spn fic: "blind, without a blow"
He was wrong.
Lucifer defeated himself, the moment he, in his arrogance, took Sam as his vessel.
Lucifer regarded humans as little more than animals, clay and spit mixed together and made to move about through the regrettable debasement of his Father’s holy fire.
In hell, through the aeons, he had watched through the bars of his prison, as human souls dissolved into decay under the pressure of their hatreds, their fears, their despair. He could not speak to them through the bars of his cage, and they could not see him, but they lowered their blind black eyes toward him in a vain attempt to appease. Some even thought of it as worship. They sickened him - how could their disgusting attempts at praise ever please him, Lucifer, the Morning Star, who had been there when, with the first choirs of archangels, he had illuminated the universe with the glory of his song?
No, Lucifer had no respect for human souls, not before they devolved into demons, and not afterward.
He thought little of the process of taking a vessel. He had seen demons do it; he knew the feverish joy they felt, moving about in human form once again, even as he sneered at their pathetic pleasures, as they made the humans hosting them shrink in horror. As an Angel, though fallen, Lucifer knew that he would require an invitation, and that was the only thing that concerned him in securing a vessel. He had no doubt that any mere human could successfully resist the might of his will, honed to godlike strength by aeons of focused resistance.
It only took Lucifer a few days of crafting twisted hallucinations to seduce the mourning soul of Nick into consent, and mere seconds of possession to shred his soul into tiny, groveling threads. Not even whimpers remained of Nick, only a cringing and terrorized desperation that he be left unregarded.
Lucifer held the inferior vessel together, feeding it with gallons of blood steeped full of his step-children’s essence. The hissing blood moved through Nick’s tormented veins, soothing it as best it could, and curling in ecstasy to be of service to Lucifer.
The fact that Sam Winchester came to him willingly, already engorged with demon blood, was amusing to Lucifer. Suffused with so much demonic energy, Sam could drop demons with a thought. Lucifer knew he had torn Famine apart simply by dispelling the demons the ravaged old Horseman had consumed. How Sam thought this power would be useful in controlling Lucifer once Sam consented, Lucifer had no idea. It was ludicrous. The demon blood was simply an upgrade from coach to first class, as far as Lucifer was concerned.
Lucifer considered bargains the toys of demons, and he never dealt in them. Let the weaknesses of humanity, their desires and petty concerns, be their downfall.
Likewise, he felt that taunting the humans was beneath him, but the look on Dean Winchester’s face was simply too delicious when he let Dean think that Sam had nearly won control. No, it was too easy to feign unconsciousness while Dean struggled with the simple Enochian phrase. (Lucifer, of course, hated Enochian not only as the language of his imprisonment, but as a corruption of Angelic thought into Earthly utterance -- still, he spoke it fluently, and it had certainly been useful in convincing Azazel to leave his outpost in the wilderness and seek out the daughters of men.)
Lucifer was glad to retrieve the keys from the hands of the Horsemen, and he supposed he owed Dean the favor of surviving for doing him that little service. He blinked away from Sam’s brother, as Sam struggled mightily from inside him - hovering for just a moment to fully appreciate Dean’s helpless anguish at losing his brother yet again.
Stull Cemetery was a quaint and depressing plot of land, but prophecy was prophecy for a reason, and clearly his showdown with Michael had reverberated back into the past with enough strength to make an impression on human sensitives for more than a century prior. Still, he would not bow to destiny if he had a chance to alter it.
When Michael appeared, Lucifer was heartened by his older brother’s weariness and resignation. Though the Winchester bastard held him well, Lucifer could perceive his might and glory radiating out from him, but it was strained and faded from the sublimity Lucifer remembered. Lucifer well-remembered Michael’s beauty and majesty, rivalled only by his own, and he well-remembered his shock and horror that he avert his love and admiration from his brother to these mere earthly abortions. It was for love of Michael, as much as dismay at God, that he had fallen. Perhaps with God gone abroad, Michael would relent, would welcome his brother’s embrace. What reason was there, really, for them to fight?
But Michael had hardened over the aeons. Gone was his glorious joy, and with it, any semblance of free will. He was concerned only with the End, the prophesied Destiny, and he was willing to cut down Lucifer for it.
“You’re a monster, Lucifer, and I have to kill you.”
Lucifer bridled at the words of his brother, even more offensive uttered in human tones. “If that’s the way it’s gotta be, then I’d like to see you try.”
When the battle was rudely interrupted by Dean Winchester, Lucifer dispatched the old Hunter and the little disgraced warrior with a snap of his fingers, but saved the savaging of Dean for his brother’s bare hands.
Lucifer let Sam rise a little closer to the surface as he beat Dean. Cruel, he had to admit, but he wanted to hurt Dean, and truths always hurt more than lies.
The glint of light off the Winchesters’ car took Lucifer by surprise, but it wasn’t the light that caught Lucifer’s attention, it was the swell of emotion that flooded through Sam at the sight of it, the human’s feelings already so close to the surface that he managed to sway Lucifer’s hand.
Lucifer was mesmerized by the scenes of human life that played out in Sam’s mind, as the intended Vessels of two warring archangels grew from boyhood into manhood, all within the environs of the sleek black car that currently held Dean up as he struggled to stay conscious. Even now, he was speaking to Sam with desperate words of support and love, love like Lucifer hadn’t heard in aeons, and maybe, never would again.
As Dean endured for Sam, promising he would never abandon him, Lucifer saw those words play out in truth in Sam’s memories over decades - finally coming to rest on one bright, shining memory - the day Dean greeted his brother risen from the dead, having traded his own immortal soul for what he believed was his brother’s more valuable life and well-being.
Lucifer was stunned. His brothers had never taken this kind of chance, not for love, not for him. His own brother, Michael, would not even shrug off a meaningless destiny, sketched out faintly by a God who could care less.
Lucifer could feel Sam’s memory, the strength of Dean’s embrace, the intensity of their love.
This was love, then. Human love. This was what these brothers were fighting for.
This what his Father had perfected in these helpless, puling creatures, so frail, so fraught with error.
Human love made the affection he’d felt for Michael - even for God - pale in comparison. These creatures, wracked by so many pains, such need, could lay it all aside, not simply for a moment, but once and for all.
Lucifer felt in Sam just one desire - “beat the devil, save Dean, save Dean, save Dean.”
And he saw the same emotion shining dimly from Dean’s ravaged face, “beat the devil, save Sammy, save Sam, save Sam.”
These brothers were defined, through and through, by their love for one another.
Lucifer’s borrowed hand, stained from pummeling fragile flesh, trembled as he felt something rising up. Shame, envy.
Acceptance. Understanding.
Respect.
Lucifer could no longer pretend that the humans were somehow less than himself and his brothers. He knew, now, that God, having given them freedom of choice, had allowed them to nurture a depth of love that the Angels had never imagined.
His love for Michael was like a perfect stained glass window admiring a perfect marble statue - both were exquisite, yet both were unmoved, static and eternally cold.
These humans in all of their frailties had surpassed the Angels by such a height and such a depth that Lucifer, at last, was humbled.
For the first time ever, Lucifer felt compassion. He let the hand fall, and sank back.
Sam Winchester gasped in astonished relief; his only words were to reassure his brother.
“It’s okay, Dean. It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got him.”
Lucifer listened calmly while Sam quickly spoke the Enochian.
He felt almost nothing as Michael, like a slave, reappeared, still insisting on fighting.
He fell back into the pit, without fury, without hatred.
He whispered softly to Sam, across the terror of the fall, “It’s okay, Sam. It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got you.”
Lucifer defeated himself, the moment he, in his arrogance, took Sam as his vessel.
Lucifer regarded humans as little more than animals, clay and spit mixed together and made to move about through the regrettable debasement of his Father’s holy fire.
In hell, through the aeons, he had watched through the bars of his prison, as human souls dissolved into decay under the pressure of their hatreds, their fears, their despair. He could not speak to them through the bars of his cage, and they could not see him, but they lowered their blind black eyes toward him in a vain attempt to appease. Some even thought of it as worship. They sickened him - how could their disgusting attempts at praise ever please him, Lucifer, the Morning Star, who had been there when, with the first choirs of archangels, he had illuminated the universe with the glory of his song?
No, Lucifer had no respect for human souls, not before they devolved into demons, and not afterward.
He thought little of the process of taking a vessel. He had seen demons do it; he knew the feverish joy they felt, moving about in human form once again, even as he sneered at their pathetic pleasures, as they made the humans hosting them shrink in horror. As an Angel, though fallen, Lucifer knew that he would require an invitation, and that was the only thing that concerned him in securing a vessel. He had no doubt that any mere human could successfully resist the might of his will, honed to godlike strength by aeons of focused resistance.
It only took Lucifer a few days of crafting twisted hallucinations to seduce the mourning soul of Nick into consent, and mere seconds of possession to shred his soul into tiny, groveling threads. Not even whimpers remained of Nick, only a cringing and terrorized desperation that he be left unregarded.
Lucifer held the inferior vessel together, feeding it with gallons of blood steeped full of his step-children’s essence. The hissing blood moved through Nick’s tormented veins, soothing it as best it could, and curling in ecstasy to be of service to Lucifer.
The fact that Sam Winchester came to him willingly, already engorged with demon blood, was amusing to Lucifer. Suffused with so much demonic energy, Sam could drop demons with a thought. Lucifer knew he had torn Famine apart simply by dispelling the demons the ravaged old Horseman had consumed. How Sam thought this power would be useful in controlling Lucifer once Sam consented, Lucifer had no idea. It was ludicrous. The demon blood was simply an upgrade from coach to first class, as far as Lucifer was concerned.
Lucifer considered bargains the toys of demons, and he never dealt in them. Let the weaknesses of humanity, their desires and petty concerns, be their downfall.
Likewise, he felt that taunting the humans was beneath him, but the look on Dean Winchester’s face was simply too delicious when he let Dean think that Sam had nearly won control. No, it was too easy to feign unconsciousness while Dean struggled with the simple Enochian phrase. (Lucifer, of course, hated Enochian not only as the language of his imprisonment, but as a corruption of Angelic thought into Earthly utterance -- still, he spoke it fluently, and it had certainly been useful in convincing Azazel to leave his outpost in the wilderness and seek out the daughters of men.)
Lucifer was glad to retrieve the keys from the hands of the Horsemen, and he supposed he owed Dean the favor of surviving for doing him that little service. He blinked away from Sam’s brother, as Sam struggled mightily from inside him - hovering for just a moment to fully appreciate Dean’s helpless anguish at losing his brother yet again.
Stull Cemetery was a quaint and depressing plot of land, but prophecy was prophecy for a reason, and clearly his showdown with Michael had reverberated back into the past with enough strength to make an impression on human sensitives for more than a century prior. Still, he would not bow to destiny if he had a chance to alter it.
When Michael appeared, Lucifer was heartened by his older brother’s weariness and resignation. Though the Winchester bastard held him well, Lucifer could perceive his might and glory radiating out from him, but it was strained and faded from the sublimity Lucifer remembered. Lucifer well-remembered Michael’s beauty and majesty, rivalled only by his own, and he well-remembered his shock and horror that he avert his love and admiration from his brother to these mere earthly abortions. It was for love of Michael, as much as dismay at God, that he had fallen. Perhaps with God gone abroad, Michael would relent, would welcome his brother’s embrace. What reason was there, really, for them to fight?
But Michael had hardened over the aeons. Gone was his glorious joy, and with it, any semblance of free will. He was concerned only with the End, the prophesied Destiny, and he was willing to cut down Lucifer for it.
“You’re a monster, Lucifer, and I have to kill you.”
Lucifer bridled at the words of his brother, even more offensive uttered in human tones. “If that’s the way it’s gotta be, then I’d like to see you try.”
When the battle was rudely interrupted by Dean Winchester, Lucifer dispatched the old Hunter and the little disgraced warrior with a snap of his fingers, but saved the savaging of Dean for his brother’s bare hands.
Lucifer let Sam rise a little closer to the surface as he beat Dean. Cruel, he had to admit, but he wanted to hurt Dean, and truths always hurt more than lies.
The glint of light off the Winchesters’ car took Lucifer by surprise, but it wasn’t the light that caught Lucifer’s attention, it was the swell of emotion that flooded through Sam at the sight of it, the human’s feelings already so close to the surface that he managed to sway Lucifer’s hand.
Lucifer was mesmerized by the scenes of human life that played out in Sam’s mind, as the intended Vessels of two warring archangels grew from boyhood into manhood, all within the environs of the sleek black car that currently held Dean up as he struggled to stay conscious. Even now, he was speaking to Sam with desperate words of support and love, love like Lucifer hadn’t heard in aeons, and maybe, never would again.
As Dean endured for Sam, promising he would never abandon him, Lucifer saw those words play out in truth in Sam’s memories over decades - finally coming to rest on one bright, shining memory - the day Dean greeted his brother risen from the dead, having traded his own immortal soul for what he believed was his brother’s more valuable life and well-being.
Lucifer was stunned. His brothers had never taken this kind of chance, not for love, not for him. His own brother, Michael, would not even shrug off a meaningless destiny, sketched out faintly by a God who could care less.
Lucifer could feel Sam’s memory, the strength of Dean’s embrace, the intensity of their love.
This was love, then. Human love. This was what these brothers were fighting for.
This what his Father had perfected in these helpless, puling creatures, so frail, so fraught with error.
Human love made the affection he’d felt for Michael - even for God - pale in comparison. These creatures, wracked by so many pains, such need, could lay it all aside, not simply for a moment, but once and for all.
Lucifer felt in Sam just one desire - “beat the devil, save Dean, save Dean, save Dean.”
And he saw the same emotion shining dimly from Dean’s ravaged face, “beat the devil, save Sammy, save Sam, save Sam.”
These brothers were defined, through and through, by their love for one another.
Lucifer’s borrowed hand, stained from pummeling fragile flesh, trembled as he felt something rising up. Shame, envy.
Acceptance. Understanding.
Respect.
Lucifer could no longer pretend that the humans were somehow less than himself and his brothers. He knew, now, that God, having given them freedom of choice, had allowed them to nurture a depth of love that the Angels had never imagined.
His love for Michael was like a perfect stained glass window admiring a perfect marble statue - both were exquisite, yet both were unmoved, static and eternally cold.
These humans in all of their frailties had surpassed the Angels by such a height and such a depth that Lucifer, at last, was humbled.
For the first time ever, Lucifer felt compassion. He let the hand fall, and sank back.
Sam Winchester gasped in astonished relief; his only words were to reassure his brother.
“It’s okay, Dean. It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got him.”
Lucifer listened calmly while Sam quickly spoke the Enochian.
He felt almost nothing as Michael, like a slave, reappeared, still insisting on fighting.
He fell back into the pit, without fury, without hatred.
He whispered softly to Sam, across the terror of the fall, “It’s okay, Sam. It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got you.”