Questions

I don’t own any of this. That honor goes to Neil Gaiman, Vertigo, DC Comics, Netflix, Warner Bros., and (Dad-help-us), Fox. Use of and sharing by others, in any way, shape or form, is not allowed.

Unless you’re one of the actual owners of the LUCIFER property, of course, then feel free to use any bit of or all of it with my enthusiastic blessing. I wouldn’t even want compensation or credit. Really.

A Tale of the Events between episodes 4.9 and 4.10

Several minutes after he had come back to his normal appearance, Chloe realized that she and Lucifer had been hugging. Yes, there had been hugs in the past, but this one seemed especially intense and personal. Everything about it had felt safe and happy and, in a way, complete.

A bit embarrassed, Chloe stepped back, although it was difficult for her to take that first step. His body had been warm and strong, and it was all she could do to force herself to move away from him. He had been so very standoffish lately, and she enjoyed the physical contact again. Come to think of it, she had never before hugged his bare skin, and that realization was tantalizing, to say the least.

“I knew you could do it, Lucifer,” she told him, a smile on her face as she worked to control her feelings. “I told you that you could.”

“I don’t think I could have done it without you, Detective,” he replied, his voice careful. “Thank you for your assistance.”

Chloe wondered how she could ever have thought that Lucifer did not care about things, as it had become very clear to her that he cared about everything. He might not be obvious about the depth of that caring, but it was there. The things he had said while she had conducted her interrogation had revealed so very much of what he thought of himself, and that revelation was painful to her.

“That’s not true, Lucifer,” she said. “This is something you did yourself.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Detective. Please don’t ever do that,” he replied and went to his bar where he poured out two drinks, and then brought the glasses and the nearly full bottle of very fine bourbon back to where Chloe stood. He handed her a glass and then nodded in the direction of the couch.

They moved to the couch, each one sitting at one corner of it, legs stretched out across the cushions, bare feet almost, but not quite touching. An unconscious attempt to avoid another of the personal bubble-breaking hugs they had just had.

Lucifer didn’t bother to cover up, remaining shirtless. Chloe thought it must have had something to do with being his old self again. Looking at his chest, she was happy to see that his immortality left him without a scar, after having been cut with an axe when she discovered she was his Achilles heel, as it were.

And I would do it again. And again. Don’t you know that, Detective?

Yes. Yes, he would.

And she did. And she would remember those very words forever, as though they had been engraved upon her soul.

Sudden realization took Chloe as she realized then that when Lucifer had told her, after she had very nearly died, that he had gone to Hell and back for her, that he had really meant it. Knowing how much he hated that place, she also realized how very much he truly cared about her.

“You know, I’ve got some questions for you, since you’ve said I could ask you about anything at all,” she said a little while later, once Lucifer had topped off her tumbler of bourbon. Chloe noted to herself that the Devil had excellent taste in alcohol.

“And what would those questions be, Detective,” he asked, sipping at his own drink. “I’m an open book to you, of course!”

“Nothing so grandiose, but I’ve wondered about some things,” she said, pulling out the necklace that had been her birthday gift from him, comfortably warm from its close proximity to her skin. “For instance, I know that I seem to make you vulnerable, but there was a time when you didn’t seem to have that problem. Until I shot you and you seemed genuinely surprised about that.”

Lucifer snorted, a half-smile on his face, as he remembered when he realized something was very different. At the time, it had been both thrilling and terrifying.

“Until that moment in time, my dear, my flesh was impervious to mortal instrument-created wounds,” he explained. “When you were able to wound me, I was shocked, to say the least.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she told him. “I still feel terrible that that happened.”

“There’s nothing that can be done about that, Detective, unless we part ways permanently, and truly, I don’t believe I’m willing to sever our relationship.”

Lucifer caught sight of Chloe’s unconscious pleased smile and kept his own pleasure at her response to himself.

“And that container of yours that was stolen? I know you showed me those Russian dolls. What else was in there? You said something about wings, but I never saw any wings in there.”

“Remember when you saw the scars on my back?”

“You wouldn’t let me touch them,” she recalled. “I remember the look you had on your face, too, when you asked me not to touch your scars.”

“My wings had been stored in that cargo container. When the container was stolen, the wings were also stolen and then were taken by someone else. I had to get them back, because I’m sure you can understand why humans shouldn’t have them.”

“Those wings you were so intent on getting back?”

“Yes. They were my wings.”

“Your—oh.” Wide-eyed realization and not a little shock. “Why weren’t they part of you?”

“As I believe I mentioned at the time, it was a way to show dear old Dad that I wasn’t going to play a part in his play. I had Maze cut them off. At the time, I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them. I did that later, once I found them again.”

“But you have them again now,” she protested. “Right?”

“Yes, it appears so. I tried removing them all over again—several times—but as they continued to return, I finally gave up and have kept them where I suppose they belong.”

Chloe shuddered at the thought of the sort of personal butchery he was so blithely relating. Surgery to remove a diseased body part was one thing, but the removal of something so special and perfect? That was unthinkable to her.

“So, I’m guessing you put those Russian dolls in there to make it look as though they were what you were actually storing? Your whole ‘not lying’ thing, so you would have something to explain it.”

“Yes, Detective,” he said, looking a trifle embarrassed and perhaps a little ashamed. “I promise that from now on I will only tell you the complete truth. No more partial truths.”

“I know you will, Lucifer,” she said, stretching out a toe to tease the Devil’s left big toe. She was rewarded with a snort and a smile that broke through his guilty expression.

“Footsie, Detective? Really?”

“Complaining?”

“Now, I never said you should stop, did I?”

Chloe laughed. She just couldn’t help herself.

“No, I guess you didn’t.”

“You have other questions?”

Chloe remembered her earlier thought about Lucifer’s “trip to Hell and back” and knew it was time to ask.

“When I nearly died a couple years ago, before you took off for Vegas that first time, you told me you’d ‘gone to Hell and back’ when it all happened,” she began.

“Yes, I did, Detective.”

“You weren’t being dramatic, were you? You really did go to Hell and back to save me,” she told him. “Why did you have to go to Hell?”

“I had to get the formula for the antidote from the Professor, and that’s where he’ll spend the rest of Eternity,” he explained. “His own private Hell is remarkably appropriate, I think.”

“Private Hell? What does that mean?”

“A damned soul’s experience of Hell is related to whatever terrible thing they did in life,” Lucifer said. “In the Professor’s case, he will experience the situation where that young man perished in the car fire because of his selfishness repeatedly, for the rest of Eternity. This time, however, he is confronted by and pursued by a large crowd of people who condemn his actions with each replay of the crash and death.”

“He’ll go through that forever?” Chloe asked, horror written in her expression. “That’s awful!”

“Detective, he not only tried to murder you, he unapologetically murdered several innocent individuals. My honest opinion, see what I did there, is that he should be going through so very much worse than he is right now,” Lucifer said, his voice and eyes cold. “He doesn’t deserve a happily-ever-after sort of afterlife. Ever.”

He reached out and touched his fingertips to her shoulder, giving it a feather-touch squeeze.

“I told you before, Detective—and again.”

Chloe blushed. Then something else occurred to her.

“I just realized something,” she said.

“And what would that be?”

“When I saw the results of people spending time with you, you showed them your Devil face, didn’t you,” she stated. “They were reacting to finding out the Devil really exists.”

“Ah—yes, that could have–,” he stopped and then started again. “Yes, that’s what happened, Detective.”

“No wonder they tend to fall all over themselves confessing to their crimes,” she surmised.

“You really seem to have connected with that priest who was killed, too,” Chloe suggested. “You were so very angry when he died—and I think there was something else. You openly loathe Kinley, but once you found out Father Lawrence really didn’t have anything to hide–”

“He was a genuinely good man and dear old Dad gave him a raw deal,” Lucifer said, his voice soft, but still angry. “And then, just before he died, he made it clear that he knew who and what I am, and he was fine with it. Fine with me. I don’t know how, but he was. It wasn’t at all fair. I think he might have been a friend if he had lived.”

“Your shared love of music didn’t hurt, I think,” Chloe said with a knowing smile. “I wish you had kept playing when I came up to your place that night. I liked seeing you having so much fun.”

“Well, there was that, I suppose,” Lucifer acknowledged, his eyes crinkling with warmth. “He did a damned good job at keeping up with me, anyway.”

“I’m glad you had the time you did with him.”

She raised her glass in a toast, which Lucifer solemnly joined in with her.

“To Father Frank,” she said.

“To Father Frank,” Lucifer agreed. “With luck, he’ll find a way to liven up the Silver City with his music.”

“The Silver City?”

“What you humans call Heaven,” he explained.

“Oh. Okay.”

They continued chatting, with Chloe asking her questions and Lucifer doing the best he could do to answer them fully. He had given her a promise and would keep it.

The level in the bottle of bourbon got low, and the Detective got a bit tipsy as a result, but the Devil remained sober, as always. He knew Chloe rarely allowed herself to get that inebriated, especially after the events of the night Dan sent her the break-up via text. He imagined she was afraid that he might not show the forbearance he that on that night.

“She was your Mother?”

“Well, she was Mum-popped-into-Charlotte-Richards,” he explained. “Once I sent her packing, the real Charlotte Richards popped back in and resumed her own life. Most people don’t get that chance once they go to Hell.”

“Charlotte was in Hell?”

“Well, she hadn’t been a very good person in her first life, but once she got back, she really turned it around,” Lucifer said with a fond smile. “Then, when she sacrificed herself to save my brother, he flew her to the Silver City himself, to be sure she didn’t go back to Hell. Last I heard, dear old Dad didn’t argue about that decision.”

“I’m glad,” Chloe said. “I liked the new Charlotte.”

“I did, too, Detective.”

Chloe looked at her watch. Damn. It was getting late and the sitter could only stay for so long.

“I’m sorry, Lucifer, but I have to go. Trixie—”

The Devil nodded his understanding.

“Please give young Miss Beatrice my regards.”

“Beatrice? Really?”

“I refuse to refer to her by that atrocious nickname,” he explained, rising from the couch as she did. “May I offer you a ride home, Detective? I know you Ubered it out here, but there’s no reason you should have to do the same to get home.”

“I don’t want to inconvenience you, Lucifer,” she replied.

“It’s no trouble at all, Detective. Give me a moment to get a shirt on and we’ll get you on your way home to your offspring and your bed.”

“I’ll be right here, Lucifer.”

“I certainly hope so, Chloe.”