InsaneJournal

Whenever Lucifer had something or someone on his mind, he preferred to sit down in front of a piano and play until he’d puzzled his way through whatever was nagging at him. Today, that was none other than the Peggy Carter, who he couldn’t figure out. Maybe part of her appeal was the fact that she was so elusive, but Lucifer wagered that there was substance behind his interest, and he wanted to find out for certain one way or the other.

That is, if she would ever let him. He certainly didn’t take that for granted.

Peggy had said she was going to meet him at the lounge, but Lucifer still expected there to be some excuse that he wouldn’t be able to argue with like her office was on fire or more travelers had shown up or someone had come to her with an existential crisis about living in space hundreds of years in the future and as the head of the traveler liaisons only she could deal with it.

So when she actually walked in at two o’clock Monday afternoon, Lucifer found himself pleasantly surprised and it showed on his face. He finished the song he’d been playing and then greeted her cheerfully, contrasting with the melody of that song. “Agent Carter! I’m glad you decided against crushing my spirits today.” He got up from the piano and asked, “What can I get you to drink?”

Gesturing to the now unoccupied bench, he offered, “Feel free.”

When she arrived at the lounge, Peggy hovered in the doorway for a long moment, listening to Lucifer play the piano. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised that he was so good. Wouldn’t it make sense that the devil was good at anything he wanted to be good at? She watched him play from behind and then crossed the room and cleared her throat so as not to startle him.

Honestly, Peggy had every intention not to drink, but somehow she thought that might not fly with Lucifer, so when he greeted her with that question, she tipped her head to the side for a moment and then asked for a glass of red wine, dry, please.

“Do you spend all of your time in here then, even when the lounge isn’t open?”

“Not all of it,” Lucifer replied, slipping behind the bar and seeking out the wine collection, choosing a bottle carefully. “But a good deal, certainly. I still enjoy going to the gym, which is Beckett’s fault, and I do tend to sleep most nights.” Of course, most of the reason he bothered with sleeping was Hawke, but that wasn’t information he was going to share.

“It worked out for me, as I was here during the Red Alert.” There wasn’t anywhere else on the ship that Lucifer would have rather been, and he assumed she could guess that. “I heard from Lady Mary that you were with her in your office for three days. Are you sure you just want wine?”

He smiled slightly at that, because he was just teasing Mary, but he imagined it could have been a trying three days. And even as he asked, he walked the glass over to her. There was already a glass and a bottle of scotch atop the piano for himself.

Peggy took the wine with a thanks and sipped it. It was a good wine, practically the exact type of wine she was thinking of when she asked for it. She looked at him with an arched eyebrow and a smile. “She was fine,” Peggy said diplomatically. “We both were. The liaison office is more comfortable than many of the places that I could have been stuck in, I suppose.”

She had got as much work done as she could have considering the company.

“So you can just stand there,” Lucifer mentioned, “Or pull up a chair, or there’s plenty of room here,” he said, sitting down on the bench and leaving space for her. “Anything you want to hear?”

He was hoping to get her to play at some point.

“And is there anything you want to know about me?” he asked, curiously. “I’ll answer honestly, you have my word. And well, my word is my bond. That part of my reputation is completely true.”

Peggy hesitated and then moved to sit beside him on the piano bench, setting the wine on the top of the piano and glancing down at the keys. “What’s your favorite piece to play?” she asked. She turned to look at him. “What were you playing when I walked in?” She hadn’t recognized it, but there were any number of reasons why that was the case.

Lucifer had to think back to what he was playing when she entered, and then looked at her sheepishly. “Oh, it was this…” he said, starting off on the refrain, looking to her for confirmation before he stopped. “I play that without thinking sometimes. It’s a song called ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ and it was a favorite of a priest I knew.” Albeit however briefly. “As to my favorite thing to play? That changes, depending on my mood. Right now, that, I suppose. It’s rather melancholy.”

He hadn’t realized he’d started playing that song, but it made sense when he thought about. Caitlin’s departure had caught him by surprise, and it was still weighing on his mind.

“And that’s the benefit of managing the lounge. Rather than upending tables, I’m taking my frustration at people disappearing out by playing melancholy Bob Dylan songs,” he mused. “That came out about thirty years after your time, I’d guess.”

"It's always difficult when people come and go without notice," she said, though it was odd for her, having been the first to arrive and here she still was. She didn't feel any tug or pull back home, and she wondered if that was a difference. It wasn't always the people who were having trouble adjusting that were sent back, though it did happen more often than not.

She glanced at him. "How come you don't play when there are people in here?" Peggy asked. "You could be the entertainment, hmn?"

“We don’t even know where they’re going,” Lucifer pointed out. He assumed home, but there was no way of knowing if that was the case. After all, nothing about this made sense to begin with.

He grinned at her suggestion, reaching for the bottle and filling his glass, then taking a long drink. “Oh I will, but will you even know?” he pointed out. “I even had Tony playing during the red alert. So he may play here too.” Lucifer had no idea, really. The other man had said a lot of things during the three days they spent in the lounge.

“That being said, do you want to play anything? Just here and now?”

"Somehow, I find it hard to believe Tony Stark knows how to play the piano," she said with a slight laugh. Only based on observations, of course. If he was anything like his father, Tony wouldn't have ever had the attention span to sit down and learn how to play. She arched an eyebrow over at Lucifer. "Contrary to your assumption, I used to frequent the lounge regularly. You can ask Kate Beckett about that." That was before the other travelers began arriving with more frequency.

Peggy looked at the ivory keys, her memory slipping back to the last time she played the piano, her brother prodding her on at a Christmas party at their home. She folded her hands in her lap. "No, I don't," she said simply. "But you're welcome to continue playing if you'd like."

“Oh believe it,” Lucifer said. “He’s slightly out of practice, but he can play. And what, did you stop visiting the lounge when I showed up? You really are going to give me a complex, Agent Carter,” he added, amusement evident in his voice.

Looking at the piano, then at Peggy he asked, “Well, what would you like to hear? If I know it, I’ll play it for you. And I know a lot of music so…”

She wasn’t meaning to give him a complex but she was also sure that any excuse she were to make to him he wouldn’t believe or would brush it off. “I wonder if Tony’s mother played,” she murmured. Her fingers itched to touch the keys, really, but she held back.

Peggy looked at him instead of at the piano. “Something classical,” she said. “Is that all right?”

“Of course,” he replied. “Have a composer in mind?”

“Brahms?” she suggested.

Lucifer took another long drink of scotch, then set the glass back down on top of the piano and rested his fingers on the keys. “Brahms, huh?” he asked, not waiting for a response before he started playing Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118 No. 2, rather than going for his more famous Lullaby, which had a proper name that Lucifer never bothered to remember.

The piece was introspective and lyrical and for a moment Lucifer got lost in the music, until he happened to glance over and noticed Peggy was as well. Before he could even think about what he was doing, he nudged her gently to get her attention and then nodded toward the keys, inviting her to take over. He could tell with one glance that it wouldn’t be that far of a jump, as he was certain that she was already playing along with him in her mind.

Peggy did want to play, but it had been so long for her that she wasn't sure if she'd be able to. Yes, she had been playing along with him in her mind but it was something completely different to actually put her fingers on the keys. Her hands, folded together, tightened a bit, her knuckles pale, and she shook her head at him and left her hands right there in her lap.

"Why the piano?" she asked after a moment.

Lucifer simply shrugged and continued playing, but when he finished he turned to look at her, studying her expression. He didn’t say anything though, and her question surprised him.

“No one’s ever asked me that before,” he mused. “But you played, so you know. It’s relaxing, and you can get lost in the music for a while.”

He ran his fingers over the keys, not playing anything in particular. He fell silent as he did so, composing as he went along. After a while, he turned to Peggy and asked, “What’s on your mind?”

Peggy nodded. It used to be relaxing for her at least, before her brother died. It wasn't as relaxing anymore, or she didn't expect it to be, considering she hadn't played since before he died. "I'm just enjoying listening to you play," she said. She reached for her glass of wine and picked it up, her fingers curling around the stem more tightly than she meant to. She took a sip.

She had that glass in a death grip and Lucifer didn't say anything, but it was clear he'd noticed. “Come on, Peggy,” he said gently, “play something.”

He wasn't sure why, but she was hesitant to do so, even if it was evident to him at least that she wanted a turn. “No judgment here if you miss a few notes. Or we could play something together?”

"No," she said, more firmly than the 'no thank you' she had said before. She took her wine glass and stood up from the piano bench, moving away from him and sitting at one of the tables nearby. "I can't imagine you asked me in here only to try and play a duet with me," she said in a simple deflection of the topic at hand.

Peggy smiled at him. "Have you made any plans for how to make this lounge even more exciting and welcoming than it already is?" she asked.

“How do you know?” he asked, blatantly ignoring her attempt to change the subject. He turned around on the bench to face her. She knew he didn’t invite her here to talk about the lounge either. “You told me you played, after all.”

He briefly turned back to the piano to refill his drink, before facing her again, glass in hand. “Really,” he asked. “Aren’t you tired of keeping everyone at arm’s length? Can we just have a conversation with real answers?”

"Yes," Peggy said simply. "I used to play. I don't play any longer." There was a distinction that needed to be made there, and she didn't want to have to explain herself any further. He had, after all said, that he understood that no meant no. Or had he only meant it when referring to sex?

"I wasn't aware that we were having a real conversation," she said with a slight twitch of the corner of her mouth. "It seemed to me all that was happening was you trying to convince me to play the piano."

Bloody hell, she was frustrating. But he couldn’t help but smirk as she teased him at the end. “Fine,” he said. “Direct question. How did you become Agent Carter, and what agency were you working for?” he asked, genuinely curious. He knew she was on the allied side during the war, but that was about the extent of it. “You seem to be rather renown.”

"MI5 and then the SSR," she said. That wasn't something she'd keep quiet, especially not seeing how many people knew her and also how far away from top-secret clearances and whatever else kept her quiet about that involvement back in her own time.

Peggy watched him as she spoke. It was a secret thrill of hers to enjoy the reaction of people, especially men, when they learned just what she did during the war, as a woman.

“That explains so much,” Lucifer said, eyes widening. “No wonder you’re so skilled at deflection and to such an annoying degree. But still, that says a lot about you.”

Not nearly enough, however. “I mean, it explains why you may default to avoiding answering a question, but it doesn’t explain why you continue to do so. Other than you keep people at a distance, but that still isn’t the why of it all. So, why?”

She crossed one arm over her chest, holding the wine glass in one hand. “It’s easier that way. When you’re in my line of work, with secret after secret, it’s much easier to keep people at a distance than it is to keep lying to them all the time.”

“That's not what you're doing here though,” Lucifer pointed out. “It's the complete opposite of your job here. So again I ask, why? Or would you rather hear my theory?”

She arched an eyebrow. “Please,” she said slowly, an edge to her voice. “I would absolutely love to hear you theorize on what makes me tick.”

Lucifer caught the edge in her voice, and managed to keep from reacting. Instead he offered simply, “It sucks.”

He watched her for a moment, and then continued.

“It sucks when you’re close to someone and all of a sudden they disappear from your life. Or you know they will, eventually. Or when you know that everyone you care about is going to die one day, and you’ll outlive them all because you can’t die. And anyone you get close to will eventually just not be there anymore and the cycle will just keep repeating itself until you stop caring to begin with. And at that point you wonder if you would be better off back in hell because there you didn’t have to care at all.”

He paused, realizing he’d made that a bit more about himself than her and he gave her an apologetic shrug. “Just you know… take out the immortal bits from that and adapt it a little.”

She was early impressed how he’d managed to turn it back around on him. Probably without even meaning to. Not that Peggy minded. She leaned against the piano and tipped her head as she looked down at him. “So is that why you’re so fluid and haphazard with your relationships?” she asked him. “Because it’s easier to just not care?”

“Yes,” Lucifer replied. “Or I was, at least.” That had been changing since the detective and coming aboard this ship. “But how about you?”

“I have friends,” she said, not defensively. Not really at least. “In fact, several of them are here, even. I simply care about my job, whether that’s my job here or what I was doing before. Both are important in different ways, and I know how to adapt to any given situation.” Peggy paused for a moment. “Would it make you more comfortable if I adapted to this one instead of being myself?” Was it a problem that he didn’t like who she was or didn’t believe that who she was was who she was?

Lucifer stared at Peggy for a moment. “Alright, so apparently I’m coming across as a complete ass,” he said. “Because no, I’m not saying you need to change who you are. Only that at some point I’d like to get to know you better than that. Like to the point where you’d tell me why you had your glass in a death grip at the piano,” he said, his voice growing quieter. “And only because I’ve decided it was worth it to me. And I didn’t think we’re entirely dissimilar, but maybe I’m wrong.”

Or maybe she just really didn’t like him, and was only there because she was tired of him asking, like she’d suggested.

He wasn’t wrong, though she would have never in all her life made some kind of direct comparison between herself and the devil. And maybe that was the problem. Peggy clearly had to stop thinking about Lucifer, the man in front of her, as the devil (even though he was). She took a moment, looked at him, narrowing her eyes slightly, and then tossed back the rest of her wine, all of it, in a few quick gulps before setting the empty glass back on the piano.

“The last time I played the piano was at a family Christmas party a few months before my brother died,” she said.

Lucifer met her gaze for a moment, not saying anything, before he simply nodded. “Sit back down?” he asked. “I’m not going to try and make you play,” he added quickly. Instead, he stood up himself and collected her empty wine glass, taking it to the bar for a refill.

She’d either been really close to her brother or had unresolved issues with him or both, he figured. Regardless, he guessed she still carried around a lot of that grief and he felt like he needed to tread carefully if he didn’t want that wall to go right back up again.

With the glass refilled, he turned back to the piano.

Peggy sat back down even though she didn’t one hundred percent want to. She folded her hands in her lap once again and watched Lucifer at the bar over her shoulder. She didn’t know why she’d blurted that out about her brother. Probably to get him to stop asking her to play or stop asking her to open up. Or both, probably.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the glass and sipping it again. “Where is this wine from? Earth or some planet I’ve only just recently heard of now?”

“Earth,” Lucifer answered, sitting down next to her again. He didn’t elaborate on that. Instead, he asked, “So you were close to your brother? And he died in the war?” He was guessing, based on the fact that she’d given the war as the reason she’d stopped playing, previously.

She was surprised but didn’t argue or ask anything else about the wine. It was good wine, and she might have to ask for it specifically the next time she came into the lounge for a drink. “Yes,” she said as the answer to both of his questions.

Lucifer relented on the wine, as she answered both his questions at once. No more yes or no questions, he thought. If he even bothered to keep asking. “I should send the rest of the bottle home with you,” he mentioned.

He turned his head and looked at her, debating with himself as to whether there was a point to even continue. But it was the way she’d downed her glass and then told him why she’d stopped playing that made him continue, despite the fact that even he was picking up on the fact that he could just be annoying her. (At least he’d gotten the wine right.)

“Tell me about him?”

“Who?” Peggy asked. “My brother?” No, she didn’t want to talk about her brother. She started to shake her head, the tip of her tongue against her teeth. “I don’t want to talk about him,” she said.

“Why don’t you tell me about Los Angeles? Isn’t that where you most recently were? Though about seventy years after I was there, I imagine.”

Lucifer nodded. He wasn’t really expecting any different but he actually got a straight answer that she didn’t want to talk about him. So he left it there. It didn’t hurt that he excelled at talking about himself.

“Alright, Los Angeles it is. So you know I left Hell, moved to Los Angeles, opened my nightclub Lux, which is why I feel most at home here,” he mentioned. “That was my life for five years, and all the debauchery you’d imagine that went along with it.” Lucifer couldn’t help but smirk there. If there was a haven for that sort of thing in Los Angeles, Lux had been it.

“Then one day a friend of mine came back to visit me. I’d made a deal with her when she’d worked at Lux and she became a famous singer. So she owed me one. By the time she got back to me though, she was a mess. So I told her it was time to pay me back, and I tasked her with pulling her life together. She was wasting her talent… and her life away.”

He sighed, thinking of the Delilah he’d known as his employee and the woman who’d returned to him after turning to drugs. “I told her it wouldn’t be easy, but she agreed to do it. And then some bastard gunned us down outside Lux. She didn’t have the same bullet-resistant immortality going for her that I did, so…” His voice trailed off. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but that was the first time he’d cared enough about someone that their death mattered to him. “RIght,” he continued, “The police came to investigate her murder and they were quick to label it as drug-related. I wasn’t. And that’s where I met the detective.”

Shaking his head, he thought back to the initial interview, and his doubts that anything was going to be resolved by the police. “I had pretty much decided to conduct my own investigation because I didn’t trust the LAPD. Eventually Detective Chloe Decker just let me tag along. We solved the case and I punished the bastard responsible, but not before she got shot. So… I saved her life, which apparently was the wrong thing to do? My brother seemed to think so, at least. I mean, we’re not meant to interfere like that, I guess, especially me.”

Giving Peggy a shrug, he reached for his glass and downed it, immediately pouring a refill. “I’d do it all over again, every time, even though this was all my father’s plan for only he knows what purpose. But it changed everything.”

That was certainly an understatement.

“Anyway, that’s pretty much how I became a civilian consultant for the LAPD. Or the start of it at least.”

Peggy sipped her wine as she listened to him. It was a pretty interesting story, not one she would have expected, especially from the devil. “So then how were you consulting if you weren’t supposed to be directly interfering. Actually, on that note, how can you not interfere at all? Aren’t you doing that simply by talking to me, to anyone?” She thought that it seemed a little like a lonely existence, if he wasn’t supposed to have any interaction with any human being.

“Well, there’s limits,” Lucifer explained. “I mean, everything I do now is against what my father wants because I’m here, or I was in Los Angeles, and not hell. But saving someone’s life? Or bringing someone back from the dead and hell to kill me and send me back to hell? Like my brother did? That’s really against the rules.”

He leaned back slightly and sipped his drink, a smirk on his face. “But! The rules have always been arbitrary. So it’s not like I was ever going to succeed anyway.”

Of course he would see rules as arbitrary. It wasn’t like Peggy was a firm believer in following all rules, though with a military and special ops background, she appreciated the structure of them. She just tended to break them at will herself as well. “This may be a silly question but can’t he just - your father, I mean - pluck you up and put you where he wants you?”

“Oh, he could,” Lucifer answered her. “But where’s the fun in that? It’s much more fun to let your children run around like toys, fighting one another, working with and against each other, pulling the strings and watching what happens for your own amusement. Or so it seems to be for him,” he mentioned. “I mean, I wasn’t supposed to even be able to do anything other than what he wanted me to do, and look what happened. But anyway, enough about him. We all have those aspects of our lives that aren’t particularly pleasant to talk about, after all.”

He glanced over at Peggy. “I’ve only had two years of therapy. I could probably stand at least a decade more to get past all of that…”

She attached onto the bit about therapy. “Have you been seeing anyone here on the ship?” she asked. She went to sip her wine only to find that she had drained the glass already. She set it aside, not needing another glass of wine at this point in the day.

“Not really,” Lucifer replied. “I meant to talk to Deanna Troi but... “ She hadn’t been there long. “Mostly it’s just Hawke and Beckett, or the punching bag at the gym. Or this piano here. And then in turn I’ll act as a punching bag or whichever…” He smiled at that, thinking how unlikely it probably was that he’d have as many friends here as he did. Or that he’d end up being the one listening sometimes, or letting someone he didn’t even know just wail on him, as Kitty had.

“Well, then maybe you should see someone about those - issues or whatever,” she said bluntly. Not that she would do the same but then again, Peggy Carter didn’t think she had issues that needed to be discussed with anyone at all.

Lucifer turned to her, brow raised. “Do you even hear yourself?” he asked. “I talk about my issues all the time. You, on the other hand, live with them buried so deep you don’t even realize you have them. And before you argue that I’m wrong, take a good look at that piano and think about how much you enjoyed playing, and why you can’t play it now. And there’s nothing wrong with that, unless you never deal with it because you’re only hurting yourself more.”

All those words spilled out before Lucifer even had a chance to stop them,and it wasn’t as if he didn’t mean them either. She was too much like him, or how he used to be, for him not to see it. And, as it turned out, for him to not say something about it.

If Lucifer had wanted Peggy to talk to him, he probably shouldn’t have called her out like that. “Talking about your issues isn’t the same as dealing with them,” she said shortly. “And I’m not hurting myself or anyone else, for that matter. I’ve lived my life, I’ve made the decisions I’ve made, and I’ve seen the same kind of love and loss that others have. I’m doing just fine. I’m British. We don’t talk about out feelings.”

“How do you deal with them, then?” Lucifer asked, his voice far more reserved than it had been only a moment before, and his expression softer and less incredulous. He genuinely wanted to know.

“What do you mean? They’re feelings, emotions. They’re natural to have. Why would I need to talk about them to anyone besides those with whom I care about?” For instance, if her brother were here, she supposed she’d speak to him. Steve, as well, was someone she’d been known to talk to. Daniel Sousa, if he were here. Even - hell, even Howard Stark.

“Oh,” Lucifer replied almost sounding confused. “I just make friends by talking to random strangers or letting them talk to me. Or beat me up. Or annoying them with questions… Sometimes all of the above.” He didn’t know about other people, but that seemed to be working for him.

She shook her head, but fondly. “Yes, I’ve noticed.” Though she hadn’t beat him up - yet. Not that she couldn’t. Of course she could. She just hadn’t had any reason to yet. “I should get back to work. Thank you for the wine. I promise not to stay locked up in my office all of the time.”

Lucifer nodded at Peggy. “For the record? There’s no one in here from the time I leave each night until 9:30, ten o’clock. Just in case you ever get the urge to play. And if you ever want a glass of that wine and I’m not around, or busy, it’s Casillero del Diablo. The Devil’s Cellar.”

He couldn’t help but grin at that. “Of course, their translation has always been rather loose.”

She was almost certain she wouldn't be taking him up on that offer but she thanked him nonetheless. She laughed lightly at the name of the wine. “How fitting,” she said. “You've got your own wine even in this century.”

“What can I say, I've always been inspiring,” Lucifer replied. “Don't be a stranger. We're almost friends now.”

She held up a hand. “Almost,” she echoed, but a smile crossed Peggy’s face as she walked past him and headed for the door.