Firsts are an unusual thing when you are an eons-old being as ancient as creation itself, and yet, Lucifer had found that he had experienced rather a lot of firsts lately.

His first taste of physical, mortal pain the night that Chloe shot him in the leg.

His first time refusing sex.

His first time trusting someone enough to be vulnerable around them.

His first true act of selflessness.

His first mortal death...

All these new experiences were invigorating, but also largely incomprehensible to him. He still could not describe what he felt that night when Chloe had fallen asleep in his arms, or what exactly had pushed him to call out to his father and ask for that one simple thing... "protect Chloe."

It was exhausting to think about, and after the day he had just had he was all too willing to forget about it and leave those questions for another day, but he was unprepared for another first.

To an angel or the devil, sleep is really more of a past-time to get through the dull hours of the early morning when nothing interesting ever happens, rather than an actual necessity as it is for mere humans. As such, dreams always seemed rather contradictory to them. Why sleep just to experience something that feels like being awake? However, this night Lucifer's sleep was far from the peaceful nothingness he was accustomed to.

He's back in the hangar, staring down the man who had just pointed his gun at Chloe, and is now pointing it at him instead. He feels the rage in him and smiles his venomous smile. The devil facing off with a real monster. Then he hears the gun go off, felt the pain rip through him, followed by the sticky warmth soaking his clothes and hands. His vision blurs, and he starts for fall, but rather finds himself standing looking down at his own body, a brilliant crimson flower blooming beneath him.

He blinks, and suddenly it is Chloe lying there. "No…" he gasps, kneeling beside her, pressing on the seeping wound. "No, no, no, this isn't happening, this isn't what happened." The room is swimming, he looks frantically around. What he's looking for he doesn't know. Malcolm? Help? His father?

Malcolm is nowhere to be seen now. Help isn't coming. His father gave up on him millennia ago.

Then he sees her, standing where Malcolm had stood. It has been ages since he last saw her, but she is as beautiful and terrible as ever. She raises her arms, as if welcoming him into an embrace, "Lucifer, my dear son." Her voice is soft and as smooth as a cliff face worn by the timeless sea, but is betrayed by a menace bubbling beneath the words. Terror writhes in his gut, mixed with the pain, and the confusion.

He has to get away, far away. But Chloe is still there, her eyes blank and staring. He cannot leave her. He cannot move at all. Mother is moving towards him now, gliding across the floor as slowly and threateningly as a storm across the sky. She lays a hand on his cheek and his blood runs cold. "Why did you keep me locked away, Lucifer?" Her other hand shoots out, and plunges into his chest, he can feel her tugging at his soul, tearing through him, trying to rip it out.

He awakes panting and soaking in chilly sweat. He looks down at his bare chest. No visible marks, and only the faint ghost of pain from either the dream or the actual, waking gunshot wound. His breath comes in gasps and he rubs his hands over his face, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to erase the images from his mind.

"What the bloody hell was that?" He mutters to himself, falling back onto the pillows. It figures that his first dream would also be his first nightmare. Honestly, why couldn't it have been a sex dream. Sighing, he rolled out of bed and pulled on his robe. I need a drink.

In the lounge, he was somewhat surprised to see Amenadiel was still there, sitting at the bar nursing his own glass of scotch.

"Brother!" Lucifer exclaimed, bemused. "I didn't know that you had a taste for alcohol."

Amenadiel grimaced. "I don't. But I've already broken almost every code of conduct that I had, so I figured what's one more?" He took another swig and turned to look at Lucifer. "I was hoping you were Maze… she still hasn't come back."

Lucifer approached the bar and poured himself a glass. "And you still haven't told me just how she was able to save your life… not that I'm complaining of course."

Amenadiel looked away, deflecting the question with another. "Why are you up, Luci?"

Lucifer stiffened and stared fixedly at the wall. Already this night he had shown Amenadiel fear. Weakness. If he told him he was having nightmares now, he would think he was going soft. Hell, maybe he was. Then again, if anyone could understand the terror he felt in regards to their mother, it was him. And he wanted to talk to someone about it, and it was too late to visit the good doctor. His damn vulnerability, it would seem, was spreading.

He took another long drink from his glass. "I believe I just had a nightmare."

"Really? You?" Amenadiel asked, slightly amused.

"Oh, shut up." He snapped.

"Alright, alright." Amenadiel's face grew serious, contemplating. "I didn't even know we were capable of dreams… are you sure that's what it was? Could it have been a message from Father… a prophecy or something? What was it about?"

Lucifer shook his head. "I don't think so. It didn't have any rhyme or reason, no snippet of the future, it was just… bad. There was Mum and the hangar and Chloe." His throat tightened at the memory of her blank stare. "Just everything bad that happened or could happen rolled into one nice little package… I think I finally understand why hallucinations and mind games were such an effective means of torture."

"What happened?"

Lucifer sighed. "It doesn't matter. It wasn't real. But since you ask… Mum reacted to her imprisonment about how you would expect. She tried to rip my soul out." He could feel himself shudder, but still, that wasn't the worst part. He suddenly didn't want to talk about this anymore.

"And what about the detective?"

For a moment he didn't answer. He couldn't answer. Couldn't bring himself to say the words. Then, finally he managed to whisper. "She died."

"Oh." They sat in silence for a while. Amenadiel examined him closely, trying to make sense of what could cause his brother to change so much. "Why do you care so much for her?" He asked finally.

Lucifer shrugged. "Don't ask me, I don't understand it either."

The words replayed in Amenadiel's mind. The same words Mazikeen had spoken just before she saved his life. He realized he didn't understand it either, but maybe he was beginning to.

-/-

Halfway across the city, far away from the bright lights and blaring music of Lux, Chloe is having difficulty sleeping as well. She keeps replaying the events in her mind, trying to make sense of it. She had heard the shot. She had seen him fall. Later, she had seen the blood soaked on his shirt and the larger pool of blood that had congealed beside her car. She had to cover Trixie's eyes to keep her from crying.

There had been far too much blood. The simple truth was Lucifer shouldn't be alive… much less walking around as if nothing had happened. But the fact was that he was.

What do you believe when truth and facts are at odds? Of course, there was an explanation, the same thing Lucifer had been trying to tell her for months now, but she refused to believe it.

Beside her, Trixie fidgeted in her sleep, a small whimper escaping from her lips. Chloe wrapper her arm around her tighter and pulled her closer, kissing her forehead. Trixie had asked if she could sleep with her tonight, and after what they had just been through, Chloe was all too happy to agree. To be honest, she was relieved to have Trixie with her. Terrified that if she looked away, she would be gone again.

Malcolm had others in the station helping him. She shivers, knowing she won't be able to sleep peacefully again until she knows who his connections were and how far they went. But that wasn't the only thing that frightened her.

Lucifer had left abruptly after Malcolm was dead. Something about him had seemed very off. No charming smile or witty remarks. No sense of satisfaction of having delivered punishment. He had seemed nervous… scared even. She had never seen him like that and it was disquieting beyond comprehension.

She hadn't even been able to convince him to stay long enough to get checked out by a medic. Perhaps she should have been more insistent, but honestly, she had just wanted to go home with her daughter, so she let him go. Now, she hoped that he was alright.

You can ask him yourself in the morning. She told herself. Everything will seem brighter in the morning. With that thought, she drifted into a fitful sleep.

She was standing in the middle of downtown LA. Skyscrapers towering around her, the sky above overcast and foreboding. The ground started shaking violently. She had felt dozens of earthquakes before, but none as bad as this. The towers seemed to sway above her and rubble came crashing down from their vast heights. She started running, looking for a place to take cover. She saw a small outside dining area outside a café and jumped the fence to crouch under one of the tables.

The air was roaring now with the sound of blaring sirens and screaming people. The ground continued to shake. Chloe could hear her heart pounding in her ears. All of a sudden, the shaking must have become too much and the line of building across the street from her fell over abruptly. However, they didn't fall straight down or tumble haphazardly like she would have expected, but rather half of them fell one way and half of them fell the other way, like stalks of wheat being pushed aside as someone walks through a field.

She looked up, and the pounding of her heart stopped.

Floating nearly a hundred feet off the ground in between where the buildings had parted floated a woman wreathed in flame. Her countenance seemed to be constantly shifting between a thousand different faces, but her eyes burned constantly with a white, searing light. Her lips twisted in a cruel smile. All around her, everything she seemed to look at or touch crumbled and turned to dust. Behind her were four other figures, each of them cloaked in a different color- red and black on her right, green and yellow on her left- and each astride winged steeds.

What the hell? She knows she must be dreaming now, but never before has a dream felt so real.

The woman fixes her gaze on Chloe. If feels like there is an explosion in her mind. She screams, clutching at her head trying to claw the pain out, anything to make it stop. She feels blood dripping from her eyes and bubbling up her throat. What is happening?

"STOP!"

The pain ceases. She opens her eyes and wipes away the blood. Lucifer is standing in front of her now, glaring defiantly up at the terrible woman. She crawls out from under the table. "Lucifer, tell me, please, what is going on?"

He turns to look at her. Relief, sadness, fear all swirling together in his dark eyes. Abruptly, as if out of nowhere, Mazikeen appears standing next to another man that is vaguely familiar. Chloe thinks she may have seen him before, but can't place it.

"Chloe," he whispers her name, but his voice is tight with fear. "Are you alright? Can you run?"

She nods. "But you didn't answer my…"

He cuts her off. "I need you to get as far away from here as possible." It's clearly not a suggestion, but rather more of a plea. "Get Trixie and get as far as you can."

She nods again. She doesn't want to run, but she feels her feet backing away in spite of herself. He smiles wistfully at her, then exchanges a nod with Mazikeen and the other man. There is a determined light shining in his eyes, and suddenly a brilliant set of wings extends from both his shoulders.

They look vaguely similar to the ones she had seen at the auction, but there was no mistaking that these were something else entirely. Nearly 8 feet across and blindingly bright, they make Chloe want to cry. His clothes have changed too. He is wearing glossy black armor, as dark as obsidian. He draws a sword wreathed in black flame.

Beside him, Mazikeen draws her twin daggers and for an instant her face is replaced with something monstrous. The other man, his brother Chloe remembered abruptly, is now also clad in armor, shining silver reflecting the dark flames of Lucifer's sword. He too has a dazzling set of wings, his a dark sheen gray.

She is frozen to the pavement, staring in amazement. She remembers Lucifer's words and starts run away in the opposite direction, but before she turns the corner, she looks back at the odd trio facing off against the terrible woman and her grim entourage, each of whom had now drawn weapons of their own- a scythe, an ax, a bow, and a whip.

The woman gives a chilling cry and the horsemen sweep forward. Lucifer grabs Mazikeen's hand and they sweep upwards to meet them, his brother beside them. They clash above the city with the force of battling behemoths. The sound alone threatens to blast Chloe off her feet. Everything around her began to crumble, the ground beneath her feet fading away into oblivion. She was floating in the darkness when only the light of the battle in front of her. Then she was consumed by the darkness.

Her eyes flew open and she drew in a long, gasping breath. She was still shrouded in darkness, but she could feel the familiar softness of her sheets and hear Trixie's steady breathing. She tried to calm her own breathing to match hers, but her heart was racing. Lucifer's devil talk is beginning to get to me, she rationalized. It's just the stress.

Still, while nightmares were to be expected, she had thought that they would be of Malcolm, or other dirty cops with hidden faces lurking in the station. Not of angels and demons and flying horsemen. Those were the nightmares of a child after watching a scary movie, not of a grown woman who made a living locking away real-life monsters.

And it had felt so real… Even now, it did not have the glossy, distant feeling of a dream, threatening to slip away forgotten with her wakefulness. It felt more like a memory. She could recreate every tiny detail in her mind, sharp and defined.

Abandoning any hope she had for falling back asleep, she sighed and reached for her phone. Perhaps music would be enough to calm her nerves. She put her music list on shuffled, and muffled a sarcastic snort of laughter as the first song to come on was none other than the soft, steady drumbeat of The Turtle's Eve of Destruction.

"Of course," she muttered to herself, and turned it back off. If someone was trying to give her a sign, they weren't being very subtle, but Chloe Decker didn't believe in such things.