Sympathy For The Devil Chapter 2/?
Title: Sympathy For The Devil Chapter 2
Chapter Word Count: 2,400
Genre: Angst/Romance and eventually some comedy because sometimes you just need a laugh.
Characters, Pairing(s): Eventual Castiel/Lucifer, Dean, Sam, Gabriel
Warnings: Slash,blaspheme, spoilers, swearing, sin's of every nature, ect. NC-17
A/N: No beta, but if you see a mistake feel free to PM me.
Summary: In the end, it all came down to Castiel's understanding of human nature, and Lucifers understanding of Castiel.
Gabriel finds him, or rather Lucifer allows himself to be found by Gabriel. He stood on the sandy white shore of Lake Michigan, peering out into the crystal blue waves, white-caps rolling and breaking. It's beautiful, the line where blue meets blue on the horizon, their shades barely different but somehow decipherable. They reminded him of Castiel, and his grace.
“Castiel's fine,” Gabriel tells him, keeping his golden eyes on the horizon. “It was a close call though. Repairing his grace....it wasn't easy. If Jimmy Novak had been alive, Castiel would not have made it.”
Tearing his gaze away from the endless blue, Lucifer frowns at his brother. “You would have saved the human over your brother?”
“It's as he would have wanted,” Gabriel shrugs, unrepentant. “Castiel will never put himself over that of a human who still has faith. Novak was a faithful man, and now he's a faithful dead man. But...had I been forced to make a choice, I would have respected Castiel's wishes, I think.”
“And suffer for it?” Lucifer asks snidely. Gabriel was just as quick to abandon Heaven as Lucifer, if for entirely different reasons.
Gabriel's golden eyes flash, filling with the wrath of Judgment himself. “Don't,” he warns, proverbial feathers ruffling. “You think because I left that I am uncaring? I did come when he needed me.”
“You did,” Lucifer accedes and turns his eyes back to the horizon, and it's familiar blue.
“It's beautiful, isn't it?” Gabriel asks aloud. “Just water and sky, but it's beautiful.”
There is more beneath his words then mere admiration. “Why did Castiel do it?” Lucifer asks, for surely Gabriel would have found the answer inside their little brother?
“What?” Gabriel huffs. “Do you even know what he did?”
“He hurt himself to hurt me,” Lucifer mutters. “And to what end?”
He can feel Gabriel's own grace hum beside him, pushing in at the edges of Lucifer’s. He doesn't smother Lucifer, like Castiel did, but lingers at the precipice. The devil finds him yearning for the touch, but if Gabriel can feel the desire, he ignores it. “What did it feel like?” Gabriel asks. “When you felt him.”
“You must have touched his grace too,” Lucifer says in reply, frowning.
“I did,” Gabriel confirms. “I touched it, weaved my fingers through it, braided each of it's torn strands back together. I swam in it, soothing over all the dark spots of tarnish, and embracing what light was left. And he let me, invited me in with nothing but welcome” He gives Lucifer a glinting, challenging look. “It is as I remember; beautiful and cool, like mercury, and so despairingly young.”
So young.
The youngest.
Jealousy, Lucifer understands it like nothing else. After all his pit of despair, Hell itself, had been built on a foundation of jealousy and rebellion. “It hurt.” The words come out contemplative and frustrated. “It was torture. Castiel feels as no Angel should. He is falling.”
“He is not,” Gabriel snapped back. “You fall, and you are fallen. There is no falling. There is no transition, only faith. If Castiel had fallen, he'd be without his wings now. He is neither like Anna who craved humanity, or you who craved rebellion. He worships at the knee of our absent Father with no less credence than before. He does his best, and keeps his faith. It isn't easy, Lucifer. It's not falling, it's not so simple. There is no ground on which you find yourself, on which to run. He's strung up in between, struggling for a balance that will not damn him either way.”
“Like you,” Lucifer surmises, turning to look at Gabriel. “Like you.”
Gabriel turns his gaze back to the waters. “Yes,” he says after a fashion. “Like me. I've done a lot of things, but I still look to my father, even when he isn't there. That is faith. I have faith, as does Castiel. And you...” Gabriel shakes his head. “You rebel, but you are not without grace. I've never understood it.” He looks down, at the sand bright beneath their feet, each grain shining with it's own color. “Castiel though, his faith fails him. He might not be falling, but his grace is dying every day he doesn't find our Father. It's not enough to know that He is out there. Castiel wants more.”
Like Lucifer once did.
“What will happen to him?” Lucifer inquires, curiosity shimmering across his grace.
Gabriel cluck his tongue. “Nothing good, I'm sure. I doubt he'll ever lose all his love for Father, and with at least that much I believe he will live. That and no more.” Skimming across Gabriel's mind, Lucifer plucks thoughts of a drug-riddled, heavy-lidded Castiel who cares about little, but even less for himself. “That was what Zachariah once envisioned life should Dean Winchester refuse to say yes. I don't know how much truth is in it, however.”
Like much else, Lucifer refuses to acknowledge the possibility. “I am not without faith,” He replies instead, looking up into the sky. “In Him, I have faith, but in his faithless creatures I have none. And for that I was condemned.”
Narrowing his eyes, Gabriel hums thoughtfully. “It was for more than that. What was it, Morning-star? Were you so threatened, as the first born, by the new baby that you simply couldn't stand it?”
“Why make them different?” Lucifer asks abruptly. “Why start new? Were we not good enough to merit his gifts? His Angels will love him as no man ever will, and yet he bestows such glory as Free Will upon infants too ignorant to know what to do with it.”
Gabriel cackled, a sharp biting sound that reminded Lucifer to the coyote his brother could be. “You took care of that, didn't you? Slippery little snake as always.”
“I simply opened their eyes to life.” Unrepentant, Lucifer shrugs. “It was his folly to keep them ignorant. The ignorant are weak and easily swayed.” They were sheep to him, and thus easily lead to the slaughter.
“You opened their eyes and they sinned, Elder Brother.” Gabriel is flying a kite when Lucifer turns his eyes back to him, a brilliant red diamond in the sky. “You opened their eyes to sin.”
“I suppose I did,” Lucifer agrees, watching the kite until it's little more then a bobbing red dot in a sky of blue.
“Then this world, the way that it is, is your fault,” He shoves the string to the kite in Lucifer’s hand and shares a sharp look with his brother. “Think about that.”
And then Gabriel is gone.
Lucifer tilts his head back to the bobbing kite and finds that it is blue. The string skip-stutters from his hand, and the kite drifts to the ground in a slow decent, air catching it only to let it go again. It hasn't yet hit the ground when he finds he can no longer watch, willing himself elsewhere.
*
It wasn't he who released the Horsemen, though he did nothing to stop it. Death comes when he calls, but he has since learned, watching his own brother bleed as he held him, that Death is a tricky thing. The horsemen are free, but the sense of victory had faded as fast as Castiel had in his arms.
Lucifer is unsure how he wishes to continue. Observation is needed.
It strikes him as odd though, as it is prophesied that the Four will ride by his hand. Having had no hand in it, he can only sit back and swim in his own vague confused amusement. Emotions, all but the strongest, are still stunted in his current vessel. His thoughts drift towards Samuel Winchester, and he longs for a skin of his own. Samuel Winchester is his skin, rebellious and troublesome thing that he is.
He walks the Earth as he has not for a millennium, soaking in the scent of sin and daily fear. These creatures are little more than two-legged cockroaches, a resilient plague tainting the world. They scuttle, leaving nothing but disease and waste behind. Pestilence's presence is barely felt, for the humans have done his job heartily in his stead. They shit and they piss and they fuck . They spread disease with their bodies, mouths and minds. Disgusting creatures, humans. Absolutely vile.
How Famine makes himself known in a world already starving for everything is anyone’s guess. Humans crave a variety of things, things they need and want. Sex, power, money, beauty, time, excess. They have and want more.
Samuel Winchester is no different. He craves as a human does, with his whole body, with his whole essence. When Lucifer learns that one of his own vile children has died at the mouth of the Boy King himself, he is there in a moments flash. He mightn't be able to find Samuel Winchester, carved up as he is like a Holiday ham, but he can follow a trail when one is laid so prettily.
He hunts as the humans do.
What he finds instead is horrifying. His brother, his Castiel, on his knees in a pit of raw, stinking meat, fisting great lumps of the clove and hoof into his desperate maw. Elder Winchester is there as well, outwardly unaffected, but Lucifer can see what the boy craves inside.
Dean Winchester wants more than anything for his brother to be safe, to be okay, to be with him. As the Horsemen spouts his clever lies about how Dean is empty, how he is void of need, Lucifer can't help but laugh in the shadows where he hides. Dean cannot feel the effects of Famine because what he feels now, in this moment, is as he always feels. He always desires to see his brother safe, okay, and with him. His brother is as important to him as the airs he breaths. It's instinctual, both bred into him, and finely honed after years and years. He desires to protect with the single mindedness of a warrior trained from infancy. His need today is no less desperate than any other.
When the Boy King arrives so saturated in the blood of the other, Lucifer is excited. This is what he has wanted, what he has craved. He is strong, yes, but not unaffected by Famine. He wants to crawl inside the boy, and burn him out. He wants the flesh of the Baby Winchester to be his own. He wants to hear the word yes on his lips, wants it so bad he can almost taste it.
Surely the boy is wavering? He's spilled the blood of too many demons down his throat to have any good intentions. He kills, feeds, fucks, the beautiful little sinner. He is as dark as any of Lucifer’s own, surely? But as the Boy King raises his hand, tearing soul after soul from Famine's own belly, Lucifer finds himself wrong. Samuel Winchester is something else. Something Lucifer does not understand.
When he looks back to his own brother, he finds Castiel staring at him, blood on his own mouth, blue eyes wide.
“Cas?” Dean asks, his concern torn between his guardian and his charge. “Cas, are you okay?”
“I am fine,” Castiel tells him, his eyes never wavering from Lucifer’s own. “I am....I must go.” He vanishes, but not from the room. Lucifer can see his grace, a brilliant cerulean blur against the otherwise dull warehouse.
Elder Winchester is swearing, cupping his brothers face in anxious relief. They're embracing like long lost lovers, tight and frantic. Lucifer has no idea why, but he dose the same to Castiel. He is happy too, to find his brother safe, and okay, and with him. It's strange, this relief he feels as he reaches himself out to touch the Seraph. Castiel's whole body shudders with it, the remnant effects of Famine yet to wear off. He lurches forward, the mass of his grace colliding with Lucifer, in the void where they hide.
Castiel's human had craved meat. Castiel's grace had craved touch. Lucifer understands.
The little Seraph trembles with his need. For all that Gabriel has claimed Castiel to be unfallen, he has been cut from the Host. The choirs of his brothers do no sing in his ear, do not whisper guidance. He is without the light of his Father and the love of his Brothers, and Lucifer cannot understand how he is yet to fall. To lose so much and still cling to the tattered, fraying strands of faith.
Instead of attempting to decipher the puzzle, he simple holds Castiel against himself. Lucifer will hold him till Famine's touch wears off, and Castiel is left with all his senses. He'll accept the horrified look Castiel will surely give him, for allowing himself to fall in the arms of the Devil. He'll ache when Castiel curses him, and flutters off in a rush. He'll do all this and more, for he too craves, like a burning man craves water, touch.
It happens exactly as Lucifer imagines. The mercury like liquid movement of Castiel's grace turns to steel. The seraph forces himself back into his vessel, materializing in all his pale, awkward glory before Lucifer. “I....” he stumbles over what exactly he should say. “I'm leaving,” Castiel dares, taking a step back. The distance does not help to alleviate his obvious fear, however.
It bothers Lucifer that Castiel should fear him, though he has so many reasons to do so.
“I won't stop you,” Lucifer confesses, shoving himself back into the tight, constricting confines of Nick. “Gabriel tells me you are not falling.” He throws the words out like a life line, and hopes that Castiel will catch it, and stay if only for a moment longer.
His fingers twitch at his sides, but Castiel stays. “His theory is that as long as I keep faith in my father, He'll keep faith in me.”
“Faith in you,” Lucifer echoes, spiteful incredulity curling his words with hate. “That would be akin to saying Father still has faith in me.” Because no matter how damaged it might be, Lucifer's grace was his own, just as Castiel still has his.
Castiel's head falls to the side, a curious cat-like gesture. “Why wouldn't he?” The Seraph asks. “You know what he wants from you, Elder Brother. You need but only ask it and it is yours.”
Castiel is gone even as the words spill from Lucifer's mouth, bitter and old.
“Forgiveness.”
TBC....