SPN fic: "two-edged, golden, sanguine" (5.22+)
title: "two-edged, golden, sanguine"
author: fannishliss
rated: PG, gen, no pairing (Lucifer/Michael if you squint)
warnings: none, spoilers for 5.22.
words: 3600
disclaimer: Thanks be to Kripke! also, to the biblical witnesses who tried to describe the archangels -- thanks J, Ezekiel, and John. :)
Summary: What happened to Sam in hell wasn't what he expected.
Follows my other 5.22 codas so far: " not the burnt and broken" (Dean pov); " blind, without a blow" (Lucifer pov -- it would help to read this one!); " Ground Rules" (Lisa pov).
~*o*~
Sam was trapped, helpless inside his own body as his fist slammed brutally into Dean’s face.
His voice tortured and distorted by the damage, Dean ground out, “Sammy, it’s okay, I’m here. I’m not gonna leave you!”
Sam screamed his brother’s name, desperate, trying with all his might to do anything, anything at all, that might save Dean, at least from dying at Sam’s own hands. But his scream only echoed inside his head, futile, all his demon-blood enhanced strength pitiful against the power of the archangel. Nothing he did had any effect. If only he could save Dean-- anything but this.
A glint of light, gleaming off the beautifully polished roof of the Impala, flashed into his eyes. Dean never skimped on the time it took to take care of her, and Sam's emotions, already frantic, surged up at the thought of all the love and devotion Dean had lavished on Sam across a lifetime dedicated to taking care of his little brother.
Just like the old adage, Sam’s life began to pass before his eyes, revisiting so many cherished moments with Dean, some joyful, some tragic, but most simply their life together, being brothers.
Then Sam noticed that Lucifer was enthralled; mesmerized, he stared into the gleam of light, rifling faster and faster through Sam’s memories.
Sam had a crazy surge of hope that he could take advantage of Lucifer’s distraction to break free - even if it was just long enough to let Dean know, with a look or a word, that he loved him, that he was grateful Dean was there.
The flood of memories abruptly came to a halt as Sam remembered the crushing hug Dean had thrown around his neck the day he’d sold his soul to bring Sam back from the dead.
And then Lucifer simply opened his hand, and relinquished his grip, and Sam was back in control.
Gasping in shock, Sam reeled back, away from his brother. His hand didn’t even sting from the terrible blows it had dealt, and Dean collapsed to the ground.
“It’s okay, Dean. It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got him.”
He pulled the rings out of his pocket, threw them to the ground, and rattled off the Enochian.
It felt like all the air in the world was rushing down into the horrible vacuum of Hell, and that’s where Sam had to go. Then Michael yelled his name.
“Sam! It’s not gonna end this way. Step back.”
“You’re gonna have to make me!” Sam shouted over the roar of the abyss.
“I have to fight my brother, Sam. Here and now. It’s my destiny.”
Michael sounded like an automaton, so little free will left that he had to play out his mission no matter the circumstances.
Sam wished to God that Dean didn’t have to watch this, but God wasn’t listening. Dean’s eyes were full of love, and awful sorrow, but his support helped Sam find the strength to do what had to be done. Sam closed his eyes and leaned back toward the gaping maw of Hell.
He felt a moment of vertigo, then Michael grabbed him. Sam had no choice but to pull Michael, in Adam's high-jacked body, down with him.
They plummeted into a terrible eternity of blackness, emptiness, a vast night bereft of stars.
As he fell, Sam heard Lucifer’s voice through his terror, strangely calm: “It’s okay, Sam. It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got you.”
Then Sam felt as though he were being torn inside out, as Lucifer was forcibly ripped from his body and mind. The agony was even greater than the terror of the fall, and Sam blacked out.
* * *
Sam came to with no sense of lost time. His lungs ached from the airless void he had fallen through, and he gasped, shocked to feel cool, sweet air rushing into his lungs. His eyes were tightly closed, a sunlike brilliance shining through the blood-red of his eyelids.
Sam’s body was still vibrating with adrenalin and the unpleasant buzz of all the demon blood he’d consumed only a few hours earlier. He fought to get his breathing and heart rate under control, trying not to draw attention to himself.
He cracked his eyes open, but he couldn't make out anything but brilliant white light. His ears rang with a high, piercing shrill, but even as he listened, the vibrations of bells and the whistling clatter of a million starlings deepened to sepulchral underwater sounds like blue whales, and as if a switch had been flipped, the noise resolved into voices.
The two archangels were arguing.
“I have to fight you, brother,” one resounding voice was saying. Sam had never heard anything like it - something like gigantic chimes, like a gong the size of Texas. It was neither male nor female, not human, but translated in his mind into words he could easily comprehend.
“You can’t fight me, Michael," the other voice said, "not without our vessels.”
As mind-boggling as Michael's voice was, Lucifer’s voice was immeasurably more beautiful than his brother's -- vibrating like a firmament full of stars, like all the frequencies of a thousand suns.
“It’s God’s will that you be punished, Lucifer, and I won’t fail him.” Michael's voice, as Sam grew accustomed to it, was flat, angry, and belligerent.
“Oh, Michael. God isn’t punishing me. You and I fell together this time, and I have all of eternity to make you love me again.” Lucifer sounded soft, and shining, like the warmth of the sun in springtime.
“I can’t love you! You’re a monster.” Michael's voice was all armor, clashes of steel.
“Michael, I’m your brother. Just because I disobeyed doesn’t make me a monster. I’m only what he made me - just like you.”
“Lies!” Michael shrieked, like the fall of a blade upon the block.
Sam lay still and silently checked himself out. He realized he was in no pain, and he wasn’t hungry or thirsty, but he wondered how long he’d survive inside a cage with two warring archangels.
Lucifer laughed, and it was beautiful, a miraculous symphony, a wilderness of birdsong, wind, and rushing waters. Sam found himself smiling, and they noticed him.
“Sam, you’re awake. Are you all right?” It was Lucifer asking.
Sam could see no reason not to answer.
“How am I breathing? and where are we?”
“This is the cage - I adjusted reality so your body could survive.”
“Where’s Adam? Is he okay?”
“He's safe -- Michael’s keeping him asleep.”
“I'm not interested in these ignorant questions-- only in destroying you, Lucifer!” Michael said angrily.
As Sam squinted into the light, he began to make out two shapes like men with vast wings of light extending out in all directions. The wings rippled as if made of currents of water, and sparkled with flashes of energy.
“Why did you let me go?” Sam asked, risking another question despite Michael's wrath.
“I think you already know why, little brother,” Lucifer said.
“What did you call him?” Michael said, and the clashing noise of his anger rose dramatically.
Sam wanted to back away from Michael’s fury, but he still wasn’t sure it was safe to move, so he sat frozen.
“Michael, Michael,” Lucifer soothed. “These creatures deserve our Father's favor. They choose poorly sometimes - but so do we. And when they love one another, it’s like the glory of God himself!”
Sam was awestruck as Lucifer's aspect rippled like sunlight on a lake surface -- brilliant darts of light, blue and gold and white, that made a gentle lapping sound like little waves against a pebbled shore.
“Blasphemy!” Michael hissed, all discord.
“So you never saw why they were our Father’s favorites? You merely obeyed him blindly? The humans are the crown of his creation, made like us in his image, but so precious in their fragility, their need, their generosity and selflessness.”
Michael lapsed into silence, his glory dimming.
Lucifer seemed to subside a little in response. “A shame, isn’t it? I finally repent, and now you're so hidebound you can't see the truth. Well, we have eternity to reconcile our differences.” Lucifer's voice, even betraying his disappointment, was hypnotic. Sam felt he could stare into Lucifer's glory and listen to his pleasant murmur forever, and he realized that forever was a real possibility.
Eternity. Sam struggled to wrap his mind around it. He could sense no passage of time; even though he was breathing and his heart was beating, there was no sense of change or fluidity in his surroundings. He could hear the fluctuations of the archangels, as their volatile moods swelled and abated, but he had no way of placing them in scale, as everything around him was a blank, white void.
He seemed be sitting on a solid surface, and the archangels' brilliant light was all around him. He had no sense of a chamber, or a cage, or any kind of enclosure. For all he knew, he was crouched on an endless plain, burning under the glory of the two archangels like twin suns.
After pondering his situation for some unknown length of time, Sam gathered his nerves and spoke again. “Is there any way for me to get out of this cage?"
Lucifer's laughter rang again, but tinged with a bitterness Sam seemed to taste on the air, like sulphur.
"You're not in the cage -- you're in the reality I made for you. When your body hit the cage, I was ripped from it as I was pulled inside -- but luckily for you my influence extends a little way outside it," Lucifer explained.
"Can I get home then? Dad escaped, and Dean..." Sam asked.
“Unlike them, you still have a body. John Winchester was a spirit, and Dean was a demon,” Lucifer said mildly.
“Don’t say that! Dean was never a demon!” Sam shouted, suddenly angry. The demon blood always made his anger more difficult to control.
“Sam, Sam. Dean was Alistair’s apprentice. Of course he was a demon,” Lucifer said.
“But Dean’s not evil! He’s not... not... a monster!” Sam spat.
“Every demon was once a human soul, Sam. Dean was as much a monster as any demon-- a master torturer in fact- but of course, his victims got what they bargained for.” Repentant or not, there was a smartass smirk in Lucifer's tone.
“Dean was on the rack! He sold his soul to save me!” Sam was really angry now, and he could feel the demon blood stirring --- though the light of the archangel seemed to prevent it from rising as much as it normally would.
“I know all that. I really find it quite beautiful. So very tragic. Dean suffered so greatly at the hands of Alistair, holding on to the thought of you, alive. I watched it all through the bars of my cage.”
“You ... watched?” Sam couldn’t be any more furious, he thought.
“Well, I couldn’t do anything else!" Lucifer laughed again, but the beauty of his laughter was beginning to lose its charm for Sam. "Trapped in the cage, looking out into Hell, with no way to communicate except through very specific and gory channels - and only a few beings knew those specifics- Azazel being one.”
Sam was wrong. He could be more furious. “Azazel took his orders from you?”
Lucifer said simply, “I told him I wanted out, and I told him to look for the two of you. He did the rest on his own - with a bit of help from Heaven of course. Heaven’s held onto the precious Winchester prophecies for aeons. You can’t blame it all on me.”
Further enraged, Sam ground his teeth and kept his mouth shut. There was nothing he could do or say in response to the terrible injustices done to his family in the name of destiny - up to and including the angels interfering with their parents’ hearts and memories just to keep them together long enough for Sam and Dean to be born.
“Don’t sulk, Sam. You’re still alive... Dean’s still alive... even Adam. Where there’s life there’s hope, right?”
Sam felt himself calming- the archangels' light did seem to drive back the blood’s maddening influence, keeping Sam’s rage from boiling over. He was even just able to tolerate Lucifer’s miserable platitudes.
“Okay. Let’s start over. I’m not in the cage, but I can’t just walk out, cause I’m in a body and this little reality you've set up is surrounded by Hell.”
“That’s right," Lucifer agreed. "But demons can’t come near angelic light. That’s why with Nick I had to drink gallon after gallon of demon blood - it protected the body, but my grace still burned it away.”
“How do you even have a grace?” Sam said, feeling mean.
"My worshippers feed my grace --so many humans think they are following my Father, but they spend their energy appeasing me.”
“I thought grace came from God,” Sam said.
If a being of light could shrug, Lucifer did. "Grace-- it's a way divine energy flows. Angels, gods, all tap into divine energy one way or another."
“Gods?"
Lucifer laughed again, his ringing, delightful laugh, like sunlight trickling through a canopy of leaves. “You were there when I fought those other gods, Sam - you still don’t believe in them? You’ve killed several yourself. Ah, but you convinced yourself they were only monsters masquerading as gods. No, they really were gods.”
Sam refused to acknowledge the stab of guilt he felt at the thought of all the monsters he’d killed - and apparently, actual gods were among them.
“Dean and I have a duty to protect people from being eaten,” Sam argued sullenly.
Lucifer didn’t take the bait. “You can console yourself-- those pathetic gods I killed at the motel dissolved back into the one source, and humans will soon imagine them back into being.”
"Does that go for Gabriel too?" Sam asked.
"Probably," Lucifer said carelessly.
Michael had kept silent this whole time, but Sam was suddenly curious. “Can Michael still access Heaven’s power, now that he’s in Hell?”
“I'm sure Heaven still sends Michael power, hoping he'll somehow put an end to me.” Lucifer didn’t sound too frightened by the idea.
“That’s right, Lucifer. I’ll figure out a way,” Michael threatened, in his flat, colorless tones. Now that Sam had been conversing with Lucifer, the difference between them was startling. It reminded Sam of Dean's description of Raphael, so lifeless and nearly worn out by despair. Even backed by Heaven, Michael had only a shadow of Lucifer's glory.
“But why?” Sam dared to say. “Why do you still have to fight him, if he’s already repented of the reason he fell? Why don’t you just, like, hug it out or something?”
“It’s my destiny,” Michael repeated.
“Can you believe I was anxious to reunite with him?” Lucifer asked Sam. “But he won’t last long like this...”
“Like what?” Sam asked.
“With our true forms confined so closely together,” Lucifer responded. “Like calls to like.”
“I’m nothing like you! Nothing!” Michael shrilled.
“You just keep telling yourself that, big brother,” Lucifer said, with his familiar smugness. “You and I are cut from the same cloth, but my will is strong, while yours has nearly atrophied from harping so long on this same tired ‘mission.’”
Sam was alarmed by Lucifer's words, wondering what he had planned.
“I’m nothing like you,” Michael whispered, his voice shifting in his despair to wind and the roar of flames.
“Nothing,” Lucifer whispered back, but he moved closer to Michael, his wings brushing his brother's.
Sam could now see the archangels clearly, haloed within their brilliant light. Their wings were glorious, transcending color in ways Sam’s mind couldn’t grasp, radiant as lightning, white as snow. Each wing was covered with eyes, or things Sam perceived as eyes, whirling, sensing. They had faces where men would have faces, but always turning, watching, looking in all directions -- and some of the faces were eagles, or lions, or incredible creatures that Sam couldn't name.
As Sam's eyes adapted, he could see auras of light around the archangels' wings, ribbons of dancing color like the aurora borealis. Lucifer's were stronger and more vivid than Michael's, and as they neared, his auras danced around his brother's wings.
“Nothing....” Michael’s glory was diminishing, his words dwindling away, like the roar of the sea in a shell, and he made no move away from Lucifer.
“Come to me, brother,” Lucifer sang, and his beauty and magnetism were irresistible. His power seemed to pulse and surge like the ocean, hypnotic as a serpent luring a bird. Michael's wings were now arrayed toward Lucifer, as though intent on catching his brother's every nuance.
“Rest, my dearest, rest with me,” Lucifer intoned, all sweetness, all comfort, all peacefulness promised in his crooning.
“Yes,” Michael murmured, “my brother.” His wings had furled slightly, relaxing, yet still aquiver, reacting as Lucifer neared.
As Sam watched, the two archangels moved closer and closer, until their wings were intertwined, and energy crackled back and forth between them, shooting off bluish arcs and pieces of rainbow, and their auras trailed tracers as they moved.
Lucifer opened his wings, moving closer to his brother, gathering him in. Michael drew back slightly, but as Lucifer touched him Michael swayed closer, until he leaned into the embrace.
All Lucifer's wings gathered around his brother, and his brilliance rose and grew till he seemed all aflame, but he wasn't consumed by the fire.
Sam's eyes had grown accustomed to the light, but this was too much. Blinking in pain, he had to look away.
A deafening roar reverberated out from the angels and shook Sam to the bone, and he wondered again if he'd survive. When it finally died back, and the light dimmed a little, Sam dared to look: only one angel remained, vast and vibrating with power.
"Oh my God! Lucifer, what did you do? Where's Michael?" Sam shouted, jumping to his feet. His heart was pounding again in astonishment.
Before the archangel could answer, a crumpled form stirred nearby, and Sam realized that Adam had been only a short distance away the whole time.
"What happened? Where am I?" Adam asked.
"Just -- just wait a minute," Sam said quickly.
"We are one. We have reconciled," the archangel said, in a calm, powerful voice.
"Michael?" Sam asked, astonished.
"Yes, and Lucifer as well. Our enmity has been our greatest weakness, and we are much stronger together."
Sam didn't understand it, but somehow, the two angels had simply fused together -- maybe like the elohim of old. He would've loved to ponder the metaphysics of angelic union, but his first priority had to be escape.
"Are you gonna bust out then?" he asked the sublime entity.
"No, but if you tell the warrior Castiel all you've witnessed here, perhaps God will set us free. ... God seems interested in him."
The voice seemed to sound all along the spectrum, almost painful in its intensity. That didn't necessarily help Sam understand it.
"Castiel? How am I supposed to get a message to him, trapped down here with you?" Sam asked.
"Lucifer remembers all the contours of your power. He can touch the part of you that will finally give you control, so you'll be able to transport body and soul together just as the angels and demons do."
"But ... But ... I don't want demon powers. I want to be rid of them, once and for all!"
"Power in itself is neither good nor evil. The demon blood freed your inhibitions and baser impulses, but once you're in control, you can make your own decisions."
Sam was still afraid, knowing how tempting it was to justify using the power for his own personal agenda. Still, he had to get Adam and himself away from the cage and out of the Pit, and if his powers or the demon blood or Lucifer or Michael or the weird combination of the two of them could help them escape, he had to go for it.
"Am I strong enough to take Adam with me?" Sam asked.
"Yes," the vast new being replied, "and we will help send you on your way."
"Thank you," Adam said, and Sam nodded. It was good to appreciate the efforts of the archangels as long as they were playing nice.
"Some things may have changed by the time you return," the archangels said.
Sam felt a pang of anxiety, hoping Dean was okay. Who knew how long Dean been mourning, imagining Sam on the rack, or worse, taking up the knife? Sam wanted to think Dean was with Lisa, that he wasn't Hunting alone, and that he was somehow coping with the normal life Sam knew he dreamed of.
If this escape attempt worked, maybe he would soon find out.
"All right, I'll try to give Castiel your message. Thanks, uh, for not killing us down here, and for helping us escape."
The archangels dipped their many wings to Sam in a bizarre moment of courtesy.
"Just think yourself home, and we'll give you a little push."
Sam held out his hand to Adam, who took it and stood. "Kind of lean into me, okay? and bend your knees," Sam advised.
"What?" Adam asked.
But Sam had already envisioned Bobby's front door, and with a loud roll of thunder and a jarring landing, he and his half-brother escaped from Hell, unsinged, but owing a debt.
author: fannishliss
rated: PG, gen, no pairing (Lucifer/Michael if you squint)
warnings: none, spoilers for 5.22.
words: 3600
disclaimer: Thanks be to Kripke! also, to the biblical witnesses who tried to describe the archangels -- thanks J, Ezekiel, and John. :)
Summary: What happened to Sam in hell wasn't what he expected.
Follows my other 5.22 codas so far: " not the burnt and broken" (Dean pov); " blind, without a blow" (Lucifer pov -- it would help to read this one!); " Ground Rules" (Lisa pov).
~*o*~
Sam was trapped, helpless inside his own body as his fist slammed brutally into Dean’s face.
His voice tortured and distorted by the damage, Dean ground out, “Sammy, it’s okay, I’m here. I’m not gonna leave you!”
Sam screamed his brother’s name, desperate, trying with all his might to do anything, anything at all, that might save Dean, at least from dying at Sam’s own hands. But his scream only echoed inside his head, futile, all his demon-blood enhanced strength pitiful against the power of the archangel. Nothing he did had any effect. If only he could save Dean-- anything but this.
A glint of light, gleaming off the beautifully polished roof of the Impala, flashed into his eyes. Dean never skimped on the time it took to take care of her, and Sam's emotions, already frantic, surged up at the thought of all the love and devotion Dean had lavished on Sam across a lifetime dedicated to taking care of his little brother.
Just like the old adage, Sam’s life began to pass before his eyes, revisiting so many cherished moments with Dean, some joyful, some tragic, but most simply their life together, being brothers.
Then Sam noticed that Lucifer was enthralled; mesmerized, he stared into the gleam of light, rifling faster and faster through Sam’s memories.
Sam had a crazy surge of hope that he could take advantage of Lucifer’s distraction to break free - even if it was just long enough to let Dean know, with a look or a word, that he loved him, that he was grateful Dean was there.
The flood of memories abruptly came to a halt as Sam remembered the crushing hug Dean had thrown around his neck the day he’d sold his soul to bring Sam back from the dead.
And then Lucifer simply opened his hand, and relinquished his grip, and Sam was back in control.
Gasping in shock, Sam reeled back, away from his brother. His hand didn’t even sting from the terrible blows it had dealt, and Dean collapsed to the ground.
“It’s okay, Dean. It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got him.”
He pulled the rings out of his pocket, threw them to the ground, and rattled off the Enochian.
It felt like all the air in the world was rushing down into the horrible vacuum of Hell, and that’s where Sam had to go. Then Michael yelled his name.
“Sam! It’s not gonna end this way. Step back.”
“You’re gonna have to make me!” Sam shouted over the roar of the abyss.
“I have to fight my brother, Sam. Here and now. It’s my destiny.”
Michael sounded like an automaton, so little free will left that he had to play out his mission no matter the circumstances.
Sam wished to God that Dean didn’t have to watch this, but God wasn’t listening. Dean’s eyes were full of love, and awful sorrow, but his support helped Sam find the strength to do what had to be done. Sam closed his eyes and leaned back toward the gaping maw of Hell.
He felt a moment of vertigo, then Michael grabbed him. Sam had no choice but to pull Michael, in Adam's high-jacked body, down with him.
They plummeted into a terrible eternity of blackness, emptiness, a vast night bereft of stars.
As he fell, Sam heard Lucifer’s voice through his terror, strangely calm: “It’s okay, Sam. It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got you.”
Then Sam felt as though he were being torn inside out, as Lucifer was forcibly ripped from his body and mind. The agony was even greater than the terror of the fall, and Sam blacked out.
* * *
Sam came to with no sense of lost time. His lungs ached from the airless void he had fallen through, and he gasped, shocked to feel cool, sweet air rushing into his lungs. His eyes were tightly closed, a sunlike brilliance shining through the blood-red of his eyelids.
Sam’s body was still vibrating with adrenalin and the unpleasant buzz of all the demon blood he’d consumed only a few hours earlier. He fought to get his breathing and heart rate under control, trying not to draw attention to himself.
He cracked his eyes open, but he couldn't make out anything but brilliant white light. His ears rang with a high, piercing shrill, but even as he listened, the vibrations of bells and the whistling clatter of a million starlings deepened to sepulchral underwater sounds like blue whales, and as if a switch had been flipped, the noise resolved into voices.
The two archangels were arguing.
“I have to fight you, brother,” one resounding voice was saying. Sam had never heard anything like it - something like gigantic chimes, like a gong the size of Texas. It was neither male nor female, not human, but translated in his mind into words he could easily comprehend.
“You can’t fight me, Michael," the other voice said, "not without our vessels.”
As mind-boggling as Michael's voice was, Lucifer’s voice was immeasurably more beautiful than his brother's -- vibrating like a firmament full of stars, like all the frequencies of a thousand suns.
“It’s God’s will that you be punished, Lucifer, and I won’t fail him.” Michael's voice, as Sam grew accustomed to it, was flat, angry, and belligerent.
“Oh, Michael. God isn’t punishing me. You and I fell together this time, and I have all of eternity to make you love me again.” Lucifer sounded soft, and shining, like the warmth of the sun in springtime.
“I can’t love you! You’re a monster.” Michael's voice was all armor, clashes of steel.
“Michael, I’m your brother. Just because I disobeyed doesn’t make me a monster. I’m only what he made me - just like you.”
“Lies!” Michael shrieked, like the fall of a blade upon the block.
Sam lay still and silently checked himself out. He realized he was in no pain, and he wasn’t hungry or thirsty, but he wondered how long he’d survive inside a cage with two warring archangels.
Lucifer laughed, and it was beautiful, a miraculous symphony, a wilderness of birdsong, wind, and rushing waters. Sam found himself smiling, and they noticed him.
“Sam, you’re awake. Are you all right?” It was Lucifer asking.
Sam could see no reason not to answer.
“How am I breathing? and where are we?”
“This is the cage - I adjusted reality so your body could survive.”
“Where’s Adam? Is he okay?”
“He's safe -- Michael’s keeping him asleep.”
“I'm not interested in these ignorant questions-- only in destroying you, Lucifer!” Michael said angrily.
As Sam squinted into the light, he began to make out two shapes like men with vast wings of light extending out in all directions. The wings rippled as if made of currents of water, and sparkled with flashes of energy.
“Why did you let me go?” Sam asked, risking another question despite Michael's wrath.
“I think you already know why, little brother,” Lucifer said.
“What did you call him?” Michael said, and the clashing noise of his anger rose dramatically.
Sam wanted to back away from Michael’s fury, but he still wasn’t sure it was safe to move, so he sat frozen.
“Michael, Michael,” Lucifer soothed. “These creatures deserve our Father's favor. They choose poorly sometimes - but so do we. And when they love one another, it’s like the glory of God himself!”
Sam was awestruck as Lucifer's aspect rippled like sunlight on a lake surface -- brilliant darts of light, blue and gold and white, that made a gentle lapping sound like little waves against a pebbled shore.
“Blasphemy!” Michael hissed, all discord.
“So you never saw why they were our Father’s favorites? You merely obeyed him blindly? The humans are the crown of his creation, made like us in his image, but so precious in their fragility, their need, their generosity and selflessness.”
Michael lapsed into silence, his glory dimming.
Lucifer seemed to subside a little in response. “A shame, isn’t it? I finally repent, and now you're so hidebound you can't see the truth. Well, we have eternity to reconcile our differences.” Lucifer's voice, even betraying his disappointment, was hypnotic. Sam felt he could stare into Lucifer's glory and listen to his pleasant murmur forever, and he realized that forever was a real possibility.
Eternity. Sam struggled to wrap his mind around it. He could sense no passage of time; even though he was breathing and his heart was beating, there was no sense of change or fluidity in his surroundings. He could hear the fluctuations of the archangels, as their volatile moods swelled and abated, but he had no way of placing them in scale, as everything around him was a blank, white void.
He seemed be sitting on a solid surface, and the archangels' brilliant light was all around him. He had no sense of a chamber, or a cage, or any kind of enclosure. For all he knew, he was crouched on an endless plain, burning under the glory of the two archangels like twin suns.
After pondering his situation for some unknown length of time, Sam gathered his nerves and spoke again. “Is there any way for me to get out of this cage?"
Lucifer's laughter rang again, but tinged with a bitterness Sam seemed to taste on the air, like sulphur.
"You're not in the cage -- you're in the reality I made for you. When your body hit the cage, I was ripped from it as I was pulled inside -- but luckily for you my influence extends a little way outside it," Lucifer explained.
"Can I get home then? Dad escaped, and Dean..." Sam asked.
“Unlike them, you still have a body. John Winchester was a spirit, and Dean was a demon,” Lucifer said mildly.
“Don’t say that! Dean was never a demon!” Sam shouted, suddenly angry. The demon blood always made his anger more difficult to control.
“Sam, Sam. Dean was Alistair’s apprentice. Of course he was a demon,” Lucifer said.
“But Dean’s not evil! He’s not... not... a monster!” Sam spat.
“Every demon was once a human soul, Sam. Dean was as much a monster as any demon-- a master torturer in fact- but of course, his victims got what they bargained for.” Repentant or not, there was a smartass smirk in Lucifer's tone.
“Dean was on the rack! He sold his soul to save me!” Sam was really angry now, and he could feel the demon blood stirring --- though the light of the archangel seemed to prevent it from rising as much as it normally would.
“I know all that. I really find it quite beautiful. So very tragic. Dean suffered so greatly at the hands of Alistair, holding on to the thought of you, alive. I watched it all through the bars of my cage.”
“You ... watched?” Sam couldn’t be any more furious, he thought.
“Well, I couldn’t do anything else!" Lucifer laughed again, but the beauty of his laughter was beginning to lose its charm for Sam. "Trapped in the cage, looking out into Hell, with no way to communicate except through very specific and gory channels - and only a few beings knew those specifics- Azazel being one.”
Sam was wrong. He could be more furious. “Azazel took his orders from you?”
Lucifer said simply, “I told him I wanted out, and I told him to look for the two of you. He did the rest on his own - with a bit of help from Heaven of course. Heaven’s held onto the precious Winchester prophecies for aeons. You can’t blame it all on me.”
Further enraged, Sam ground his teeth and kept his mouth shut. There was nothing he could do or say in response to the terrible injustices done to his family in the name of destiny - up to and including the angels interfering with their parents’ hearts and memories just to keep them together long enough for Sam and Dean to be born.
“Don’t sulk, Sam. You’re still alive... Dean’s still alive... even Adam. Where there’s life there’s hope, right?”
Sam felt himself calming- the archangels' light did seem to drive back the blood’s maddening influence, keeping Sam’s rage from boiling over. He was even just able to tolerate Lucifer’s miserable platitudes.
“Okay. Let’s start over. I’m not in the cage, but I can’t just walk out, cause I’m in a body and this little reality you've set up is surrounded by Hell.”
“That’s right," Lucifer agreed. "But demons can’t come near angelic light. That’s why with Nick I had to drink gallon after gallon of demon blood - it protected the body, but my grace still burned it away.”
“How do you even have a grace?” Sam said, feeling mean.
"My worshippers feed my grace --so many humans think they are following my Father, but they spend their energy appeasing me.”
“I thought grace came from God,” Sam said.
If a being of light could shrug, Lucifer did. "Grace-- it's a way divine energy flows. Angels, gods, all tap into divine energy one way or another."
“Gods?"
Lucifer laughed again, his ringing, delightful laugh, like sunlight trickling through a canopy of leaves. “You were there when I fought those other gods, Sam - you still don’t believe in them? You’ve killed several yourself. Ah, but you convinced yourself they were only monsters masquerading as gods. No, they really were gods.”
Sam refused to acknowledge the stab of guilt he felt at the thought of all the monsters he’d killed - and apparently, actual gods were among them.
“Dean and I have a duty to protect people from being eaten,” Sam argued sullenly.
Lucifer didn’t take the bait. “You can console yourself-- those pathetic gods I killed at the motel dissolved back into the one source, and humans will soon imagine them back into being.”
"Does that go for Gabriel too?" Sam asked.
"Probably," Lucifer said carelessly.
Michael had kept silent this whole time, but Sam was suddenly curious. “Can Michael still access Heaven’s power, now that he’s in Hell?”
“I'm sure Heaven still sends Michael power, hoping he'll somehow put an end to me.” Lucifer didn’t sound too frightened by the idea.
“That’s right, Lucifer. I’ll figure out a way,” Michael threatened, in his flat, colorless tones. Now that Sam had been conversing with Lucifer, the difference between them was startling. It reminded Sam of Dean's description of Raphael, so lifeless and nearly worn out by despair. Even backed by Heaven, Michael had only a shadow of Lucifer's glory.
“But why?” Sam dared to say. “Why do you still have to fight him, if he’s already repented of the reason he fell? Why don’t you just, like, hug it out or something?”
“It’s my destiny,” Michael repeated.
“Can you believe I was anxious to reunite with him?” Lucifer asked Sam. “But he won’t last long like this...”
“Like what?” Sam asked.
“With our true forms confined so closely together,” Lucifer responded. “Like calls to like.”
“I’m nothing like you! Nothing!” Michael shrilled.
“You just keep telling yourself that, big brother,” Lucifer said, with his familiar smugness. “You and I are cut from the same cloth, but my will is strong, while yours has nearly atrophied from harping so long on this same tired ‘mission.’”
Sam was alarmed by Lucifer's words, wondering what he had planned.
“I’m nothing like you,” Michael whispered, his voice shifting in his despair to wind and the roar of flames.
“Nothing,” Lucifer whispered back, but he moved closer to Michael, his wings brushing his brother's.
Sam could now see the archangels clearly, haloed within their brilliant light. Their wings were glorious, transcending color in ways Sam’s mind couldn’t grasp, radiant as lightning, white as snow. Each wing was covered with eyes, or things Sam perceived as eyes, whirling, sensing. They had faces where men would have faces, but always turning, watching, looking in all directions -- and some of the faces were eagles, or lions, or incredible creatures that Sam couldn't name.
As Sam's eyes adapted, he could see auras of light around the archangels' wings, ribbons of dancing color like the aurora borealis. Lucifer's were stronger and more vivid than Michael's, and as they neared, his auras danced around his brother's wings.
“Nothing....” Michael’s glory was diminishing, his words dwindling away, like the roar of the sea in a shell, and he made no move away from Lucifer.
“Come to me, brother,” Lucifer sang, and his beauty and magnetism were irresistible. His power seemed to pulse and surge like the ocean, hypnotic as a serpent luring a bird. Michael's wings were now arrayed toward Lucifer, as though intent on catching his brother's every nuance.
“Rest, my dearest, rest with me,” Lucifer intoned, all sweetness, all comfort, all peacefulness promised in his crooning.
“Yes,” Michael murmured, “my brother.” His wings had furled slightly, relaxing, yet still aquiver, reacting as Lucifer neared.
As Sam watched, the two archangels moved closer and closer, until their wings were intertwined, and energy crackled back and forth between them, shooting off bluish arcs and pieces of rainbow, and their auras trailed tracers as they moved.
Lucifer opened his wings, moving closer to his brother, gathering him in. Michael drew back slightly, but as Lucifer touched him Michael swayed closer, until he leaned into the embrace.
All Lucifer's wings gathered around his brother, and his brilliance rose and grew till he seemed all aflame, but he wasn't consumed by the fire.
Sam's eyes had grown accustomed to the light, but this was too much. Blinking in pain, he had to look away.
A deafening roar reverberated out from the angels and shook Sam to the bone, and he wondered again if he'd survive. When it finally died back, and the light dimmed a little, Sam dared to look: only one angel remained, vast and vibrating with power.
"Oh my God! Lucifer, what did you do? Where's Michael?" Sam shouted, jumping to his feet. His heart was pounding again in astonishment.
Before the archangel could answer, a crumpled form stirred nearby, and Sam realized that Adam had been only a short distance away the whole time.
"What happened? Where am I?" Adam asked.
"Just -- just wait a minute," Sam said quickly.
"We are one. We have reconciled," the archangel said, in a calm, powerful voice.
"Michael?" Sam asked, astonished.
"Yes, and Lucifer as well. Our enmity has been our greatest weakness, and we are much stronger together."
Sam didn't understand it, but somehow, the two angels had simply fused together -- maybe like the elohim of old. He would've loved to ponder the metaphysics of angelic union, but his first priority had to be escape.
"Are you gonna bust out then?" he asked the sublime entity.
"No, but if you tell the warrior Castiel all you've witnessed here, perhaps God will set us free. ... God seems interested in him."
The voice seemed to sound all along the spectrum, almost painful in its intensity. That didn't necessarily help Sam understand it.
"Castiel? How am I supposed to get a message to him, trapped down here with you?" Sam asked.
"Lucifer remembers all the contours of your power. He can touch the part of you that will finally give you control, so you'll be able to transport body and soul together just as the angels and demons do."
"But ... But ... I don't want demon powers. I want to be rid of them, once and for all!"
"Power in itself is neither good nor evil. The demon blood freed your inhibitions and baser impulses, but once you're in control, you can make your own decisions."
Sam was still afraid, knowing how tempting it was to justify using the power for his own personal agenda. Still, he had to get Adam and himself away from the cage and out of the Pit, and if his powers or the demon blood or Lucifer or Michael or the weird combination of the two of them could help them escape, he had to go for it.
"Am I strong enough to take Adam with me?" Sam asked.
"Yes," the vast new being replied, "and we will help send you on your way."
"Thank you," Adam said, and Sam nodded. It was good to appreciate the efforts of the archangels as long as they were playing nice.
"Some things may have changed by the time you return," the archangels said.
Sam felt a pang of anxiety, hoping Dean was okay. Who knew how long Dean been mourning, imagining Sam on the rack, or worse, taking up the knife? Sam wanted to think Dean was with Lisa, that he wasn't Hunting alone, and that he was somehow coping with the normal life Sam knew he dreamed of.
If this escape attempt worked, maybe he would soon find out.
"All right, I'll try to give Castiel your message. Thanks, uh, for not killing us down here, and for helping us escape."
The archangels dipped their many wings to Sam in a bizarre moment of courtesy.
"Just think yourself home, and we'll give you a little push."
Sam held out his hand to Adam, who took it and stood. "Kind of lean into me, okay? and bend your knees," Sam advised.
"What?" Adam asked.
But Sam had already envisioned Bobby's front door, and with a loud roll of thunder and a jarring landing, he and his half-brother escaped from Hell, unsinged, but owing a debt.