Lucifer: Taken

Part IV

*Lucifer's POV*

When Lucifer finally opened his eyes again, it was to a white ceiling. He looked around slowly, realizing that he was in a hospital. He blinked a few times, clearing his vision, and moved his hand to touch his face, and then his chest, where even his fingers gliding gently over his skin brought him pain. He quietly sucked in a breath through his teeth, grimacing as he pulled his hospital gown aside.
Lucifer was really quite taken aback by his own state of being. How had this happened? How was it even possible that he, Lord of Hell, was laying in a hospital bed, body bruised and broken? He raised his other hand to help pull back the dressings on his torso, and only then did he see it.
The IV was sticking into his arm, and the sight of it sent Lucifer's heart into overdrive as everything came back. He grabbed at the tape and tegaderm covering, trying to peel it off with trembling fingers as his heart rate skyrocketed toward 200. He would absolutely not be made vulnerable by drugs that he didn't even like. He would never again allow himself to be put in such a position as Uriel had put him in.
"What are—Lucifer, stop. Stop! It's okay!" Smaller hands covered his, applying a bit of force to stop Lucifer from removing the IV from his arm. His wild eyes met the detective's worried ones, and he paused what he was doing for a few moments to look at her.
"Detective," he greeted her pleasantly, as if he hadn't just been trying to rip an IV out of his arm. "I didn't expect you to be here."
"She's been here just as long as you, pal." This voice came from the other side of the room, and Lucifer's head snapped to his left side to look. Dan stood in front of a chair, looking as if he were about to intervene if things got any more escalated. Lucifer turned his attention back to Chloe, giving her a puzzled look.
"I came in with you," she offered, squeezing the hand that she was still holding. Lucifer allowed her to drop his hand when she was done, still staring at her.
"Tell me what happened," he said, though it was more of a question than a demand. Chloe sighed, sitting back down in her chair.
"You disappeared out of nowhere. I came looking for you at Lux when I didn't hear back from you all day, and by the time we found you, you were in pretty rough shape. We called an ambulance, they brought you here, and we've been waiting for you to wake up for about fourteen hours." Chloe didn't meet his eyes for any of this conversation, and Lucifer's brow furrowed. After about a minute of silence, Chloe spoke up.
"Lucifer?" she said tentatively. He sighed and looked at her, then at Dan.
"I'd like the full story, if you don't mind. Leave out no gory details," he chuckled, then grimaced at the pain in his chest. Chloe and Dan's eyes met, and Lucifer could feel the hesitation in the room.
"Come on, Detective. I don't have all day," he jested, earning an eye roll from Dan.
"You've got a while, buddy. I'm going to get some coffee." He stood and left, Lucifer calling after him as he went.
"I'll take a whiskey while you're at it, Daniel!" He looked back to Chloe, and his smile faded at the look on her face. And he thought he'd been the one held against his will and tortured. "Detective?" he prompted more gently. "Are you alright?" Chloe met his eyes, shoulders tense, then sighed and looked down at her hands.
"We were working on the case with those three tor-" she stumbled over her words, glanced at Lucifer, and tried again. "-torture victims for about a week and a half, then you disappeared. I got a lead, and called you around 8:30 in the morning on Wednesday. You didn't answer a couple of my calls, so I took Dan to check it out. I called a couple more times throughout the day, but didn't hear back, so I went to Lux to check on you. When you weren't there and Maze didn't know anything, I got worried. I let it go until the morning, but I still hadn't heard from you, so I worked with Dan again on the case. We found a lead that suggested you might be involved, and we ran with it.
It took us almost another two days before we figured out where you were being kept. We brought the team in, and found you in that . . . meat freezer, chained up to the ceiling by your wrists. You had—you were bleeding a lot. We didn't know if you would make it. Dan kept pressure on the biggest wound while we waited for the ambulance, and then we came with you here. They gave you a couple of blood transfusions, set your ankle, stitched you up, and you're good as new." Chloe forced a laugh, and grimaced at the sound. Lucifer let his head rest back against the pillow, staring at the wall as he remembered what the past four days looked like for him.
"I'm sorry, Lucifer. I shouldn't have said anything so soon. It's a lot to process, and you just woke up—"
"You didn't find him," Lucifer interrupted, finally looking at her. She looked exhausted, with her normally neat bun falling out and shadows under her eyes.
"I—we—" she began, but didn't know where to go. "No. We didn't find him," she agreed reluctantly. "But we will. I swear to you, Lucifer. We'll find who did this."
Oh, Detective. You won't find him, and that's alright. He's not meant to be found, Lucifer thought to himself, staying quiet. Now that things were calming back down again, he realized how much pain he was in—and that the Detective needed to leave and give him time to heal at his speed.
"What's the damage?" he asked, changing the subject.
"Uhh," Chloe started, looking up and down his body as if trying to find a logical place to start. She stood up again, and started at his feet, gently touching the things she talked about as she made her way up. "Broken ankle. Lacerations and some serious bruising on your wrists, but no breaks or sprains. You have about thirty cuts all over your chest and back, but they're not very deep and most didn't need stitches. A couple bruised ribs, two are broken. Punctured lung, maybe from one of the ribs. It's hard to say." Ah, so that's why it hurts to breathe, he thought absently as she continued.
"Stab wound in your right shoulder that was pretty gnarly. Twelve stitches. Twenty two for a pretty long cut here," her fingers trailed across a bandage over his heart. Her hands trembled as she touched his neck, and then his cheek. "Signs of strangulation. Some trauma to your face. A wicked black eye, maybe a fractured cheekbone."
"No, not the cheekbones," Lucifer lamented. She cracked a halfhearted smile at that, and Lucifer returned it, glad to ease her mind if only for a moment. Her smile quickly disappeared as her hand hovered over the most heavily bandaged area on his lower abdomen. "Sixteen stitches." She touched it gently and Lucifer flinched, his hand immediately meeting hers there with the intention to protect the wound.
"Sorry," she apologized quickly, drawing her hand back as if it had been slapped. Lucifer grabbed it and looked in her eyes.
"Don't apologize," he told her in an attempt to reassure her. He could almost feel the guilt radiating off of her as much as he felt the pain in the upper half of his body.
"I thought I was going to lose you," Chloe blurted out, meeting his eyes. "I was . . . I was so scared when we found you. When you lost consciousness, I . . . thought you would never come back." Lucifer tried to sit up a little straighter, concern evident on his face. He winced at the movement, eyes closing tight as he breathed through the stabbing pain in his abdomen.
"Here," Chloe murmured, pressing something into his hand. He looked at it, trying to figure out what to do with what she gave him.
"Morphine," she explained. "It's on a drip; you can press this button if you're in a lot of pain." Lucifer slammed his thumb down on the button, and almost instantly, he felt a wave of relief. His eyes glazed over, and he let out a sigh, letting his head rest against the pillows again.
"Detective . . ." he started, for once at a loss for words. "I didn't realize." He felt stupid for saying that—of course he didn't realize; he was unconscious—but he didn't know what else to say. His eyes wandered over to her face, and he did his best to keep them there, but his vision was swimming. "I apologize. I didn't realize the extent of what was going on until I got to the warehouse. By the time I did, it was too late." His eyes began to flutter closed, but he forced them open again to look at Chloe, trying to gauge her response.
"Don't apologize," she echoed his words from a minute ago with a small smile. "You couldn't possibly have know what you were getting into. Go ahead and rest, Lucifer. It's been a long day."
"Understatement of the millennia," Lucifer muttered in response, and Chloe laughed, causing the corners of his lips to turn up at the sound. He wanted to tell her to go home, not to worry about him. He would heal. The words formed in his brain, but didn't find their way out of his mouth before he succumbed again to sleep.