#but being in a magical dead zone wouldn’t mean the complete ceasing of their existence

[tenacious-minds]

I’ve been listening to endrinas the language of flowers fic, and in the authors notes of chapter 1 of part three, they mention how the book never explained how Sirius got his wand back, and my immediate reaction was “I always assumed they never bothered to take it off him”.

[disappearinginq]

First of all: Thank you for replying :) What do I want to see wrapped up...? God appearing would be a bit too much wouldn't it be? Maybe a sign or something from his side? But I don't know, like Chloe knows everything. Maybe one of the archangels fixing the mess that happened. and oooh hugs. thank you for considering my thoughts :)

I will always answer asks from people who bothered to read anything I wrote. The day I don’t, assume I’m dead. 

But no lie - God actually was going to make an appearance. The original version went that Samael and his brothers in an all out fight accidentally killed Chloe (I think I made it that Ragiel, in an effort to hit Samael, missed and got her instead) and that’s what snapped him out of Delilah’s influence. Except then it got super complicated, because it’d originally been based on everyone thinking Samael was the worst of Lucifer, when really, Lucifer was the worst of Lucifer, and Lucifer in a fit of rage destroyed the Earth by ripping apart the boundaries between Earth and Hell and letting everything from Hell swamp the Earth....and God showed up because Chloe wound up meeting him a la Sam and Dean in the Garden in Heaven style, but...anyway. It was already almost 100k words, and I figured I should be wrapping things up, not making things more complicated, so I decided Lucifer was going to save himself instead. 

BUT - because you were kind enough to give me an answer, here’s a preview of what I have written (but I’m not married to), and lemme know if this is a direction I should pursue, or if you would prefer the final chapter be IMMEDIATELY following the previous one. 

 There was no such thing as normal.

One of those beautifully crafted lies humanity liked to sellitself.

After everything – everythingbeing an entirely mind-warping view of the world, the universe, life afterdeath, the cosmic forces of the existential nightmare that was being human, andthe new found and not easily ignored knowledge that her partner and her friendwas proof of a higher power – Chloe didn’t know what to do. What to think. Everythingsince meeting Michael and Gabriel and allof them, there’d been no time to stop and think about what exactly was going on. To consider all of theramifications, and all that it meant that Lucifer wasn’t human, that there wasa God with a capital G, and…now that she hadtime to process it, it just made things worse.

Somehow, breaking through to Lucifer was the easy part.

Which just explained how much of a shit show circus herreality had become.

The part that really, well and truly threw her though, wasjust how fast everything tried toreturn to normal.

After the better half of…weeks? Months? It felt like yearsfrom her point of view – of investigating serial killer cultists who used magicto try and steal Lucifer’s soul or rip him in half to jump start an apocalypse,of seeing him destroy downtown LA with an epic battle between his brothers andbarely managing to avoid Lucifer killing himself out of spite…

After all that…

Monday mornings at the precinct seemed surreal.

She burned herself twice at the coffee pot because she wasn’tpaying attention where she was reaching, zoning out as she tried to go over again what exactly she’d witnessed. Shewalked face first into a glass door, much to a patrolman’s amusement, becauseshe couldn’t keep her mind off the sight of magnificent, damaged wingssprouting from her partner’s back. She misfiled three separate warrants becauseshe couldn’t stop herself from picturing the almost reptilian features of afully enraged archangel as his brothers threatened to literally drag him toHell bound in chains.

But most of all, she couldn’t stop thinking about the look onhis face when he admitted just how lost he truly was – not just as Lucifer, butas Samael.

And she didn’t know what to do about it.

She stayed away. She didn’t know what to say, or what to do.There was no one to really talk to – Dan hadn’t been there for the finalbattle. He hadn’t seen just how far gone Lucifer had been, or what he wascapable of. Hadn’t seen him turn a crowd with little more than a whisper in aneager ear.

She wanted to talkto Michael. Or Gabriel. Or even Ragiel or Azrael. Any of them. All of them. Itdidn’t matter. But no matter how many times she tried to…contact them…she wasmet with stoic silence. It was like past the moment where Lucifer savedhimself, they ceased to exist. They didn’t stay. They didn’t warn they wereleaving. They said nothing and were simply gone. Maybe she was doing it wrong.But she had asked Dan how exactlyprayers worked, because maybe she was just doing it wrong. Maybe she didn’tmake the right gesture, maybe she hadn’t said the right words.

She just wanted toknow what she should do.

After days of silence, she understood Lucifer’s frustrationwith his biological family. Prayers became littered with vague threats ofviolence, and language that would make a sailor blush. She even caught herselfonce doodling a haloed stick figure getting whacked with an umbrella before shesighed and crumpled the paper up in frustration.

If she was being truly honest, she was more frustrated withherself than angels.

The desk across from her remained noticeably empty, a starkreminder that all was not right in the world.

Lucifer hadn’t come in since…well, actually, he hadn’t beenat the precinct since before he wastaken. It’d been weeks since she’d seen him at work.

She eyed her cellphone.

She could call him.

She should callhim.

But every time she her finger hovered over the ‘call’ buttonon his number, she chickened out.

Because what couldshe say?

Despite her confidence that Lucifer could make his owndecisions and save himself…she felt ridiculous thinking she could offer animmortal being with phenomenal cosmic powers anything like advice.  Or comfort. She’d thought she could look pastthe new reality she found herself in. Lucifer was still Lucifer.

Except he wasn’t.

And she wasn’t the same, either.

And every time she thought back to a moment or an instancewhere she lectured Lucifer on humanity and what was right and wrong, she felther cheeks start to burn from embarrassment. It must’ve been like listening toa talking monkey try to tell a god about the world. And now, when she suspectedthat they both needed that connectionto someone who maybe understood, she found herself flailing.

She tried to rationalize that he hadn’t called her either.That must mean he wasn’t ready to talk yet, right? Or maybe he just needed timealone. He had narrowly avoided death.Ish. An undoing of a soul. That must be traumatic, right? She hadn’t wanted tosee anyone, except her daughter, after she’d been shot, either. Maybe he wasthe same way?

Facing mortality for a mortal was one thing.

She couldn’t even begin to imagine what the sameconfrontation meant for an immortal. Lucifer once treated his mortality as agame, but it was one thing to experience the novelty of pain for the firsttime. It was an entirely different matter to consider death.

Chloe stared at her phone. Maybe he wouldn’t pick up.

Maybe he would.

She wasn’t sure which scenario was worse.

Every time it buzzed, she snatched it like a fat kid snaggedfree cake, hardly daring to breathe until she realized that it was just ane-mail from someone else. A text from her mother. A picture from the babysitterand Trixie.

At night, when her shift was over, she purposely took thelong way home, cruising past Lux, telling herself every time that this time would be the time she stoppedin.

Except it wasn’t.

Lux remained shuttered and closed, devoid of the pulse thatgave the building a life of its own. Somehow, what happened there seemed tolinger. It might have been her imagination, except that others seemed to feelit too. No one lined the sidewalks waiting to get in. No one approached thebuilding, peering in windows to see when it would re-open. People skirted thesidewalk, crossing the street without really seeming to know why, because oneblock later, they stopped and looked around, confused as to why they crossed inthe first place when their destination was the other side of the street.

There was no evidence of what happened. Nothing every made itto YouTube, or the news, or any other media platform. She assumed it was thearchangels at work – or at least, some other cosmic force. She had nothing elseto explain why one night, downtown LA looked like an aftermath scene for amonster movie, and the next day like nothing happened.

And stranger still…the more she tried to recall exactly whathappened in the aftermath, the less clear her memories became. Was it stress?Was it shock? Was it the frailty of the human mind? Was it something…or someone…else entirely?  

She sat in her car outside of Lux, parked just beyond thehalo of a streetlamp, staring up at the darkened building. Lucifer couldprobably answer her questions. Now that he didn’t have to answermetaphorically, or she knew that he wasn’tbeing facetious, it would probably help them both. Right?

Or maybe it would just make it worse. At least now she had abunch of ‘maybes’ or ‘what ifs’ that she could easily shrug away or make up ananswer that while perhaps being utter BS would make her feel better at night,and not like someone was staring at her from on high no matter where she was.

God saw all, right? How much was all? What kind of pervy God were they talking that?

She sighed and growled in frustration, grabbing the steeringwheel with both hands as she let her forehead drop against it. “Uggghhhh, why does everything have to be so goddamn difficult?”

“Because that’s how the world works.”

Chloe screamed, and almost hurled herself out of the carbefore her brain even processed who’s voice it was.

Maze sat in the passenger seat, feet up on the dash, one armpropped on the open window, sucking on a lollipop of all things, lookingcompletely unimpressed by Chloe’s cardiac arrest.

“Maze,” Chloehissed through clenched teeth as she reflexively put a hand to her heart. “Areyou trying to kill me?”

Maze considered it for a moment, cocking her head to one sidebefore pulling out the stick candy with an audible ‘pop’. “No,” she said. “I am wondering what you’re doing with yournightly drive-bys though. Seems a little stalker-ish, even for you.”

Chloe declined to answer, because she didn’t have one.Instead, she changed subjects. “Where have you been, anyway? I haven’t seen yousince…” she actually had to think about it. When was the last time she saw Maze? The night Lucifer disappeared fromthe penthouse? And how long ago was that?“Since before Michael and Gabriel showed up.”

Maze flat out laughed at that. “Well, duh,” she sneered, lips pulling back an almost feral snarl. “Demonsand archangels are no bueno. We gothistory. I wasn’t about to get in the middle of all…” she waved her lollipoparound in a vague circle, “that.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be Lucifer’s bodyguard or something?”Chloe pointed out.

Maze pursed her lips, raising one eyebrow. “Aren’t yousupposed to be his partner? Where have you been, besides skulking outside theclub like some sort of creeper?”

Chloe cringed, looking away.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Maze said. She fell silent fora moment, sucking on her candy. “It’s the kind of tragedy I expect from his Dadby now.” Maze glanced skyward through the open window of the car. “Giving himexactly what he wants, in the worst way possible.”

She considered it for a moment. “How…” she stopped, trying tothink of exactly what she wanted to ask, whether or not she wanted to know thetruth. She chewed her lower lip. No. She didn’t need to what Maze meant – notreally, not from her. “How is he?”

Maze leaned forwards, looking up at the darkened penthousethrough the windshield. “Different.”

Chloe didn’t ask any further.

Thunder rolled gently in the distance. Another spring storm,coming across the Pacific.

“What are you waiting for? Permission?” Maze snapped. “Go.”

Chloe reached for the ignition. Maze was right. She didn’thave the right to sit out here and stalk someone who clearly wanted to be leftalone. Lux was empty for a reason. He hadn’t come to work, hadn’t called,hadn’t reached out for a reason. Sheshould know well enough what it was like to have someone who didn’t listen toboundaries.

Maze slapped her hand away from the keys. “Not leave go, go see him go.” She pointed towards the club’s front doors. “It’snot locked. He’s in the penthouse. Go.”

Chloe began to shake her head. “No, he hasn’t invited me, hehasn’t reached out – I need to respect that –”

Maze growled in frustration, and for a moment, sounded lessthan human. “Oh, for the love of – he’s not thatdifferent. He hasn’t reached out because youhaven’t said anything. He thinks you’re just like everyone else who’s everfound out the truth about him, and so far, he’s right. Now go.” She wavedtowards the club.

That hit Chloe like a sucker punch to the gut. It was onething to stay away because that’s what Lucifer wanted.

It was another thing entirely to abandon a friend in need whodidn’t know how to ask for help.

“Okay, I just…do I need-” she glanced back over and Maze wasgone. Chloe heaved a sigh. “Of course she vanishes into thin air. What demonninja bartender doesn’t? Using a door would be unrealistic, right? Who does that? No need to say good-bye, oranything. Pfft.”

She made sure the windows were up, the door was locked, anddarted across the street before she could change her mind.  

(*(*(

Lux was silent. Eerily so. Not like the sound proofing Samaelhad, or the frigid temperatures, but like all the electronics were shut down.The bar was dark. The screens were off. The central air wasn’t on.

The last time she was here, she witnessed Samael rend his brother’swings from his back and throw him down into Hell through a tear in reality shewatched him create.

The columns were repaired. The piano replaced. The glasspicked up and everything polished to a glass-like shine.

Everything looked exactly the same as it had beforeeverything started on the surface, and yet somehow…still felt dead underneath.

As she watched the numbers climb towards the penthouse, shehad a sudden urge to hit the emergency stop and climb the rest of the way bystairs just to draw it out.

She needed the extra time. She had no idea what to say. Shedidn’t even know where to start. Would he even see her? She hadn’t felt thisnervous facing down Samael, and she’d seenwhat he’d done.

Lucifer was a friend. A bestfriend.

Who was an archangel who fell from Heaven, ran Hell, andthen…took a vacation in LA.

Yeah. She could do this. She could totally do this. Yep. Onehundred percent, she owed this to Lucifer, she owed it to herself, she –

The final ‘ding’ echoed like a gunshot in the tiny space. Shefelt her heart hammering in her chest like she’d run a marathon and she wasn’teven sure why. She wasn’t afraid ofLucifer. She hadn’t been afraid of him as Samael. Michael, Gabriel, Death – she’d faced them all withoutfeeling like this. What the hell waswrong with her?

Maybe she should leave. She should go, she hadn’t beeninvited, it was too soon it was-

The doors slid open and she froze.

The penthouse was destroyed.

Absolutely destroyed.

The piano was upended against the marble walls, the bench inpieces flung to the other side of the room. The bar and every bottle shattered.Bits of glass peppered the floor. Expensive alcohol leaked from broken bottles,drying where it lay on the black floors.  

Ta daaaaah!