my_own_advocate | The Cape Rouge, Sunday Afternoon

Duke didn't really much want to leave her behind either, but he bit his lip on his protest. The sooner they did this, the sooner he could stop hurting and they could all just be for one goddamn minute.

He nodded to Lucifer and slowly started to pull himself upright without the use of his dominant hand.

"Oh, stop," Lucifer muttered, scooping him up into his arms midway through that ridiculous performance. "This won't be long," he promised Octavia (even though he probably couldn't promise any such thing).

He unfurled his wings and took off, without delay. Maybe he'd feel a bit more settled after this. If he was lucky.

The visit took longer than he'd hoped, but shorter than he'd feared. The same went, more or less, for the extent of the damage in Duke's arm: enough to be splinted now, not bad enough to need any kind of surgery.

"Here we are," he said, as he descended towards the Rouge. "The ship's still in one piece."

Octavia wasn't up on the deck anymore. She was down in the galley, having ended her general check-up around the boat on clearing out things from the fridge that hadn't survived the wait for them.

She'd started tearing up somewhere in the middle of it, for no discernible reason.

(The shock -- the shocks were starting to wear off.)

It had not improved her mood.

The x-rays had hurt, in Duke's opinion, almost as much as the original injury had, and the painkillers they'd given him were doing nothing to help the tanking of his mood as the adrenaline he'd been running on since -- he didn't even know by now -- had drained out of his system.

He wriggled out of Lucifer's arms the moment it was safe, letting out a faintly disgruntled noise, his arm tucked into an ugly beige sling.

"Think I need a drink this time."

Not on those painkillers he didn't.

"Loathe as I am to argue with that," Lucifer said, his fingers falling to the small of Duke's back as soon as the man had stepped away, "What you need is a lie down."

What they all needed was a lie down. Preferably with all the doors locked for the next 24 hours.

Octavia hadn't heard them yet.

And that meant this still felt like the first time she'd been entirely alone since... she wasn't even sure when. And everything was just coming back to her in disjointed flashes, from Jophiel throwing that rock, to the roar of battle, to Lucifer's I love you --

She leaned heavily on her hands against the edge of the counter, and tried not to shake.

Duke didn't pull away from Lucifer's touch, but he also wasn't melting into it the way he usually would, either. He moved a little stiffly to the door to the galley, figuring Lucifer could follow along at will.

"Fine. Bed works too, I guess."

He paused when he saw Octavia.

"Shit. Are you okay? Did something else happen?"

"Do you need a visit to the clinic as well?" Lucifer asked, following right behind.

Unlike the two of them, he hadn't let anything sink in yet.

Octavia had forced a deep breath as soon as she's heard the door open, but it didn't seem to be helping. She told herself to straighten up, to pull herself together, to push this aside.

But instead her brain was now looping around one particular moment.

That was never part of the plan.

That was never part of the plan.

That was never part of the plan.

And she stood there, gripping the edge of the counter in silence, shoulders hunched and tense.

Shit.

Duke shoved his own mood aside and hurried over to her, carefully reaching out to set his good hand on her back.

"Tavi. Hey. It's okay, we're home."

"Octavia?" Lucifer said. He followed Duke, decidedly more hesitant about it.

About everything, really.

And with good reason. Because when Octavia suddenly moved, it was a flail as she whirred around to face them.

To stare at Lucifer, and to wail, like she had no control over the words coming out of her mouth, "You didn't tell us the whole plan!"

Duke jumped back, not in any hurry to get his remaining arm injured, then snapped his gaze over to Lucifer.

Fuck. In all the -- everything -- he'd forgotten that part.

Lucifer opened his mouth, then closed it. "No," he said finally, "I didn't. I-- the Detective came up with the idea at the eleventh hour, and I didn't..."

He trailed off.

And Octavia just --

Exploded.

"Why didn't you?" she demanded. "I get that you two are --" She grasped for a word for a second, for what they were, then gave up. "-- but you put her at risk, and exactly the way it turned out! We could've had her back but you left us out!"

Her hands were tight fists at her sides.

"And for what?"

Yeah, Duke was just . . . not going to insert himself into the middle of that. He headed for his liquor cabinet.

"You could have had her back," Lucifer agreed, "Or you could have died as easily as she did. I wasn't happy with her suggestion, Octavia, but there was no stopping her."

Once Chloe Decker got an idea in her head, there never was. It was something she had in common with the rest of the people he... cared about most.

He wondered if that said anything.

"But she didn't want to tell you, and I wasn't about to put either of you in the same bloody situation."

"So you let us go in blind!"

Because it wasn't just about endangering Chloe. Not really.

The welling in Octavia's eyes finally turned into a tear or two, but she didn't seem to notice. It didn't lessen her fury any; her voice just turned into more cutting gravel.

"I trusted you."

Duke had to dig a little, but he eventually found what he was looking for. He pulled out a bottle of rum with what was clearly a handwritten label and set it on top of the cabinet while he went to look for a glass.

And here Lucifer had managed to live without terrible, soul-destroying feelings of worthlessness for a few hours. It'd been nice, really.

"Yes, I'm terribly sorry I didn't want you dead," he snapped. "What exactly do you think you would've accomplished out there, hm? Clearly you two decided to fight in the end, and Duke fractured his bloody arm."

"You know what helps keep me alive? Telling me what the fucking plan is!"

So apparently Octavia had no intention of getting any less loud right now. Had you missed this, porgs?

"It's not about accomplishing something, it's about not being blindsided by what my side does. It's about you letting her decide that no one else needed to know." Her nails were really starting to dig into her palms now. "So you don't care that we could have helped, fine. But we also could have fucked it up because we didn't know."

"Yes, Duke fractured his fucking arm," Duke said, raising his glass, which now had two fingers of very exclusive rum poured into it. "And is still in kind of a lot of pain about it so can we maybe, like . . . stop yelling? For a minute?"

Well, maybe a headache would distract from the arm pain at least.

"I didn't want you there in the first place," Lucifer snapped, mostly because the words were halfway out of his mouth by the time Duke spoke.

He half-turned to glance at Duke and opted not to finish that thought. "...Didn't the doctor say you weren't supposed to be drinking?"

Octavia, however, stared at Lucifer like he'd just slapped her across the face.

Sorry, coupled with the feelings of betrayal she'd worked herself up into, that last snap was just...

Well, a slap. No matter how unintentional.

Duke looked at his drink, crestfallen.

". . . Fuck. But the pills aren't even working yet!"

He'd taken them like ten minutes ago.

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