For those of you who feel you need content warnings, here's a vague warning that won't spoil anything for anyone else: There will be blood and darkness and grit because that's how I roll. My little black heart can't help it. The darkness may or may not include gruesome descriptions of violence, explicit sex, depression or suicide, drug use, and putting a truckload of money in the swear jar. On the upside, I believe in happiness and the power of love, so there are usually lights at the end of these tunnels. Usually.

01. REVELATION

"It's all true," Chloe breathes, her eyes wide.

"Detective?"

"It's all true." She shuffles back, stopping only when a boot heel collides with the bottom-most stair.

Lucifer steps forward, a hand outstretched in concern—and this is when he sees it, the telltale crimson. His very own Mark of Cain.

"No," he croaks, his hands flying up to his cheeks. Why now?

Chloe stumbles back, draping herself on the stairs. She never takes her eyes off him as she leans farther away. Farther from him.

"You're—"

"Terrifying?" He drops his hands back to his sides, giving up all pretenses of normality.

"—the Devil."

Emphasis on the. The one, the only, please give a round of applause for.

"I have always told you the truth."

"You don't lie," she agrees, trembling.

"Now you're getting it." A grim smile twists his monstrous mouth.

This is wrong. Even though she's somehow able to form complete sentences—how? it took Linda weeks—this is still so very wrong. Assuming there was ever any good way to reveal himself to her, it was decidedly not in a broken room, standing next to her ex-fiance's cooling corpse.

He knows how it looks, what he looks like and in fact is: a sanguine grotesque in Italian wool. For so long, he's reveled in this face, all the power it affords him, especially among mortals. After all, if he's to be the poster child of evil, why not be it in spades?

Now, though, a deep shame gnaws at his insides as he scrambles to stuff the monster back into Pandora's pretty little jar. Again and again he tries, but just as his wings have grown and regrown of their own accord, the leathery, red skin now persists. Here I am, it says. Take a damn good look at my sins.

A small voice whispers inside of Lucifer, What if it never goes away? After all, he's killed Cain, a human.

What a punishment that would be. Like something straight out of his own toolbox in Hell.

They stare at each other in a wild-eyed standoff, spiraling down their own living Hell loops. They breathe raggedly, as if there's not enough air in the cavernous room, as if gale-force winds aren't blasting through the floor-to-ceiling window he's blown to bits.

Chloe breaks the silence, surprising him. "I'm not afraid of you."

"You're an awful liar."

She surprises him again as she forces herself to stand, arms folded over chest, fingers white-knuckling elbows. "I'm not lying." She breaks their hypnotic staring contest and takes in the surrounding room, the chipped columns and destroyed mezzanine. "This is bad."

Welcome back, Detective, he thinks. If he could forget what face he is wearing, the exchange would almost feel normal.

"There's a lot to explain," she says.

Too much, really. For example, the unexplainable: a Hell-forged blade, enough feathers to build a divine goose from scratch. Not to mention Satan himself, letting it all air out. The whole bloody trifecta.

She looks at Cain with a thousand-yard stare. "Is that one of Maze's knives?"

"It is, actually." And how did crafty Cain come to have it, Mazikeen? It certainly can't go into evidence. "Right," he sighs. "You're taking this far better than you should, so, in for a penny, in for a pound. I suggest you look away, Detective. I'm about to disturb the dead."

Without further preamble—because, really, how can he smooth over desecration with a face like this?—he bends and yanks the blade from Cain's chest. The depth of the wound and the force of the tug lift Cain's torso off the floor. The body falls back with a heavy thud that's music to his ears. Ding-dong, the bastard's dead. Only took thousands of years and a trail of bodies.

Chloe watches without blinking or commenting.

There's nothing to do about the remaining knife wound or the feathers, except to call in favors later that will make such problems go away.

It's possible Amenadiel is taking calls and would feel inclined to pop in for a time-bending cleanup session. Unfortunately, Amenadiel's abilities come as part of a package deal that includes meandering theological discourses Lucifer has no stomach for today. There's also the chance that Chloe would lose what is left of her mind if she had to deal with two supernatural beings right now.

Lucifer scratches at his face, grinds his teeth. The devil face remains locked in place. "Well, it would seem I'm stuck. This has never happened before."

"You...you can control it, usually?"

"Well, I don't bloody well go walking about like this all the time, do I?" he snaps, and immediately regrets it when she flinches. More gently, he adds, "Nobody would have a thing to do with me, Detective, least of all you."

She draws an unsteady breath. "I know this isn't you, Lucifer. And, well, even if it is, it's only one side of you. Right?"

"How do you not get this?" he laughs. "This. Is. Who. I. Am. What will it take for you to see that?" He scoffs, "You won't see it even when it's staring you in the face."

"I—"

Sirens wail, interrupting her. The warped bubble they've found themselves in bursts.

"Chloe... I don't want to leave you, but I..." Lucifer indicates his face with a disbelieving huff.

She nods. "Go."

"I'll make this right. You have my word."

"It's okay," she says, and gives him a watery smile.

Lucifer knows it's not, but he flees the scene. A concrete stairwell spits him out into a back alley that smells of motor oil and rotting cabbage from the garbage of an adjoining Korean restaurant. Stumbling to a shadowed space between two close-set buildings, he leans against a graffitied wall and tries one last time to put the Devil away. But Cain is right. He can't outrun what he's done. He's been a fool, believing he could be anything else.

Police cars surround the block, their sirens screaming, and, well, that's that. He must go. With a muffled cry, he unfurls his broken, bleeding wings and soars high on a lightning strike of pain. Loose feathers drift to the ground behind him.

The air thins above the sprawling, sun-kissed streets of Los Angeles. He zigs and zags low over the city, lower than he should in these days of planes and drones and zoom lenses. It's all his battered wings, all the ache beneath his ribs, will allow.

Soon, his building comes into view. He dives forward, aiming for the penthouse balcony until he remembers Dan and Ella may be inside with Cain's lackey. Slowing his descent with a groan, he changes course for the rooftop. When he lands, it's on tiptoes, and his knees buckle beneath him. He collapses onto the hot concrete and stays down, panting as he draws his wings in one last time.

Before darkness consumes him, he crawls into the shadows. He weeps silently and wonders if, like so many things in this endless existence, Chloe Decker's presence in his life has come to an abrupt, unsatisfying end.

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned: This is unbeta'd as hell.