Fic: Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen (Lucifer(TV), PG-13)
Title: Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen
Author:
xwingace/xwingace
Summary: "You hide so much from your children, hoping that not knowing will keep them safe. Because once they know, they must act on that knowledge, and that will change their life however they choose to act." Chloe stumbles into a fight she would probably have been better off staying out of.
Fandoms: Lucifer(TV)
Word count: ~3200
Rating/Contents: PG 13 for some violence. No other warnings apply
Available on:
Livejournal
Dreamwidth
Fanfiction.net
Archive of Our Own
Chloe Decker found her way to the abandoned building more by instinct than by any investigative power. Well, that and the humongous storm cloud building right above it. Trouble was brewing and this looked like the epicentre. Of course Lucifer would be here.
The week had started of mostly normal, as far as that went, with another murder case. A particularly gruesome one, admittedly, and with no clue yet as to suspects. Lucifer had shown up with inappropriate comments at the ready as usual. But as he'd walked further into the extensive crime scene, first the smile had dropped, then the eyebrows. Lucifer had turned inward until he didn't seem to be looking at the corpses at all, but at something else entirely.
On the next crime scene the day after, different location but much the same otherwise, he'd started out quiet. He'd stayed quiet, too, Quiet, intense, and a particular brand of controlled rage. This was a Lucifer she'd caught glimpses of before. Like when he'd casually announced his intent to rip Malcolm's limbs off, and later when he'd stood over Malcolm and watched him bleed out. She'd never seen that Lucifer stick around this long.
The press, ever hungry for scandal, was going crazy on this one. More even than on the Satanic killings that had seen Lucifer himself implicated a few weeks ago. There was nothing in this case that pointed even vaguely in his direction. The high profile of preacher Williams' murder had inspired other doom-preachers to point their fingers at Lucifer. The media at least were listening to them.
Lucifer wasn't. He'd walked through the sea of questions outside the second crime scene like Moses through the Red Sea, all parting before him.
And that was the last Chloe had seen of him all week, even though the next day, a third massacre was discovered. Lucifer didn't answer his phone, Lux was deserted and the door to his apartment locked.
She thought she'd spotted Maze on the crime scene perimeter. But it could just have been a black woman dressed in leather. By the time she'd reached there, the woman was gone.
The fourth day, she didn't bother calling. The scene was different. There were still deaths, but someone or something had interfered. At least half the victims were still alive, but they were all gibbering. The least incoherent one said something about demons and a dark, no, a black angel, saving them, then flying off into the desert. Well, it was the closest Chloe'd had to a clue so far.
This was where her instincts told her to get in her car and start driving. She did. It brought her here. Wherever here was. The cloud above was roiling, with flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder promising more to come. But on the ground, everything seemed silent, still, abandoned.
Then it wasn’t. For one brief instant, the ground at her feet lit up. A line not three feet away from her curved into the distance, blue lightning and red fire intertwined. It faded almost before it could register, but it had been there.
Chloe took a step to where the line had manifested itself, intending to step past it. She couldn't. When she hit the point where the line had been, the air around her lit up, blue and red and solid as bricks. She could step back easily. Going forward was impossible.
"Chloe."
Chloe started. When she'd taken the step toward the… barrier, she'd been alone. Now Lucifer, Maze and a black man were all standing beside her. In the back of her head, she recognized the black guy, too. Lucifer had introduced him as his brother, back at the auction where he'd hoped to retrieve his wings.
Not quite the same circumstances. Instead of good suits, both of them wore jeans and leather, and the black guy - Amenadiel? - was hefting a sword of all things. Not just a sword either, but one of those big two-handers.
Then there was Lucifer, the man whose weapons were words or his own bare hands. Had she forgotten that he'd thrown a suspect through a plate glass window without any sign of effort? She definitely hadn't forgotten talking him down from strangling another, literally single-handed. Lucifer was holding a spear that looked designed to stop a rhino. He also looked shocked to see her, color draining from his face.
"Detective, you really shouldn't be here," he said, as if he wasn't standing there dressed to kill. He'd gone pale as ash.
"I shouldn't be here? Lucifer, what is going on?"
Lucifer squared his shoulders. His color had come back, but his expression was still grim. "I am correcting my own mistakes."'
"Didn't we have this discussion? You can't just run off and..."
"We haven't got time for this," Maze interrupted. "The barrier's up, he knows we're here."
"And you're not going anywhere," Lucifer said, looking at Chloe. "Bloody hell. Okay, change of plans. Maze, protect her."
Maze looked ready to protest, but Lucifer shot her a look that had nothing of command in it. "Please, Mazikeen." Maze rolled her eyes, but nodded and pulled out a set of wickedly curved daggers. They looked suspiciously like the set that the LAPD had taken from Lucifer's apartment.
"I'll take on the mortals, then," Amenadiel added, nodding his head to the door of the building. A ragged group of people was approaching, the nearer ones breaking into a run. Amenadiel handed the sword to Lucifer. "I'll catch you up."
"Yes, well, I suppose this was a battle to the death regardless." Lucifer slung the spear across his back to take the sword. "Don't take too long." He took off. In fact, Lucifer just took a step and then plain disappeared, as if he'd teleported away.
Amenadiel cracked his knuckles as the people approached. "Time to get to work." Chloe started to pull her gun, just in case.
She needn't have bothered. The 'work' took the blink of an eye. By the time Chloe had got her gun up, the oncoming horde had been replaced with a scene not unlike one of the earlier crime scenes. Amenadiel was gone.
One difference between this and the crime scenes, though. These people were alive, as Chloe found out when she went to check on the closest. Unconscious, bruised and battered, but alive. "Who are these people?" She asked Maze, who hadn't disappeared.
"People who chose to kill instead of dying," Maze answered. She gave Chloe's gun a look of disdain. "That's not going to do you any good here."
Chloe ignored her long enough to assess a few more of the unconscious people. She could discern no pattern in age, race or gender, but all of them in clothes that looked like they'd been worn for days. All the clothing was bloodstained, but, from the two she inspected more closely, that blood didn't belong to the owners of the clothes.
Now she turned on Maze. "What the hell is going on here? Where's Lucifer?"
"Hell is exactly what's going on here. An escaped demon, feeding on death and chaos, and powerful enough that it'll take the Lord of Hell himself to force him back down." Chloe got another one of Maze's characteristic derogatory looks. "Let's hope that what we've got is enough."
Chloe closed her eyes and sighed. This again. Both Lucifer and Maze remained consistent in their conviction about this whole Satan, Hell and damnation business, and it was only making things worse. It was also not the point right now. "So if it's that bad, why aren't we helping?"
The look she got from Maze now was at least a little less insulted at the very fact of her existence. "He said to keep you safe." Maze looked away. "And he's safer if you're not around."
"You don't really believe that, and I sure don't. Where is he?"
That question didn't need answering, in fact. A crash from inside the building told her enough. Chloe rushed inside, Maze on her heels.
The building was larger than she'd thought. After a short hallway, it opened up into a large, mostly empty interior space. It hadn't looked like an airplane hangar from the outside, but that's what it seemed to be. It was also on fire.
In the middle of the room was… some sort of special effects prop? It made for a convincing demon, at least. It was hard to get an impression of scale, because her eyes kept sliding off it. The overall impression was one of a mountain of glowing embers beneath a layer of dried blood, crowned with curled horns too heavy to be realistic.
Lucifer stood in front of the thing, leather jacket and the shirt underneath rent to shreds. The scars on his back showed as bloody streaks. He was wielding the big sword one-handed, with the spear in the other. He shouted his defiance as he deflected blow after blow without doing much damage in turn.
An opening, of sorts. Lucifer stepped back, the arm with the sword moving further back. The butt of the spear clanked to the floor for extra support. Lucifer threw the sword up in a high arc, over the things head.
As he threw, a pair of wings unfolded and rose up from behind the creature. The first impression Chloe had was of an eagle except much, much bigger, rising and stooping on the hunt. It was gorgeous in its elegance and fearsome in purpose.
What struck wasn't an eagle. At the intersection of the wings was a human figure. Amenadiel! He caught the sword at the apex of the arc and then swung it at the back of the creature's neck. Immediately he turned (yes, in mid-air, and where had he hidden those wings all this time? How did he have wings at all?) to evade the counterstrike. A fiery arm came swinging up to catch at the new annoyance. Amenadiel dodged, beating up and around to prepare for another strike. His opponent's head turned, awaiting the fall of the sword.
In doing so, the creature presented its side to Lucifer. He'd recovered from the throw and now took a two-handed grip on his spear and rammed it into the thing's side.
That had an effect. The mountain of embers erupted, roaring into flame. It also flailed wildly. Amenadiel, who failed to evade the uncontrolled backswing, was swatted aside. Lucifer, still hanging on to the spear, was swept along. Pulled off his feet, he let go and rolled some distance before coming to a stop.
Amenadiel had landed in a heap not too far from Chloe and Maze. He sat up, shaking off a daze.
Lucifer stayed down longer. It was a good thing he'd put distance between himself and the creature, because he had its full attention again. It had turned toward him and began to approach with deliberate slowness.
"Lucifer!" Maze shouted, the first sound she'd made since coming into the room. She pulled her daggers from under her jacket and sprinted forward to protect her boss.
Chloe blinked and realised she still had her gun out. She raised it to her target - a little higher than she was used to aiming, and started shooting.
Maze had been right. The bullets didn't even ricochet. They were just absorbed in the boiling mass of flame. The only thing they accomplished was for the thing to turn around again and focus its attention on her.
Chloe felt her heartrate rise. She had to deliberately swallow and still couldn't get rid of the lump that had formed in her throat. It was one thing to look at the creature as it was engaged with others, but now its eye was on her, and everything became that much more… more.
Her instincts were screaming at her to move, to run, to get away, while at the same time they kept her rooted to the spot, knowing it was useless. Her arms were locked into place, her gun still up and her finger still on the trigger. But she couldn't even move that finger, little use as it would have been.
Maze had reversed direction, was coming toward her now. Too slow, and yet the thing didn't seem to move at all quickly. Time flowed like treacle, and even if she had been able to move, she could never, ever be fast enough to outrun that.
Beyond the oncoming creature, she saw Lucifer had managed to get to his knees. His face contorted into a scream. Chloe couldn't hear past the rushing of blood in her ears. Slowly, ever so slowly, Lucifer closed his eyes and bent his head. His chest moved as if he were breathing in for another scream.
Then, he rose.
Lucifer rose up, and kept rising. From his back, above him, wings of shining light unfolded. No bird comparisons entered Chloe's mind this time. They were all of their own, grace and power. If she'd still had breath, the sight of them would have taken it away.
In her current state of mind, it all made sense. The Devil had once been an angel. His name meantlight-bringer. Now she knew why. The light of the wings outshone the fear the other thing put out, and she felt like maybe she'd be able to move again, in time.
But it didn't last. As soon as they manifested, smoke rose up from around the base of the wings, covering them in black soot and smothering the divine light. There had been nothing more than the merest glimpse, a tiny spark of hope.
Lucifer had changed himself, to something not that different from the thing he'd been fighting. If someone came into the fight now, they wouldn't have been able to tell good guy from bad.
Either the demon had become smaller, Lucifer had become larger, or perspective had been playing tricks on Chloe all along. Lucifer was suddenly of a height with it, taller, even. He reached out, grabbed the thing's head, kneed it in the -- well if it wasn't its groin, it still looked like it hurt -- and threw it to the ground. Then he kneeled next to it and pushed. And kept pushing.
The ground below the creature took on its fiery hues and started to tear and melt. Lucifer was pushing the demon straight through the concrete floor.
Time started again. Everything was shaking, and debris started to fall. Cracks were racing across the floor, radiating out from the titanic struggle. Chloe dropped her gun, then fell to hands and knees. Her legs wouldn't support her any further. Maze took the three steps required to come to her side, but couldn't help her back up before a crack opened up underneath. Both of them rolled aside, helpless.
Amenadiel soared in, wrapping both his arms and wings around both her and Maze. Safety, more or less.
Just how much more, Chloe wouldn't know, because at that point the adrenaline ran out. She lost consciousness.
--
She drifted close to waking once to feel arms around her, carrying her as if she were a child.
--
The next time, she was in a familiar bed. Her own. She wasn't wearing her shoes anymore. She fell asleep.
There were nightmares - of course. The demon approaching her, the inevitability of the capture and nothing she could do about it. She twisted and turned, throwing off her blankets. Still she couldn't bring herself to full wakefulness to dispel the nightmare.
A door opened. Someone was coming in. She couldn't open her eyes.
Even less than half-conscious, Chloe recognised Trixie's voice, sleepily asking why she'd been woken up.
The answer was low voiced, pitched to not disturb a sleeper. "Your mother needs you for a bit."
"Okay."
Trixie was deposited next to her, and the girl immediately curled into her, like she'd always done. At least until Chloe had made her sleep in her own bed at night. Chloe wrapped herself around Trixie too. This, at least, she could protect.
Trixie was asleep again as soon as she'd lain down. Chloe was now at least half-awake and she tried to force her eyes open, to at least acknowledge Lucifer, say… something. But there was a hand on her head, slowly stroking her hair.
"Rest, Detective. It's all taken care of."
The hand stayed, gently brushing hair off her forehead. It felt safe, sheltering. She moved her own hand to stroke Trixie's hair, who responded by snuggling closer. She hugged the girl tighter. The hand lifted, but she could hear the faint rustle of fabric that meant Lucifer had sat in the chair next to the bed.
"You hide so much from your children, hoping that not knowing will keep them safe. At least for a time." Lucifer spoke softly, and he wasn't expecting a response. Nor would Chloe have been able to give it, for all that his words came through clearly. "They must learn at some point in order to survive, but you hope to soften the blow by postponing it. Because once they know, they must act on that knowledge, and that will change their life however they choose to act.
"You acted tonight. It wasn't your fight. There was no reason for you to be there. But I don't think I could have done what I needed to do without you there. Thank you.
"And through that act, you learned something, Detective. Something I've been telling you for months. As long as they were just words, you could choose to ignore them. Tonight, you weren't told. You saw.
"For every Moses inspired to greatness, there are a dozen Malcolms, driven to madness by certain knowledge of the divine. And Moses didn't come out of that one unscathed either. This knowledge is a burden as well as a blessing."
Movement. The blankets were pulled back around her and tucked in. Another tender, protective caress over her hair. "You still have a choice, Detective. Now, while you're still asleep. You can choose to regard it as a dream, or a nightmare - the stress of a gruelling case getting to you. The human mind can be amazingly resilient. Let it be a figment of your imagination, and nothing needs to change. Yet."
A sigh. "This choice, unfortunately, can't be a conscious one. You either admit the possibility into your rational mind or you do not. This is the best I can offer. So please, Chloe, rest."
There was a slight darkening of the shadows over her, a light flutter on her forehead that might or might not be a kiss. "Whatever you choose. I'll be here."
----
----
I could say so much more about free will, choices and the consequences of making the latter on the former... but there is only so much Lucifer can say to a half-asleep Chloe. And I truly don't know myself which choice I'd prefer her to take, should Chloe ever really be confronted by incontrovertible proof of Lucifer's condition.
But I wrote it anyway: The Exercise of Free Will
Lucifer seems very much to be about free will and acting on it. I don't think he could deliberately take an action that limited someone else's free will. The tragedy being, of course, is that that limits his freedom to act, under a lot of circumstances. Very much including pretty much whenever he interacts with Chloe.
---
XWA
This entry was crossposted from DreamWidth. The DreamWidth entry has
comments. You can comment on whichever entry you prefer.
Author:
xwingace/xwingace
Summary: "You hide so much from your children, hoping that not knowing will keep them safe. Because once they know, they must act on that knowledge, and that will change their life however they choose to act." Chloe stumbles into a fight she would probably have been better off staying out of.
Fandoms: Lucifer(TV)
Word count: ~3200
Rating/Contents: PG 13 for some violence. No other warnings apply
Available on:
Livejournal
Dreamwidth
Fanfiction.net
Archive of Our Own
Chloe Decker found her way to the abandoned building more by instinct than by any investigative power. Well, that and the humongous storm cloud building right above it. Trouble was brewing and this looked like the epicentre. Of course Lucifer would be here.
The week had started of mostly normal, as far as that went, with another murder case. A particularly gruesome one, admittedly, and with no clue yet as to suspects. Lucifer had shown up with inappropriate comments at the ready as usual. But as he'd walked further into the extensive crime scene, first the smile had dropped, then the eyebrows. Lucifer had turned inward until he didn't seem to be looking at the corpses at all, but at something else entirely.
On the next crime scene the day after, different location but much the same otherwise, he'd started out quiet. He'd stayed quiet, too, Quiet, intense, and a particular brand of controlled rage. This was a Lucifer she'd caught glimpses of before. Like when he'd casually announced his intent to rip Malcolm's limbs off, and later when he'd stood over Malcolm and watched him bleed out. She'd never seen that Lucifer stick around this long.
The press, ever hungry for scandal, was going crazy on this one. More even than on the Satanic killings that had seen Lucifer himself implicated a few weeks ago. There was nothing in this case that pointed even vaguely in his direction. The high profile of preacher Williams' murder had inspired other doom-preachers to point their fingers at Lucifer. The media at least were listening to them.
Lucifer wasn't. He'd walked through the sea of questions outside the second crime scene like Moses through the Red Sea, all parting before him.
And that was the last Chloe had seen of him all week, even though the next day, a third massacre was discovered. Lucifer didn't answer his phone, Lux was deserted and the door to his apartment locked.
She thought she'd spotted Maze on the crime scene perimeter. But it could just have been a black woman dressed in leather. By the time she'd reached there, the woman was gone.
The fourth day, she didn't bother calling. The scene was different. There were still deaths, but someone or something had interfered. At least half the victims were still alive, but they were all gibbering. The least incoherent one said something about demons and a dark, no, a black angel, saving them, then flying off into the desert. Well, it was the closest Chloe'd had to a clue so far.
This was where her instincts told her to get in her car and start driving. She did. It brought her here. Wherever here was. The cloud above was roiling, with flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder promising more to come. But on the ground, everything seemed silent, still, abandoned.
Then it wasn’t. For one brief instant, the ground at her feet lit up. A line not three feet away from her curved into the distance, blue lightning and red fire intertwined. It faded almost before it could register, but it had been there.
Chloe took a step to where the line had manifested itself, intending to step past it. She couldn't. When she hit the point where the line had been, the air around her lit up, blue and red and solid as bricks. She could step back easily. Going forward was impossible.
"Chloe."
Chloe started. When she'd taken the step toward the… barrier, she'd been alone. Now Lucifer, Maze and a black man were all standing beside her. In the back of her head, she recognized the black guy, too. Lucifer had introduced him as his brother, back at the auction where he'd hoped to retrieve his wings.
Not quite the same circumstances. Instead of good suits, both of them wore jeans and leather, and the black guy - Amenadiel? - was hefting a sword of all things. Not just a sword either, but one of those big two-handers.
Then there was Lucifer, the man whose weapons were words or his own bare hands. Had she forgotten that he'd thrown a suspect through a plate glass window without any sign of effort? She definitely hadn't forgotten talking him down from strangling another, literally single-handed. Lucifer was holding a spear that looked designed to stop a rhino. He also looked shocked to see her, color draining from his face.
"Detective, you really shouldn't be here," he said, as if he wasn't standing there dressed to kill. He'd gone pale as ash.
"I shouldn't be here? Lucifer, what is going on?"
Lucifer squared his shoulders. His color had come back, but his expression was still grim. "I am correcting my own mistakes."'
"Didn't we have this discussion? You can't just run off and..."
"We haven't got time for this," Maze interrupted. "The barrier's up, he knows we're here."
"And you're not going anywhere," Lucifer said, looking at Chloe. "Bloody hell. Okay, change of plans. Maze, protect her."
Maze looked ready to protest, but Lucifer shot her a look that had nothing of command in it. "Please, Mazikeen." Maze rolled her eyes, but nodded and pulled out a set of wickedly curved daggers. They looked suspiciously like the set that the LAPD had taken from Lucifer's apartment.
"I'll take on the mortals, then," Amenadiel added, nodding his head to the door of the building. A ragged group of people was approaching, the nearer ones breaking into a run. Amenadiel handed the sword to Lucifer. "I'll catch you up."
"Yes, well, I suppose this was a battle to the death regardless." Lucifer slung the spear across his back to take the sword. "Don't take too long." He took off. In fact, Lucifer just took a step and then plain disappeared, as if he'd teleported away.
Amenadiel cracked his knuckles as the people approached. "Time to get to work." Chloe started to pull her gun, just in case.
She needn't have bothered. The 'work' took the blink of an eye. By the time Chloe had got her gun up, the oncoming horde had been replaced with a scene not unlike one of the earlier crime scenes. Amenadiel was gone.
One difference between this and the crime scenes, though. These people were alive, as Chloe found out when she went to check on the closest. Unconscious, bruised and battered, but alive. "Who are these people?" She asked Maze, who hadn't disappeared.
"People who chose to kill instead of dying," Maze answered. She gave Chloe's gun a look of disdain. "That's not going to do you any good here."
Chloe ignored her long enough to assess a few more of the unconscious people. She could discern no pattern in age, race or gender, but all of them in clothes that looked like they'd been worn for days. All the clothing was bloodstained, but, from the two she inspected more closely, that blood didn't belong to the owners of the clothes.
Now she turned on Maze. "What the hell is going on here? Where's Lucifer?"
"Hell is exactly what's going on here. An escaped demon, feeding on death and chaos, and powerful enough that it'll take the Lord of Hell himself to force him back down." Chloe got another one of Maze's characteristic derogatory looks. "Let's hope that what we've got is enough."
Chloe closed her eyes and sighed. This again. Both Lucifer and Maze remained consistent in their conviction about this whole Satan, Hell and damnation business, and it was only making things worse. It was also not the point right now. "So if it's that bad, why aren't we helping?"
The look she got from Maze now was at least a little less insulted at the very fact of her existence. "He said to keep you safe." Maze looked away. "And he's safer if you're not around."
"You don't really believe that, and I sure don't. Where is he?"
That question didn't need answering, in fact. A crash from inside the building told her enough. Chloe rushed inside, Maze on her heels.
The building was larger than she'd thought. After a short hallway, it opened up into a large, mostly empty interior space. It hadn't looked like an airplane hangar from the outside, but that's what it seemed to be. It was also on fire.
In the middle of the room was… some sort of special effects prop? It made for a convincing demon, at least. It was hard to get an impression of scale, because her eyes kept sliding off it. The overall impression was one of a mountain of glowing embers beneath a layer of dried blood, crowned with curled horns too heavy to be realistic.
Lucifer stood in front of the thing, leather jacket and the shirt underneath rent to shreds. The scars on his back showed as bloody streaks. He was wielding the big sword one-handed, with the spear in the other. He shouted his defiance as he deflected blow after blow without doing much damage in turn.
An opening, of sorts. Lucifer stepped back, the arm with the sword moving further back. The butt of the spear clanked to the floor for extra support. Lucifer threw the sword up in a high arc, over the things head.
As he threw, a pair of wings unfolded and rose up from behind the creature. The first impression Chloe had was of an eagle except much, much bigger, rising and stooping on the hunt. It was gorgeous in its elegance and fearsome in purpose.
What struck wasn't an eagle. At the intersection of the wings was a human figure. Amenadiel! He caught the sword at the apex of the arc and then swung it at the back of the creature's neck. Immediately he turned (yes, in mid-air, and where had he hidden those wings all this time? How did he have wings at all?) to evade the counterstrike. A fiery arm came swinging up to catch at the new annoyance. Amenadiel dodged, beating up and around to prepare for another strike. His opponent's head turned, awaiting the fall of the sword.
In doing so, the creature presented its side to Lucifer. He'd recovered from the throw and now took a two-handed grip on his spear and rammed it into the thing's side.
That had an effect. The mountain of embers erupted, roaring into flame. It also flailed wildly. Amenadiel, who failed to evade the uncontrolled backswing, was swatted aside. Lucifer, still hanging on to the spear, was swept along. Pulled off his feet, he let go and rolled some distance before coming to a stop.
Amenadiel had landed in a heap not too far from Chloe and Maze. He sat up, shaking off a daze.
Lucifer stayed down longer. It was a good thing he'd put distance between himself and the creature, because he had its full attention again. It had turned toward him and began to approach with deliberate slowness.
"Lucifer!" Maze shouted, the first sound she'd made since coming into the room. She pulled her daggers from under her jacket and sprinted forward to protect her boss.
Chloe blinked and realised she still had her gun out. She raised it to her target - a little higher than she was used to aiming, and started shooting.
Maze had been right. The bullets didn't even ricochet. They were just absorbed in the boiling mass of flame. The only thing they accomplished was for the thing to turn around again and focus its attention on her.
Chloe felt her heartrate rise. She had to deliberately swallow and still couldn't get rid of the lump that had formed in her throat. It was one thing to look at the creature as it was engaged with others, but now its eye was on her, and everything became that much more… more.
Her instincts were screaming at her to move, to run, to get away, while at the same time they kept her rooted to the spot, knowing it was useless. Her arms were locked into place, her gun still up and her finger still on the trigger. But she couldn't even move that finger, little use as it would have been.
Maze had reversed direction, was coming toward her now. Too slow, and yet the thing didn't seem to move at all quickly. Time flowed like treacle, and even if she had been able to move, she could never, ever be fast enough to outrun that.
Beyond the oncoming creature, she saw Lucifer had managed to get to his knees. His face contorted into a scream. Chloe couldn't hear past the rushing of blood in her ears. Slowly, ever so slowly, Lucifer closed his eyes and bent his head. His chest moved as if he were breathing in for another scream.
Then, he rose.
Lucifer rose up, and kept rising. From his back, above him, wings of shining light unfolded. No bird comparisons entered Chloe's mind this time. They were all of their own, grace and power. If she'd still had breath, the sight of them would have taken it away.
In her current state of mind, it all made sense. The Devil had once been an angel. His name meantlight-bringer. Now she knew why. The light of the wings outshone the fear the other thing put out, and she felt like maybe she'd be able to move again, in time.
But it didn't last. As soon as they manifested, smoke rose up from around the base of the wings, covering them in black soot and smothering the divine light. There had been nothing more than the merest glimpse, a tiny spark of hope.
Lucifer had changed himself, to something not that different from the thing he'd been fighting. If someone came into the fight now, they wouldn't have been able to tell good guy from bad.
Either the demon had become smaller, Lucifer had become larger, or perspective had been playing tricks on Chloe all along. Lucifer was suddenly of a height with it, taller, even. He reached out, grabbed the thing's head, kneed it in the -- well if it wasn't its groin, it still looked like it hurt -- and threw it to the ground. Then he kneeled next to it and pushed. And kept pushing.
The ground below the creature took on its fiery hues and started to tear and melt. Lucifer was pushing the demon straight through the concrete floor.
Time started again. Everything was shaking, and debris started to fall. Cracks were racing across the floor, radiating out from the titanic struggle. Chloe dropped her gun, then fell to hands and knees. Her legs wouldn't support her any further. Maze took the three steps required to come to her side, but couldn't help her back up before a crack opened up underneath. Both of them rolled aside, helpless.
Amenadiel soared in, wrapping both his arms and wings around both her and Maze. Safety, more or less.
Just how much more, Chloe wouldn't know, because at that point the adrenaline ran out. She lost consciousness.
--
She drifted close to waking once to feel arms around her, carrying her as if she were a child.
--
The next time, she was in a familiar bed. Her own. She wasn't wearing her shoes anymore. She fell asleep.
There were nightmares - of course. The demon approaching her, the inevitability of the capture and nothing she could do about it. She twisted and turned, throwing off her blankets. Still she couldn't bring herself to full wakefulness to dispel the nightmare.
A door opened. Someone was coming in. She couldn't open her eyes.
Even less than half-conscious, Chloe recognised Trixie's voice, sleepily asking why she'd been woken up.
The answer was low voiced, pitched to not disturb a sleeper. "Your mother needs you for a bit."
"Okay."
Trixie was deposited next to her, and the girl immediately curled into her, like she'd always done. At least until Chloe had made her sleep in her own bed at night. Chloe wrapped herself around Trixie too. This, at least, she could protect.
Trixie was asleep again as soon as she'd lain down. Chloe was now at least half-awake and she tried to force her eyes open, to at least acknowledge Lucifer, say… something. But there was a hand on her head, slowly stroking her hair.
"Rest, Detective. It's all taken care of."
The hand stayed, gently brushing hair off her forehead. It felt safe, sheltering. She moved her own hand to stroke Trixie's hair, who responded by snuggling closer. She hugged the girl tighter. The hand lifted, but she could hear the faint rustle of fabric that meant Lucifer had sat in the chair next to the bed.
"You hide so much from your children, hoping that not knowing will keep them safe. At least for a time." Lucifer spoke softly, and he wasn't expecting a response. Nor would Chloe have been able to give it, for all that his words came through clearly. "They must learn at some point in order to survive, but you hope to soften the blow by postponing it. Because once they know, they must act on that knowledge, and that will change their life however they choose to act.
"You acted tonight. It wasn't your fight. There was no reason for you to be there. But I don't think I could have done what I needed to do without you there. Thank you.
"And through that act, you learned something, Detective. Something I've been telling you for months. As long as they were just words, you could choose to ignore them. Tonight, you weren't told. You saw.
"For every Moses inspired to greatness, there are a dozen Malcolms, driven to madness by certain knowledge of the divine. And Moses didn't come out of that one unscathed either. This knowledge is a burden as well as a blessing."
Movement. The blankets were pulled back around her and tucked in. Another tender, protective caress over her hair. "You still have a choice, Detective. Now, while you're still asleep. You can choose to regard it as a dream, or a nightmare - the stress of a gruelling case getting to you. The human mind can be amazingly resilient. Let it be a figment of your imagination, and nothing needs to change. Yet."
A sigh. "This choice, unfortunately, can't be a conscious one. You either admit the possibility into your rational mind or you do not. This is the best I can offer. So please, Chloe, rest."
There was a slight darkening of the shadows over her, a light flutter on her forehead that might or might not be a kiss. "Whatever you choose. I'll be here."
----
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I could say so much more about free will, choices and the consequences of making the latter on the former... but there is only so much Lucifer can say to a half-asleep Chloe. And I truly don't know myself which choice I'd prefer her to take, should Chloe ever really be confronted by incontrovertible proof of Lucifer's condition.
But I wrote it anyway: The Exercise of Free Will
Lucifer seems very much to be about free will and acting on it. I don't think he could deliberately take an action that limited someone else's free will. The tragedy being, of course, is that that limits his freedom to act, under a lot of circumstances. Very much including pretty much whenever he interacts with Chloe.
---
XWA
This entry was crossposted from DreamWidth. The DreamWidth entry has
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