To be fair, given what she’d just learned, that wasn’t the least bit surprising. Oh, she’d handled it well enough -- props to her for not freaking out and having her brain melted -- but the knowledge that angels, demons, heaven and hell were all very, very real (and, in one case, making himself quite at home in the apartment) did not lend itself toward getting much rest, not when Ella wanted to pace and talk and maybe cry a little. Really, it could have been any of the above.
After tossing and turning for nearly an hour, she finally sighed, throwing back the covers and creeping from her room. Chloe’s door was easy enough to find, even in the dark, and after only a moment of indecision, she tapped lightly on the frame, then eased the door open. “Chloe? You awake?” Probably not.
By this point it had been weeks since Chloe had discovered the truth about Lucifer. Or rather, proof that he’d been telling the truth the entire time. First it had been his wings, then it was his Devil face, something that she was -- to a point -- proud of herself for handling the way she did. It at least seemed like she’d taken to it better than she had the first time, in his timeline.
So after going to her room in the apartment, wanting to spend some time working on a couple of things, she went to bed completely unaware of the conversation that had happened between the two of them. But part of her chosen career meant not sleeping very heavily, so it didn’t take more than the knock to the doorframe for her to wake up with a bit of a deep breath and a yawn.
“Hmm?” she asked, rolling over enough to look at the door, seeing Ella there in the dark. “Hey, yeah… no, I’m… what’s up?”
Catching sight of her friend clearly half-asleep was enough to send a stab of guilt through Ella. Right. Middle of the night. “I… Nothing. It’s nothing, nevermind, go back to sleep,” she was quick to say, ducking her head and intending to make a quick exit, all the while kicking herself for not checking the clock before she went to bother Chloe with her insanity.
That was the trouble, though: she wasn’t crazy. She just needed someone else to tell her that.
“No, no, hey, come back.” Chloe shifted and pushed herself up to sit, reaching over to the bedside table to click the lamp on that was there. She squinted a bit in the light, letting her eyes adjust before waving the other woman in. She rubbed at them then briefly before running a hand through her blond hair. “What’s going on, El?”
“Are you sure?” The guilty look was written across Ella’s face, plain as day, but after a moment of hesitation, she swallowed and nodded and slipped through the doorway, closing the door quietly behind her.
But what was she supposed to say? Your boyfriend is the actual, honest-to-Hell Devil? Nah, that didn’t fit. For several long beats, Ella didn’t seem to know what to say, turning the various options over before she finally settled on a quiet, “He’s not a method actor.” That worked, right?
She nodded a bit and pulled her legs up so Ella could sit on the bed by her. “Yeah, I’m sure, c’mon.” Her feet tucked up under her legs and she folded her hands, letting them rest on top of the comforter that still covered her lower half.
There was confusion etched on Chloe’s face at the look on Ella’s, trying to read it, but finding it difficult with the sleep fog still there. But then she said that and though it took her a moment, her eyes went wider and she gave a knowing sort of look. “Oh… right, yeah. Um.” Her nose scrunched up momentarily. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know!” The words came out hushed, Ella mindful of keeping her voice down, as she padded further into the room so that she could drop down onto the edge of the bed. “I thought I was, but that was before, and now I can’t shut my mind off and everything just got so, so much more complicated and I don’t know what to do with any of it.”
The science portion of her brain supplied that it might be a touch of shock -- which wouldn’t have been surprising, all things considered. The question was how to get past that before she said or did something to hurt Lucifer.
Right. She squeezed her eyes shut to try and remove any sleep that had built up before shaking off the brain fog. “I know it’s a lot.” And she did -- truly. It had taken her a few days to process the wings, but luckily that had braced her enough for the next part that the shock had been no where near as intense as she’d thought it might’ve been.
“What happened exactly?”
“‘A lot’ is way over there,” Ella said, gesturing with both hands, “I think we’re in the neighborhood of a metric fuckton with an elephant on top.” It was ridiculous, but that just went with the ridiculousness of the evening. Her hands dropped into her lap, fingers twisting together before she settled on picking at her nails.
“We were just talking. He was talking about his family and I said he could tell me anything and suddenly… wings.” In fairness to Lucifer, it hadn’t been quite that direct, but Ella had managed to gloss over all the insignificant details between. “I feel like I’m going crazy. Am I going crazy, Chloe?”
Oh God, he might’ve broken Ella’s brain just a little and she reached over to where the other woman was sitting to grab one of her hands, squeezing it. “Breathe.” Because she was going to talk herself into a breakdown if she didn’t try some sort of calming technique. “You’re not crazy.”
Chloe shook her head then a bit and gave her a gentle smile. “I promise. I know. He and I… had a real long talk when I first got here and he ended up showing me then. Though, I guess my understanding is that I already knew back home? At least in his timeline… which is still weird to say.” She rolled her eyes a bit and proceeded to prop her head up on her hand, elbow digging into her own leg as she looked at her friend. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you a head’s up. I offered, but we weren’t sure it would be a good idea.”
She closed her eyes, taking several slow, deep breaths: in through her nose, out through her mouth, until she felt at least marginally calmer. Her hand twisted under Chloe’s, squeezing it tightly in return.
“I just… an hour ago, I was fine. ‘Oh, Lucifer’s the devil, n-b-d.’ So why am I freaking out now?” That was what she didn’t fully understand -- how the big reveal had surprised and awed her, but now, left to her own thoughts for too long, nagging doubt had set in and made her wonder about the larger implications of… well, everything.
“You’re freaking out now because the shock of it has worn off.” That was about as accurate of an answer she could think to give, anyway. “Like… it’s a lot to process. I had to keep reminding myself he’s been saying from day one who he is, just… actually seeing the proof is…” Her voice trailed a bit and she let out a quiet sigh, looking away for a moment before looking back to Ella. “What about it exactly has you all riled up like this?”
“It’s not him. Like, I’m fine with Lucifer.” That much, at least, was true. She kept waiting to feel some sense of panic at exactly who and what he was, but it hadn’t come yet; he was still just her annoyingly sexy, kind of childish, perpetually peacockish friend, and finding out that he was actually about a bajillion years old hadn’t changed that. “It’s everything else, okay. It’s… I always thought there was more out there, but finding that out for real is… it’s…” She trailed off, unable to put into words just how small and insignificant it made her feel -- at least, not without sounding stupid. The entire context of the universe had expanded a million times over and Ella just plain wasn’t sure what to do with that.
She could only imagine how it made Ella feel, the one between the two of them who actually had a relationship with faith and held beliefs. Or held them at one point, at least. “It’s weird, right?” Honestly, that was an understatement. “Apparently it’s why I ran off to Europe for a month after everything with Pierce. Not that I have any memory of doing that, but y’know.” Chloe sighed a little then and scooched closer to her friend, wrapping her arms around her in a hug, resting her cheek against her shoulder.
“The more I think about it, the more I’m like… if we only knew, right? Humans always want angels to walk among us, but then when we find out they actually do... it’s like that fourth wall between us and everything else just completely shatters.”
“Suddenly, so much is explained. Like why Lucifer always looked like someone had kicked his puppy while you were gone,” Ella said, happy to sink into the hug. Hugs may not have been a magic cure-all, but damned if the world didn’t seem a bit more even-keeled after; her friends certainly knew her well.
“That’s it! That’s exactly it. I mean, I believe, but I believe in… you know, concepts. Abstract. It’d be like finding out we’re actually in those alien marbles in Men in Black. The whole universe just feels so much… bigger,” she tried to explain, not sure she was explaining it well at all. The divine wasn’t supposed to be something a person could reach out and touch, it just wasn’t, and finding out that some of her favorite people served a higher power in a very literal sense… well, it might have just been too much to process in one evening.
The idea of Lucifer looking like someone had kicked his puppy both amused her and made her desperately curious to know exactly how he’d handled that. She’d only heard his side of things and of course, she was certain bits had been omitted, even if she knew what he’d said was the truth. “He did?” she asked after a moment, trying to picture it, before shaking her head a little.
“The universe has always felt big to me, but I think I get what you’re saying. It’s just…” A lot. Chloe paused before she said that again and closed her eyes for a moment, still side-hugging Ella. “We’re still who they choose to spend time with though, you know? Out of all of us. Kind of makes things feel a little less mind-blowy?”
“Yeah, it was… weird. Really weird. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look like that,” Ella said slowly. He’d been distant, showing up at crime scenes only to be disappointed and leave when Chloe hadn’t been there. At first, she’d thought they’d just gotten into a fight, but that hadn’t explained it, not fully.
“It might make it more mind-blowy,” she said with a soft, disbelieving laugh as she tucked a little tighter into her friend’s side. “I mean… why us? I’m not anybody special. I’m just… me.” Which, in turn, made her wonder why celestial beings would show any interest in her -- and not just one, but two, apparently. Talk about a mind-trip.
She shrugged a little then, but continued to hold onto Ella as she thought, contemplating on the question her friend asked. “I mean, I dunno why us? But you are special, I hope you know that.” Even if neither of them were necessarily special by celestial standards, there had to be something that drew Lucifer, et al to them, right? She smiled a little and then let out a quiet laugh, saying nothing for a moment before, “his wings are gorgeous though, right?”
“I’m really not.” It wasn’t self-depreciating or fishing for a compliment; it was that Ella truly didn’t see anything remarkable about herself. She just was who she was: someone who tried to be a good person and bring happiness and positivity wherever she went, but that wasn’t really anything special. At least, not in her mind.
The question had her raising her head, nodding. “I thought for sure that wings on a person would just look weird, but nope. It suits him.” And, if she were being completely honest, made her wish she could have a set of her own.
That made her roll her eyes a little. She knew Ella didn’t mean it in a bad way, but there was a part of her that just wanted to jokingly give the other woman a small shake and tell her to just take the compliment -- even if it was more like fact than anything else. Because Ella was very special to a few different people, herself included.
“Before you joined the department, there was a case where someone had been murdered over a missing cargo crate… which turned out to be Lucifer’s. His wings had been stolen?” Which she was a bit confused about, honestly. She remembered the scars on his back, but the wings hadn’t definitely been attached when she saw them in person. “I don’t know how to explain that, but some guy who liked to sell ‘religious’ things had what we thought was them and I remember seeing them and just having my breath taken away. Of course, those turned out to be fake, so I don’t know how he got them back or… uh, attached. Not sure I want to ask, honestly.”
Lucifer had said something similar about getting his wings back. At the time, Ella hadn’t poked too hard at the thought, but now that Chloe brought it up again, it made the mental tumblers start spinning; the realization they eventually landed on (that someone had likely amputated the wings, because unless angels were that far removed from humanity, body parts didn’t just detach at random) made her heart ache.
“I’m going with ‘it’s magic’ because the other option is… Yikes.” Ella couldn’t fully repress the shudder as her mind wandered into terrible places full of science experiments and what the truly insane among the devout might do if ever faced with a flesh and blood angel. No, Ella did not want to know the actual story behind that.
“I think putting it under that umbrella is probably the best option,” she agreed, laughing a bit before giving her one more squeeze and then loosening her hold so she could look at Ella better. “So, for whatever it’s worth, I think you’re handling this whole revelation pretty well?” Not that she was going to ask if Lucifer had shown her his face -- she assumed he hadn’t, considering how nervous he’d been to show her it.
“How’s your brain feeling about it? You can crash here with me tonight if you want to talk about it some more or don’t really want to be alone right now.”
“I don’t feel like I’m handling it well. My brain feels like it wants to come out of my ears right now,” Ella said, even as she sank further against Chloe -- nope, her friend wasn’t escaping that quick. But, really, she wasn’t handling it as poorly as she could have been: she was still functional, not losing herself to terror or awe. It could have been far worse.
“I think… I think I might take you up on that. Just for tonight,” she answered after a moment of consideration. She doubted she was going to get much sleep, but just the presence of another friendly face would likely be helpful.
“Good.” And that was all Chloe said in response to her friend agreeing to stay with her for the night. She knew she had tossed and turned quite a lot the first night when Lucifer had shown her his wings - of course, that had also been her first night in Night Vale. Poor timing, maybe.
She pressed a quick kiss to Ella’s hair and laughed a bit, nudging her. “C’mon. It’ll be like we’re teenagers again, having a sleepover. Not that I really had many of those at all when I was a kid, but eh.” She shrugged a bit and then moved to scooch over in the bed so Ella would have room to lay down if she wanted. Even if the bedroom itself wasn’t huge, at least it was big enough for a decent sized bed.
Laying back down, Chloe fluffed up one of the pillows under her head a bit more as she talked. “Your brain is probably going to be in ‘what the hell’ mode for a little while, but it’s worth it to try and get some rest.”