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"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.
[[ nfb and taken from Lucifer episode 5x16, 'A Chance At A Happy Ending'. preplayed with the awesome
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