InsaneJournal

"You're looking better," Lucifer said to Kate as he sat down opposite where she had herself propped up on the couch. "Not at all like a sociopathic queen who would use her last remaining child's death to her own political advantage." He had threatened to compare her to Cersei, after all, he had better take that back.

He flashed Kate a grin and then asked, "So how are you feeling? Better, I hope?"

“If I’m going to be anyone, it’s probably going to be Arya,” Kate replied, aware that she had said something similar to Lucifer via the PADD. There was also a strong argument she could have made for Ygritte, which Kate would probably prefer given that Arya’s obsession with murdering those who had harmed her or her family was at times hard to watch, or maybe even Daenerys but she left it at that. Teasing Lucifer about essentially calling her a sociopath with his choice of Cersei as a character she might relate to wasn’t really worth the energy it would take.

“Sore,” she said with a sigh, “They were able to reset the bones easily enough in the med bay, but it takes time for them to heal, even here. Castle made me laugh the other night and I thought I was going to pass out from the pain afterward, but I can tell I’m getting better. It’s duller when things hurt, I’m not sleeping as much...that sort of stuff.”

Lucifer would have said Ygritte, because he imagined Kate would be scary to anyone who crossed her, but instead he listened as Kate described how she was feeling. "Yeah, you fell asleep the other night as I was telling you that I've all but called things off with Hawke." Whatever things were. And by all but called things off he meant he'd simply been avoiding her. And maybe she'd been avoiding him as well. He wasn't entirely sure.

"And I had to spend a night in the brig without you there to drop by and keep me company," he mentioned. "You haven't missed much."

Oh, she had definitely been out of it because Kate knew she wouldn’t have forgotten that particular piece of news. She remembered Lucifer paying her a visit and the two of them talking about how she had been injured, but anything that had come after it was simply non-existent in her mind. But at the news Kate raised an eyebrow, her mind immediately going to work to try and figure out what he wasn’t telling her in that particular sentence. Lucifer was a pretty good friend in all the ways that mattered but he did have a habit of withholding information that might force a deeper conversation.
“Okay,” she said after a moment, a line forming between her eyebrows as they drew together in thought. “Why did you end it?” Kate didn’t know if he’d tell her why, but it was worth a shot.

"I don't know," Lucifer replied. "I mean, I haven't said anything to her about it, or about anything, really. I just don't believe that the domesticated lifestyle fits this particular devil," he added, his voice almost chipper. "Anyway, it's not like we could officially end something that wasn't officially a thing to begin with, right?"

That was the truth, even if he did his best to make it seem insignificant. He'd felt ill at ease until he'd made the decision to pull away from the one thing he had even slightly resembling a relationship.

“So let me get this straight,” Kate replied, her lips pressed together in a thin line while she wrestled with her annoyance at the dismissive way that Lucifer seemed to be handling this. “You decided that a relationship, or even something resembling one, wasn’t for you. Rather than explain that to the girl that you’ve been, if not dating, regularly having sex with and spending time with, you’ve simply stopped talking to her in the hope that she’ll get the message and leave you alone.”

Rolling her eyes at him, Kate reached out to grab one of the throw pillows on the sofa and, in one smooth motion, hurled it across the room so that it smacked Lucifer square in the face. “You’re such a jackass. That’s a horrible thing to do to someone!”

"Well she hasn't bothered to talk to me either," Lucifer pointed out, sounding as childish as he was being. "And be careful, will you? Don't injure yourself just because you're annoyed at me. That's not going to do your recovery any favours."

Frowning, he turned the pillow over, looking at it. He could have caught it before it hit him, but given that Kate had risked further injury to throw it at him, he'd at least given her that satisfaction of letting it strike the intended target; himself.

"Before I was knocked out, and somehow ended up in the desert with my wings, I'd called the detective to reveal the truth about myself to her," he mentioned idly. It was odd, the memory of a life he both had and hadn't lived.

Kate wasn’t going to deny that it had hurt. As soon as she had thrown the pillow at him, the sharp twinge of pain served as a reminder that she wasn’t back to full health just yet. Still, she didn’t regret it because Lucifer needed a knock on the head given the situation. “Doesn’t matter,” she replied quickly, shaking her head at him even as she placed one hand over her ribs and tried to breathe through the pain. “That’s the excuse you are telling yourself so that it seems okay. She probably isn’t talking to you because you aren’t talking to her, not because she doesn’t care.”

“Regardless,” Kate continued, her voice losing the tightness it had held now that her ribs weren’t blazing a line of fire up and down her side. “She deserves to know that you’ve decided to move on. This isn’t like Mary and a one time thing, you two had….something going on and that deserves a proper resolution. Not you just shrugging your shoulders and walking away like a jerk.”

Kate could remember a time when Castle had done that to her, angry about something he had overheard her say and pulling away from their partnership and, even worse, becoming cold and distant. He had promised to wait for her to be ready for a relationship, and she had been desperately trying to work through her lingering problems and PTSD for her shooting to better herself, but then left her hanging, bringing around flight attendants he had met in Las Vegas and repeatedly breaking her heart while refusing to tell her what had changed. “I’ve had that happen to me when someone just pulled away and didn’t ever explain what had changed, it’s horrible and you can’t do that to her. If you are finished then you tell her that.”

Sighing at him, Kate reached up to brush a piece of hair behind her ear. “Does that have anything to do with ending things with Hawke?” Lucifer’s situation with Chloe Decker was complicated to say the least, and it wouldn’t be so strange to know that something had happened in his dreams to give him second thoughts about continuing things with Hawke if Chloe was still in the mix.

"It's more like I was feeling trapped in more ways than one," Lucifer said. And then I got one form of freedom back and I wanted it all back. It seems even semi-committed relationships are too much for me." It sounded shallow and it was, but Lucifer wasn't holding back from the truth. Not when Beckett was forcing him to face it.

"How do you tell someone that?" he asked. He wasn't actively seeking to be a jerk, but it was certainly easier than confronting the actual issue. Or Hawke.

"I should have stuck to not sleeping with anyone on the ship," he mused, but it was partially his desire to sleep with more people on the ship that had been a contributing factor in his decision. "Maybe I'll just go back to Hawaii," he teased, remembering how quickly Kate had been willing to jump to the conclusion that he'd just run off.

“With empathy,” Kate replied. “Just because you have decided that you want to call things off, it doesn’t mean that Hawke wants that or feels trapped, and you need to respect that.”

For the second time in their conversation, she rolled her eyes, following it up with a shake of her head. “You and I both know you wouldn’t have pulled that off,” she said quickly, “And I don’t think it’s the ship or the people on it that are really the issue here.” Even if Lucifer was telling her that he felt trapped, Kate wasn’t convinced that was the whole story though she was willing to bet that Lucifer had yet to realize what the rest of his reasoning exactly was. He was usually so resistant to delving deeper into whatever was really going on underneath the surface.

“Oh, go right ahead,” she said, gesturing towards the window that had nothing outside of it but endless black dotted with stars. “You’ll suffocate in less than a minute. You might be immortal but Hawaii is a long way away. I’d bet that deep space wins and Bones ends up hovering over you in the med bay rather than you frolicing on Waikiki Beach.”

"Yeah, that's not how it works at all," Lucifer mentioned, replying to the point she was making about him flying into space, avoiding talk of empathy. He was the devil, empathy wasn't going to be his strong point. It wasn't even a weak point. Empathy was barely a point of consideration at all.

"But you're right, I should talk to her. I would just rather do literally anything else than talk to her about this. Can't you talk to her?"

He asked that question hopefully, even if he already doubted that she'd go for it.

“How do you know?” Kate questioned with a raise of one eyebrow. “Have you made it a habit of flying around in deep space before now?”

The answer to his question was the simple shake of her head, because in no situation was Kate going to take the heat off of Lucifer by doing his dirty work for him. “No. There’s this thing called adulthood that requires you to man up and take care of it yourself. Otherwise you’re going to ruin a friendship in addition to whatever this is that you are breaking off.”

"I"m willing to take the chance, having traveled between Hell and earth for eons," Lucifer pointed out. "Want me to prove that to you? I can bring you back souvenir if you'd like." There was an unexpected edge to his voice, as he didn't appreciate being questioned about something Beckett knew nothing about. Or maybe he was already feeling defensive about the entire Hawke situation.

Either way, his mood had shifted, and he changed the subject abruptly, "So what have you been doing to entertain yourself while you've been stuck here?" That attempt at deflection wasn't subtle in the slightest.

“No,” she said, and if Lucifer’s voice carried an edge, Kate’s was brittle and cold. “I’d much rather that you figured out why you’re so eager to leave in the first place.” She already knew that he would likely tell her that he was bored, that living a life on the Enterprise just wasn’t as exciting or interesting as what Lucifer wanted for himself.

Kate tended to think that was just a line he used, though it was likely Lucifer believed it to be true, but even if it was, she thought it was the most superficial reason in a whole host of other options; the first among them being fear of attachment given his immortality and the fact that no one else in his life shared that trait.

Reaching back to readjust the pillow that she had been using to keep her busted ribs away from the hard edge of the sofa’s armrest, Kate released a sigh. While it might have passed as one given because her new position against the pillow had eased some of the pain, it was really one of frustration that Lucifer was again sticking to his pattern and avoiding talking about something that mattered. “Sleeping and reading,” she said, shrugging one shoulder. “Not much else to do when you can’t leave your room and there’s no television.”

"I don't want to leave, I just want things to be less complicated," Lucifer said, ignoring any fault he had in complicating manners to begin with. He was looking for a magical answer that would put things back as they were without as little work and mess as possible. Even if he was painfully aware of the fact that no such resolution existed.

"So read anything good? Tackling Game of Thrones, maybe? Wait, did he ever finish the series??" Lucifer asked, curious.

He was quite ready to not be talking about himself or the mess he'd made of things, and would rather focus on Kate or lighter topics. Even if he'd brought Hawke up originally, which probably was unnecessary, wasn't it? He could avoid everything altogether if he just never mentioned it.

“Hate to break it to you, but life is complicated,” Kate said, shooting him a stern glance. “You get to know people, you make friends, you have relationships and one night stands and various other connections. That makes life complicated, but it’s also what makes it worth doing.” While she didn’t know he just wanted a magical solution to rewind the clock, Kate did at least understand that Lucifer just didn’t want lasting romantic attachments.

“All I’m saying is that you keep talking about leaving,” she continued, deciding not to take the bait he offered in changing the subject just yet. “Since you’ve gotten your wings back…...they’re becoming a crutch of shorts. Things get difficult? Well, you can always pop off to Hawaii for a few days to avoid the problem. You get bored? Why not just go off to Rome for a week, or maybe stay gone for two or three so you don’t have to spend the day in a routine. As happy as you are to have them back, and I’m happy that you’ve gotten them back, I think it’s too easy for you to use them as a way to avoid anything that upsets you or bores you and it’s…...I think running from the life you’ve made is a mistake. I know right now it’s a joke, you don’t think you’ll actually do it, but what if the day comes that you do? Because once you’ve done it once, it’ll be that much easier to do it again.”

For just a moment, Kate didn’t say anything else, wanting to give Lucifer a minute to process everything she had just unloaded on him. But with that out of the way, she gave a shake of her head. “No, I’ve never read any of the books in that series,” she replied, “They’re too long and intricately plotted for one, and I had the sort of job where I might start a book one morning and it’d be two or three months before I could ever pick it up again so it was better to choose things that were a bit simpler in plot.” Or, you know, detective fiction because she had no trouble keeping up with those twists and turns since they mirrored her day to day life so much. “As of May 2016, he hadn’t finished it and, in fact, was pretty far behind in writing the next one so who knows.”

Shrugging a shoulder at him, Kate lightly tapped the glass front of her PADD where it rested on her lap, lighting up the screen and passing it across the sofa to him. “I’ve been going a bit old school. Re-reading some of the classics that I haven’t touched in decades or not at all in a couple of cases.” On the screen in front of Lucifer was the title page for one such classic, Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, “I hadn’t read that one since I was probably 12 or 13, but it holds up really well even now.” Though she was sure people who lived in this time period thought Alcott’s description of Civil War-era Concord quaint and boring, but it still captured Kate’s attention as it had when she was a pre-teen.

"You're right," Lucifer admitted. She usually was. "I mean, there's a reason I had Maze cut them off in the first place. And then when I realized I still hadn't cut ties fully, I burned them." But now he had his wings back and he wasn't keen on giving them up again.

Sighing, he fell silent for a moment. There was another issue as well, and that was the question of what this meant when it came to his father. How else could he have had something so powerful returned to him? And then other questions arose from the memories he'd gained along with his wings. Who had knocked him out? How long had he been out? What had Chloe thought when he said he was on his way over, and then never showed up?

Life was complicated, and it had grown increasingly so ever since he'd abandoned hell. So he was again grateful for the change of topic. "Little Women, huh? Never read it."

“I spent a long time pushing away anything significant in my life because I was scared of being hurt,” Kate said, “When my mom died, it was the worst thing I’d ever experienced and I couldn’t stand the thought of going through that kind of grief again. It was safer, definitely, but it was also lonely,” she shrugged at that, folding her hands together and resting them on her lap. “But I didn’t mind that so much because I let work replace everything else that I could have had.”

“And then I met Castle and, a few years later, the life I had been living just wasn’t enough. I wanted more. I wanted something better and, in making that decision, I’ve put myself in the position for some real pain if something were to happen to him….” At home, she’d already gone through that sort of worry and depression and hate and everything else she could possible put a name to. “But I wouldn’t trade it. And I hope that one day, you’ll get to that point and it won’t just be about running or avoiding, but living, even with wings that let you go wherever and do whatever.”

Having said all she meant to say about it, Kate gestured to the PADD in his hands. “I don’t know if it's the sort of story you’d really enjoy,” she said. “It’s about the March family, set in the Civil War era in Concord, Massachusetts. They are poor, not destitute, but poor and the four sisters in the family deal with that in various ways while their father is away fighting for the Union army. It’s really just a book about their lives and growing up together, with all sorts of commentary on family, social standards at the time and the place of a woman in that society. That sort of thing.”

"The place of a woman in society? No it would probably just make me angry that it took so long for women to be recognized as equals. They sure beat the apple story to death when they blamed Eve for the fall of man," he mentioned, addressing the book first.

But the rest of what Kate said wasn't entirely unfamiliar. "Yes, well, maybe that will happen. Someday. I don't know that I can handle normal, though."

Normal, as in day to day life where nothing happened and everything was all but predictable. "Anyway, enough about that, yeah?" He was ready to drop the subject entirely, even if that meant leaving. "What exactly happened that got you laid up in here?"

He'd heard part of the story, but not all of it.

At that, she gave a snort, “You’re assuming that we still are,” Kate replied. “I know it’s certainly better than it was even in my time, but there are plenty of men around here who think that women have no business doing what they do and being interested in the things that they are.”

“Jo March wanted to be a writer, a dominantly male profession at the time. To be a writer, she had to use a penname and all of that and was frequently looked down on and even mocked for her desire. So, yeah, it’s partially about the place of a woman in society. One that, at the time, thought women were only good for marriage, bearing children, and maybe being a teacher or a nurse until they found a suitable husband.”

“Not much to tell really,” she said, “Flash Thompson had something go wrong when he was taking a shower, it caused him to morph into what I’ve since learned he called the Venom Flash. Security measures when a threat happens involve neutralizing the threat and protecting everyone on the ship, so we responded with the idea of cornering him somewhere and trying to eliminate any more damage to the ship or keep him from attacking anyone.”

“I guess Venom Flash sensed the threat, and he lashed out to protect himself. The trouble with that is I was the only person there without superpowers or supernatural abilities, so while everyone else could get out of the way or defend themselves, I got thrown into a wall and broke a whole bunch of stuff in the process.” And still, Kate shrugged it off. “Still not the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.”

"Sometimes I miss being back at home where no one believed I was the devil because it wasn't quite as strange as this place," Lucifer mentioned. "But I'm really glad you're alright, Kate. Even if you are always lecturing me on how to not be a complete douche and think I need to be more human, I couldn't handle anything happening to you."

Of course, he couldn't handle anything happening to Hawke either, which was part of the problem. He had happened to Hawke and part of him hoped that the fact that she hadn't contacted him meant it wasn't as big of a deal as he thought it was.

"Oh, and there are plenty of idiots on this ship. Including some with outdated ideas about women or overinflated egos about themselves. I try to just ignore them." He could think of that one idiot who had gone off on something Lucifer had no idea about and had not cared to even read fully.
Though since getting his wings back, Lucifer's tolerance for others had increased exponentially. That was another positive, he supposed.

Kate was just happy that it hadn’t been worse. She could have ended up with far more serious injuries, and it wasn’t even out of the realm of possibility that she could have been killed but she didn’t really like to think about that part. The important thing was that she wasn’t and the most challenge part was going to staying off her feet to allow the work of the medical staff to complete itself and get her back to normal. “I’m glad too,” she said with a sigh. “I’m lucky it wasn’t worse.” Other people might take the situation as a sign that finding something else to do was the better option, but Kate just wanted to dig her heels in that much more.

Rolling her eyes at him, she again adjusted her position on the sofa, gritting her teeth as the movement jostled her ribs a bit. “Easy way to fix that,” she told him. “Don’t do douchey things that require me to lecture you.” Though it really wasn’t about making Lucifer more human so much as getting him to understand that humans worked in certain ways and if he was going to insert himself into their lives, he needed to accept that.

“Oh, they’re still out there,” she agreed. “Maybe in a minority now compared to 2016, but still here. I work with some of them.” And with a shrug her shoulders, she left it at that.

"Yeah, you are. But if I know you, you're going to keep going with it." He wasn't complaining. The fact that Beckett found something on the ship that she enjoyed was hardly a sticking point for Lucifer. "Just be careful. As much as you can be with the people we're surrounded with."

He grinned. "I make no promises there. I'll try though." And even when he was an ass, he at least eventually tried to fix it. That had to count for something.

Kate could have denied it, but that would have been a lie, so instead she just gave one of those noncommittal little bobs of her head. “For the most part, yes,” she agreed, “I do think I’m going to have to change my approach in some of these situations, given the disadvantage I have to some of the others on the security team but I’m never going to be the person that just runs away from a threat. It’s just not who I am.”

“Yeah, I know. For the most part, once you realize you screwed it up, you do try to fix it. Even if it does sometimes require someone yelling at you to get you to figure out where it went wrong.”

"Not much is actually going to be a threat to me so it sounds like a bit of a cop out if I say I'm not typically the type to run," Lucifer replied. But he wasn't, though he often tried to manipulate tricky situations to his advantage.

"Only sometimes?" Lucifer asked, teasingly before his expression grew more serious. "I should go. I need to figure out how to talk to Hawke and I think that requires a trip to the gym. I'll punch the bag for you a couple times," he offered.

“Punch it, kick the hell out of it. Whichever,” Kate replied with a grin. “I’ll eventually get back in there myself.” Though she really had no idea when that would be, which was pretty depressing.

“But yes, go ahead,” she said, gesturing towards the door. “You and Hawke absolutely need to talk, and the sooner the better.”

"Well if I break it now, I can blame you," Lucifer said, grinning. "I'll let you know how things go with Hawke."

He paused in the doorway. "Rest up properly before you go saving us all from certain doom again, alright? And next time I'll bring scotch." He didn't wait for a reply, not giving her a chance to argue. It really was time for a trip to the gym.