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Inlustris/Starlight

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The Movement of the Stars

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Chapter One – Hestia.

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"Looks like you had a busy couple of days," Chloe commented, taking in the state of the hastily (and badly) cleaned room. The ceiling and light fixtures had been pulled down, there were boards covering some of the windows and the piano was missing a leg. And Lucifer looked possibly even worse than he did during the Zombie Bride case, "Either the orgy went really, really well or it went really, really badly?"

She doesn't miss the way he glanced toward his bed, before giving her a slightly leery grin. "I can add you to the guest list for the next one, if you'd like?" The offer isn't as lighthearted or as genuine as it had been in the past.

There's a person in the bed, their long dark hair escaping from under the pile of blankets.

"I'll save you the trouble and decline in advance," Chloe frowned, sliding onto a dusty, but otherwise clean looking bar stool, "It wasn't really an orgy gone bad, was it?"

"No," Lucifer refilled his glass with something that smelled less refined than his usual tastes, "But one of my sister's is going to be staying for a while. She got herself out of a bad situation, so you'll have to make do without me for a few weeks. Just while I help get her settled in."

A bad situation?

"You've never mentioned any sisters?" Chloe glanced from her partner, to his bedroom, to his choice of alcohol for the day – less bottom shelf and more bottom of the barrel, "What's her name?"

"Hestia." Lucifer answered almost reverentially, abandoning the glass, in favour of drinking directly from the bottle, "It used to be Hesperiel, but someone in Greece mispronounced it and she liked it better, so it stuck."

Of the empty bottles already on the bar, two were of his preferred quality, and the last three were similar to the one Lucifer was about to empty.

"Is everything ok?" Chloe asked, careful to keep her tone light, "You don't have to tell me anything, but if there's anything I can do to-"

Lucifer dropped the bottle; it bounced off the edge of the bar and hit the floor (a thousand glittering pieces fanning out across the cracked marble), and ran for the bedroom.

"-help?"

It takes a moment to hear it; Chloe's been a cop long enough to know what the sound is, a keening cry of pain and loss. And Lucifer's voice – calm and soothing – over the top of it, both speaking a lyrical language, she doesn't understand and isn't ever going to try to reproduce, ever.

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She peeks into the room on her way out. There are a number of things that Chloe wasn't expecting to see. How much Hestia looked like Lucifer. The bruises and bloodied bandages covering the younger woman's back. The criss-cross of cuts on the soles of her feet. Or the look of utter wretchedness on Lucifer's face as his sister sobbed in his arms.

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