InsaneJournal

Lucifer had spent most of the day putting his mysteriously returned wings to good use, but when he wasn’t traveling around the island or between islands, he was brooding. Because as much fun as it was to have them back, he didn’t understand how it was possible and more troubling was trying to figure out what it all meant.

And brooding was what he was doing now, sitting on the beach in his usual wardrobe, except his feet were bare. He stared out at the ocean, trying to make sense of the seemingly impossible, and wondering if his father was interfering with his life again.

He sat there for an hour, easily, before he spotted a familiar figure walking toward him, though he wasn’t sure he’d even been noticed.

“Kate! Just who I wanted to see,” Lucifer said, looking up at his friend. “Are you busy?”


Lucifer had been noticed, initially as nothing more than a lone figure sitting on the beach as Kate had eaten dinner in one of the open air restaurants down the sand. It hadn’t been until she and Castle had begun their walk back to the hotel that she had realized who exactly was sitting in the sand by himself, and being given a wide berth by anyone who walked along the shore.

Promising Castle that she would see him back at the room, Kate paused to slip off her shoes, snagging the flip flops between her fingers and closing the distance between herself and her friend. “Interesting way of looking me up,” she said in reply once Lucifer had taken notice of her, “Sitting on the beach and scaring everyone but the fish.”

Dropping her shoes onto the sand, Kate took a seat a moment later, stretching out her legs and crossing them at the ankles. “No. Why?”

“Because that memory thing?” he asked. “I know exactly what you were talking about now. I don’t think you warned me about the headache though…”

He’d had no idea that people had been deliberately avoiding him, nor did he really care. The endless advance and retreat of the ocean had been all he cared to focus on. And as he’d told Hawke in Mexico, the beach had been home to some of the most defining moments in his life.

Like when he’d burned his wings.

Reaching into the pocket of his shirt, he pulled out the pack of cigarettes he’d had on him when he found himself aboard the Enterprise. They hadn’t been opened, and despite being over two hundred years old now the first one he’d smoked, earlier in the morning, hadn’t been stale.

Nor was this one.

He made sure the breeze was carrying the smoke away from Kate, and then said, “I don’t know what to think about it all, yet.”


“Probably because I didn’t have one,” she replied, raising an eyebrow in his direction. “A bullet to the chest and a bullet to the abdomen tends to make a headache seem like a stubbed toe.” A couple of weeks ago, the idea of such a thing happening would have crippled her, and Kate still wasn’t at peace with it all, but she had moved into that portion of the grief cycle - or whatever you wanted to call it - that allowed her to joke about her future.

She just had to do it with the spark of pain about the what ifs and might have beens.

Kate hadn’t known that Lucifer smoked, but given that he was the devil and that vices were kinda his thing, she wasn’t surprised at the notion. Still, she wrinkled her nose at the smell as he lit a cigarette though he was at least considerate enough to direct the smoke away from her so that she wouldn’t smell like an ashtray. “I doubt anyone does at first,” she said with a shrug, “It’s so jarring when you first come out of it, and I’d think that would be the case even if you had a whole bunch of pleasant dreams. It’s not normal to wake up with a whole new portion of your life in your head.”


Lucifer nodded, remaining silent even after Kate spoke.

He stared out at the water, considering how much he wanted to tell her. Finally, he took a deep breath, and then said, “When I first moved permanently to earth, Maze and I landed on the beach. The detective kissed me on the beach. I sent my mother to some unknown universe, again, on a beach. It’s where I burned my wings, severing my ties to hell.”

He paused, glancing at her before returning his gaze to the water. “I suppose the ocean makes me reflective.”



She wasn’t trying to make light of things, really she wasn’t, but Kate’s mouth curled up with the urge to smile as he talked about the beach and it’s relevance to his life. She certainly had places like that for herself, too, and seeking them out to allow herself time to think and to process various events in her life hadn’t been that unusual. “Well, you chose to live in California. There are beaches everywhere.” she told him.

But with her silly joke out of the way, Kate gave a little nod of understanding. “Places where significant parts of your life happen tend to do that, but the question is why you feel the need to be so nostalgic, because it’s not the water or the beach. Plenty of those have been around since we got here.”


“Well,” Lucifer said, putting out his cigarette and then crushing it down and slipping it into his pocket. “That’s easy.”

He stood up, then offered his hand to help Kate to her feet.

“There’s something I need to show you.”


The look she gave him was one of open curiosity, and it spoke to just how much Kate trusted Lucifer that she didn’t ask any questions. There were some people in your life that you just took at their word and followed without hesitation, it was always a constant surprise to her that the devil himself had become one of those people.

Slipping her hand into Lucifer’s Kate easily got to her feet, pausing to brush the sand off her shorts and the tanned skin of her legs. With as much as it knocked off as she could manage, she bent down to retrieve her shoes. “Yeah, alright.”


Nodding, Lucifer allowed himself a grin, the look he gave Kate almost mischievous before he led her back toward the resort, and into his room. He hesitated, but only a moment, knowing that he couldn’t very well start stripping down in front of a married woman without explanation. Especially one he considered a friend and whose trust he wanted to keep.

“Trust me,” he said, removing his blazer and his shirt. “I don’t think you ever had the opportunity to see the scars on my back, but they’re gone now…,” he added, turning around slowly so that she could see that for herself.

“As far as I know, I got my wings back in the desert,” he said casually, as if this was something that happened every day. “But I discovered that I had… at the beach.”

As he spoke, he let his wings unfurl, acting all the while like this was still completely normal.

“I just don’t know how. Or why.”


“I’d be far more inclined to do that if you weren’t currently taking your clothes off….” Kate replied, the sarcasm practically dripping from her voice even if there was a part of her that was very serious with her words. She could already imagine someone setting the rumor mill wild if they happened to take notice that she had gone into Lucifer’s hotel room with him but, for the moment, she was just pleased he hadn’t decided to start stripping out on the sand.

She hadn’t seen his scars, there had never been a reason for Kate to see Lucifer without a shirt, but she knew that he had them because he had told her the same time when he had explained about burning his wings to cut himself off from his life as the overlord of hell.

“Huh,” Kate said, surprised when he turned to show her his bare back that the skin was smooth and taught. No rough patches of skin, no inflamed red areas like what covered so much of her own torso. He looked like what he was, a guy that had been made with the intention of being an Angel, with not a single blemish or mark.

She had an inkling of where this might be going, if only because of the casualness that Lucifer was working to convey. She understood the reasoning, he so often downplayed things to try and take his emotions out of the equation, but it was the effort that it was taking that had her waiting on the big reveal. He certainly hadn’t pulled her up here and stripped down to tell her he didn’t have scars anymore.

Even so, she still wasn’t prepared for the sight of white wings sprouting from his back and spreading into a graceful arc. Kate wasn’t at all the sort of person that often reacted dramatically, but the gasp of air that she let out once he had revealed his wings certainly qualified as such. “........oh, wow,” she said quietly, half tempted to reach out and touch them but managing to resist.


“Yes, so, that was unexpected,” Lucifer said, moving closer to Kate so that she could touch them if she liked. Yes, he could draw people’s desires from them, but he didn’t need to do that. Her reaction wasn’t uncommon as the divinity of the wings had that effect on people, as it had when that hypocrite religious artefacts dealer had them mounted like a trophy.

“And I really need to figure out why I have them, and how, but the best news is I’m no longer trapped in this version of the world for all eternity. I can leave whenever I want,” he added cheerfully. “Otherwise I might have been more upset by their reappearance.”


Since he offered, Kate lifted one hand up to brush over the feathers, not surprised to find that they were as soft as they looked. But it was more than just that, the sheer size of them and the brightness of the white shade almost made them glow.

But whatever continued awe she might have felt, it was snuffed out when Lucifer started talking. Much like being doused in a bucket of water, or the flame of a candle burning out, the mention of leaving was more than enough to snap the infatuation of seeing his wings and bring her back to reality. “I don’t think that’s true,” she said quickly, pressing her lips together. “You don’t know how to get out of this world, much less how to get back to yours.”

But Kate also knew Lucifer and that he was going to devote all of his time into trying to figure it out. And if he did? He would be gone, without hesitation.


“I don’t need to go back to my version of the world, and you’re right, I don’t know how to do that,” Lucifer said. “But at any point, I could return to hell. Or heaven, I suppose, but if there’s one place that I’d want to return to less than hell? It would be that.”

He smiled brightly at Kate, oblivious to what she was thinking, or the conclusion that she’d jumped to. “Isn’t that brilliant? Sort of like a get out of jail free card. I’m not trapped here anymore.” And that had been the single best piece of news he’d received from his new onslaught of memories.


“Yeah, well,” Kate said, reaching out to snag the shirt that Lucifer had taken off between two fingers. “I wouldn’t start bragging about it to everyone else, you aren’t the only person here that’s itching to leave. And it’ll just entice them to do something stupid and get themselves hurt.”

And that was without factoring in that there were people who were stuck here and would be upset when he ran off to do whatever the hell it was that Lucifer was so desperate to do. Not just her, either. Hawke, Mary, Tony…..there was an entire list of people. “Good for you Lucifer,” she replied, tossing him his shirt and getting to her feet. “I hope it all goes well.”


“What are you talking about?” Lucifer asked, staring at Kate, baffled by the sudden change in her tone. “You’re upset,” he mused. “Why are you upset?” And as quickly his wings had appeared, they were hidden again, and he was putting his shirt back on. “Kate?”

His voice reflected his confusion, and he didn’t want her leaving where he’d have to follow after her, but if he did have to follow after her it was probably preferable that he was wearing a shirt. So he was fumbling with fastening the buttons, hoping she’d explain herself now, without him chasing after her.


“I’m not upset,” she said, and that much was true. She wasn’t upset, she was pissed off. Lucifer wanting to leave wasn’t exactly a secret, but the disregard for the friends he had made and finding a place he had hated preferable to staying on Earth…...it made her angry more than anything. “I’m just saying that you shouldn’t start telling everyone about your wings, because it might encourage them to try and find a way to leave. They’re not immortal and it could hurt them.”

Brushing a piece of hair out of her face, Kate started to turn for the door but she paused for a moment, deciding that before she left it was best that she put one more thing out there. Even if Lucifer stuck around for a bit longer, she wasn’t sure that he would think to talk to everyone that he needed to explain himself to but at least one person stood out above the rest. “You should talk to Hawke about this…..”


“What are you talking about? Why the hell would people hurt themselves? They know they don’t have wings. And I planned on talking to Hawke but now I’m not so sure,” he mused. Not with the way Kate was reacting, at least. It certainly wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

“I thought you might actually be happy for me, so I’m not really sure why you’re giving me a lecture.” He frowned at her, still completely oblivious to the fact that she thought he was going to take off and leave in apparently a few days time. “I mean, I told you first because I don’t know what to think about any of this, and I thought…”

Shrugging, he supposed he didn’t know what he thought.


“It doesn’t have anything to do with wings, Lucifer.” Kate barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. “There are a dozen different things that someone could decide to do because they think if you can suddenly leave, so could they. The Harry Potter crew could try to apparate, someone else could try some other hairbrained magical spell, or stealing one of the ships and flying somewhere else. Even if it’s not going to get them home, it could get them somewhere else. That’s the damn point.”

Whatever restraint she had, it went out the window when he said he might not talk to Hawke. “Oh, that would be great, leave and don’t bother to tell the girl that you’re doing…..whatever it is you two are doing.” And she did roll her eyes at him then.

“But no, I’m not happy. You think you’re getting what you’ve wanted this whole time, going back to a place that you hated just because it gives you the illusion of freedom. And that’s good for you, but life isn’t always just about you. These decisions that you make? They don’t affect just you. You’ve got a life here, and you’ve not given a single thought to what it might do to other people if you up and leave.”

Quickly running a hand through her hair, Kate paused for a minute to decide how to address the rest of what he had said. “I’m giving you a lecture because you’re being an idiot. And if you leave without talking to Hawke? I’ll find your ass and put a bullet in it. But do what you want, Lucifer. You usually do anyway.”


As Kate talked about spells and stealing ships, Lucifer still wasn’t following. But when she mentioned Hawke and him leaving it finally clicked, and his eyes went wide, ready to interrupt her but then thought better of it, and instead remained silent, listening to her rant. If she wasn’t so bloody angry at him he’d have laughed, because she had it all wrong. He gave himself credit for having the restraint to keep from even smiling.

And then she was threatening him, and he couldn’t help it. “Well I would certainly hope you would, if I was that big of an ass,” he informed her, the corners of his mouth quirking up. “You think I’m going to just up and leave you? And Hawke? And everyone else? Kate… No. I’m not.”

He sat down on the bed, nodding at the spot next to him. “Sit back down?” he asked.


“No,” she corrected quickly, “I think you expect that you’re going to be able to come and go as you please, without any problems or consequences because that’s always how it’s gone. But this isn’t your universe and what you could do in your own isn’t what you might be able to do here and, even if it worked, who's to say that you don’t run off somewhere and just decide never to come back?”

Maybe Lucifer didn’t want to admit that was a possibility, but given how he disliked being on the Enterprise it was one that she felt shouldn’t be discounted.

Kate didn’t move a muscle at the invitation, crossing her arms as she stood by the door and narrowed her eyes at him. “Now is not the time to coddle me.”



“Yes, because I hadn’t once considered that these might be a one-way ticket,” Lucifer shot back, looking almost hurt as Kate laid into him. “Glad you have so little faith in me, Kate. Here I am, excited to know that I don’t have to outlive everyone I care about here, and you think I’m bailing. I mean, you can tell me not to coddle you, but I prefer to think that you actually care about me don’t want me to leave and that’s why you’re reacting the way you are, rather than the alternative.”

He shrugged, his defences going back up. “Never mind then. I’ll share my excitement with someone else. And ask someone else to help me figure out how the hell this happened.”


“How long do you think it’s going to take before you find something more interesting to do than sit around on the Enterprise if those things work?” Kate asked. She could have yelled it at him, but she didn’t. It wasn't a lack of passion in her belief, but rather the matter of factness about the situation that kept her voice in check but it wasn’t terribly hard to see that she was angry. It was in everything from the way she was standing to the way the muscle in her jaw was working back and forth and the glint of fury in her eyes that was almost encompassing enough to disguise the hurt. “You wouldn’t do it on purpose, Lucifer. You’re an idiot but you usually are not an ass. But eventually you’d go off somewhere, have a grand old time and just decide to hell with the Enterprise and all the rest of it. Why go somewhere boring when you can always be living and doing something exciting.”

“Outliving people is going to happen no matter where you are,” she snapped. “It sucks, and I’m sorry you have to go through it, but it’s going to happen, regardless of where you are.”

And then she rolled her eyes, striding across the room in four quick steps to smack him solidly upside the head. It wasn’t a punch, and it wasn’t close to his face, but the palm of her hand landing squarely on the back of his head. “Of course I care about you, you stupid jerk. Aside from Castle, you’re my best friend in this universe, but can you honestly tell me that you aren’t thinking of spreading those things and flying away with no intention of returning? Or that the time might come when you just don’t come back?”

Because friends or not, Kate didn’t think that was the case, and there probably wasn’t much Lucifer could say to change her mind.



“Feel better?” Lucifer asked, after Kate smacked him. He’d noted that she’d called him her best friend in this universe outside of her husband, and that was still resonating as he looked at her.

“One day you’re going to be so old you have no idea who you are and I’m going to come up to you and introduce myself as the devil and you’re going to be really upset that you’re somehow in hell. And I can’t mess with your mind like that if I disappear before that happens, so I don’t know what you’re so worried about.”

He leaned back as he watched her. “I’ll have an eternity to go from place to place the way you think I’m going to now. The difference is, now I don’t have to feel trapped anywhere and that makes any one place feel less threatening.”


“No,” she replied, using her thumb and forefinger to thump the outside shell of his ear. “It’s not useful when the person you're hitting doesn’t feel pain. It just makes it annoying.”

Kate’s scoff at the mention of hell wasn’t meant to be dismissive, but it probably came off that way though she really didn’t notice. “If I start losing my mind, someone just put me out of my misery,” she said, wrinkling up her nose. “I’ve seen what dementia does to a person, and I don’t want people that love me to have to sit and watch. Besides, the chances are much higher that I end up killed when some alien race boards the Enterprise and tries to murder us all, I’m the first one running towards the fight.”

It was a morbid thought, but Kate wasn’t a stranger to death. You really couldn’t be when you chose law enforcement as a career. She’d nearly been killed more times than she had fingers to count with and that meant she had spent a considerable amount of time deciding how she would like to die. In a fight while, hopefully, protecting others seemed inevitable, but she also wouldn’t mind peacefully in her sleep.

Regardless, she wanted it to be quick and for no one to have to sit by for weeks or months or years and wait for it to happen.

“But, for the record,” she added, shaking herself out of that line of thought, “I’m probably going to hell anyway, so if you screw with me before I die, I’ll just mess with you for the rest of time.”


“I’m glad you have that planned out,” Lucifer mentioned, looking at her in slight amusement. “But of course you would run toward the fight.” That was true of most of the people he found the most interesting, who would sacrifice themselves to save other people. Or who otherwise wanted to better humanity. Or perhaps who would shoot and kill the worst of what humanity had to offer without a second thought. It all worked toward the same goal.

Smirking at her he asked, “Are we good? I mean you’re threatening me with punishment for all eternity so I’m thinking we’ve patched things up.”


“I’m a cop,” Kate replied, shrugging her shoulders at him. “If we don’t go towards the fight, we probably aren’t doing our job.” And though she wasn’t still a cop in the technical sense, Kate took her duty on the Enterprise with as much seriousness as she had when she had strapped on a gun and a badge as part of the NYPD. It was simply who she was.

“For now.” It was a simple answer, and though she still wasn’t quite sure Lucifer wouldn’t leave with the intention of coming back and just fail to reappear, at least she had a reasonable expectation that he wasn’t meaning to do it when he flew off. “Give it a couple of days, I’m sure you’ll do something to piss me off again.”


“I’ll try my best,” Lucifer replied, grinning. “Not to. Though now I’m far less likely to want to show off what I can do now, and that’s no fun at all.”


This time when Kate narrowed her eyes at him, it wasn’t because she was angry but rather because she was sizing him up and trying to judge the level of bullshit he was attempting to feed her.

“Yeah, right,” she said after a moment. “Disapproval is like catnip to you. If you know someone doesn’t like it, you’ll do it anyway. You’ll do it more than you otherwise would, just to get on someone’s nerves.”

But it honestly wasn’t the wings that bothered her, it was all the stuff that went with them. But Kate supposed she would just have to get used to it since it didn’t seem like they were going anywhere.


“Brilliant,” Lucifer said, standing, and taking Kate’s hand so he could pull her toward the door and outside. He was grinning as he did so, reminiscent of the time Trixie had tugged at his hand to lead him somewhere. But he didn’t even care that he was acting like a child eager to show off a new toy. In some sense, that was exactly what he was, not that he would ever want to think of things that way.

“Look up there,” he said, dropping her hand and pointing toward a cliff. It was almost instantaneous how he disappeared from one place to appear another. Something he’d never shown off to a human before, as he’d had Maze cut off his wings upon arrival.

Then he returned to standing next to Kate, looking no less mortal than he had previously. “I mean, it is brilliant, right?” he asked her.


“That you can apparate?” Kate asked, pursing her lips to try and hide her grin. She was teasing Lucifer like she so often teased Castle, purposefully twisting basic sci-fi facts to rile her husband up or acting nonchalant just to further stoke his enthusiasm. “I mean, Dumbledore did it first, but it’s still pretty cool.”

And then she grinned, glancing up at the sky where a few birds were flying off the who knew where. “I guess you can go hang out with them if you want, huh?”


“If I want to hang out with someone who’s not going to dampen my enthusiasm sure,” Lucifer replied. “I ought to take you up to the cliff and then leave you to hike your way down,” he teased. But if he was taking anyone flying, it was going to be Hawke, first.

His expression grew more serious. “So, I’m not going anywhere. Alright? And I really do want your help figuring this out. I mean… You were a detective and all. Solving mysteries was sort of your job.”


“I married the most enthusiastic fanboy on the planet,” Kate said with a shake of her head, “Tampering his excitement, or just messing with it, is both fun and part of my job. No reason I can’t apply that experience and use all that knowledge on you.”

She hadn’t forgotten that part of the conversation from earlier, but as it had then, the idea of trying to hack away at the mystery of Lucifer’s returning wings left her a little uneasy. For one, Kate had made her career solving murders and while she was damn good at her job, be it in homicide or vice or any other division she’s worked her way through, she wasn’t so confident that she would be as successful with this case, least of all because it wasn’t a homicide.

There was no crime scene. No evidence other than the wings on Lucifer’s back and the memories in his head. There were no witnesses, no timeline to help establish the sequence of events and a witness that was as emotionally invested as it was possible to be which would make trying to untangle things all the more difficult.

She knew that from experience, both as an investigator and as a daughter who had lost her mother and been faced with trying to solve the case when it went cold. She had missed information because of her emotional attachment and it still ate at her.

Blowing out a long sigh, Kate shoved her hands into the pocket of her denim shorts. “I’m not going to tell you I can solve it,” she said after a moment, “You’ve been around cops, you know how this works well enough. The things that I would normally do for an investigation are impossible given the circumstances but I’ll do what I can.”

She didn’t have a clue what that would be, other than grabbing Castle and filling him in while she made a murder board to help her think.

Though it would obviously need a new name. It couldn’t be called a murder board without a murder to solve.

“And that’s why you’re the best,” Lucifer said. “For at least giving it a try.” He knew there was little chance that he could figure out who had knocked him out, or even how long he’d been in the desert before he’d come to. But he was also focused on the bigger question. Why?

At least he wouldn’t have to try and find that answer alone, even if they were even less likely to ever really learn that one.


“Like I told you before,” Kate replied with a quick shrug of her shoulders. “Friends back one another up. It took me 15 years to solve my mom’s case, so if it can be solved? We’ll get there eventually.”


“Another reason I hope you don’t think I’m going to just up and leave,” Lucifer pointed out. “Who’s going to back me up and how am I going to return the favor?” He shook his head. “Anyway, I should go find Hawke. I can’t imagine she enjoyed the fact that I was gone when she woke up this morning.”

Looking over at Kate, he smiled at her. “Thanks,” he said. “Even for smacking me upside the head.” If there was one thing he knew for certain, it was that Kate wasn’t afraid to give him her honest opinion. And that was something Lucifer greatly valued, even if it might frustrate him at the time.


Kate gave him a look that was very clearly an unspoken question as to why exactly he and Hawke were sharing a bed again, but she didn’t say anything about it. Some conversations could keep and that was one of them. Chances were by the time she and Lucifer got around to talking about it, something else would happen to shake up their pseudo-relationship.

“You needed to be smacked upside the head,” she replied, giving him a smile in return, “But you’re welcome.”


“I did, actually,” Lucifer said. “But not for the reasons you’re thinking of. That can wait until later, though.” Without warning he disappeared again. This time to reappear all of four doors down, where he knocked on the door, and flashed Kate another smile.

No, having his wings back wasn’t going to get old anytime soon.



Lucifer’s popping in and out reminded Kate of that scene from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix where the Weasley twins had taken to apparating every few feet and delighting in the noise and the chaos that it created. Lucifer was doing the exact same thing, albeit also for his own enjoyment, though he was far older than the 17 that the Weasley’s had been at that time in the series.

“Ridiculous,” Kate muttered as he flashed her a grin, giving him a roll of her eyes that would put some of the looks she had given to Castle and various criminals over the years to shame. But what Lucifer wouldn’t see as she turned away from him to walk back to her own room was the hint of a smile.

Even with remaining reservations, she could admit it was nice to see her friend happy but now it was time to shake that all off and focus on enjoying one of her last free nights on Earth. Who knew if she’d get the chance again?