5 Hours Later

It starts the same way each time.

Chloe is back there, in the gallery, surrounded by pristine white walls and floors, priceless sculptures in various states of dishabille standing about the space. In this dream, she is alone, her footsteps clacking against the marble, creating echoes that drown out everything except the sound of her own thundering pulse. It's unnerving, how void of color the place is, how cold it feels, how empty.

And then, out of nowhere, feathers start to fall. Powdery white feathers, soft as snow that fall from the sky, landing upon her head and shoulders like tiny clouds. They are unbearably soft to the touch, nearly dissolving as she goes to pluck them from the air. Strangely, they also burn, glowing with a faint light that cannot be contained. They are beautiful, and yet she cannot discern from where the feathers come.

Their descent does not stop, however. No, if anything, what starts as a sprinkling of feathers quickly turns into a barrage. The downpour is so heavy that it obscures the room, the sculptures and the staircase vanishing from sight. She can barely see two feet in front of her face, stumbling blind across the space to nothing but the sound of her beating heart.

From there, the vision turns to a nightmare.

The feathers turn crimson, splattered and saturated with red that she can only assume is blood. It sticks to her jacket, to her shoes, to her hair, weighing her down as if each one weighs a ton. The burning intensifies as the feathers amass, building upon her back like some grotesque set of wings.

It is just when the feathers threaten to drown her when she sees it. Sees them: a pair of burning red eyes filled with nothing other than fire and rage that licks through her soul and sets her ablaze.

The feathers on her body ignite, and the Devil laughs.

"Chloe."

Her head turns toward the sound of her name, only to meet Ella's concerned gaze. Chloe lets out a relieved breath. She isn't in the gallery, she's in the precinct. The interrogation room at the precinct to be precise, and the forensic scientist is stood bent over the table, palms laid flat to carry her weight, as she examines her friend as she would evidence.

"Everything alright?"

"Yeah," Chloe rasps, not even managing to convince herself with that one. "Yeah, everything's fine."

Thankfully, Ella chooses to take Chloe's answer at face value. They have more pressing matters to worry about after all.

"We need you to walk us through what happened one more time," Dan instructs from the seat next to Ella as gently as he can given the circumstances. Chloe can't blame him for being a little short-tempered, not while the man who murdered the woman he loves currently lies on a slab in the morgue, unable to be prosecuted for his crimes. Justice would not be had for Charlotte Richards, at least not in the way they had wanted.

Chloe swallows thickly, memories threatening to overwhelm her.

"I told you. We showed up to the address Pierce's guy gave us, only to realize it was a trap. Pierce wanted Lucifer dead for some reason, but I intervened. Pierce fired and I took the bullet; I was wearing my vest but the impact knocked me out. Next thing I knew, I was waking up on top of a helicopter pad. Then you called and heard the gunshots. By the time I got back down, Pierce was already dead."

"And the murder weapon? Did you happen to see it?"

Gnarled fingers reach down and yank on the dead man's chest, the curved blade releasing itself from rotting flesh with a morbid hiss. She does nothing to stop its removal, frozen and watching while it is deposited into the breast pocket of a designer jacket.

"No."

Dan's frown deepens. "And Lucifer?"

Her eyes dart up to meet her ex-husband's, panic rising in her throat as she repeats, "Lucifer?"

"Yeah. How does he fit into all this?" Dan continues, oblivious to Chloe's mental freak out. "When we were on the phone, you said you both made it out alive, but when police arrived at the scene, he was nowhere to be found."

"I...I don't know," Chloe stutters pathetically, her mind swimming. How could she possibly tell Dan what she saw? How could she possibly explain that Lucifer was... that he was...

Or maybe I do know, her own words echo in her mind, coming back to haunt her. Maybe I have been avoiding the biggest truth this whole -

"Hey, it's alright," Ella reaches over and grasps Chloe's hand in her own, giving a comforting squeeze. "I know this is hard. Your criminal mastermind ex-fiancé was murdered and you are the one who found the body, but you're the toughest cookie I know."

Chloe tries not to grimace. Leave it to Ella to make a girl feel better.

"I really..." Chloe shakes her head, the urge to pull at her hair overwhelming, as if it would rid her of all the bad memories. "I really don't know what happened. All I know is when I ran down from the helicopter pad, Lucifer was..."

"He was what, Chloe?" Dan presses, leaning across the table, impatient.

She has to close her eyes.

Lucifer, she calls as she descends the stairs by twos, body aching to reach her partner before it is too late.

Lucifer, she tries again, panicked now as she takes in the sight of Pierce's men broken and unconscious on the ground. She nearly slips on bloody feathers in her hurry, not even noticing how out of place they are, how they were missing mere moments before.

A relieved breath escapes her lips as she sees the silhouette of his suit bent over Pierce's body.

Wait...Pierce's body. Unmoving, unyielding, with an eerily familiar blade sticking from his solar plexus. Yet, she can barely register that Pierce is dead before the man in the suit is moving, standing at full height, and then turning to face her.

It's all real, she gasps, unable to wrap her head around it.

Heaven and hell, angels and demons, it is all real. And that terrifies her more than she is willing to admit. And maybe...maybe her mind clings to the possibility that this is some cruel joke, some twisted act he has put on to justify his outrageous and unrelenting metaphors. But then he speaks in that all too familiar voice, a single word enough to shatter what remains of her sanity.

Detective?

He takes one step forward, and she takes an equal step back. The look of confusion on his face is heartbreakingly familiar.

If her entire world was not imploding, Chloe would notice the concern in his eyes, the vulnerability and the hurt that lies within those fiery irises. But the accent she loves coming from the creature that stands before her only makes things that much more devastating.

It's all real, she repeats like a broken record.

Her eyes snap open. Even now, all these hours later, the memory gives her shivers. She wonders if there will ever come a time when the memory doesn't haunt her, when that face won't haunt her.

But Dan doesn't know that she is being haunted by literal demons. Dan doesn't know - he can't know - what she knows. He is still waiting across the table, watching her silent spell as if she has lost her mind. And perhaps she has. Perhaps she has finally seen one impossible thing too many, yet still, to say to Dan that the Devil did it is nothing short of insanity.

She couldn't lie, and she wouldn't, because that creature with the scarred red skin and the furious crimson eyes...that wasn't her Lucifer. That was someone else, something else.

Chloe looks Dan straight in the eye and says, "He was gone."