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“Bear and endure: This sorrow will one day prove to be for your good.” - Ovid
***
“La gota que colmó el vaso”
There’s no one around to hear, but Ella mutters to herself all the same.
This is it. The straw. Ringing in her ears muffles the sound of a fully mobilized precinct beyond the glass walls of the lab. In the midst of the chaos, Lucifer stands apart, a pillar of vibrating agony. Maze, obviously more accustomed to the aura he puts off when he’s like this, slips into his orbit, a slowly spinning satellite peppering him with questions before wheeling away. She alone has the mettle to breach the ten-foot bubble he has glared into being around himself.
Ella wishes, and she wants. They need her. Chloe needs her. But the skitter-stop pulse of her heart in her chest persists. Adios higher brain function - it’s long lost to the reedy hum whining right on the edge of her perception. Sensation prickles in the arches of her feet, urging her to go. Run. As far and as fast as she can.
Right now, all she is, all she can be is a liability.
Pain sings, a broken nail and torn cuticle added to an already lengthy list of injuries collected today. Undeterred, Ella scoops the rest of her backup toiletries from the jumble of her drawer into the jumble of her bag. Travel-sized hairspray clatters and falls with a hollow clank and metallic roll, and she grips the counter, white-knuckled, to keep from losing every last bit of her shit.
Strap slung across her body so the weight rests on her unbruised hip, Ella bolts. With any luck her Uber driver should be cozying up to the curb outside right now. Her phone dings. One thing that’s gone right today at least.
Sound assaults her as soon as she flings open the door, an auditory breaker threatening to pull her under.
His voice cuts through the noise, a bellowed, “Miss Lopez,” that halts her escape. Ella feels the weight of Lucifer’s gaze on the back of her neck, and a sigh gusts out of her. Still, she stops and turns, almost gets mowed down by an overzealous uni for the effort.
“Lucifer,” she starts, studying the tile between the toes of her sneakers for a lingering moment until her vision swims around the edges, a wobbly Scooby Doo cartoon of badness. If it was literally anyone else, this conversation wouldn’t be necessary. Ni modo. Excuses are typically not her thing. Buck-up and bootstraps being more her M.O. Everyone has limits. Apparently nearly being murdered by the ‘nice guy’ she allowed into her life is hers. So, the unvarnished truth spills from her lips, a whispered, “I can’t,” Lucifer couldn’t possibly hear above the din.
And yet, somehow, he does. In the space of one shaky, uneven breath he draws her in, stiff and awkward and clinging to her nearly as hard as she clings to him. A moment of blind, squirming terror when he wraps her up a fraction too tight. Then a moment of peace before Ella shimmies herself free, scrubs at her wet cheeks with the heel of her hand. Two hugs today. Voluntary ones, no less. The world must really be ending.
Wild eyes meet hers, and Lucifer nods, then nods again. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. They’re about sixty thousand leagues from okay right now, but Ella believes him, what he means anyway. That they are okay. He won’t hold this against her.
“I’m so sorr…”
Lucifer dismisses the apology with a wave of his hand. Maze hovers into the space over his shoulder, managing to exude an air of both impatience and indifference. “Think nothing of it,” he says. “We’ve got a lead. Go.”
Any other day Ella would ask what they figured out, but she trusts Lucifer. No one on the planet is more motivated to find Chloe Decker and bring her home safely. So, on a squeak of rubber soles, she obeys, slamming her sunglasses into place. Because if she’s being brutally honest a tiny, evil part of her blames Maze. Without her goading, Ella might have gone on screwing tattooed losers.
It was safe. Sure, it made her feel like human garbage sometimes, but they had no power over her.
Neither of them could have known.
“Where the hell is Ellen going?” she hears Maze ask. Ella doesn’t stick around to catch the answer.
At the curb, a classic blue Beetle idles and she swallows a pang of guilt for noting the note she swore never to note. Before today, the prospect hadn’t crossed her mind.
Silence please, it read. Along with the destination – St. Brennan’s. Chelsea, the driver, probably thinks they released her from the drunk tank in the basement. Considering the state she’s in - hopelessly rumpled clothes, smudged mascara, and a flurry of fly-aways - Ella could hardly blame the poor girl. But if she judges, Chelsea keeps it to herself.
Beyond the car window, LA exhales her pungent hot asphalt, smoke, and salt bouquet. The sun arcs into its slow descent toward the horizon. And Ella breathes.
The Beetle slides into traffic.
At first, home was all she wanted. Her bed, her shower, her fluffy robe with the flirty ladybug on the back and a carton of rum raisin. But he’s there. The wolf. On her couch. Sitting at the tiny table in her eat-in with a plate of mama’s enchiladas that Ella made him, fingers steepled beneath his chin. And in other places she refuses to think about because she swore never to puke in a stranger’s car after that one time.
When she recovers? Bonfire. Possibly arson. Or both. She can’t sleep there.
Chelsea stops short at a light, and the Beetle rocks on its aged shocks. She mouths, “Sorry,” in the rearview and eases her way into a slow sputter once she’s able again.
The Big Guy will listen. That’s why she’s headed to St. Brennan’s instead of home, Heaven forbid, or a motel or Linda’s or…
Quiet. Of the myriad ways Ella knows herself, these are her unalienable truths. She needs quiet to truly process, emotionally process. And oblivion to forget. Not necessarily in that order.
Somewhat belatedly, she realizes the problem. St. Brennan’s won’t be quiet. In her rush to be elsewhere she forgot that it’s Wednesday and Father Seth will be prepping for choir practice. He won’t allow her to slip in through the side door and perch on a pew or kneel at the altar while she empties herself. He’ll want answers.
Wise as the serpent. Innocent as the dove. Ella falls short on both accounts, like everyone else in creation. Understanding doesn’t ease the bone-deep ache of being so hideously duped. The mere thought of telling this story draws her lungs bowstring tight with dread. Mostly because she’s ashamed.
Oblivion it is.
Ella clears her throat and it burns. “Change of plans,” she says. “Can you drop me at Lux? Please?”
Chelsea, thankfully, hangs the left to turn back without comment.
***
“Heeeey!” she slurs, eyes closed, bereft now the synths have stopped tinkling and the bass-born vibrations aren’t scrambling her brains like an egg. Ella remembers, suddenly, that PSA. The black-and-white crack of eggshell and sinister sizzle. Your brain on drugs. Hysterical laughter catches against the lump in her throat, the purple one with finger shapes that refuses to dissolve no matter how much of the good stuff pours over it.
Lucifer stands in profile, hands bracketed around the controls for the sound system. Soft light spills through stained glass, painting his face in a riot of shattered color. Seconds tick, the antique clock above her head wheezing each one away.
The ding of the elevator arriving at the penthouse level must have gotten lost between verse and chorus, and Ella has no idea how long she’s been here. Time ceased to exist after she got friendly with Lucifer’s stash of Electric Kool Aid then chased it with a series of generously mixed cocktails. For the last little while, she’s been down to straight vodka and watching the back of her eyelids or the smear of her reflection in the mirrors on the ceiling while the music carries her through gentle ebbs and flows of forgetting. The floor is cool against her back, her limbs too loose to care about the less than stellar accommodations. Beyond the wall of windows LA sleeps as much as it ever does, the deep, close, beautiful dark shot through with neon.
He doesn’t seem surprised to find her here. Or irritated. Which, bonus.
“Off the wagon again, I see,” he says finally, exhaustion strung between protracted syllables. For a man she’d once described as Gatsby with a side of the Terminator, Puck, and Dennis the Menace to a friend back home, Lucifer is Methuselah made manifest all of a sudden. Ancient and ageless.
“Wagon, what wagon? Radio Flyin’ all the way, buddy.” Ella shouts it at him, as only the truly inebriated can. It bounces back to her as rude and in the sudden silence rational thought slowly corrodes the fine edges of her buzz. Oxidized.
Lucifer scoffs, palms pressed together in a mockery of prayer. “That most high and holy wagon,” he says. Footsteps thud. Each one rattles in hips and shoulders, and her vision blurs as she tries to pull him into focus to follow. “Though it appears you’re managing high well enough,” he mutters, eyeing the pharmaceutical typhoon unleashed on his coffee table.
“Yeah, well. Me and the Big Guy, we’re ride or die,” she says, and glass clanks when he upends a tumbler too firmly then turns to liberate a bottle from the bar. Which is a fantastic idea. Ella leans onto an elbow to rescue her vodka (also his, let’s be honest) and tosses back two burning swigs. The neck feels cool in her grip, the body even better against her cheek. Shame claws through her, drawing blood, and Ella kisses her cross in apology. “Good as He is,” Lucifer makes a rude noise but no comment. “I have to live here. Consider this,” she raises her bogarted bottle aloft and liquor sloshes, threatening a spill, “... medication.”
Her oh-so-necessary curative disappears, winked out of existence by Lucifer and his clattering Italian oxfords. “Perhaps you’ve already ingested your recommended daily dosage.”
Ella makes a face, blows a raspberry that births a throb in the vein between her brows, and resumes her sprawl. Cold marble assaults the sliver of skin where t-shirt and jeans refuse to meet, her denim jacket long discarded. Somewhere.
“No judgment, of course,” he says, pours and kills three fingers of scotch, the grim set of his mouth unchanged. Lucifer gestures with his empty glass, pretending at laissez faire, but Ella knows better. “I simply thought, given all that’s happened today, you might prefer to avoid a trip to the ER. Not that I know from personal experience, but I wager having your stomach pumped is fairly unpleasant.”
He’s not wrong. Dwelling serves no purpose. There be demons.
Chloe crosses her mind, the hows and wherefores. Anything to distract. But she asked on the phone several shots ago, and he assured her the Detective was fine. Lucifer, clearly, is not but she can barely manage her own damage right now much less whatever shook him enough that he’s here, alone, instead of with Chloe.
Her throat hurts. Her head hurts. Her heart hurts. Tears threaten again but Ella blinks them back and fishes for the words she wants in the Mariana worthy muddle between her ears. It was easier to forget with the music thumping away thought.
So much for oblivion.
“Bad things have always happened to good people,” she says, simply. Okay, maybe a little watery. And mumbly. Charlotte. Chloe. Lucifer. The hundreds or thousands of victims at the scenes she’s processed. “Why is what baffles me. I mean, this would still be the actual worst but, you know, I would at least have a reason.”
“We both know that’s not the way Dad works,” Lucifer retorts, tone sharp and Ella hears the thunderclouds gathering on the behalf of everyone he believes was unjustly wronged by the Grand Plan. Because Lucifer thinks he’s the Devil when he’s really the most dedicated acolyte of the Strasberg method on the freaking planet. Or the kindest, most delusional person she knows. Seriously, it’s a toss-up at this point.
He can’t possibly be anything else. She refuses to let him be anything else.
“Of course…Dad,” she mutters. As in the Almighty. Right.
Lucifer hums the question, pouring a double he downs without preamble, and Ella wonders why he bothers with a tumbler at all when straight from the bottle is so much simpler given his apparently titanic tolerance. One brow hitches higher over the rim of his glass, and he waits.
“That’s…so bad,” she blurts and barely swallows her groan. She’s either too sober or not drunk enough for this conversation. Or any conversation. Her eyes squeeze shut, a reflex against any more input.
A dull thwack sounds from six inches to the left of her head, the rug settling back into place where the leg of his effortlessly stylish reading chair disturbed it. Lucifer’s towering frame lingers above her before he folds himself up, elbows to knees, and sits down, scotch deposited sadly beyond her reach.
“I’ve been around awhile, Miss Lopez,” he says, storm temporarily guttered by the quiet compassion that bleeds from some invisible, inviolate well inside him. “And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that everyone has darkness in them.”
“How did you…?” Lucifer looks at her, and Ella snorts, deflects. This is like He Who Shall Not Be Named. If she admits it, even to herself, even in her head without laughing she’ll have reassess. It becomes real. “Riiiight, because you’re the Devil.”
“Yes, of course I am. Where have you been?” Ella blinks up at him and presses her lips together, because what can she say that Linda hasn’t already tried a thousand times over. “One has nothing to do with the other.”
Lucifer heaves a sigh. “I just,” he starts, stops, leans to fetch the scotch and knock back a swallow, suddenly pensive. “I just know you,” he finishes. A crease blooms between his brows then vanishes. “Of all the things that cretin did, the innumerable ways he proved himself unworthy, of course you would take his pathetic parting salvo to heart.”
Ella squints. Her eyes water. Allergies. Pity she couldn’t handle, but Lucifer would never offer something so pedestrian. Yet, his open, tender expression screams kindred, of having been where she’s pinned, of being told repeatedly you are in no uncertain terms capital-B Broken. Usually by the people you love.
She prays for him, this poor lost boy, a quick flutter of lashes and intentional thought.
“All that really matters in the end are the choices you make,” he says. Lucifer intends it as solace, but as much as he claims to know her, he hasn’t cornered the market on selective omission.
“Dude, then I am so screwed,” she says. “You have no idea…”
He cuts her off like he had at the precinct, hand raised. Occasionally Lucifer can be a condescending jerk.“The mistakes you’ve made? The people you’ve hurt? The relationships you’ve ruined?”
Ella shrugs. Somehow, she thinks they’re not just talking about her anymore, and she eyes the scotch bottle longingly.
“You have to get past that…Go to confession. Go to Reno. Pop a molly. I’ll cart you to Cedars if I must. Whatever, you do, don’t carry it with you.”
“But Pete…” Ella chokes on the name and her stomach churns, an acid burn rising in her throat that threatens to bring the bagel she choked down earlier out for an encore performance. She rolls onto her side just in case, staring listlessly at the tiny scuff marks and moss embedded in the fine ridges where well-kept leather meets outsole.
Where had he gotten into tortula muralis? Had they caught a case and not called her? Where even was her phone? Five deleted pictures, and then her playlist synced to the sound system. Why hadn’t they called her?
“Pete is a sociopath,” Lucifer snarls, derailing her runaway train of thought.
Ella startles, taken aback by the sudden vitriol, wondering where this righteous indignation was earlier, but Chloe had still been missing then, and he is a single-minded man.
She stares at him and his eyes flash red.
She stares at him and flame flickers, there-and-gone, in an unnatural crease above his eyebrow
She stares at him and the puzzle pieces she has nudged aimlessly around the Lucifer-shaped card table in her head snick into a dangerous, dovetailed place. Those tiny persistent scraps of evidence she doesn’t have the wherewithal to mentally scatter any longer converge, and a tremor runs through her.
Lucifer marches heedlessly onward, his features twisted with rapturous, justified wrath.
“Pete’s ticket is punched for the most horrific berth the Pit has on offer,” he says. “Make no mistake.”
Panic draws her knees to chest, not at the naked hostility in his words but the certainty. Lucifer knows where Pete’s headed. Ella flinches when he suddenly levers himself out of the chair, prey brain activated and hoping he didn’t notice. Footsteps stomp toward the bar. She counts them silently to belay the panic.
One. Tan couch. Two. Blue rug. Three. Red chair. Four. Black vase.
Moments are all she gets. Ella gulps two ragged breaths, and he’s back with a fresh bottle. The actual Devil. Pure punishment clad in Prada.
She resists the impulse to run. Barely. Not from him, okay not just from him. But all of it. The knowing. Because if Lucifer is…
All of this after him, after Pete – Ella feels an impossible yawning inside her, that laughter caught behind the horrific purple lump, trying to break free and crack her open for good. Because if He loves her, and He really no-faith-required exists, why would He allow this? What possible larger purpose could it serve?
“Everyone has darkness in them, Miss Lopez.” Lucifer settles back in and catches her eye, his focus absolute. The weight of his unyielding earnestness in that moment swallows her with the efficiency of a singularity, as if he can will her into agreeing simply by wanting it. Maybe he could. He was once God’s best and brightest, favored above all. If any creature was endowed with a sliver of divine will, it would be him. Lucifer. Heaven’s first fallen. Her brother from another mother. The Devil.
The knowledge sits on her chest until her lungs empty out, and Ella wonders now how she was able to ignore the otherworldly bend of reality that occurs around him, how she handwaved him with LA excuses and method techniques. Mother above, she needs a drink desperately, but she doesn’t trust herself to reach for it.
“Your shadows, your scars - they're part of who you are,” he continues, subsiding in a soft shush of fabric, a tempest wave slipping free from the shore. “They’ve made you strong. Made you brave. Made you choose to accept people, love people as they are, rather than how you wish they were. That’s an incredibly rare and beautiful quality, Ella.”
She stares at him, her head throbbing to the inescapable tune of adrenaline, grief and drink. Lucifer seems caught in a memory, his eyes glassy and focused faraway.
Then the lost little boy is back, apologetic, all raw edges and hunger with his masks discarded. Love me, the boy pleads. Even though we both know I don’t deserve it. And how in the name of all that is good and holy does Chloe do this? Every frickin’ day?
“Don’t let him take that from you,” he sighs, sincere. But he also means, don’t let him take you from me. Because they’re friends. She’s friends, not just friendly, with the Devil. Ella breathes, lets that little revelation sink in.
What had she said when they first met? The Devil gets a bad rap? But he rules Hell and that’s not so great? She still believes that. If everyone who rebelled for the sake of forging their own path got sent to rule Hell for their trouble, the underworld would have a Game of Thrones level court to support.
Lucifer had grunted then snapped, “I didn’t create Hell, I just work there,” annoyed. At the time, she blew it off as method mumbo jumbo, but hindsight colors everything in different, darker shades. His random disappearances, consistently questionable behavior, Chloe’s extended vacation to Rome of all places. Family in Florida.
Maybe this is the larger purpose. To accept without judgment. To heal.
To have sympathy for the Devil.
Not every day you get a bona fide celestial being shoved onto your path, and Ella’s intuition, battered though it may be by artificially induced amnesia, tells her not everyone who knows who he is has taken it well. And this man, correction, fallen angel deserves better. Setting the knee-jerk anxiety aside, Lucifer in his person, not a concept or metaphor, is good. Hella complicated and astonishingly selfish, sure. Until he isn’t. And the fact he’s not human? Makes so much sense.
“Miss Lopez,” he prompts, uncertain, maybe even concerned he overstepped in using her given name, and her heart breaks for him again.
The silence this time was unintentional, just the unalienable truth of Ella Lopez. Emotionally processing.
“Still awake,” she chirps, far lighter than she feels, but she can do this for him. For both of them. A little white lie. Wallowing never solves a damned thing and she’s been here, okay maybe not exactly here, enough to know. Her wolf will get what he deserves, eventually. “And whoa-kay. That got super heavy. I am officially in no condition for productive navel-gazing right now, trust me.”
Genuine laughter booms out of him, and he bends down to tuck an unkempt strand of hair behind her ear, a gesture born of casual, platonic affection. From the Devil. “We’re not that different, you know,” he says.
Ella smiles at him like it’s a good thing, all teeth, even though the thought terrifies her. That they’re both right – him and Pete. And despite everything, she is more like the Devil than the angel he once was. Lucifer, none the wiser, rumbles into an anecdote about people long dead as the skyline bleeds from black to violet.
Eventually she’ll tell him she knows. Just…not tonight.