as she spoke. "Have Moira tell the family that she's selling off the company to a wealthy buyer. And then we have Moira present the fake copy of the financials to Lucifer at a party at Lux..."
And they would sit back and wait for the husband to steal them.
"You know, that's a very good idea, Eve."
"Thank you."
"Thank you."
"Thank you?"
"Thank you?"
Lucifer really hoped Eve dropped the 'trying to be Chloe' shtick, and soon.
[[ part 1 of 2! taken from Lucifer episode 4x09, 'Save Lucifer'. ]]