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"For the show, it's really important that we remember that Lucifer is the Devil. It's important for Lucifer sometimes to remember that he's the Devil: to keep the notion that he is a wild animal that is seemingly being tamed but, at any moment, could snap."
--
Tom Ellis
The heavy door fell closed behind them, leaving them in profound darkness.
“LAPD!” Chloe yelled, gun raised, her voice echoing in the confines of the factory building. “The building is surrounded, come out with your arms raised above your head!”
There was no response.
Chloe shrugged philosophically. She had radioed in for backup, but it would be a while before they got here, so the bit about the surrounded building was nothing more than a bluff at this point.
A click off to her right alerted her to the fact that Lucifer must have found a light switch. However, things remained stubbornly dark. “And he saw that it was no good,” her partner commented drily.
“Power’s out,” she guessed, lowering her gun. There was nothing to aim at. She felt as if she had gone blind. “Can you see anything?”
She could feel his tall shape close behind her. “Yes, but I don’t see the human stain. He must be hiding behind one of these conveniently spaced bits of engineering.” His breath brushed her ear, making her shiver. “Should I go in?”
There had been times, she reflected, when he would have just gone ahead without asking, leaving her scrambling in his wake trying to save the situation. He’d really come far.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “I’m not finished bluffing yet.” She clicked her radio. “Is SWAT ready?” she said, loud enough to be heard by the perp.
The deafening report of a gunshot put an end to that particular performance. Chloe blindly grabbed at Lucifer, managing to seize his jacket lapel, and threw herself on top of him and both of them out of the line of fire. The bullet ricocheted off the wall behind them.
A second shot had them scrambling for cover, Lucifer dragging her behind a hulking piece of machinery that Chloe only noticed when her shoulder bumped against the unyielding metal.
Twin red pinpoints of light came to life in front of her face. “He fired at you,” the Devil growled.
“He fired at both of us,” Chloe whispered, reaching out a hand towards the glowing eyes to find his face. “Calm down, Lucifer. You’ll give our position away.” His skin was warm beneath her fingers as she stroked his familiar stubbled cheek.
She could hear him pant softly, fighting for control, and finally, his hand covered hers where it rested on his face, and the hellfire faded. “He’s wearing night vision gear,” Lucifer said sotto voce, sounding much calmer. “He’s already seen us.”
She relaxed. Out-of-control-Devil situation averted. “How do you know? Could’ve been a lucky shot.”
“I saw him wearing it when he fired at you.”
“At us ,” she corrected him. Chloe couldn’t even make out her hand in front of her face, but she supposed that being able to see in the dark was a much less incredible feat than shape-shifting or superhuman strength, so she ran with it. “Okay. Did you make his position?”
“He’s about forty-five yards away in this direction.” He framed her face with his warm hands and turned her head until she was facing in the general direction of the machine in front of her. “Straight that way behind a tank, and I don’t mean the military vehicle.” He made a sound of incredulity. “Can you really not see anything?”
“It’s pitch black in here, Lucifer,” she whispered, trying to come up with a plan of action. “Right. I’ll draw his attention, you circle behind him and take him out.”
“Detective, he will shoot at you again!”
“That’s what I’m counting on. As long as he’s taking potshots at me, he won’t be shooting at you.”
“Not acceptable. He might hit you!”
“Lucifer, we can’t let him get away again. If we wait until backup gets here, he may escape in the meantime. We have to take him down now. I’m not effective stumbling around in the dark. You’re the one on this team with dark vision and superhuman speed. It’s your job. Now go.”
She could hear him exhale sharply. “Fine.”
“Just don’t kill him.”
“That’s up to him. I will if he hits you.”
“You’re not invulnerable either right now,” she reminded him, but from the feeling of cold at her side where his warmth had been, she could tell that he had already gone.
Right, time to do her bit. “Jim Compton!” she yelled. “There’s no way out! Surrender yourself now, or the Devil will come and get you!” She so loved saying things like that.
There was no reply, but then again, she hadn’t really expected one. However, nobody was taking shots at her, either. And she still couldn’t see a fucking thing, so she had no way of knowing what was going on.
Draw his fire. Carefully, she crept to the side of the machine she was hiding behind, keeping low to the ground, and took off her jacket to lob it out into the open. Or at least, where she remembered open space to be.
A shot rang out, shooting her poor jacket stone dead before it had hit the ground.
Come on, Lucifer.
On cue, her partner’s voice came from somewhere in front of her. “Hello, murderer,” he purred. There were sounds of a brief scuffle, then two pinpoints of red light appeared in the pitch blackness. “Time to repent your sins.”
A second voice - had to be that of Jim Compton - made a noise of horror that was almost comical. “Fuck!” the man yelled, “shit fuck don’t shit fuck.”
Relieved, Chloe got to her feet. Lucifer’s eyes were still glowing, providing her with a welcome beacon in this darkness, and she began walking towards it, carefully.
“Detective!” Lucifer shouted over Compton’s continued cursing.
At the same time, something grabbed her from behind, and she felt the unmistakable pressure of a gun against her temple. “Don’t move,” a voice hissed in her ear. “Drop the piece. Stay where you are, Satan,” the man behind Chloe added more loudly, “or she dies!”
Satan?
More importantly, a second guy. They hadn’t seen that one coming. Immediately, Chloe put her safety on the gun, dropped it into the darkness where it hit the floor with a clatter, and raised her hands. “Okay, okay. I’m unarmed. Take it easy.”
In the near distance, Lucifer’s eyes were still glowing. “If you so much as harm a hair on her head, I will eviscerate you,” he growled.
And he’d be out of control for sure. God alone knew what would happen then. “Listen,” Chloe said urgently to her attacker, “shooting me will take you at least a full second. He’ll have you by then, and then nothing will save you.”
The gun at her temple remained rock steady. “Shut up! The only way she stays alive is if you don’t move a muscle!”
For a minute, there was silence. Chloe still couldn’t see a thing except Lucifer’s eyes, while everyone around her was either a celestial being or wearing night vision goggles. If she could somehow get the lights to go on, the perps would be temporarily blinded, but since that was not happening… How convenient.
It’s a setup. Had to be. Compton fleeing into a factory building with no power where his partner and night vision equipment were waiting for him - it was all part of a plan. But for what?
“Oh, bloody hell,” Lucifer said, inexplicably.
“Got him,” a third voice said. “We can turn the lights back on now.”
This is my fault , Chloe kept thinking.
They had been brought at gunpoint into a small room, still in the same building. She now found herself tied to a chair near one of the bare walls, while Lucifer was locked in a cast iron cage, of all things. It was too small for him to stand upright, so he was sitting down on the metal cage floor, looking grim.
Definitely a setup.
The other two men apart from Jim Compton - Chloe had dubbed them Ernie and Bert - were wearing monk-like getups that clearly marked them as religious zealots.
From what little had been exchanged among the three men, Chloe gathered that Jim Compton had acted as bait, committing the murder Chloe and Lucifer were investigating and leaving a trail for them to follow, just to get lured into this trap. Just to lure Lucifer into this trap , she corrected herself, while I’m there to make him vulnerable . Clearly, a lot of fanaticism was involved if they had been willing to kill someone for it.
Zealots or not, they seemed to know what they were doing. Apparently, they had been on the Devil’s track ever since a certain “fight in the church” (whatever that might be about); they had somehow known about his weakness in her presence, and they even knew enough to keep from looking at him directly so he couldn’t use his charm on them.
Play for time , Chloe told herself. Backup would arrive sooner or later. “Man,” she said, gathering her bravado, “you guys are in so much trouble.”
Compton and Ernie apparently knew better than to let themselves be provoked so easily. Bert, however, responded, “No effort is too great when doing good deeds in the name of the Lord.”
“Yeah,” she pressed on, “what the hell’s all this supposed to accomplish, anyway?”
“The Devil has walked the earth long enough,” Bert said. “We will send him back whence he came.”
“Oh no, not again ,” Lucifer interjected languidly from his position on the floor. “The road to hell’s becoming really worn out, what with all the commuting I’ve been doing lately.”
Ernie, who had remained silent until now, grabbed a cattle prod and put it to the iron cage bars. “Be silent, hell spawn!” he snapped.
With a deep humming sound, the device sparked to life, enveloping the cage in a crackle of high-voltage electricity.
Lucifer screamed.
“Stop it!” Chloe yelled.
Ernie merely looked at her, grinning, and kept going. Lucifer screamed again.
This wouldn’t be happening to him if I weren’t here. “I said STOP IT!”
Bert stepped up to her and backhanded her viciously. She couldn’t suppress a cry of pain as she briefly saw stars.
The screaming stopped.
Her senses swimming, fearing the worst, Chloe looked at Lucifer. For a terrible moment, she thought that the voltage had burned him all over, but then she recognized his Devil form.
“You will regret this,” Satan growled. His faced flashed, shifting and flickering between various degrees of Devilness, for lack of a better word, and his eyes glowed.
The cage door burst open by itself.
Ernie dropped the cattle prod and retreated to the wall, whimpering, while Compton had already drawn his gun and was firing at Lucifer.
Chloe thought her heart would stop, but Lucifer just kept moving, out of the cage and towards Bert, with the inevitability of continental shift, ignoring Compton and his gun completely.
Rattled, Bert retreated behind Chloe’s chair and put his arm around her throat from behind. “Stay where you are, Satan, or she’s dead!”
Chloe head-butted him, feeling his nose crunch with the impact of the back of her skull.
The next thing she knew, Lucifer was on the guy, throwing him across the room and into Compton. Both men went down, joining the third guy on the floor.
Then the Devil leaped on them with a roar that vibrated in Chloe’s solar plexus like a death knell, making her breath stall.
It actually was an effort to draw in air, and when she had finally managed, she yelled, “Don’t kill them, Lucifer!”
She winced when Bert was propelled against the cage with the sound of bone breaking, followed by Compton, who fell on top of his pal.
“And why shouldn’t I?” the Devil howled. “They deserve death!”
“No, they don’t! Please, Lucifer!”
“That one hurt you !” It was a cry of pain. “He deserves a thousand deaths!”
“Lucifer, I understand how you feel, but please, please, don’t do this. He only slapped me. I’m fine. Don’t do this. It isn’t you!”
He froze. Turned to her, eyes glowing, face flickering. When his eyes made contact with hers, the flickering stopped.
“It’s not you,” Chloe repeated, holding his fiery gaze, willing him to calm down. “Not anymore. Don’t let them turn you into the monster everyone else thinks you are.”
Time seemed to stop.
Lucifer looked at her, panting, hands opening and closing, caught in a paroxysm of indecision. Finally, with a huff of irritation, he moved to her, and put his hands on the wire straps that held her arms immobile. They fell off.
As soon as she was free, she felt herself pulled to her feet and wrapped in his arms, his red Devil’s hands moving along her neck and face, checking her over while caressing her. “You’re all right,” he said, voice breaking. He shifted back at last, his familiar dark eyes drinking her in, and then he engulfed her in a hug.
Chloe melted against him, weak with relief. “I’ve got a thick skull.” And she pulled him down to kiss him.
The perps, meanwhile, wisely remained where they were, either not daring or unable to move, only whimpering softly.
The requested backup burst through the door just when Chloe was gathering the guns.
“Not that I’m not glad or anything,” Chloe said when they were back at the precinct, “but why aren’t you more electrocuted, or more riddled with bullets? Don’t tell me that the guy missed you four times at close to point-blank range.”
“Been thinking about that, actually, Detective,” Lucifer said, “and I have a theory.”
She watched him pace up and down in front of her desk. “What’s that?”
He pointed at himself with the air of a professor giving a lecture. “Lucifer Morningstar is vulnerable when I’m with you,” he said, “but the Devil is not.”
She frowned, considering, picking up the cold pack and pressing it to the side of her head where an impressive lump had formed. His theory did seem to fit the facts. “That would also explain why the voltage stopped hurting you after you shifted.”
“That’s right, it would,” Lucifer said, using the same finger to point at her and grinning his “aren’t I brilliant” grin.
The grin faded when he noticed the cold pack. “Which holding cell is that maggot in again?” he growled.
“He’s in hospital, Lucifer,” Chloe said soothingly. “You’ve punished him enough. And it’s just a little swelling. I don’t even have a concussion.” She’d had enough of those in her time that she could tell by now. “Which is more than can be said for him.”
He held his punisher’s face for a second longer, then he smiled. “Good.”
Later that night, they were sitting on the couch in her apartment, looking in the general direction of the dark and silent TV, leaning against one another, their arms around each other. Chloe was too exhausted to move, and she half suspected that Lucifer felt much the same, celestial or no. Trixie was in bed (she had insisted on the three of them watching Moana and that Lucifer read her bedtime story); a bottle of wine and two glasses were on the table in front of them, and neither of them had said a word in minutes, both of them lost in thought.
He was so solid and so warm, and she was about to drop off any second now.
It was ridiculously domestic.
In that moment, Chloe could almost believe that they were a family, a normal human family with normal jobs and normal problems, with the weirdest thing ever happening to them the occasional sock disappearing into that black hole residing in the washing machine.
And wouldn’t that be boring.
No, she much preferred her current life on the edge of sanity, with her Devil who could alternate on a dime between raining down hellfire to protect her and bestowing the most gentle affection (not to mention great sex) upon her. It was nerve-wracking yet fulfilling and infinitely safe, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.