Chapter Text
After the confirmation that Lucifer Morningstar is indeed the actual Devil, Chloe's world and view of it had been turned upside down irreparably.
The truth of who he really was had overwhelmed her in ways she would've never found possible; the feeling of suddenly being unaware of where she lived in, of the people she was surrounded by, even of the man she trusted the most, had melted her brain.
And so she had fled.
She needed time, she needed space. But most of all, she needed answers and she couldn't get them from him. Not when the mere sight of him caused her mind to burn.
She found herself in Europe, Rome to be more specific, looking for something, anything that might clear the blur. Rather than answers, all she found was more and more paranoids about the Devil's existence and, most importantly his intentions.
What if it had been a charade all along? What if her partner, the blunt, childish but also unbelievably sweet man she came to know, was just a fictitious character he made up to accomplish something?
She couldn't find a single reason that would make sense but honestly what did make sense when a timeless being that has been portrayed as the source of all evil since forever casually becomes a civil consultant and decides to stick around her, of all people? There must be something else he's aiming for, something she's unaware of.
After all, it wouldn't be the first time she had fallen for a charade. The image of another tall, biblical figure flashed before her eyes without her permission. Maybe she should just stop caring for anyone, that seemed to erase her capabilities to spot lies.
Every time she lets someone into her heart they turn out to be either working behind her back –though she had forgiven Dan long ago for that– criminal masterminds to being the devil himself. Maybe she is the problem.
It was in that moment of complete weakness that William Kinley made his way into her life and head with his speculations, adding fuel to the already ongoing fire that was blazing in her mind.
After engaging with the priest, the image she had of the man she was falling in love with started to blur more and more, slowly replaced with the portrait of a foreigner being, an entity who was apparently a menace to humanity and the world itself.
One month later she found herself back in LA with a mission to accomplish and a vial in her purse. But then as soon as she returned to a routine that included Lucifer in her life again, she started to slowly come to her senses, realizing he was as harmless as she'd always known him to be.
He had looked so timid with her, so hopeful to get back to where they left things off before.
The manipulating, wicked, villainous creature Kinley had described to her was nowhere to be seen. She just saw her partner, and as confused and broken as she still was, she couldn't bring herself to do him any harm; She couldn't do that to him, she needed to save him from Kinley. To save him from herself.
She accidentally left the glass that was supposed to 'send back to where he belongs' fall, officially backing down from the plan and resulting in the unholy priest, aware she was no more willing to cooperate, to snitch on her to Lucifer.
The look of devastation on his face when he's confronted her is one she may never forget and for which she will always castigate herself, but she couldn't pretend anymore; as much as she wished she could, she couldn't give him the answer he wanted, not when she still found it hard to breathe in front of his other face.
So when he asked her if she can accept him, she replies with the truth she's kept from him ever since she came back.
"I don't know" she had said between shuddering sniffs. There was nothing she could offer him other than that. and when he took his broken gaze glistening with unshed tears off from her to turn to Los Angeles's night sky, she took the chance to leave, stepping out of his penthouse and his life.
It's during a bar fight that she bumps into him again for the first time in months.
He's all snark and she doesn't really blame him. In fact, she just lets him go, it's not like she has anything to say that might change anything between them anyways.
The following times their paths cross again, he's got company on his arm. A woman she later finds out is not just any woman but the first woman ever in humanity: Eve.
Chloe did like the woman, considered her to be nice enough. But most of all, she seems to be more than willing to accept his... other side.
And why shouldn't she be? Celestial madness's probably been her everyday life since her birth, or creation, to be more exact. Their realities simply cannot be compared.
That's precisely the reason why at first she thought she might be exactly what Lucifer needs, that she may help him burn away the shadows, doing what she currently wishes she could do but cannot actually bring herself to.
Though it's hard to remember any of that any time Lucifer drags her along in the precinct and parade their not really family friendly tales to demonstrate God knows what.
She doesn't hold a grudge against her; if anything, she felt almost sorry for her, in a certain way.
She recognizes Eve had found herself between the fire that was currently blazing between her and Lucifer and his spiralling.
Obviously she doesn't love her with him, but she can't find it in herself to dislike her either. After all it wasn't Eve she was in conflict with. She was in conflict with herself. Herself and the mess that were her feelings.
Whenever she looked at them together, at their relationship, she felt the jealous sting very clearly, and who wouldn't watching the man you feel so intensely about just carelessly engaging in intercourses with another and literally anyone else that breathed in their proximity?
But other than burning jealousy, the uncomfortableness of witnessing said relationship was impossible to ignore, making her wonder deeply about the hypothetical what ifs;
If she hadn't run away and actually went through with the whatever she had going on with Lucifer that she still cannot name before Charlotte's murder, is that the route their relationship was going to take?
Debauchery and no commitment? Was that his idea of a relationship? Because if it was, maybe what happened had been for the better.
She'd wish it went differently, that she would have reacted differently, that she hadn't hurt him so much, obviously, but perhaps the pain they experienced now only spared them an even bigger one in the future.
It's not that she thinks he can't. She knew he tried his best around her, cases or not, knew he'd have tried his best if they gave their thing a shot. And perhaps that was an issue too;
She hates feeling like he's forcing himself to be someone he's not, be it work related or not.
But even if lately she often thinks that maybe she's never truly known him, she is certain that this isn't who he is either. The partner she knew was over the top and utterly excessive but not this unreasonable, not this violent.
Now he just threatens and harms people to the point of even breaking their bones; her mind travels back to the revelation of him breaking Julian's back.
I'm the Devil.
That was his explanation to everything.
Technically that was the truth, but at the same time she has never heard anything falser.
He's always been the Devil right? And yet he's never acted like it until now. it never mattered what kind of scum they dealt with, he's always known better than take matters into his hands and dirty them.
Now he's just out of it, and even if she can't stand the fact that Eve not only encourages but cheers whenever he spirals out of control, she doesn't fault her on it.
She may contribute to his delirium but she's not the source of it either. Her own actions are, she's the cause of his downfall, she's certain of that much.
She remembers the happiness and relief she had felt weeks ago, when he announced with one of the soft smiles she had missed on his face that he was were he was supposed to be and that they would have kept their partnership going.
Now she looks back at that moment and scoffs at her own naiveness.
Who was she kidding?
Nothing in their relationship is remotely close to how it was and in all honesty she has no idea if it was ever going to be again.
Maybe he'd been right when he initially suggested to get closure on their partnership, but she left her own feelings tell her otherwise.
She wants him to be happy more than anything. After all that has went down that's the least she could do.
And yet, as selfish as that might sound, she wants to be happy too, and this thing between them does not make her happy just as she knows it doesn't make him either.
She wants to be there for him and try to heal the wounds she's given him, but if all she can do is make him think he has to force himself to be someone he's not around her, pushing him further into the darkness, then she's not sure if being around or even working together at all is a good idea.
She doesn't plan to even think of telling him any of this though. She knows he'll take it the wrong way and will only end up worsening his and their relationship's already fragile state.
He probably thinks that work will do him good but she disagrees. He needs some time away from it, whenever he realizes or not and if he's not willing to step away from it, then she will.
So one evening, when she's doing work from home on her laptop and a case that requires a few months of solo undercover work in New York to infiltrate into the business of a shady, mysterious man involved in the disappearance of aspiring actresses and models shows up, she seizes the opportunity and requests to take the case immediately.
"Doctor! I need your immediate assistance" Lucifer barges into Linda's office, as always uninvited, visibly distressed, which she notes instantly.
"Is everything alright?" Linda asks concerned.
"Of course everything's not alright, I wouldn't ask for my therapist's immediate assistance if it was" he says, his brow raising as if answering the dumbest question he's ever been asked.
Deciding to ignore his sarcasm, she politely asks her current patient to give them a moment and temporarily leave the room to come back later, apologizing to him while she accompanies him to the door.
"Okay. Go on, what's wrong?" She asks, urging him to take place on the couch.
"It's about the detective."
Oh Linda had no doubt about that. She didn't need to ask to know it was about Chloe, but she did nonetheless.
"What about her?" Linda asked, urging him to elaborate.
"She's being... distant, evasive. She barely calls me for cases nor pays any particular attention to me other than scolding me" he huffs frustrated.
He had tried to stay away, to remind himself that she fears him, that she doesn't want him. But once he saw her again, all hopes of ever succeeding evaporated, replaced with just her beauty and intoxicating scent he'd missed so deeply.
It's almost laughable how much control she has over him really.
He had tried to step out of her life when he found out she's a miracle, he had tried when he wanted to keep her out of his father's spotlight and he'd tried the most when he's found out what she had tried to do.
All attempts were and will always be useless. He's like a moth to a flame; he'll go to her even if he gets burned in the meanwhile.
"She had expressed the wish to keep working with you, you also told me she jumped on yo-
"I wish" he says with a teasing grin Linda can tell by now is just a facade, a brick from the walls he's built around himself.
"To protect you from an explosion's impact" she finishes, ignoring his puerile attempt to escape from the topic.
"Yes but-" he sighs, "that's just how the detective is. I've seen her jump on suspects, on strangers to protect them. Given, she doesn't want me dead anymore but that doesn't mean she wants me at all either!"
He vividly remembers the peace he had felt when he opened his eyes to see her laying on top of him.
Warmth spread inside of his chest, so intense it made him forget about the blinding pain he was experiencing that day.
He literally laid in a pool of blood flowing out of a wound that would have been fatal for any human with her weight pressing on it and he could not have cared less.
He would've gone back to Hell an happy man knowing she was ready to sacrifice herself just to not make him go.
Too bad it didn't last long.
Because that wasn't the first time he had witnessed her do something like that, in fact it was one of many: He recalls her jumping on Axara, a diva she had no relationship with whatsoever, to protect her from a shower of bullets. He had stopped her from running into a room filled with lethal gas to save two boys she's never met. Even during the very first days she'd been in his life he remembers his own perplexity at her going out of her way to help Nick Hofmeister, a man who had publicly disrespected her at her father's funeral. Or in court, when she basically freed her dad's killer to not ruin his reputation.
Selfless to a nauseating degree. That's Chloe Decker.
She's the only one he's ever wanted to protect to the point of being willing to throw his life away. In fact he has. More than once.
But she? She would it for anyone.
She'd give her life away to protect a perfect stranger without second thoughts, and that was one of the very reasons that made him so enamored with her, but it also frustrated him greatly, because now it made her all the more unreadable regarding her feeling towards him.
He despises the thought of her considering him a possible threat –the memory of her jumping away from his reach startled still vivid in front of his inner eyes– but he doesn't want to be anyone either. He wants to be something to her.
He wants to be in her life and be someone worthy of her time.
It doesn't matter that he wants to be so much more than just her professional partner, he's willing to put his own desires aside for her and their partnership's sake, he realizes that it's just wishful thinking now anyways.
He's more than aware that he'd have to thank dad if he manages to even be partners for real again.
"It's not that simple, Lucifer. you made the first step by making the decision to continue your partnership, but you can't expect things to go back to normal overnight."
"Truthfully Doctor, I'm not sure they ever will be" he admits melancholy.
"Only time will tell. For now, let things take their own course, force it back to how they were will only make them worse"
He simply hums in acknowledgment in response.
"How are things going with Eve, anyways?" She asks suddenly.
At the confusion on his features, she opts to elaborate further.
"You've mentioned being perplexed at her request of starting a relationship, that she should've known better. What changed?" She asks curious.
"I guess I just changed my mind. After all it didn't require much change anyways" he replies with a shrug.
"Mhm." Linda replies simply, making it clear that she was keeping herself from saying something.
"I'll need you to be more verbal on that one, Doctor" he says narrowing his dark eyes.
"Well you said nothing has changed. You are as physically open as you were before you agreed to embark in this relationship" Linda muses, not missing Lucifer's look telling her all too clearly he wasn't getting the point.
"What I mean is: if nothing changed from when since you were just hooking up, what makes you consider it a relationship in the first place?"
"She wanted me to be her boyfriend and she showed me how much she did so here we are" he says looking as if he was answering to a question of common sense.
"So that's all it takes? Obviously Eve's devotion to you is very admirable, but what about how you feel about her?"
"Well I'm flattered, obviously."
"That's not what I mean, Lucifer" she tells him exasperated;
"To be in a relationship with someone it means to have eyes for them only, to not being able to imagine your life without them in it, to be committed. Do you feel any of that when you're with Eve?"
Lucifer opens his mouth only to shut it seconds later.
He knows he finds Eve to be funny, beautiful and overall easy to be around and he cares a great deal for her.
But he also knows that how he describes how he feels about her isn't different from how he'd describe how feels about Mazikeeen, Miss Lopez or even the Doctor herself, who's currently looking at him like he's just given her an answer even if he hadn't muttered a word yet.
"What I think is that you're grateful to Eve, that you are truly touched by her acceptance of your 'identity'. So much that you think you owe her anything she desires and in her case, that desire is to be your girlfriend. So you complied; not because you wanted it, but because she earned it. And while you think you owe it to her deep down you hope it could fill the void Ch-"
"Enough." He says abruptly.
"Lucifer I'm just-"
"I only asked your help to fix my professional situation with the detective, not to overanalyze my relationship with Eve." He says, his voice firm and cold.
He doesn't need to be reminded that the Detective doesn't want him, the night she's shouted at him that he terrified her still haunting him was already doing a splendid job at that.
Eve, on the other hand, does want him. She's left Silver City solemnly for him.
He may not feel anything for her, not the way she wants him to at least, but it's not like he has anything to lose now anyways and if him being her boyfriend makes her happy, who is he to deny her that?
After all, he knows how it feels like to desire to be with someone so deeply, only to realize they'll never want you as much, and if he can spare Eve that pain, then he will. What he feels is inconsequential.
"Good talk" he states, feeling like he's had enough therapy for the day.
He stands up from the couch, making to head towards the door when his trousers start to vibrate.
He picks his phone from the pocket to open the notification, only to stop dead in his tracks as he does so.
Linda is still talking, probably trying to reason with him but he's not listening anymore, too dumbfounded by the message he just received.
"Lucifer I'm sorry if I upset you, I only want you to... Lucifer?"
He's still staring absently at the phone's screen when the Doctor calls his name again in concern, urging him to tell her what's wrong.
After a few moments, he finally looks up at her, an unreadable expression on his face.
"The Detective. She left."