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It happened so fast and she was standing behind him, but Chloe knew the exact moment her world turned upside down. It was the moment she heard the sharp crack as the ax sunk into Lucifer’s sternum and he stumbled back with the impact. She knew then that she had been wrong. So terribly wrong.
As he fell backwards towards the floor, all of the fear and terror Chloe had been battling over his true nature melted away, swiftly replaced with ice cold dread as he hit the ground. Hard.
She watched in horror as he laid there, staring at the wooden handle of the ax as though not comprehending what he was seeing. Then his hands reached for it, as if to remove the deeply embedded metal from his chest and she rushed to his side. Dropping to her knees, she trapped both of his hands in hers.
He tried to protest, but his breathing was becoming wet and ragged. He stared up at her with tears and terror gleaming in his eyes and her heart broke into a thousand pieces. How could she have been so blind? She was planning to kill him. Send him back to Hell. How could she do that to him? To her partner? She had been so stupid to run away, going to Rome of all places and wasting valuable time. Time that was about to be up.
Chloe watched the blood spreading across his shirt and the fog that filled her head and had her hovering over him in stunned silence suddenly lifted. "Lucifer. Oh my God. Oh my God, no, please." Tears filled her eyes and she whipped around searching for someone –anyone– who could help her. Someone that could save him.
"Somebody call for an ambulance now!" She didn't recognize the voice screaming out the words. She was so used to sounding calm and collected, being the put together and logical detective. But the image of Lucifer running in front of her and the wet thump as the ax hit home was replaying at blinding speeds through her mind. She had never felt terror like this before, even when Trixie was taken.
The panic tearing through her chest strangled her. Tears streamed down her face now as she turned back at him. He was crying too, and she sobbed even harder. She had never seen him cry before.
"Why would you do something so stupid, Lucifer? You're vulnerable around me, and yet you do something like this knowing it can kill you! Why?!" She hated that she was yelling at him as he lay on the ground, dying from a stab wound intended for her, but she needed to understand something before he was gone.
His beautiful face was growing more ashen by the second. He took a small breath, then another, before licking his lips and smearing them with blood. She could see the pain in his eyes but he smiled the way he only did at her and his hand reached up to cup her cheek. The look in his eyes telling her what she didn't want him to say yet, but knew was going to all the same.
"Would do it again, to keep you safe. Be–Because I love you. Don't you know that Detective?" He blinked and took two more short rasping breaths before he stilled, and his hand began to slowly slip from her cheek.
"No. No. No no no noooo‐"
"CHLOE?!" Dan's voice rang out through the barn but she didn't look up. She didn't want to see the look on his face when he saw Lucifer dead on the ground and her sobbing over him. She laid her head down on Lucifer's shoulder.
"I'm sorry, Lucifer. I'm so, so sorry. Please come back. Please, I'll do anything, just come back."
"Chloe…Oh my God. Lucifer." Her ex husband stopped a few feet away but didn't make a move to step any closer.
"Please don't take him away from me. Please? I'm sorry I doubted him. But please, God, you can't let him stay there. Not after this. Not anymore. Please give him back." Chloe begged into the fabric of her dead partner's suit.
Her desperate prayers went unanswered.
"Chloe?! Dan! Did you find them?! Is he oka–" Ella skidded to a stop beside Dan, a strangled gasp ripping through her.
"Santa Maria... No. Please not him. Not him, too." The forensic scientist crashed to her knees, making the sign of the cross as she struggled for breath.
Dan knelt down beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders as she wept. He wasn’t crying. A stoic expression set on his face as he stared at Lucifer's body, with Chloe weeping freely onto the dead man’s shoulder.
The crime scene became flooded with officers, detectives, and field techs but none of them dared approach the trio on the ground right away. They left them as long as they could, kept away by menacing glares from Dan, but eventually they needed to take Lucifer away and process the rest of the scene.
Chloe fought her ex husband as he pulled her away from Lucifer's body. Kicking and screaming at him until he deposited her in Ella's arms where the woman still knelt on the ground. She sobbed harder as the small woman rubbed her back in soothing circles.
"I'm so sorry, Chloe. I'm so so sorry. Please, Chloe we have to calm down. You don't want to hurt yourself. He wouldn't want that." Ella was rocking her back and forth like a child but Chloe didn't care how it looked. She didn't care if she hurt herself. She deserved to hurt for everything she had put him through and had been planning on putting him through.
Her heart felt like it was both in a million pieces and gone at the same time. Like when Lucifer had taken his last breath, he had taken her heart with it.
She hadn't even told him she loved him too.