my_own_advocate | Los Angeles, Saturday (Reply)

	"Thank you for coming, Detective." It had taken Lucifer more time than he cared to admit to put himself back together after their... well, it hadn't been an argument, had it? Mostly just a yelling-at, a being-yelled-at that had bounced through his head for days afterward. He rose to his feet, glad he'd asked Octavia and Duke to clear out. Had to do this properly. "How's, how's Trixie?"
	Funny. The argument was probably the last thing Chloe had been thinking about lately. Her head kept swimming with Dan and how she'd sent him to do her work and how he'd bled out in her arms and how he'd asked her to tell Trixie about the unicorn armies, and... and. "Yeah," she said, before realizing he'd asked her a direct question. "...Uh, she's, she's, you know, with my mom and Dan's parents," she said. "She's a strong little girl, she's just having to be stronger than she ever should right now." She stared at the floor. Lucifer said nothing. They should... something. "Listen, I know that you asked me to come here," she said, lifting her gaze to look at Lucifer. "But... I just wanna get something off my chest first. Um, you know, the argument the other night, I... it just. We were both stressed, and um, it was emotional, and you have these people, and, and--"
	"There's no need, Detective. You were right," Lucifer said, looking up at her face. "You were... able to say the one thing I couldn't admit to myself. That I agreed to be God for the wrong reasons. But now I know why I need to be God." He studied her expression. "For Dan's sake," he said.
	That expression was confused. "What do you mean?" she asked.
	"Uh, please, sit down, please," Lucifer said, gesturing nervously towards a seat. He sat down next to her on the couch, immediately reaching for a decanter of whiskey. A bit of Dutch courage, so to speak. "So, Dan's... Dan's death," he began. He blew out a breath. "Everything that's happened is Michael's fault," he said. "He's been assembling the Flaming Sword to win the war."
	Chloe's eyes narrowed. "So that's why they killed Dan, to keep us from finding that out?"
	"No," Lucifer said, looking down at his glass. "Michael... killed Dan." No, he should look Chloe in the eye. He did. "...to make you feel guilty. So that when you die, you'll go down to Hell. A twisted bribe to get me to go back like a good little Devil." His eye twitched. (Couldn't help it.)
	What? Chloe shook her head. Shook it again, like that would... "I don't," she said. "I don't even know what to do with that."
	"You must refuse to give in," Lucifer said gravely. "It's all a manipulation. Detective, you mustn't feel guilty!"
	Chloe stared at him for a long moment. Then she veered to her feet. "Yeah, right, okay," she said. "I'll just snap my fingers and not feel guilty!"
	"I'm serious, Detective!" Lucifer said, rising physically along with his voice.
	"I'm serious too," Chloe said, with barely restrained anger. "That is not how emotions work, Lucifer." No response. "Prove me wrong!" she snapped. "Come on! Go on, just..." Oh fuck no she wasn't going to cry again. "Feel worthy!" Somehow the helplessness on his face made her angrier still. "Or you know what? No, this is better. This is better," she said, walking around him to grab a bottle stopper out of his ice bucket. "Stop feeling vulnerable around your-- your people and, and, and feel vulnerable around me again." She jammed it hard into his shoulder. Nothing happened. "Easier said than done, isn't it?" she said bitterly.
	He'd hoped to fix this, somehow. Instead... well, instead everything felt just a little more broken. (Feel vulnerable around me again. That was going to sting for a while.) "This isn't the same," Lucifer said urgently. He sucked in a breath. "I can't let you end up like Dan!"
	Confusion seeped back into Chloe's expression. (A sense of sudden dread.) "What are you talking about, end up like Dan?" she asked. "Dan's in heaven!" Except. Except that look on Lucifer's face, that helplessness, the way his mouth moved like he wanted to speak but he wasn't saying anything-- she knew that look. Her eyes grew wide. "Lucif..." She took a step closer. "Where is Dan right now?" He didn't lie. He only ever omitted. And she wasn't going to let him omit now.
	He couldn't tell her. It would kill her. She kept insisting. Started yelling. That determined Detective glint back in her eye, pulling at a thread, and he just. "Don't make me say it," Lucifer said. He sounded small. "Please."
	"Where is he--" Something audibly hit the balcony. Wings? That had sounded like wings. Chloe turned abruptly towards the balcony doors. Michael?!
	No. It was Remiel, her always-majestic falcon wings fraying, feathers spilling everywhere as she staggered in from the balcony. "Lucifer," she croaked, and collapsed to the floor.
	"Remy!" Lucifer cried, the entire conversation forgotten, and leaped to his sister's side. He squatted down to the floor and combed his fingers through her hair, along her forehead, to her neck. No pulse. He looked up at Chloe. "She's dead," he managed.
	"Oh my god." Chloe settled alongside him on the floor, searching Remiel's body for wounds, signs of a struggle.
	"Michael must have found out she was our spy and killed her with the Flaming Sword," Lucifer said helplessly. Another dead body he was partly to blame for-- No, Michael. Michael was.
	Chloe frowned as she gently lifted a piece of leather across Remiel's neck and found the lethal wound. "Are there actual flames on the Flaming Sword?" she asked.
	"Detective, this is hardly the time to start questioning the rules of celestials," Lucifer said. He eyed her. "But, yes, the sword has flames on it. It makes sense. Don't overthink it."
	Don't be Lucifer about this right now, Luce. Chloe pointed to the wound. "No, I'm only asking because, look, there's no burn marks around the wound, so whatever Michael killed her with, it couldn't have been flaming."
	"So he must have just used Azrael's Blade. But when I saw Michael, he said he had the sword," Lucifer said, beginning to put two and two together. Was that... hope? "If he did, the little show-off would have used it, which means he's bluffing. He hasn't found the piece yet." And they could still get it in time before tomorrow. He looked up at Chloe. "Look, I know it's asking a lot, but I need the detective one last time..."

---

You never knew if an endeavour would turn out futile until you tried it, didn't you? They'd found some strange residue on Remy's feathers. They couldn't identify it, but they knew who could: Miss Lopez.

"Hmm. Maybe I should run another sample through mass spec."

"Why?"

"Because this doesn't make any sense. The report says that it's yeast."

"Well, Remiel did love a hot tub."

"You know what? Give me a second," Chloe said, pushing past Miss Lopez and towards the files.

Miss Lopez turned around, large feather in hand, and squinted at Lucifer. "You know, you can actually tell me things by now," she said. She brandished the feather. "You hit an emu with your car, didn't you?"

Oh, Miss Lopez. Luckily, he was saved from answering that by the Detective, who had found a lead. An abandoned beer factory, used by the fence who had last been seen in possession of the missing piece of the sword. So they made a quick detour to pick up some truly hideous turtlenecks after Miss Lopez applied some cosplay make-up, and then huried there, hoping beyond hope they were still in time.

They were, but barely. By the time Lucifer got there, in Michael costume and all, Raziel and Ibriel were already busy roughing up their fence and knocking him about the factory. "Well, well, well, TJ, you're quite the feisty human, aren't you?" Lucifer called, manhandling his voice into that hideous accent Michael had chosen for himself.

"Finally!" Raziel snarled. "Help us, brother! This little cockroach won't let go!"

He approached TJ carefully, working his fingers around the man's fist. There the necklace was, so close, so difficult to dislodge. "TJ. If you know what's good for you, you will let go of the necklace."

"Over my dead body!" the human snarled, and with a powerful shove, he knocked both Raziel and Ibriel back. Away from him.

"You know, the human makes a good point," Ibriel growled. "Father isn't here anymore, which means the rules about not killing humans vanished with him. If you wipe this one worthless soul out of existence..."

"...I'll have everything I want."

He'd beat Michael, stop his ascension before it even began. Force a peace between his siblings. Bring some justice back into the world.

All it took was killing one little human. Just a fence, a lowlife. That was what his siblings saw, wasn't it? An ant, there to be squashed?

Lucifer let out a breath. His shoulders straightened.

Ibriel frowned. "Michael?"

"Sorry," Lucifer sighed, letting go of Michael's stupid bloody accent, "but I can't do that. As good at cosplay as Miss Lopez is, I never was as adept at subterfuge as my twin."

His brother and his sister immediately backed up, their eyes wide with surprise, their bodies falling into fighting stances. "Lucifer!"

Right. A battle it would have to be. Lucifer rolled his shoulders. "Let's do this, shall we--"

The sound of metal against flesh. And then a body dropping. Michael smirked, leaning down to pry the necklace out of TJ's lifeless fingers. "Well, that was gross," he said. "But I guess you need a strong stomach if you're gonna be God."

"Is this the God you want?" Lucifer snapped at his siblings, pointing at Michael. "A God who slaughters the innocent for his own selfish gain?"

Ibriel laughed. "Humans are the selfish ones," he said. "They're animals. They don't matter."

"What about Remiel? What about our sister? Does it matter to you that Michael murdered her?" It seemed to matter to Raziel. She shifted in place, restless, uncomfortable. Good. She should be uncomfortable.

"That can't be true," she said, and spun around to look at-- "Michael?"

A shrug. An, 'I did what I had to'. That was Michael in a nutshell. That would be Michael's reign in a nutshell, bodies dropping left and right for callous reasons. It made him angry again, but... he couldn't do anything about it now. Michael had all the pieces of the Flaming Sword.

All he could do was run and prepare himself to fight another day.

That stung.

---

	They did not have a good track record with burying dead angels in the forest, but... where else could they go? They couldn't risk a divine creature being found in this state, and Remy... Remy deserved a proper burial. Even Lucifer could agree with that. So he and Amenadiel called everyone together, and then they ventured out deep, deep into the woods, further than they had gone even for Uriel. The two brothers dug the grave in silence, under the gaze of the moon.
	Remiel had been at his side for such a long time when they were children. The sister who was closest to him, who understood him. Who he had understood. Who had always followed his lead. It was fitting, Amenadiel supposed, that he was the one to lower her gently into the earth's embrace. Not that she would have wanted to be buried here, but at least he could give the ritual a touch of the divine. He climbed out and stepped aside. Let Lucifer fill the grave back up. Watched someone bury one of his best friends for the second time in a few days' time. "I can't believe Remy's gone," he said quietly. "She... died like she would have wanted. She died a warrior."
	It was so... typical of Amenadiel to accept this so readily. Lucifer was of a different mind. "It doesn't matter how she died, she's still dead," he snapped, planting the shovel firmly in the forest soil. "Dad and His mysterious ways. If he'd just chosen a successor, we wouldn't be here! Remiel would still be alive, Daniel wouldn't be in Hell!"
	Amenadiel shook his head. He leaned on his own shovel as he watched Lucifer rant and rave, railing at the ways of the world, as always. "Father didn't give us the answers, Lucy, because he wanted us to find our own way."
	"Okay," Duke said slowly, speaking up for the first time throughout the proceedings. "So far 'your own way' seems to involve a lot of murder. I'm thinking maybe a little more guidance might've been good."
	At least this funeral was in a forest. It made more sense to Octavia - not that it mattered, really, what made sense to her. Like Lucifer said: his sister was dead either way. She'd been muttering to herself - kom graun, oso na groun op; kom folau, oso na gyon op - as Amenadiel lowered Remiel into the ground, as Lucifer filled the grave. She said nothing, now.
	Amenadiel shook his head. "You have to risk falling if you wanna fly," he pointed out. "Even if it involves death. Or murder. Dad had faith in us. That's why he gave us choice."
	"Well, he shouldn't have," Lucifer snapped. He thought he was snapping. Maybe that was just the sound of his voice breaking. "I had the choice to save everything and everyone I care about, but I didn't. I chose wrong." He gave a desperate wave, as if to encompass everyone here and the universe all at once. "Michael is going to be God because I didn't have the balls to kill a two-bit fence who wound up dying anyway. And now... who knows how many other people are gonna die because of my..." He faltered, his eyes drawn inexorably towards the ground. If only he hadn't hesitated. If he'd found the courage to do the dirty work. What needed to be done. (Was this how Duke would have felt, if he'd resisted Audrey's manipulation and let Nix be? It was awful.) "...cowardice?"
	Chloe had been quiet, until now. It hadn't been her place to step in. Even comfort... was someone else's job now, wasn't it? But that made her gaze snap up to Lucifer's face. "It's not cowardly to save a life," she said. "It's not cowardly to fight for a single soul."
	That was an extremely complicated subject in this company. But yeah, Octavia agreed, her voice like gravel. "Killing someone wouldn't make you brave, Lucifer." She would know.
	Duke said nothing. He stared down at the grave, brows furrowed, eyes intent, and let Octavia handle the conversation for once. Because he'd thought about this. A lot. What he might feel like if he'd chosen not to go back into the woods and kill Nix. He'd thought about it for himself, while stuck in Haven. Thought about it again after each of his partners expressed their righteous anger at Audrey for putting him in the position at all. Killing someone, putting that mark on your soul so that other people would live, could absolutely make you brave. Telling Lucifer that now, though, wouldn't help or change anything.
	Chloe nodded. "Now is the time we have to be brave. In our own way, not Michael's," she said. "We owe it to Remiel. We owe it to Dan. We are the ones still standing. We are the ones that have to fight." She might have lost Lucifer in ways that ached, but she was sure she hadn't lost this Lucifer. The person she knew who, at his heart, wanted to choose life, justice, not desperate, nihilistic vigilantism.
	Lucifer looked at her, and caught her eye. This brave, incredible woman, who he'd hurt, who was still standing here. And for a moment, he almost felt like Chloe Decker's Lucifer Morningstar again. (Perhaps without the almost.) (Perhaps.) He didn't know what to do with that feeling, so he focused on something else. "Metaphorically for you, of course," he said flatly. "Because our siblings are invulnerable. You'd be powerless against them. All of you humans."
	"You sure there's not a way?" Octavia asked in an even rasp. "There are weapons that can hurt you, right?"
	"There are," Maze said flatly. What, she could sense her turn to finally speak up as well as anybody. She flicked out two of her knives. "You guys can have Stabby and Stabby," she said. "I figured out how I can make them useful for everybody. Even those of you who don't know how to stab right." ... Octavia was getting the single chin-lift of respect here.
	Excuse you, Duke could stab perfectly well, thank you. "Right, uh. And how would that be?"
	Octavia figured she might have had a hunch about what Maze meant. She turned the knife around in her hands, then looked up. "Well, they're basically metal, right?" And metal didn't necessarily need to stay in one shape.
	"Yep," Maze said. She gave the remaining blade a little twirl. "You shape these babies into bullets..."
	"And you have angel-killing guns." Duke nodded. Slowly at first, then getting faster. "Yeah. Yeah, I can definitely work with that."
	Something like panic had been boiling in Lucifer's stomach. It finally spilled out of him in an angry, slightly-terrified bark. "You are not working with anything," he snapped. "None of you are fighting."
	"Dan's death is my fault," Chloe said. She was shooting for 'cool', but wound up with on the edge instead. "I am fighting."
	“You need all the backup you can get,” Duke said firmly. “You’re not leaving me behind.”
	"And you know better than to try and keep me out of a war," Octavia added, just as firm. The stubborn humans had you outnumbered, Lucifer.
	Lucifer managed a loud, irritated breath through his nose. "Fine," he snarled. "Fine. Fine. Well, even if we had a dozen demon blades, it's still the four of us against a literal army of angels." AKA suicide, as far as he could tell. (And he wasn't going to accept that for his humans.)
	Amenadiel leaned harder on his shovel. "I think I might have an idea how we can get our own army," he said. He looked sideways at Lucifer. Held his gaze, until his brother got the memo, and blanched. "They're the best chance we've got," Amenadiel continued evenly. "What do you think, Maze?"
	"Hey, I'm all in," Maze said without any hesitation whatsoever. "Let's kill a bunch of angels."
	"No, Mazikeen," Amenadiel said sharply. "If we're going to do this, there will be no killing. They're our family."
	"We're talking about demons, right?" Duke asked. "The army, I mean? How likely are they going to be to listen if you try to tell them to play nice?" Because last time they'd gone into battle with a bunch of demons, they hadn't seemed to worry much about rules of "fair play" or whatever at all.
	"Last time, they were looking to overthrow their king." Octavia hoped that would make a difference. She looked from Lucifer to Maze. "And they don't have a reason to root for Michael, right?"
	Maze snorted. "No," she said. "They're gonna love an excuse to kick angel ass." She eyed Amenadiel. "Even if we're choosing to tie our hands behind our back and fight like a bunch of wussies."
	"Not wussies," Lucifer said. He looked at Chloe. "Saving lives." His voice was quiet.
	Duke was just going to . . . not point out that guns weren't generally known for not killing people. "So . . . I guess we kind of have a plan, then."
	"Enough of one," Octavia said, much more confident and level than she actually felt about any of this. "We can work out the details while we get the bullets."
	Lucifer nodded slowly. "Well, off that relentless optimism, Dad gave us the power of choice," he said. He looked up. "What say we make one last spectacularly bad one?"
	"All for one and one for all," Duke said. They were all going to die.