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"–– and there I was, the damn thing halfway down over one arm and my head stuck at a funny angle, and he comes bursting in, doesn't even knock, the bastard and— hang on, what are we doing here? Whyyy are—?"
She looks around herself confused, three rows full of her nearest frenemies looking back at her expectantly. She shakes her head, once, twice, but the scene doesn't shift back to where they'd just been, sitting in one of Lux's dimly lit alcoves, chatting about her ex, of all things. There's something weird about that thought, something not right, though; there's a taste of bile in her mouth that doesn't fit in with the memory, but she can't seem to think clearly —— and then it doesn't matter, doesn't matter at all, because now she's here.
Dread wells up in her chest, beginning to squeeze her airpipe. She chokes on a sob burbling up, turns around to what she knows will be waiting there for her — and rears back in shock, one more time.
It's Lucifer, standing there at the altar. Lucifer, not Jimmy.
She feels her own face light up in relief and happiness. This must be a dream, if Lucifer's here. Only a dream… just a dream….. means she isn't about to get hitched to Jimmy, or make the most momentous, utterly stupidbutalsoreallyreallysmart decision to say nay on her wedding day.
She giggles. That'd make an awesome name for a song.
Lucifer snaps his fingers in front of her. "Delilah! Come on, darling, focus!"
His face swims back into focus and he looks concerned. Why is he looking concerned? Confused, she looks from him to the people in the pews, but no one's mirroring his expression, they're all still just staring back at her, waiting like the hyenas they are, for the next thing to happen, for something to talk about.
Oh she's about to give them something to talk about.
Isn't she?
But Jimmy's not there. It's Lucifer, of all people. She loves him, too, but in a Iwannajumpyourbonesandsingandplaywithyou way not a Iwannamarryyouandshareyourdisgustinghabitsfortherestofmylife way and— actually, why had she ever wanted that with Jimmy?? Doesn't make sense. Jimmy's a sleazeball. She doesn't even love him. Or does she? Why would she have agreed to it, otherwise?
"Delilah? Delilah, come on, don't lose it now — you were doing so well, back on my couch."
Huh? Lucifer?
"Lucifer?" She hears herself asking, and is amazed at how her own voice sounds so tremulous. Kind of like the first time he talked her into singing in front of the whole club– she'd known she had a good voice, but she'd felt so naked standing there in the spotlight.
But then he'd laid his hand on hers and pulled her down onto the bench next to him, as if he'd known how she felt, and he'd joined his voice to hers as he played and suddenly it'd been easy, the easiest thing she'd ever done, and it'd felt good, so good, and—— now she's here. A different crowd. Totally different occasion, but he's here again. To help her?
Hang on, isn't this a dream?
She blinks, trying to clear the cobwebs from her fuzzy brain. There is something … his words to her. As they filter past her scrambled, shorted-out mess of memories, another picture slowly crystalizes. Doctor Linda's office, but with Lucifer in it. Lucifer in the doctor's chair, a notepad and pencil in his hand the way her therapist had used to do. Lucifer, sitting on the couch next to her, flipping through the picture gallery on his phone, his voice full of warmth as he's explaining each photo. Lucifer, gentle hands caressing the wooden frame of a photo of a blonde-haired woman before he carefully places the frame back onto the little table in front of her.
The Detective — Chloe. Rory, his daughter. Beatrice, the urchin. Linda. Miss Lopez. Dan the douche who died too early. Charlotte — once his mom who has her own universe now. Amenadiel, his brother. Who is now God.
Lucifer. The devil.
She hears herself respond, like an echo of her memories. At first she's a bit taken aback at his confession, shocked when he tells her that he truly is who he claimed to be - and that she's in Hell with him. A part of her still doubts - but all of his stories make a little more sense, in the light of that truth, and she can't but feel he's honest — Deep down she'd always felt like he'd been too big for his shoes, somehow.
But then — maybe he'd thought she still didn't believe him or thought she needed to see all of him but from one moment to the next he'd gone from Lucifer to this red-skinned demonic thing with burning eyes. And then——
Her heart squeezes in fear again for a moment, as her memories cycle through her brain. Sitting next to him, that time at Lux, foolishly, stupidly, asking him if she sold her soul to the devil, talking to him about Jimmy. And then——
Then she's here. At the altar. But there's no Jimmy she's facing, no Jimmy to say No to, no Jimmy whose face cycles through the full range of emotions he's capable of, from confusion to shock to denial to fully blown rage. No Jimmy who is still so fucked up from being left by his mom as a kid that she knows it's going to destroy him if she does the same; but she does it anyway, because she's an utterly fucked-up, selfish bitch herself and he's better off without her dragging him down when she'll ultimately fail at her career, at her marriage, at her life.
But Jimmy isn't here. Just Lucifer. Lucifer who stands there, patiently waiting for her to get her fucking head together.
Because he's the devil. The devil who is supposed to be a demonic creature bent on seducing you to commit every sin under the sun before carrying your soul off to Hell — that's what she understands of it, anyway, based on about a million and one songs written about him. The part about seducing people to commit sins is definitely right about him — she's done stuff with him that's probably against all kinds of laws, religious or otherwise.
And the part about the soul…?
He pretty much has her soul, already, since she's dead and all. This isn't a dream. He's explained it. She's in Hell, and this is her eternal damnation. Facing Jimmy.
Only that now there's Lucifer, and not Jimmy, and Lucifer's actually the devil, and she's dead, but he isn't interested in her soul. He's only interested in her getting her life sorted out –no, wait! That's from before, now he's—— why is he interested in her getting out of Hell? You'd think the devil would want to keep your soul, not lose it…?
She thinks, for a moment, that it's all very strange, and why is this happening to her, and if she's maybe just having a really weird reaction to the drugs, like that one time at 2Vile's place when she'd thought she'd been trapped in a cave with lots of corpses who got angry at her for being alive, but then there's Lucifer's face swimming back into focus again, and he still looks so concerned, and now also guilty like a little boy who's done something he knows he shouldn't have and——
"This isn't a drug-induced hallucination, my dear," he says, with a sigh. Can the Devil read minds?
What can he do, actually? Does he have super powers?
"This truly is my fault, I shouldn't have just sprung my other face on you without warning," he mutters. "Or delayed helping you, in the first place. I'm the reason you're still back here reliving this moment instead of frolicking on a pasture with a host of my siblings already. Though I'd like to think you'd have better taste than that, and chose to frolic in a bar instead, making music."
It's his tone rather than the words themselves that pull her away from her strange muddle of thoughts of Jimmy and his mom and the devil and superpowers. It's so sad and so unlike him, and when she looks at him —truly looks— his expression mirrors that tone so perfectly. He looks sad and ashamed, and she'd never have thought him capable of both, and in that moment right there she just wants to forget everything else she's seen and hug him.
So what if he's the devil? She's here in Hell already anyway, her soul is already his for the taking. And truth to be told, she'd rather spend time with him than face Jimmy at that altar.
"Lucifer—" she begins, her voice scratchy from nerves and emotion.
But he must read something in her eyes and tone of her intentions, and holds out a hand to ward her off when she takes a step towards him.
"No, you need to listen, to know everything," he implores her solemnly, and isn't it strange that the devil should do something like that? Beg her?
The devil, yes, a little voice at the back of her mind says, — but not the man she's come to know. Which one is real, though? Or can he be both?
"You have to understand that this, what I've been doing with you, isn't what happens usually. I help souls overcome their guilt, guiding them out of this hell of their own making so they can find their way to the Silver City — I don't trap them in their loops just so I can renew an acquaintance, for my own gain."
"But isn't that what the Devil is supposed to do, trap souls?" she asks timidly, when it becomes clear he's waiting for her reaction. She's confused despite it being the second time he's explained what he's doing, but having seen that face on him makes concentrating on the meaning of his words a terrible effort in keeping the shreds of her sanity pulled together.
There's a hint of a scowl on his face for a moment, before he huffs a tortured-sounding sigh that seems to deflate him to the point of looking like a miserable lump. "I wish people would stop believing that… but even with all the changes my brother's made to organized religion, I fear nothing's ever going to change that particular myth. Using me as their scapegoat just sits too deep to ever be expunged." He turns to regard her, his expression now infinitely sadder than before. "No, darling, it truly isn't. It's not something I've done, ever. Before I found my true purpose I thought my job was to punish those sent here, but I took no joy in them being here. It is as I told you before - you send yourselves here, your path is determined by the guilt you carry. Nothing more — nothing less. You being in Hell has nothing to do with me enabling you to follow your desires and dreams. You're here because of the decisions you took to reach them included leaving Jimmy in a public display — despite knowing how much his psyche was already damaged by being abandoned by his mother and how much your callous action would damage him further. That knowledge is the root of your guilt, Delilah. And I shouldn't have kept you from realising it by trying to rekindle our acquaintance."
Hearing it spelled out like that is sobering in every way. It smarts, to hear his accusation, and she can't but lash out in anger - even if she doesn't dare deny it. "Yeah, why the fuck did you? If what you're saying is that you could've spared me all this mess, why the he— why the fuck didn't you just let me get on with it? What did you have to gain by it, like you said?"
She doesn't know what she's trying to achieve, making the Devil mad, but surely he deserves it somehow. Blaming him seems like an easier way out, but in some way it feels like he's taken that from her by simply existing and talking to her, and why did he ever have to do that in the first place anyway? Why did he have to make her desires come true?
It's not until she feels the steely grip of his fingers on her upper arms that she realizes she's drumming her fists against his chest, her forehead pushed against his collarbone as she's spilling hot tears into the soft silk of his suit. When did that happen? He pushes her away from him but doesn't let go, to her surprise and mortification.
"Because I've been what everyone's always accused me of being: selfish. When I came across your loop, for the first time since coming down here, I felt a glimmer of something. Hope, perhaps. Of seeing a familiar face. Meeting someone I once might have called a friend, if I'd only realised I was capable of such a thing. Was there a tiny part of me that hoped also that, just as your death had been the catalyst for all the changes in my life, your presence now could bring forth some other change? Maybe, though it seems a foolish thing."
He's lost in some thought for a moment, his far too expressive eyes far away. And she knows she was angry at him a moment ago — that, according to him, she still has every right to be so now — but for some reason she can't seem to find any fuel for it inside her anymore. He's still who he is —she's so well aware of it now, with all this talk of hell and loops and guilt and redemption— but the more she listens, the more she remembers what they talked about, before. Of what he told her he'd found. Hearing herself referred to as the catalyst for all of that…? It's kind of crazy to think of her death getting the ball rolling on all of that. Kind of amazing, too, in a macabre sort of way.
When his attention turns back onto her, she comes to a realisation: all this devil stuff ultimately doesn't matter. The man staring back at her, anguished, ashamed, apologetic, but ultimately determined to do right by her, is still the same man she once trusted with her life, whose advice she had taken to heart even if she'd never gotten a chance to make good on it.
He continues, oblivious to her changed mood, looking past her, and she realizes it's because he, too, can't stomach facing his guilt. "Be as it may, I did what I shouldn't have done. I sent your loop into stasis, so that you didn't need to face Jimmy and could spend the time with me instead. I used you to unburden myself, to bask in your friendship and the warmth of your regard. I didn't help you redeem yourself, for my own selfish gain."
She takes a step back from him, his hands dropping the steady grip on her arms but rather than allowing him to take it as the reproach she knows he fears it is, she reaches out and grasps both his hands in hers.
"You know what? I don't care. Should it matter to me that you used me? Yeah, probably. I was really stupidly angry at you for a moment there, for my own selfish reasons. You gave me a shock and a fright and I think part of my brain is still scrambled a bit, some things not really aligning properly just yet with all the crazy stuff about hell and loops and whatnot — but you know what? If I spend my afterlife sitting in your office, chatting to you about life and stuff, talking shop about music, then that's tons better than what I understand the alternative would be, going through a neverending loop of facing Jimmy until realising what I'm guilty of. Cos, face it, we both know I really suck at dealing with guilt, and I'd likely have been stuck in it for a long time. So I really have to thank you, for doing it this way."
He looks at her, surprise written all over his face. "That's — I'd not thought of it that way."
She chances a tentative smirk. "Good thing you didn't entirely fry my brain when you exposed yourself to me."
The smirk he returns her is equally tentative but definitely more like him. "Good thing I'm a changed man, or I'd make a terrible attempt at a joke about how that's always been my favourite reaction to exposing myself, right now."
"Good thing, indeed," she grins, but turns serious after a moment, dropping his hands. "So, what happens now?"
They are, after all, still standing in front of that altar, even if everyone in the pews appears to be frozen.
He looks back at her, searching her face for something. "You face Jimmy one more time. And admit your guilt and apologize. Then you'll have redeemed yourself and you'll go to the Silver City."
So this is it, then. Her big moment.
"What if I can't?"
Amused, he looks at her and chides, "you might suck at dealing with guilt, but as we both also know you're far smarter than letting an obstacle like that stand in your way to stardom. Literally, in this case."
She considers for a moment. He's not wrong about that. "But what if I don't want to?"
Startled, he stares at her. "You don't want to redeem yourself?"
"What if I want to stay here and hang out with you instead?"
He'd changed her loop for her before - why not continue it that way?
He's truly shocked now. "You want to… stay in Hell? Voluntarily?"
"Why not? We can chat about stuff — maybe you can pop up a piano, even, we can have ourselves some sessions?"
His eyes narrow, still bewildered but also mildly reproachful. "You'd do all that just so that you don't have to face Jimmy?"
She leans over and pokes his upper arm with her thumb, giving him a small shy smile as she does so. "No, you dimwit, because I think you could do with having a friend around down here."