We Have Become Anathema

"So spake th' Apostate Angel, though in pain, Vaunting aloud, but rackt with deep despare:" ~Milton, "Paradise Lost"  Pariah(s)

[wehavebecomeanathema]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Been forever since I’ve posted on here or worked on any of m fan ficton. However I’m happy to say that I remembered that this tumblr exists and I have finally updated Subroutine for Serendipity for the first time in 14 months...

At this rate, who knows, I might even update Madness or churn out a few ficlets.

For those of you who haven’t read Subroutine for Serendipity, it is essentially a Supernatural and Shadowrun crossover, a dystopian cyberpunk future where humanity hides behind augmented reality overlays and online avatars. Lucifer, a street samurai and mercenary for hire, just waned to meet his client, get the commission up front, and get stared on the job. Figures that things wouldn’t go quite so smoothly for him.

[wehavebecomeanathema]

Oh look, I remembered I have this tumblr! And I actually dressed up as Lucifer again. Have a bunch of derp shots from our adventures in the woods.

And seeing as Tumblr keeps screwing up my gifs, here’s a link to an imgur album of them. http://imgur.com/a/Pbyd

[wehavebecomeanathema]

I keep forgetting about this Tumblr. Hopefully once I’m cosplaying again regularly I’ll actually have fresh updates.

[wehavebecomeanathema]

Actively working on updating SEVERAL of my Samifer stories, so that's good. But I wanted to ask you all, would anyone be interested if I made a foray into some Avengers stuff? Likely Science Bros, but I'd be open to prompt ideas if you've got any. 

[wehavebecomeanathema]

Is There a Subroutine for Serendipity?

Read it on AO3. 

If you've never heard of Shadowrun but enjoy cyberpunk, Bladerunner, Deus Ex, Snow Crash, or similar genres, please check this out. :3

Summary: Lucifer, a Shadowrunner in the dystopian metropolious of Seattle just wanted to get by, secure the occasional job, and beat the odds when it came to augmentation rejection syndrome. What he didn't expect was that he'd run into a hybrid in distress, get hired by the Russian mafia, or have to face up to the demons in his past. 

Rating: T & Up

Chapters so far: 5

Warnings: Some homosexual attractions, disturbing imagery, ideological themes, violence upcoming in later chapters, sci fi swearing, etc et al. 

Intro: Bodies crash together in a caricature of intimacy, hands plastered to hips as groins slipped against each other to the resounding bass. Their motion did little to help the stagnation of the perfumed, sweat laden air. Drinks sloshed from drunken hands over cheap shoes, down plunging necklines, into glib mouths, and off supine youths. Through the entire tableau the feeling of hedonistic abandon reigned supreme, a den of iniquity where anything could be bought, sold, or borrowed. It was best policy in such a place to not glance towards the darkest corners if you were not ready to watch the rutting of indolence in heat.

Lucifer’s gaze never once flitted to those most carnal of pleasures.

He was on a mission, and lust hadn’t helped him on one of these, ever.

Blinking harder than normal brought up his Augmented Reality Interface, the ARI overlaying his vision and flooding his visual field with data. That woman was a known member of such and such a street gang, that man dealt in REM chips, that man in the back stocked Beetles for low prices but had a bad reputation for stripping off their safety parameters. None of these people were what he was looking for. He sighed and drummed his fingers on the sticky bar top, abstractly disgusted as the residue clung to his gloves. After this mission he’d have to launder everything he was wearing, or possibly just incinerate the lot.

A light blinked at the upper right corner of his vision as a new message entered his inbox, immediately reading off over his ARI.

—Luci, I know you’re debating eviscerating me for this mission right now, but trust me. Sources say your man will be there.

[wehavebecomeanathema]

Stardust and Wanderlust

We bleed stardust and wanderlust

and secrets Man forgot.

We are the modern adventurers,

the nomads, and the mariners.

We traverse the oceanic realms

to find solace at their edge.

~

In isolation under feral heavens’ majesty

we test the mettle of our souls.

In the isles deserted and decrepit

we witness the cost of our freedom.

We pay in blood and silver,

time and tide.

We pay in memories and moments,

the slow death of neglect.

And in our wake’s swiftly dissipating foam

we record indelibly the truths of our lives.

 ~

For while experiencing the wonders of the world,

we change beyond the molds we once fit.

For who remembers the wayfarer,

the brigand, or the vagabond?

And who maintains fellowship

with the ghosts of long forgotten friends?

~

But we journey ever onward,

paying our fee in joyous fever.

We set sail and weigh anchor,

guided by the celestial aggregate.

For we are they called by the siren song

of harbours eldritch and shores alien.

We are they who bleed stardust and wanderlust

and secrets Man forgot.

[wehavebecomeanathema]

Is There A Subroutine for Serendipity?

Read here or over on AO3.

Bodies crash together in a caricature of intimacy, hands plastered to hips as groins slipped against each other to the resounding bass. Their motion did little to help the stagnation of the perfumed, sweat laden air. Drinks sloshed from drunken hands over cheap shoes, down plunging necklines, into glib mouths, and off supine youths. Through the entire tableau the feeling of hedonistic abandon reigned supreme, a den of iniquity where anything could be bought, sold, or borrowed. It was best policy in such a place to not glance towards the darkest corners if you were not ready to watch the rutting of indolence in heat.

Lucifer’s gaze never once flitted to those most carnal of pleasures.

He was on a mission, and lust hadn’t helped him on one of these, ever.

Blinking harder than normal brought up his Augmented Reality Interface, the ARI overlaying his vision and flooding his visual field with data. That woman was a known member of such and such a street gang, that man dealt in REM chips, that man in the back stocked Beetles for low prices but had a bad reputation for stripping off their safety parameters. None of these people were what he was looking for. He sighed and drummed his fingers on the sticky bar top, abstractly disgusted as the residue clung to his gloves. After this mission he’d have to launder everything he was wearing, or possibly just incinerate the lot.

A light blinked at the upper right corner of his vision as a new message entered his inbox, immediately reading off over his ARI.

Sighing to himself, he debated how he wanted to reply to their hacker, knowing the coward needed almost constant reassurance he wouldn’t kill him in his sleep. One of these days he’d drop this whole stupid team, dammit, but right now he still needed them. The streets of Seattle weren’t exactly a safe place for a Runner to go about in alone these days, so the team kept him in work and gave him a few half-way dependable allies to call in if anything went south. Of course his pride would never allow him to do that, but still, it was the illusion of a safety net that was useful.

//Shut your mouth, G4b3. You know I’m not going to kill you over a mission. Not like you chose where this guy shows up.  His lips moved soundlessly as his reply was compiled in his neural processor and transmitted out. No matter how hard he practiced, he’d never been able to get the hang of the ARI for correspondence, and with his attention divided he tended to uselessly mouth off like that. Probably some perverse side-effect of those years in Solitary. That would track.  

--Right, well, that’s good to know. Oh hey, proximity alert, someone just flagged on the club’s sensors as a… holy Hell. GET OUT OF THERE! DEMON ACTIVITY, I REPEAT, DEMON ACTIVITY!

Just like the little prick to spook at a little movement from the Nether. Lucifer scoffed and rolled his eyes, ignoring the hacker’s well-meaning warning. Really, he was able to take care of himself and a few demons wouldn’t be a problem. Besides, //They won’t be interested in little old me. Stop being such a #(%*&#&%(%# ---LANGUAGE FILTER INITIATED. Really? A language filter? That little hacker couldn’t take anything even mildly intimidating, it would seem.

--Did I mention that there are five of them?

Lucifer blew out a breath, uncomfortable with the stifling atmosphere. A body sidled up to him, something long and lean and entirely too tall. He spared the individual a sidelong glance as he rested his leg back on the bar. Well, if that wasn’t a long, cool glass of water. His ARI beeped a few times halfheartedly, but he minimized whatever asinine warnings G4b3 was trying to send him so he could fully appreciate the man next to him. Well-toned muscles rippled over the man’s back as he leaned in to yell at the barkeep and Lucifer could practically smell the weapons training on the man, something in how he held himself.

When the man started to turn, drink in hand, he didn’t seem terribly surprised to see Lucifer staring at him. His slight height advantage made his smile appear a little thin, “Can I help you?”

“I doubt it.” Lucifer thought about twelve ways he could help the younger man, but he didn’t feel like being lewd with the man would be terribly appreciated. “Just looking.”

The man laughed, a sound too honest for this place, “Like what you see?”

“Haven’t seen anything quite like it before, so you’ll have to excuse me while I quantify just how it stacks up to my general standards.”

“Sounds like you’ve got a pretty slow processor if you need this much time to quantify that. Most people just sort of know instinctively.” There was a ghost of that laugh still in his words, peeking through like coding and wires. The man reached up and brushed his long bangs from his face and the light glinted off pale yellow eyes.

Definitely not your corn-bred variety of human.

“I like to think it’s what I do with my processer that’s more important than how fast it spins.”

--LUCIFER! Don’t minimize the ARI! You’re on a job, remember?

Lucifer cursed quietly, a swift stream of Mandarin as the message flashed over his vision and obscured the man’s face. “Sorry, one second. Stupid ARIs always interrupting.” He noticed the man glance out at the dance floor again before perching on the bar stool next to him. “Just… hold that thought.” Blinking hard again, the ARI maximized over his vision again, angry messages littered everywhere. //Calm down, little man. What’s so important? My alarms haven’t gone off yet for our contact, so what’s got your wires in a twist?

--What has my… you have a lot of nerve. Those demons? Remember them? I’ve been monitoring their transitions and guess who they’re looking for?

Who they were looking for? How the hell should he know? An arrow appeared in the middle of the room and swiveled around to point to his right. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes at the hacker’s antics, he turned to see just who their target was. Of fucking course it would have to be younger man who was still smiling at him with that hint of intrigue, the glowing yellow outline on his figure blazing bright enough to make him seem otherworldly.

//Any idea as to why?

--Who do you think I am? Of course I looked into that. He’s not registered on anything that I can find, but I did dig up this.

A holo-screen popped up next to the man’s head, information decoding before his eyes from cascading streams of glowing binary. Winchester, Sam, highly dangerous hybrid. Reward: 50,000 cred, payable from Nether forces.

Shit. His first time being attracted to someone in ages and of course it’d be one of the damn kids wrapped up in the whole mess of the Conjoining.

“You’ve got demons on your trail,” he said apologetically.

Suddenly the man, Sam’s, eyes narrowed and the playfulness in his expression was gone. “After the reward then?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, kid. I might be a Runner, but your bounty isn’t even close to the low ball range of my commission fee.” It was almost cute how the kid bristled at that, and Lucifer had to work to keep from smiling. “Anyways, thought you might appreciate the heads up. I’d hate to see demons ruin your good looks.”

“Aw, do you really think I’m pretty?” Sam asked with exaggerated titillation.

At least he didn’t look ready to cram a frag grenade down his gullet anymore. 

Lucifer chuffed. “Pretty enough that I’m debating doing something stupid.”

--Don’t Lucifer.

“Really stupid.”

--Remember credits? We all like getting paid.

Sam’s casual sip of his beer was slightly ruined by the way his eyes quickly scanned the crowd, “How stupid?”

--Remember that we’ve got a job and a client you need to meet up with?

Lucifer licked his lips and gave the kid another once over. Yeah, he liked what he saw. This kid was going to muck everything up, wasn’t he? “REALLY stupid. How do you feel about upping your posted reward by a few hundred thousand?” And dammit if the way the kid smiled darkly back at him didn’t hit him below the belt.

“Sounds promising.” Sam downed the rest of his watered down beer and set his glass on the bar. “What do you have in mind?”

Pushing away from the bar, Lucifer reached out and touched Sam’s neural port over his left temple, instantly syncing up with the kid’s ARI. //We’re going to get into a fight, draw attention, and get ourselves thrown out into the back alley.

Sam raised an eyebrow but the realization of exactly what that would do swiftly dawned on his face. “You’ve got a flair for this, don’t you?”

Lucifer shrugged demurely. His punch came out of nowhere and connected with a wet snap at he broke Sam’s nose. //Lesson 1: I’m a dick. Problem?

Snarling like the animal he was, Sam was on him in an instant, eyes slipping black in an instant. What he lacked in finesse, he more than made up for in natural talent as he hooked a leg behind Lucifer’s and brought them both down to the slippery, sweat stained floor. His knee rammed Lucifer’s breath right out of him, but instead of satisfaction at a pained look on the other man’s face, he suddenly found himself with his back on the disgusting floor and pain radiating from his left shoulder.

//Dislocated.

Another explosion of pain.

//Back in place. Sorry about that, you’re heavier than you look and that’s never a nice way to get someone off of me.

The barkeep pulled Lucifer off of Sam, several of the bouncers making it over and holding the heavily augmented man back. “This ain’t no underground fight scene, got me?” the burly man yelled. “I’m gonna have to ask you men to leave or my friends put a few rounds into your kneecaps and we toss you out.”

Lucifer held up his hands. “I’m cool… I’m cool.” Then he made another dive at Sam and with a calculated shift in his momentum managed to make it look like one of the bouncers had restrained his arm much more painfully than he had. Ah, how he’d missed making scenes like this. They did wonders for distracting people from the important things, like the fact that he’d just run a cracking subroutine on this imbecilic bouncer and gotten himself a nice little skim off the top of his account.

--Luce! The client just asked me what the hell is going on. I wish I had a better answer to give him. We’ve got a reputation to keep.

Reputation? Oh, that was rich coming from the slimy little toad who wanted to call off the mission because a few demons wandered in. Well G4b3 could stew for a while, he had a hot piece of ass to save.

Another bouncer picked up Sam and escorted them both to the door, tossing them out into the street with a distinct lack of grace.

Sam started laughing as soon as the door slammed behind them, one hand resting on the brick of the nondescript building next to the club while the other gingerly felt at his lightly swollen nose. “This… this how you ask people out? Break their nose and dislocate their shoulder before getting demons on their tail?”

Lucifer shot him a lascivious grin before reaching over and snapping his nose back into place. “Only the one’s I really like. If you can’t take a little rough foreplay then I have no use of you, pansy.”

“I never said--,”

“WINCHESTER!” Demons burst through the door, their eyes as dark as Sam’s had been in his bloodlust.

//Showtime. Try not to get killed, kid.

                “It’s Sam, not kid.”

//Survive this and I might just think highly enough of you to keep that in mind. Kid.

There were matching unhinged smiles on their faces as they rounded on their would-be ambushers. Lucifer drew out a segmented katana from somewhere, the lightweight weapon expanding to full length and locking into place moments before it was slicing through a demon’s neck, cutting it clean off. He fell down to a knee as a bullet passed through the air he’d just been occupying, it’s trail outlined in yellow as his ARI’s sensors screamed at him. –INITIATING COMBAT AWARENESS- A small circle appeared at the top left corner of his vision, the red blips warning him exactly where his enemies were coming from, and his onboard targeting systems began highlighting all weapons. He rolled forward and swung his arm out, cutting off another demon’s leg at the knee, warm blood spurting into his ashen blond hair. The guttural oath from the demon set his teeth on edge, demonspeak always having that effect on him.

Slipping his katana back in its hidden compartment, he drew out dual .45s and blasted away the two demons who were just about to pump him full of lead. Well high powered plasma rounds, but close enough. He quickly scanned his ARI map and saw that the fourth demon had run off and the last one was behind him with Sam. Shit, don’t let the kid be hurt.

Turning around to see if the kid needed help with the final demon, he found himself transfixed by the scene there. Sam had a demon by the throat, his teeth latched around the carotid artery in one of the most goram beautiful displays of aggression he’d ever seen. Then the kid fucking tore the demon’s throat open and started drinking up the blood that spilled forth like it was nectar.

Kid’s a junkie? Huh. Well, everyone had their addictions these days. Far be it from him to judge the kid over this one. Besides, if he remembered correctly hybrids got power from the blood of Nether beings.

Sam looked up at him as he kept on draining the demon with eyes as black as the starless night sky, and Lucifer felt something a hell of a lot stronger than a chill shoot down his spine. GORAMIT!

Before the demon was even quite dead, Sam reached out and grabbed Lucifer by the collar of his combat vest, pulling him in. Their mouths clashed together as the demon’s body slumped to the ground, still spurting a thin stream of blood that pooled at their feet. Sam dragged Lucifer back until a wall was at his back, hands roaming wildly up and down over Lucifer’s metal alloy arms. Combat models. “Anything in you still flesh and blood?” Sam growled.

Lucifer chuckled into Sam’s mouth before he pulled back and smirked. “Enough. Why? You got problems with augments?”

“I’ve got problems with older men who hit on me, kill three demons without so much as breaking a sweat, and then watch me like that while I’m downing blood.” He rushed forward to claim Lucifer’s mouth again, angry when he realized he was being held back. “Problems I think we should work through.”

This time Lucifer laughed outright. “Oh kid, no wait, Sammy. We’re going to work through a lot of problems, but this alley really isn’t the place.”

Demon blood coursing through Sam’s blood, it was still obvious to Lucifer’s ARI that the kid’s pupils were completely blown. “Where?”

“Never mind that. I also don’t take advantage of junkies when they’re high. Policy of mine to be chivalrous. I’m all about consent.”

Sam hitched his leg up between Lucifer’s and tried to overpower the immense power of the arm pining him to the wall. “I’m consenting. See this, very consensual. And that,” his eyes dropped to Lucifer’s groin, “agrees with me.”

“No, that gets hot and bothered every time I fight. Bad habit.” He wasn’t bothered by it in the least, special biomech inside his body keeping the flood of hormones from getting to his head. Even the adrenaline was being carefully controlled. “You obviously get hot and bothered by that blood, and I don’t consider that consent. Try again when your mouth doesn’t taste like sulfer, eh?” Halfway expecting the kid to whine, he was strangely proud at the way Sam just smiled wider and relaxed against the wall, dropping his leg back down. Kid had better control than he thought.

“Fine, when I’m not high as a kite then.” Sam reached forward and touched Lucifer’s neural port, almost a caress.

Ten digits flickered across Lucifer’s vision in tickertape. Son of a bitch just gave him his number. “Will you remember this when you’re not high as a kite?”

“Mmmmm, won’t be forgetting you any time soon.”

Lucifer let his arm down and contemplated walking away. A good man would have. Instead he mimicked Sam’s early move and dragged him in by his collar, one last bruising kiss for the road to muck up his hormone control for the night. Yeah, he wasn’t exactly a good man.

He didn’t even mind when the kid bit at his lip hard enough to make him bleed, at least his own blood didn’t taste like sulfur, but it certainly didn’t taste like copper either.

Instantly they were apart, Sam against the wall gasping hard, eyes back to nauseatingly swirling yellow. “What the hell are you?” He swiped a hand over his mouth as his other hand reached out instinctively toward Lucifer.

“Just a street samurai, nothing special.” Like hell Lucifer was going to tell the kid, but it sure was interesting to see the kid’s instant reaction to his own blood. And he wasn’t so naïve that he took that instant eye change as a buzz kill. The way Sam was staring at him was a potent enough explanation that he wanted seconds. Could be dangerous with a kid like this. Too bad he lived for that.  See? Once again, another damn mission munged up because he lusted after a hot piece of ass. G4b3 was going to throw a fit when he got back.

Turning on his heel, he started off down the shadowed alley, waving over his shoulder, “Maybe I’ll call you sometime.”

“You better,” Sam yelled after him.

As Lucifer jumped up to a fire escape and rebounded up onto the roof of the building across the street, a message crossed his vision.

\\At least tell me your name, jackass.

//Lucifer.

[wehavebecomeanathema]

A Willing Sort of Madness

Chapter 6: Sometimes All of Our Thoughts are Misgiven 

Summary: Sam finally wakes up, but there are new storms brewing on the horizon.

“You seem distracted today, Lucifer. You haven’t even made any thinly veiled insults to my intelligence today.” Dr. Woland rubbed at the bridge of his nose, tired after a long day seeing patients. Lucifer’s new quiet was appreciated after the screams and panic attacks of Nick’s earlier patients that day, but it seemed to bode ill. In these past few months he’d felt that they were starting to get somewhere in unraveling the root causes of Sam’s disassociation, and if Lucifer began closing up there was a very real possibility that Sam’s treatment would grind to a standstill.

            “They’re not all so thinly veiled,” Lucifer replied distantly, his eyes fixated on a bare portion of the wall. The silence rushed back in like the tide, eddying around their ankles in cold currents.

“And?”

“I’ve stopped taking the medication and Sam’s finally coming back. Well, his hallucinations are, which means he can’t be too far behind.” Something invisible caught the man’s attention as unfocused eyes tracked right.

            Nick looked over at the wall, curious as to just what Lucifer might be seeing. Of course the first thing to address was the medication. “You’ve stopped taking your medication? Orderlies are supposed to watch you take it while on their rounds.” As soon as he’d said it he felt ridiculous. Inattentive orderlies was not a new problem in the medical field.

            There was a sigh from the leather couch as Lucifer sat up, finally deigning to look at him. “And you’ve never palmed anything in your life? Once I stopped violently resisting, their vigilance dropped off into almost criminal levels of negligence. You should really look into better staff, or maybe better training programs.” He chuckled to himself, “Imagine if I had been a dangerous patient who actually needed those drugs. Why that would have been a scandal.”

            It was almost miraculous how quickly Lucifer could get under his skin, but Nick counted to ten and nodded, knowing well that it was easiest to play along with Lucifer’s capricious mood changes and sardonic responses. “That it would be. Instead we’ll have the pleasure of Sam’s company again?”

            “And what a pleasure it is,” Lucifer muttered, quietly satisfied.

            During their past few months Nick had certainly heard often enough from Lucifer about how he was looking forward to Sam’s return, but there was a niggling worry in the back of his mind. “Is it?”

            “Is what?” Avian inquisitiveness in those familiar hazel eyes somehow had them looking blue, must have been a trick of the light.

            “Is it going to be a pleasure to relinquish control to Sam?” Nick tapped his pen on his notepad, rhythmic thumps as he sorted through the issues he saw arising from this odd situation. “After all, you’ve been the dominant personality for nearly three months now, correct? Surely you’ve developed some taste for freedom, found all the ways you fit under Sam’s skin better than merely being cramped in a corner of his mind.”

            “Jealousy, is that it?” Lucifer sounded unimpressed with the diagnosis as he pulled a leg up under him. “How is it that you still don’t understand me? I honestly feel like I’ve explained my position on this before.”

            It was true. Lucifer had, on multiple occasions, expressed anticipation for Sam’s return; but the specific issue of relinquishing control hadn’t been brought up in so many words. “Experiences can change our perspectives on things. Sometimes we find that our convictions don’t weather all storms.”

            “Oh, of all the…” waving off Nick’s train of thought, Lucifer tapped his fingers on his knee impatiently. “I understand that you’re trying to be a good psychiatrist and plumb the depths of human emotions, but you’re being obtuse again. It doesn’t suit you. I’m not human, not in the same sense you or Sam are. Sam never needed me to be any closer to human than general appearance. My emotional responses to things are naturally going to differ then. Sam’s body is as much mine when I’m in his mind as when I’m swinging his arms and legs around.”

            He rubbed his thumb over the inside of Sam’s knee, small circles, “Are you jealous of your subconscious for the time it spends in the driver’s seat when you’re asleep? I rather doubt it. I have never and will never begrudge Sam control of his body. If the need never arose again for me to take over, I wouldn’t mind at all. Sadly life is cruel and there have been more than a few occasions where I was forced to take over in defense.”

            Nick scoffed lightly, “Such altruism.” None of this tracked; no one was that selfless. Everyone felt some resentment in being replaced. Children held short term grudges against younger siblings being born and stealing the limelight, band members grew to resent the front man, jealous exes found it difficult to move on. “Part of your angelic nature, I’m assuming?”

            “No need to get nasty.”

            Something passed beyond reality and Nick watched as Lucifer suddenly twisted around and stared at the far wall. Muscles stood out in stark definition through the back of the thin patient whites, tension outlining Lucifer in something hungry. Entirely against his will, Nick again felt his eyes being drawn to the same region of wall that Lucifer was staring at. There was nothing there, just the plain cream walls scrubbed rigorously. “What is it?”

            Lucifer didn’t respond, the ticking seconds sounded thunderous in the silence.

            Minutes passed in that fashion, Lucifer’s body held twisted and rigidly at attention, Dr. Woland’s attention wandering as he counted the seconds and debated if he should try to pull Lucifer back from whatever he was seeing. Somehow this felt different than the times when Sam had hallucinated, or even the ways in which Lucifer would follow cerebral images with his eyes while still carrying on a conversation.

            Ceasing to take his anti-psychotics could certainly increase the prevalence of hallucinations, but what was the correlation between the medication and its apparent suppression of Sam’s personality? No see, there he was straying, falling into Lucifer’s rhetoric again. Sam had suffered an adverse reaction to the previous medication and his mind had fractured more visibly while his body healed. Unless Sam’s dominant personality could be influenced by the medication?

            There was still so much about the human mind that simply passed their understanding, which chemical reactions caused what reactions. If Sam Winchester’s case was able to teach him nothing else, at least it was a humbling reminder that the human mind was more complex than his professional mindset allowed him to contemplate. So many cases, so many treatments, so many errant, half-formed diagnoses that he had to lay aside for the most plausible answer.

            He was roused from his thoughts when he felt a hand on his shoulder, cold radiating through his multiple layers.

            Lucifer was leaning over his desk, “Careful doc, stare off like that and they won’t be able to tell you apart from the patients.”

            Shrugging off the touch, Nick straightened his coat for something to occupy his hands with, “Mind telling me what had you so distracted?”

            “I could ask the same thing.”

            Nick sighed and narrowed his eyes, suddenly not in the mood for the endless games.

            “Fine.” Lucifer backed off and walked back to the couch, perching loosely on the armrest rather than sitting properly. “Sam was trying to find me, but he’s still a bit too deep. It would seem that the drugs had a bit more of an effect on him than I was anticipating. He’s floundering in memories right now that he shouldn’t have access to. He’s dangerously close to disrupting the serenity of his ignorance.”

            Interesting.

            “Is that so?” This sounded promising for getting further into the history of Sam’s abuse. “What sort of memories? They would fall under the category of memories you hide from him?”

            “Yes, exactly that sort of memory,” Lucifer snapped, vitriolic and flustered. It was not a good combination and it made him seem more feral than usual. “Have you ever been betrayed, doc?”

            “Everyone has at some point, I’m certain.”

            “No, really betrayed. Purposeful destruction of trust placed in another person?” The apparent temperature in the room dropped as Lucifer rested his face in his hand. “There is a special flavour that betrayal leaves on your tongue, a unique marker that’s emblazoned into your mind. Sam’s trust was systematically ravaged as a child and he’s running through memories like fun house mirrors, everything is distorted and confusing and reflecting a hundred events he doesn’t remember. He’s--,” Lucifer’s voice caught before morphing into a hopeless snarl, “scared, and I can’t help him if he stays in there.” He looked up at Nick through ashen lashes and splayed fingers. “You asked if I was jealous of Sam’s control over his body? That’s such an insignificant matter when I can’t keep him safe inside his mind like I’m supposed to.”

            Nick shifted uncomfortably in his seat, feeling mildly voyeuristic as he watched such a proud man brought to this. “And maintaining control over his body limits what you can do inside his mind?”

            “An astute question for once. Partially, yes. Imagine sitting alone in a dark room at night, eyes affixed on the pages of a book, when suddenly a feeling washes over you that you can’t account for; vast loneliness or crushing despair. Sam’s emotions override all my thoughts, resonate deep within the core of my being, and while I’m out here doing useless things like talking and breathing, I can’t calm him. He’s too distraught to have my words alone do anything.”

            “Then was that – what, you momentarily shedding control of his body to comfort him?”

            Lucifer dragged his hand down his face, grimacing. “No, that was us living through fragments of a memory I had carefully locked down years ago. He’ll have to relive it over and over in his mind until it’s defragmented, each time it slowly grows more overwhelmingly real and immediate. He’ll wake up soon, but this is going to haunt him because he’ll have no context for it, no rational way to explain it away.” His laugh was hollow, “How do you explain to someone that they’re not still at the bottom looking up at that impossible point of hope above?”

            What was Lucifer getting at? This sounded more specific than just Sam’s vague recollections of abuse. Nick made to reply but the clock chimed the hour and an orderly was already opening the door. There would be more time to explore these latest discoveries later. “I don’t know, Lucifer, but perhaps start with assuring them of what is actually the present?”

            Sam is fifteen and the entire world has shrunken down to a pinpoint of pain, liquid fire racing through his right side that isn’t cooled at all by the puddle of icy water he’s lying in. The pain is a constant companion, weaving through all of his thoughts, dragging him back from the perilous edge of unconsciousness, and fueling his fear. Luce isn’t in the depths here with him; there is only his breathing and droplets falling off the moss to keep him company. Time has long since lost meaning here, stagnant.

            He grunts and shifts to look up the shaft, pale starlight barely showing the distant mouth of the well. Fever chills and suddenly the pain is all he knows again, eyes closing.

            “Luce.” The word is a moaned prayer. Unanswered again.

            If only he could catch his breath, call out to Dean, maybe his brother would rescue him.

            No, Dean wouldn’t do that.

            He wants me to get out of here under my own power. If he helped me, I wouldn’t be strong enough. I’d let him down.

            This isn’t the first trial that Dean has set up for him, but without Luce down here with him he can’t keep the fear from cutting into him. Luce held him in the snow, must have had enough strength left to call out until that hiker had found them. If Luce was here now, then they’d figure out a way to get out in one piece.

            Sam shifts slightly and the motion sends a renewed wave of pain and nausea through him, dry heaves start up again as he’s long since emptied himself.

            Where is Luce? That sole thought resounds throughout his mind, rippling out and touching everything else. Luce is supposed to always be there, always. Luce is the reason he’s not alone anymore, so where is he?

             Sam is almost certain his right arm is broken, somewhere beneath the livid bruise that covers the length of his forearm.

            Can I climb out with one arm?

            His fingers won’t flex right and they look swollen from the lack of motion.

            “Sam.”

            Nothing matters as adrenaline floods Sam’s system and he struggles to his knees, right arm cradled against his chest as he looks up at the mouth of the well. A cloud passes from in front of the moon and there is Luce, limned in the ardent light of the paler celestial mistress. He looks like something holy there as Sam blinks sweat from his eyes. “Luce!” but his voice is still barely more than a rough whisper.

            “It’s alright Sam. It’s going to be alright now.”

            But this isn’t right. Luce never came. Sam had lain in the well for almost three days before John had returned from his weekend business trip and happened to hear his son’s feeble calls for help. Luce arrived later, at the hospital. A crease forms between his eyebrows as he gazes up at his oldest and best of friends, utterly confused at this shift in events. “But, you never came…”

            “I’m here now, Sam. Isn’t that what matters?” Luce’s face is a silhouette and his shoulders are too wide. The man at the top of the shaft isn’t Luce.

            “Who are you?” Fear robs Sam of his joy, makes him rude as the pain starts creeping back in.

            The man at the top of the well doesn’t answer, but now Sam knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he isn’t Luce. Luce is younger and yet still timeless. This man, and he is a man, looks almost like Luce, but he most definitely is not his friend.

            “WHO ARE YOU?”

            “WHO ARE YOU?!” Sam woke himself up with his own screaming, throat raw from the same three words repeated endlessly. A sheen of sweat on his forehead and upper lip cooled his skin unpleasantly, each puff of recycled air robbing him of the warmth he’d found in oblivion. His left hand absently gripped the long healed fracture from the dreamed memory. The lights were too bright, the air too close, everything claustrophobic as he struggled to get his legs untangled from the sheets, heart still beating too fast and breath coming in anaerobic spurts.

            The dream was still there, mixing with earlier scenes of Dean’s face peering down at him, taunting kindly that Sammy could get out of the hole. But Dean would never have done that, never left him down there like that. And who was Luce? That had been Lucifer at the top of the well, the certainty of that fact growing with each passing moment he’s free from the grips of the dream. Lucifer had been trying to comfort him but he’d wanted someone else.

            Sam shoved his legs over the side of his bed and rested his face in his hands, elbows precariously perched on his knees. “Dammit, what was that?” Yes, there were times that Lucifer could be a comfort, but he’d never felt that much… he couldn’t even name the emotion he’d read in Lucifer’s silhouette. If he hadn’t been in so much pain, so worried over this impersonator watching over him, he would have wanted to melt into that emotion, slumber in the protection it promised. Figured that his dreams would find new ways to point out the inadequacies in his life, the utter lack of camaraderie and love. Just what he needed to wake up to.

            Now that his heart was no longer attempting to break the hummingbird beats per minute record, he scrubbed a hand over his face and felt the stiff drag of his stubble. How long had it been since he’d been taken to the in house barber? Well, he’d get around to it. Right now he had more important things to see to. He went through his morning routine on autopilot, bathroom, sink, teeth, brush; his mind occupied with the vague sensation that he was missing something. Patting himself down with one hand he felt everything in its right place, shirt, pants, and he wiggled his toes to assure himself he was wearing he’d actually stepped into his slippers on the way. Yup, nothing missing there.

            His eyes stared back at him lifelessly, reproachful for what he’d forgotten.

            “What?” he asked, bristling defensively.

            The reflection remained silent, a small crack forming at the upper right of the mirror. He reached forward and both of them stroked the crack, plumbing both sides of the oddity. Wasn’t there something about breaking mirrors that brought bad luck? That’d be just what he needed, more bad luck. Leaning in, he breathed on the crack and tried to buff out the crack. It still looked livid after he’d pulled back, but at least it had stopped spreading, spidery filaments waiting at the edges to start up again. “Looks like I’m not the only one who’s cracked up this morning?”

            His reflection didn’t laugh at the joke, he didn’t either. Tasteless joke.

            Just as Sam was starting to turn away, he noticed his doppelgänger move without him. The lips parted as his reflection tried to speak from the other side of the mirror. No sounds came. With an agitated puff at his bangs slipping into his eyes, the other Sam leaned in and breathed fog onto the glass, quickly writing into it before it vanished.

            ؟ECUL S’OHW

            Of course, backwards. Sam mouthed along with the question as he thought it over. “I don’t know who Luce is. I just know that I was expecting him to be there with me in the well and he wasn’t.” His gaze drifted to the crack again and he frowned, not understanding why this was bothering him so much. Luce sounded like it could be a sort of nick name for Lucifer, but he’d never dream of giving Satan endearments. Besides which, Lucifer probably wouldn’t take too kindly to it.

            Speaking of which, where was Lucifer?

            Sam carded a hand through his bangs as he walked back out into his room, worrying at his lower lip as he scanned the empty space. It wasn’t as if Lucifer was always there, but…

            When was the last time he’d seen him?

            His mind suddenly felt like it was moving through molasses as he tried to remember anything before he’d gone to sleep. Patting a staccato beat against the side of his thigh, he sat lightly on the edge of his bed. Why couldn’t he remember anything? Think, Sam, think. He remembered Dr. Woland’s arrival and Lucifer’s hissy fit over that, Lucifer giving him his heart, the maggots. The further along he went, the dimmer and more obscure his recollections became. There had been a complication, then silence. Dreadful silence.

            It came to him with considerable effort and a dizzying swell of vertigo, his hands fisting into his sheets. They’d put him on drugs and Lucifer had vanished. He’d been completely alone, and then there was only darkness.

            What day was it? What was the last day he could remember? His heart sped up again as he realized that he had no notion of time in here, no hallmark’s in his room to let him know if this was tomorrow or a year hence. He looked around the room again, taking in everything. Nothing was new, nothing had changed. Reality was playing nice and had left his room intact, but that did little to comfort him this time.

            “Alright, calm down Sam. Let’s think through this rationally.” He thought he heard a laugh directed at him from the bathroom, and he could just imagine the scathing look of disappointment on his reflection’s face. “What is the last date you remember?” Nothing came to mind, but snow. Okay, he could work with snow. Snow meant that he last remembered winter. The windows near his ceiling were too high to give him a view of anything but a strip of the sky, too frosted to see through clearly. Think, think, think. There had to be some way.

            The door.

            He watched as it swung open on noiseless hinges, the corridor beyond it a gaping chasm of nothingness. There were people out there he could ask. They would know, they were paid to keep track of facts like the current date and president. People considered those bits of knowledge to be signposts. Sam preferred the outback, himself. But right now he needed that little bit of reassurance. Pushing off the bed, he walked to the door in small, measured steps, waiting for gravity to shift or the room to decompress or some force to drag him out into that swirling nether; however when he got to the door he could feel the wood solid under his fingers, the swirling maw juxtaposed over the door he knew must be there. Lucifer was supposed to be here to force reality to make sense, dammit.

            Yes, anger was good. Anger was much better than fear, easier to manage and hold onto.

            Reaching out with blind fingers he traced the seam of the door, wishing that they allowed him a handle on the inside of his door. Instead he closed his eyes and knocked, quiet at first but then gaining in confidence. Someone would come and tell him what season it was. Maybe he hadn’t lost time at all, maybe the dream had just shaken him up and he was worrying over nothing. Except he had lost time before. There was something of a precedent for it in fact.

            And Lucifer wasn’t here. Sam could feel that in his bones, a surety beyond any rational explanation. 

            He took a step back from the door vortex when he heard steps approaching, the soft click-clacking of heels. The door never appeared, but instead Ruby materialized from the ether.

            “Your hair’s blonde,” Sam said, mentally comparing it to the deep burgundy he remembered. There was some root growth showing, so it had been a while since she’d dyed it. Damn. That wasn’t a good sign.

            Ruby responded by narrowing her eyes and pursing her lips at him. “Right, I dyed it about a month ago, but you already… know… that,” her words trailed off as she seemed to come to some sort of realization. “Sam?”

            “Yes?” None of this was making sense.

            “Oh, Sam.” Suddenly she was smiling and she reached out and was clapping his shoulder, acting entirely unlike the motivated but somewhat distant Ruby he knew.

            Time had definitely passed then.

            Fighting to maintain his composure, he sidestepped her next pat and coughed. “Would you mind telling me the date?”

            She nodded, easily picking up on his discomfort. “It’s May 24th.”

            “May,” Sam repeated, feeling something cold and dark slither down his spine and pool in his stomach. “I don’t… Last I remember there was still snow out, February maybe?”

            “That doesn’t surprise me, you’ve been,” Ruby stopped and visibly considered how to phrase it, “gone for a while.”

            Sam took a moment to digest that. He’d been gone? That certainly didn’t sound like he’d been in a coma or asleep all that time, and his body didn’t have that lethargic weakness that he’d experienced after a two week medically induced coma. He felt normal, fit. “But you weren’t surprised to see me up and about.”

            The observation hung in the air between them like something rancid and rotting. Ruby’s nose scrunched.

            “So…”

            “So you were gone and a secondary personality surfaced.”

            This time the silence stretched longer, Sam blinking uselessly as he tried to understand that. What, he’d had a dissassociative break? He shifted his weight and opened and closed his mouth a few times. Where did he even start with this?

            “Listen, Sam, maybe we should take you to doctor Woland and he can help you understand what happened a little better.” Ruby looked honestly pained to see his confusion.

            “No, no that’s fine, just--,” he ran a hand through his hair and went back to sit on his bed again. The springs protested weakly and he sympathized with them. “So, what happened? I was someone else?”

            Ruby frowned and shut the door behind her, leaning against the soft padding of the wall. “Basically. He moved differently than you, held himself a little taller. I don’t think I’d ever really realized how tall you were before. You tend to slump.” She sounded a bit flustered, rambling off random details. “He introduced himself as Lucifer--.”

            “Lucifer?” Sam interrupted her, worry flooding ice through his body. “But he’s…” He honestly didn’t know what to say, he’d always been so careful not to tell others about Lucifer. Most people would get worried if he said that he lived with Satan looking over his shoulder. 

            She walked over and crouched down in front of him, looking up through her dark lashes. “We all knew you’d come back, and Dr. Woland has been working diligently to understand exactly what caused your dissassociative episode.” Reaching out she tentatively rested a hand on his knee, “So don’t worry, alright Sam? We’ve already blacklisted the medications that caused you to go into cardiac arrest, and your current dosages have been halted by doctor’s orders until we’re certain your system isn’t suffering from any other issues.”

            Lucifer had talked to other people… through him? Sam lost track of what she was saying, staring past her shoulder as he began to realize the implications of that fact. The other blackouts, had Lucifer taken over then as well? Had Lucifer taken over or just stepped in while his own mind was adrift? Lucifer could reorder reality, he could be anyone, do anything. It wasn’t impossible.

            So where was he now?

            “—can you hear me? Sam? Sam?” It was the taint of worry to her voice that drew him back from his thoughts.

            “Yeah, sorry. Just… a lot to digest.” He smiled apologetically and tried to reassure her. Pity he didn’t feel any better. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted that the door had reappeared, so at least reality wasn’t going to come crumbling down around his shoulders on top of everything else.

            “Understandable.” She was up again and bustling around the room, picking up the folded clothes from yesterday. “Well, I’ll drop these off at the laundry and tell Dr. Woland that you’re back. Do you need anything?”

            Sam shook his head, smile still stubbornly in place. He didn’t notice when she left the room, the sound of blood rushing through his ears blocking out everything else.

            Lucifer had been him for months.

            There was a thin comfort in the fact that his comrade and sometimes torturer hadn’t tried to play it off as if he was Sam.

            But Lucifer had…

            Sam slapped his thighs and stood up, suddenly needed to do something, move around before he felt trapped. Pacing came naturally to caged animals, and he fell into step with the path he’d nearly worn into the carpet after years in this room. Twelve paces across the width of the room, seventeen across the breadth, and then twenty one to finish the slightly crooked triangle. Lather, rinse, repeat. His mind began to calm as he moved, muscles wishing for a real run rather than this cramped walking.

            Time passed unnoticed and unannounced, and all the while Sam came to no great resolution. He felt a little better for the exercise, but that was about it. Back to the bathroom, splashing water over his face, he leaned his forehead against the mirror and watched the water spiral down the drain. There was a moist handprint left on the mirror as he pushed himself back, a droplet slipping down the surface of the mirror and resting in the groove of the frame. Sam stared at the handprint and watched as it slowly faded into nothing. “Where’s Lucifer?” he asked the empty room, hands in his pockets as he moved back into his room. The other question from earlier nagged at him as well, who was Luce? If he found Lucifer, he was certain that question would be answered as well.

            He sat at his desk and opened the empty drawers for something to do. Maybe he’d ask Ruby for some paper.

            Dr. Woland looked over the thin sheets of printer paper covered in Sam’s meticulous notes, and Sam wished the man would say something. He’d needed to get it all out while the concept was still fresh, while his memory was still fluctuating between now and then. As terribly anxious as he was not knowing where Lucifer was, Sam felt clearer than he had in years. Reality still bled around the corners, hallucinations marring the benign surroundings, but he felt as if he had a handle on what was and wasn’t really there. Besides, who cared about hallucinations when there was such an important topic to consider? “So? What do you think?”

            “I think that this makes sense after what I’ve gleaned from Lucifer in the past few months.” Nick set the papers down and looked at Sam. He’d called Sam in for a session barely an hour after he awoke, and so far he’d spent the first ten minutes in complete silence as he read over Sam’s musings. “Lucifer portrayed himself as a protector of sorts, although highly twisted and possessive. If you were experiencing blackouts around dangerous situations, it could easily stand to reason that he assumed control to try and protect you.”

            “That’s what I thought too.” Sam crossed his arms over his chest, “I never realized he could do that though. He’s been with me as long as I could remember. I’m sure he told you that I could see him, but this? I had no idea that he could do this.”

            Coughing into his elbow, Nick apologized, “Cold coming on.” He pulled out a petite bottle of hand sanitizer and rubbed his hands together, wafting the smell of antiseptic toward Sam. “But Sam, you do realize that he’s a personality inside your mind, correct? It’s very important that you accept this while you still have this clarity.”

            A personality inside of him? Funny, Lucifer was the only constant in his life, the most real person he’d ever met. “I… I don’t know if I’d go that far. He’s himself, and I’m myself. We’re not,” Sam gestured vaguely without having words to describe how he saw the two of them.  

            “No Sam, he is a portion of yourself that changed to defend you.” It was obvious in the way Nick spoke, how he watched Sam, that he didn’t trust Sam to be able to make the right distinctions here.

            “Defend me? Did he tell you how he defended me?” Indignation felt like venom in his veins, thick and viscous. “I’ve suffered more at his hands than from anyone else’s,” the meaning of the words wasn’t carried through in his tone, none of the necessary vitriol to make it sound sincere. There were too many times where Lucifer had been a friend to write him off as an enemy. “It’s… complicated.”

            “I’ve gathered.”

            Sam sighed and debated how much he wanted to go into this. After so many years of keeping this a secret it felt cathartic to have someone, anyone, to talk it over with. So he bit the bullet and started, “I don’t exactly know how to start this, but… Lucifer has always been there. I was kind of an introverted kid, older brother who I idolized and a distant father. I didn’t have Dean’s natural charisma. Dean could just, I don’t know, smile and people melted. I was a little more awkward, plus I was small for a long time. Hit my growth spurt late. Then we moved a lot with John’s work, so I didn’t get to form a lot of lasting friendships.”

            New bus stops on empty curbs, by the time the leaves were falling they’d be another state over.

            “Always the new kid,” old pain laced the words, the child’s hurt over seclusion. “But I had Lucifer. Sure, he’s not someone I’d wish on my worst enemy, but… you get used to having someone there. I never told anyone about him. Not really sure why, but it just seemed like he was a friend I could keep to myself.” There was also the fact that Sam hadn’t realized that there was even the possibility that Lucifer might not be real until he was at college. “He… he was always there to pick up the pieces after I hurt myself.” Muddled memories of hospital visits and always Lucifer was the one sitting at the windowsill, there to greet him when he woke up again. “Dean didn’t always have time, he picked up work pretty early to try and help out. John would go away on business trips and when he was home he drank through a fair chunk of our funds. Dean supplemented with his odd jobs, made sure we always had something in the pantry.”

            “My hallucinations started when I was away at college. I… I thought I saw my girlfriend die. After a while it got too difficult to discern if she was real or if she was dead or, well, you get the idea. I called up my brother, left school, and started going around with him. I couldn’t focus at school and I didn’t want to just waste all that money. Lucifer visited along the way. He never liked Dean, so we’d talk when he was out. And then one night… I blacked out and woke up to find myself choking Dean out.” His hands still burned some nights with the memory of his brother’s fluttering heartbeat, rage and remorse all tangled together. “So I checked myself in here, because I couldn’t trust myself anymore. I mean, my reality was really crumbling, is still too fluid, but Lucifer was never part of the problem.”

            He was defending him, wasn’t he? Sam stopped and thought carefully about it.

            Nick voiced his thoughts for him, “You never imagined a world where he didn’t exist. You want to be ‘cured’, but that doesn’t include Lucifer. Right?”

            Sam nodded slowly, testing out the validity it. It felt right. “No, I just wanted him not to hurt me. Man, I must sound… crazy.”

            “Not more so than most.” The older man seated himself in the chair across from Sam, all at once too close and threatening even with his air of clinical blandness. “What you sound like is someone who’s suffered from a lifetime of abuse and doesn’t know any other way to live. Lucifer is at times your best friend and at times your worst nightmare, so it’s natural to be confused.”

            “I’m confused over a lot of things, Dr. Woland, but this really isn’t one of them.” The time he’d spent without Lucifer, those endless days of calling his name as the drugs dulled his mind into uselessness felt like a morass threatening to drown him. There were far worse fates than seeing the devil, much worse. “In a lot of ways I think that this is the best case scenario, because whether Lucifer is real or not, at least I know where I stand with him.”

            “Even when he’s taking over your body?” Nick replied carefully.

            “It wasn’t like I was around to take care of it.”

            “And if he suppressed you somehow?”

            Sam felt wildly protective of Lucifer, something he’d never experienced before. Listening to Dr. Woland even suggest that Lucifer would do such a thing was atrocious. “He wouldn’t do that. Every time I’ve blacked out before this, even if they were portions of time where Lucifer took control, were never longer than an hour or two at the most. An hour to three months? That doesn’t exactly sound like escalation, it sounds like necessity.”

            His doctor sighed and leaned back into the plush leather, his own chair free of the plastic coating that all other furniture in the hospital had. “You didn’t hear what Lucifer said—.”

            “No,” Sam’s voice was quiet with suppressed rage. Standing up made the room seem smaller, and he fervently wished that Lucifer was here to just solve this already. It wasn’t like him to feel this dependent, this incomplete. He had been through so much shit in his life that he wasn’t going to take shit from anyone new. “Listen to me, Lucifer isn’t the problem here. He warned me when you first came here that you’d be nothing but trouble, and look at what’s happened. You brought the maggots and then you put me on drugs. So answer me this, did he hurt anyone?”

            Nick remained seated, seemingly unruffled by Sam’s intimidating height. “He would have punched Ruby if I hadn’t of intervened, and I was told that he threatened someone in the day room.”

            “But he didn’t hurt anyone.”

            “No,” he begrudgingly conceded.

            “Then he’s not the problem here. He might be a symptom of whatever it is in my head that’s disconnected, but as far as I’m considered, you have no right to try to turn him into the root cause of my insanity.” This was exactly the kind of response that had kept him quiet about Lucifer in the first place. People didn’t understand that it didn’t matter if Lucifer was real or a fucking figment of his imagination, Sam just didn’t want to be alone.

            “Alright, Sam, alright.” Finally rising to match Sam, Nick held up his hands. “I can see that I’ve upset you, and seeing as you’re already dealing with quite a good deal from having finally come back to yourself, how about we call this session done a little early?”

            Sam could see it in his eyes, that pitying look that people always gave him throughout his life, half fearful that he might be the dangerous type of crazy. It hurt as much now as it had when he was young and noticed the wary stares from his classmates. “Yeah, sounds good.” He turned and opened the door, nodding briskly to the faceless orderly who was waiting to take him back to his room. The thin shape of a hypodermic in the man’s breast pocket showed just how little they trusted him. Fine, that was… fine.

            As he turned back to look at Dr. Woland one last time, he flinched as he noticed the shadow behind the man stretch up the wall. Darkness flooded the room, pouring from that shadow in endless torrents. He tore his gaze away just as the tide of death began stripping the skin from Dr. Woland’s bones, exposing those same crimson secrets on bleached bones. “I might be crazy, but you’re the one lying to everyone,” Sam whispered as he followed the faceless orderly back to his room. The short walk to his room felt torturously slow, and he was antsy by the time the orderly had unlocked his room and swung open the door for him.

            “Sam.”

            Lucifer stood just inside the threshold of his room.

[wehavebecomeanathema]

A Willing Sort Of Madness

Chapter 5: An Empty Nest on a Dead Bough

Summary: Sam's consciousness is still far a field, so Lucifer manages the day to day affairs.

Lucifer stared a long while at his reflection, fingertips dusting over features he knew by heart, forming a kinetic map to navigate by in the dark. “Sam, I’m trying.” In the stagnant air and stale light of the bathroom Sam’s naturally attractive features looked insipid and vaguely repugnant. Pulling lips back, he bared his teeth at the offending reflection, fingers tightening into a fist he dare not let loose. “I can’t get you back if you don’t let me help you.”

For the briefest of moments the reflection didn’t match Lucifer’s visage, the man inside the mirror was younger and a deep set terror screamed from the depths of his ancient eyes.

“Sam,” Lucifer’s hand stroked the cheek of that young, lost boy, knowing full well that it was all in their head. Sam was no more in that mirage than Lucifer was. All the mirror could hope to reflect was this body, pale and broken and denied the strength that should have been theirs.

This was no nightmare and no mirror could show the truth of the mind.

The quiet sound of the handle turning caught Lucifer’s attention and he opened his eyes, the mirror in his mind slipping away, submerging back to the depths where he kept all memory of Sam. Blinded for eternity, he would still know Sam’s face by heart.

“Sam,” Ruby appeared, her dark hair bleached blonde for the spring so that she looked like a new person, “it’s time for your appointment.”

Lucifer idly wondered if it was a requirement to work here to be painfully obtuse, surely Ruby was not naturally so vapid as to miss the fact that Sam was no longer in their presence. Hearing people continually asking for him hurt, each utterance of Sam’s name was a reminder that he had failed Sam. He should have been able to get Sam back by now, drugs or not. “Ah, my dear Ruby, I believe I’ve told you before that I don’t appreciate people mislabeling me.” Far easier to play off his pain as arrogance than to admit to this rabble that he was not all powerful.

“Or is it policy to not acknowledge any secondary personalities? I mean,” he sat up, sizing up Ruby dangerously, “the name on that chart is Sam Winchester, so obviously he’s the property owner up here.” Lucifer tapped his head and smiled somberly. “Can’t go letting interlopers think they have a chance just because the lot is vacant.” He didn’t miss the shiver that went through Ruby or the way she shifted her clip board from one shaking hand to the other.

“It’s not… You’re going to come back to yourself one of these days, Sam, and when you do I simply want to be using the right name.” She cleared her throat and stared down Lucifer, knuckles white over the clipboard.

Raising in indolent grace, Lucifer scoffed. “Yes, and when Sam comes back I will be the happiest of us all. Or do you all think me a villain because of some little play at religious idealism? Hmmm?” He crossed the distance between them, stopping far enough away to keep her from spooking. “Surely you, of all the fanatical staff, understand I’m not a monster.”

Ruby’s hand went to her necklace, a strange symbol, and she tucked it back inside her shirt. “My faith is more about a philosophy than a belief in a functional lord.”

“Mmmm, what a pretty way to sum up Satanism.”

“It’s not all black rites and hanging crosses upside down, if you must know.” However snapping at Lucifer seemed to put steel in her spine again, and she squared her shoulders. “And maybe I just don’t like you as a personality, and it has nothing to do with your name.”

Lucifer couldn’t quite help his smile, “Ah, a spunky one, aren’t you?”

“Very.”

With a half bow, he motioned for her to lead the way, “Ladies first.”

She waited a half breath, obviously wanting something that she knew wouldn’t come, but with a slight huff of irritation she moved into the hallway and looked back at him over her shoulder. “Well?”

“You know,” Lucifer began as he fell into step beside her, “it really is a shame that Sam never talked to you. I think you two would have been good for each other. But then, he has unresolved emotional issues from his last girlfriend, so I certainly wasn’t going to push him into any new relationships.”

Ruby studied Lucifer’s profile, her gaze a tactile crawling over the surface of his skin. “I feel like you’re baiting me.”

“Of course I am.”

Their gazes locked and she was the first to look away.

“Well?” Lucifer asked.

“Well maybe even if you weren’t in the picture I wouldn’t go looking to my patients for dating material.” There was something free and unbridled in her tone, a humour that danced like firelight. Spring walked next to Winter and the world turned.

Lucifer’s responding laugh was chilled without malignant intent. “Not quite what I was baiting you with, but I’ll take that into careful consideration the next time I try to hook my little Sammy up with someone.”

“Would you, really?”

He quirked an eyebrow at her, pondering her question for a long while. “No,” he finally replied, voice subdued. Ice formed in his lungs as he imagined Sam going through the heart ache of losing someone else, the chill hand of nothingness clawing at his heart beating in Sam’s chest. “No, I wouldn’t entrust him to others.”

That seemed to catch Ruby off-guard, and a hitch in the rhythmic click-clack of her heels was telling enough. She rounded on him, all passion and suppressed anger. “Entrust him? He’s not yours to--,”

“Sam has been mine since the day he was born,” Lucifer interrupted.

Ruby shrank back, terror showing in the whites of her eyes as she stared into madness far more frightening than she’d ever seen inside these halls before.

“Sam has been mine since the day he whispered into the emptiness that he didn’t want to be alone anymore.” Lucifer stalked forward, crowding Ruby so that she had to keep giving ground. “Sam has been mine since the day he lay dying in the snow and whispered a prayer to his own angel that he might just be not make it this time.” His hand shot out and she flinched from the sound of his palm connecting with the wall next to her, “Sam has been, will always be mine.”

“Lucifer,” Nicolai’s voice rang out calm and authoritative. “I don’t want to have to sedate you, but if you persist in threatening my orderlies, I won’t hesitate to do so.”

Lucifer looked from the hypodermic that Dr. Woland was discreetly palming to his own fist, poised and ready to smash into Ruby’s face. Uncurling the fingers slowly, he stepped back and put his hands in his pockets. “And the cavalry arrives.”

“Apologize.”

Ruby shook her head and edged away.

“My deepest and most sincere apologies, Ruby. Punching you really would have been a mistake, but I tend to lose my head over Sam.” He tapped at his head and smiled, once again all charm, “He tends to run hot, and I’m afraid that wears off on me from time to time.“

Something had closed off in Ruby’s stance, in her eyes; a new sort of skepticism clouding her generally chipper features. She shook her head before turning and walking away, looking far too much like she was retreating.

“Now, I believe we have an appointment to be starting,” Nick pocketed the hypodermic of sedative now that it no longer looked like Lucifer was about to lose control. “You know if she no longer feels comfortable around you, I’ll either be forced to use restraints or put another orderly onto your rotation.

Lucifer walked past the doctor, passing into the office, “Do whatever you have to. I don’t really care for demons anyways.” He could feel the restrained curiosity from Dr. Woland at his comment.

“I can’t tell if you’re grandstanding or if you really feel any conviction in half of what you say,” Nick replied, settling himself behind his desk.

“I’m always serious, doc, and anything I say that doesn’t fit into your limited understanding is an inside joke with Sam.” He arranged himself on the lounging couch, “You see, Sam has a longstanding belief that if he could look at her in just the right way he’d see a demon beneath her mask of flesh and bone, the twisted darkness of a tormented soul.”

The clock ticked on the wall as Nick digested the candid response. He scratched at his chin and nodded, “You had mentioned during our last session that you see the aggregate reality of Sam’s delusions and all of this. I suppose it stands to reason that you would slip between them seamlessly.”

“Have to keep in practice.”

Nick scribbled something on his pad, pen harsh on the fibers of the paper. “Of course. And according to my notes, you asked the last question of our last session, so I’ll start off this time, shall I?”

Lucifer waved his hand in an elegant gesture, “Be my guest, doc. You’re saving me from the tedium of waiting.”

“Right,” scanning a second file folder, Nick pulled out one print-off in particular. “I did a little digging on Sam’s records after last time. I’m sure you weren’t a suddenly formed personality, a singularity in space and time that took Sam by surprise. His medical record points to a childhood history of either an extremely accident prone young man or--,”

“Abuse,” Lucifer finished for him. “Not bad detective work, although you know what they say about assuming.”

“It makes an ass of you and me; yes, I know.” Rifling further through the file, he pulled out police reports and a note from CPS. “The official summation was that Sam’s father, a John Winchester, was a slightly distant father, but provided well enough for his boys. They note that he held down a job and was generally held in well regard by his coworkers.”

“John always was a bigger personality outside the home.”

Nick looked up at that, “Are you saying they’re wrong?”

“Is that your question?”

“No,” he ground his teeth. “But parents aren’t the only ones who can abuse children. Siblings can, or school bullies. And often abusive parents can appear quite loving when company is around.”

Lucifer held his hand up, a scar like pale ice luminescent against the back of the hand. He remembered when they’d gotten that one, the dull flash of pain as a rock gashed open and gravel bit into his cheek. “Abuse can come in many forms, some more insidious than others.”

“So we are agreeing Sam was abused?”

“Tricky, doc, but I’ll give that a pass. Yes, I essentially told you as much last time. Sam was abused and he can’t come to terms with that fact.”

Nick scribbled more notes, “I felt rather safe in that assumption. The number of his hospital stays, the escalation of his injuries, the rather flimsy reasons provided for each of the trips.” He listed off some of them, “Falling down the stairs, a bike crash, ah and here’s a personal favourite, a hunting accident… at fifteen.”

Coughing into his hand, Lucifer sat up. “I was there; you don’t need to recount Sam’s highlights for me. I’m assuming you have a question wrapped up in all of this?”

“Yes, I do. Did you form as a result of the abuse? You seem to consider yourself Sam’s protector, and yet you mentioned that you were also perpetuating Sam’s hatred of himself. That sounds to me like he had internalized the abuse to him as a child, and perhaps you’re just a glorified torturer carrying on the work of suppressed memories.”

Well if that wasn’t rude, Lucifer really didn’t know what was. He snarled and pushed off from the couch, “Does it? Were you a result of careful planning on the part of your parents or were you a surprise? Do you know beyond what they told you? Someone’s origin isn’t as simple as facts, its interpretation and self-delusion.” Crossing his hands over his chest, he widened his stance. “However to answer your question, no, I was not a result of the abuse. I came along long before that had begun.”

Closing his eyes, he remembered that small child trembling in his arms, so glad to finally not be alone any more. “Before Sam, I was; I simply waited.”

“More biblical rhetoric?” Nick asked, not openly sarcastic.

“Cute, doc. Sorry if you feel I’m channeling I Am, but where there’s a good phrase, a little plagiarism can’t go amiss.” Lucifer could smell disinfectant somewhere outside the office, hear the moans of a patient down the hall, and he remembered that this was the glorious fate to which life had brought Sam Winchester. When he opened his eyes, dull hatred blazed. “As life hurt and twisted Sam, I merely rearranged to suit his growing cognizance of the world around him.”

The two men stared at each other, a subtle understanding passing between them. Lucifer obviously didn’t see himself as the villain of this story, and Nick quite obviously wondered if Sam shared that opinion.

________________________________________

Sam is twelve and the wind feels like water as he weaves his hand through it. The open window spills sound and smell and sensation at him, a breathtaking cacophony of life. He thinks that he’s never found anything better than an open window on a summer’s evening, driving down Route 66 with no destination in mind.

He’s still young enough that the plains around him are filled with half-forgotten whoops from Indians and the howls of wolves long gone. The world is full of magic in this moment, and he turns to look at the driver of the car, to see if they share his childish exuberance in the freedom of the open road.

Dean notices him, smirk forming as he reaches over and ruffles Sam’s hair. “Heh, told you my birthday was going to be a good one.”

Dean is sixteen and John just gave him the Impala, telling the boys to go get themselves lost for a few days and see the stars at night and feel the wind in their hair. It’s a rite of passage for Dean, a chance to experience freedom and responsibility all at once.

Sam doesn’t realize this; he merely understands that with this car they could go anywhere they want. Freedom is a set of wheels and two hands planted firmly on a wheel. No one is angry now, no one is hurting him, and the world is warm and welcoming. He nods at Dean and his smile pulls so tight at his face he momentarily worries it might split it in two; which makes him laugh.

“Glad you’re enjoying yourself, Sammy. Because you know, this… this is how it should be. This is how it should always be, us driving down the road, you in the passenger seat, right where I need ya.”

The crickets are chirruping loader now, a chorus to herald in the impetus of change.

“You need me here?” Sam asks, naïve innocence misunderstanding the flash of something dark in Dean’s eyes.

Dean’s laugh is a bark, too loud and it competes with the crickets. “Of course I need you, bitch.” His smile is warm and the words are soft. “I need you to stay this close,” and he reaches out and squeezes Sam’s shoulder, “because if you get farther away I won’t be able to hold onto you.”

“Don’t worry, Dean, I won’t go farther away.” Sam’s smile is blinding against the pale illumination of the stars, the milky way a poor excuse for majesty against him.

Dean’s hand tightens painfully, “Good.” His fingers unclench one by one, and he seemingly misses the pain on his little brother’s face. “Good. Because we lost Mom, Sammy, and all we’ve got is each other.”

But that’s not right. They have Dad.

“We have Dad too, Dean.”

Both of Dean’s hands are back on the steering wheel, clenched about it as if for salvation. “No, we don’t. We lost Dad to his beers and the past. We lost him with Mom. All we really have is each other.”

Sam is quiet as he thinks this over, mind contemplating the gravity of Dean’s statement. He remembers well the binges their father goes on, the nights spent locked in rooms with sounds of video tapes playing on repeat, the glances at photographs that go on for days. John hadn’t really taught him how to shoot a gun, Luce had done that, and John hadn’t really been the one to teach him how to ride a bike, that was Dean. Each important first day of school, it was Dean holding his hand and telling him this newest school would be fine because he’d be there too. Dean was the one who beat up the bullies and gave him tips on how to talk to girls and cut his hair.

“Yeah,” there’s no joy as Sam replies, realizing that Dean is right. They are all they have.

But he has Luce too, so maybe he’s selfish, keeping such a good friend all to himself.

“Um, Dean…,”

Dean glances over at him, eyebrows raised in silent query.

“Never mind.” Maybe it isn’t wrong to keep something for himself, because Luce is there even when Dean isn’t. He isn’t bothered with the fact that there was a point in time when he intrinsically knew that Luce’s name was Samael, for that has gone the way of all things, forgotten in the haze of youth. He isn’t bothered by the fact that Luce has still never interacted with him around others, he’s obviously just shy.

There are a million things Sam isn’t bothered by right now as he smiles at his brother, the pain from his black eye all but forgotten. “Yeah Dean, we’ll always be there for each other.”

________________________________________

“Sam’s been gone quite a while now.”

Lucifer turned his attention from the window, noticing a younger man standing awkwardly a ways away from him. “Excuse me?”

The man took another step closer, thumb digging nervously into the webbing on his other hand, “I said that Sam’s been gone a while now.”

“Indeed he has.” Turning, he widened his posture a little to look less closed off, subconsciously playing to ease this curious fellow. “Not many people realize I’m not Sam.”

“Not many people pay attention. I’m Andy, by the way.” Holding out a hand, he doesn’t seem offended when Lucifer doesn’t shake it. “Right. What do I call you?”

“Lucifer.”

Andy nods as if this is a perfectly reasonable name to have and sits across from him. “Do… do you know if Sam is coming back?” He twitches and looks over his shoulder, expression horrified as he loses touch with reality for a long moment.

“Andy? Andy?” Lucifer reached forward and shakes Andy’s shoulder gently, quietly intrigued even further by this strange individual. The man never approached Sam before, so he can’t imagine why the sudden interest now. Of course people other than Sam have always been confusing to Lucifer, duplicitous or uncaring or entirely useless. “Andy?”

The last call seems to rouse Andy back from whatever he’d been distracted by and he smiles sheepishly. “Sorry, Ansem gets a little loud sometimes . See,” he goes on before Lucifer can interrupt, growing excited as he notices the spark of interest in the other man, “that’s why I think Sam and I would have been friends. I… I have Ansem, and Sam has you, right? Everyone tells me that I should, should… should admit the reality of my situation and move on. They all think Ansem died in a fire when we were kids, but that’s not what really happened.”

“Indeed?”

“Not at all.” Andy leaned forward, resting on the edge of his seat as he tapped at the tabletop, “Ansem always had the ability to influence people. He could just—just say things and people would do it, no questions asked. If he wanted my parents to get him something, bam, he’d have it. If he didn’t want to go to school, tell people he was sick and they believed him.”

“Ah,” Lucifer nodded, seeing where this was going. “So he simply told people he’d died in a fire when you were children, and they all believed him?”

Nodding wildly, Andy smiled. “See, you get it. People always look at me like I’m crazy, but they don’t understand how powerful Ansem always was. I mean, I could do it a little bit, but not like him, never like him.”

What a queer fellow, but he was likely right that he and Sam could have made fast friends. They both shared similar enough delusions that neither would be bothered by the fact that their duo was in fact a quartet.

“And the reason that no one else seems to notice Ansem--,”

“Is because he tells people when they first meet him that he isn’t there, doesn’t exist, whatever he needs to say.” Andy was practically thrumming by this point, nervous energy converted to excitement at finding a kindred soul in the patient everyone else scorned like the Devil.

Lucifer rested his chin in his hand, head tilted to the side as he appraised his new companion. “And why does he do that? Seems a fair amount of work all just to appear dead.” “No, see, it’s not about being dead. It’s about protecting me, well, in his own way.” The timid hesitation in his voice made it all too apparent that the brotherly bond wasn’t a necessarily blissful one.

A protector who didn’t want to share his charge with others, this certainly held a ring of familiarity to it.

“Andy, has Ansem ever hurt anyone because they got too close to you? Would he mind you and Sam becoming friends?” The last thing he needed was for Andy, or more accurately Ansem, to become violent simply because they were talking to Sam, or Lucifer as the case was currently.

“Huh? Uh, no. Ansem likes Sam too. He can see that Sam’s special, you know?” Andy leaned in again and cupped a hand to his mouth, lowering his voice so only Lucifer could hear, “Kind of like us.” He moved back and started tracing the wood grains in the table, “Ansem figures that Sam has some sort of powers of his own. We’ve met one or two others like us before, but Ansem didn’t like them. He felt they were threats, but not Sam.”

“Did Ansem kill the others?”

The poor man drained of colour at the question. “Not… not exactly.”

Ah, “Did Ansem tell you to kill them?”

Andy shook his head. “He can’t use his power on me, but he threatened to make them kill themselves in… in worse ways if I didn’t. I could be kind, kill them quickly.”

A killer sitting across from him without restraints or special sedatives? Now wasn’t that an incongruity? Lucifer ticked through a list of possibilities: first Andy could have hallucinated killing people just as easily as he hallucinated that his dead brother was still with him, second Andy could have killed people in such a way that he was never linked to the murders although that seemed rather unlikely with how nervous and almost mousy the boy seemed, or third… What? There had to be another tidy explanation for it all, but one wasn’t readily forthcoming.

“I see. Well then it’s a very good thing Ansem didn’t take an immediate dislike to Sam, isn’t it?”

The deadly serious warning in Lucifer’s voice had Andy shaking, nodding convulsively.

This time it was Lucifer’s turn to lean in and whisper, “You see, however dangerous your brother might seem, I am far, far worse. And if either of you should harm a hair on Sam’s head, I will end your miserable excuse for lives in such an agonizing way that you will wish you had never been born. Do I make myself clear?”

The loud screech of Andy’s chair shooting back across the linoleum silenced the room, all eyes turning to watch as his chair toppled over backwards and he fell in a heap.

Ruby glared at Lucifer warily as she came over to help Andy.

“I…. I understand. Don’t worry, we wouldn’t have… never… never hurt Sam. He’s special.” Andy’s weak reassurances were almost lost amidst Ruby’s attempts to calm him.

“Good, then we’ll all get along just fine.” And before Ruby had a chance to get in his face about what the disturbance had been over, Lucifer was up and walking back to his room, another orderly immediately falling into step beside him once his intentions were clear.

________________________________________

In the end, it was the medication.

Ceasing to take the drugs, working diligently to hide the evidence of his deception, Lucifer felt the first stirrings of change.

The hallucinations started slowly at first, in lock step with the blooming of the first flowers. As surely as the Groundhog seeing his shadow, they signaled to him that Sam was finally starting to return from the depths of their psyche, bringing his convoluted tangle of lies and self-deceptions to the forefront of their mind.

Lucifer wouldn’t have it any other way.

[celestial-artistry]

I Wish I Couldn’t Feel A Damn Thing

This was SUPPOSED TO BE A DOODLE!

Time: 8 hours

[wehavebecomeanathema]

essenceofbananafish replied to your post “A Willing Sort Of Madness”

I haven't read the rest of the story but this chapter was amazing. Very compelling and well written.

Why thank you. :D

[wehavebecomeanathema]

A Willing Sort Of Madness

Chapter 4: The Danger Is I'm Dangerous

Words: 4,277

Summary: The drugs hit Sam hard and fast and he slips beneath the waves of his madness.

“Lucifer? Lucifer?”

            Silence.

            “Come on, please…”

            Silence.

            “You can’t be gone…”

            But no matter how many times Sam called, Lucifer didn’t answer, didn’t appear. He hadn’t shown in days and Sam was starting to get worried. There had been stretches in the past, he remembered, when they were moving and it had taken Lucifer a few days to find him again, but that didn’t make any sense now.

            He hadn’t gone anywhere, was still trapped in the same four walls.

            So it had to be the medication.

            Had to be.

            Because Lucifer wouldn’t leave him alone, not in here, not after all his promises.

            Sam curled into a ball and rolled away from the door, shivering against the chill in the air, or was it a chill in his blood? His skin was starting to itch again and he expected that the old fizzle would return to his blood if they didn’t take him off the medication soon.

            If Lucifer was gone…

            Then he was a hallucination, wasn’t he?

            No, Lucifer couldn’t be a hallucination, they’d done something to him.

            Or maybe being without his heart had put too great a strain on him and he needed to go away for a while to heal up?

            Well fine, that was… fine.

            Sam stared at a wall but couldn’t bring himself to feel anything, the weight of the drugs in his system twisting all his thoughts around until he no longer had any that made sense. He tried falling asleep, hoping that it would fix everything, but his dreams were filled with an encroaching darkness that slowly ate away at his memories and paralyzed him, body and soul.

            In his dreams he was younger, still living with John and Dean, and Lucifer was nowhere to be found in the house or the yard or the Impala out front. No matter how many times he called out for his friend, he never appeared.

            And then the dream turned dark and stormy and John was gone to a bar and Dean came home.

            And Lucifer still wasn’t anywhere to be found.

            Lucifer’s heart wasn’t beating in his chest, not in this past memory, and suddenly Sam felt the loss of it, heartbeats slowing and fading away.

            Dean was yelling something at him, but he couldn’t hear over the drowning silence, couldn’t feel the blow past the freezing cold.

            Lucifer’s heart wasn’t beating.

            Sam’s heart wasn’t beating.

            But blood still flowed.

            “He’s gone completely catatonic.”

            “Sir, if you’ve read his file then you know…”

            “His vitals are dropping, we need to make a call soon.”

            “Try another medication.”

            “Come on Sam, stick with us.”

            “There’s a heart arrhythmia, beating way too fast…”

            “CLEAR!”

            “We’re losing him!”

            “Sam, I know the past few weeks have been quite… difficult, but how are you feeling today?” Nikolai asked, sitting behind his desk and watching Sam sit perfectly motionless on the seat across from him. The man seemed changed, something subtle that still communicated in his silence. Something was terribly wrong with Sam, and he was sure it went past the near death experience a few weeks back.

            He still wasn’t sure why they’d almost lost Sam, but he knew the man had poor past experiences with certain drugs. Switching Sam to new anti-psychotics had helped, but now Sam didn’t talk at all, didn’t look at people.

            He looked lost.

            “Well, if you don’t want to talk today, I don’t blame you. But know I’ll be ready whenever you do feel like talking.”

            Sam made no move to acknowledge that Nick had spoken.

            The two men sat in silence for a few more minutes before Nick decided that he could at least get some work while Sam sat, mentally checked out. He pulled a file from his desk and began translating his notes into a little more legible scrawl, detailing symptoms and proposed treatments.

            In the quiet of the room, he kept an ear open for Sam’s breaths. It was somehow disconcerting to sit in a room with the man now, which was completely irrational. Sam was simply a poor patient who had a bad reaction to his medication; there wasn’t any reason for him to suddenly be afraid of him.

            But knowing that didn’t help the irrational fear niggling at his gut.

            Glancing up at the clock, he noticed a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye.

            Sam was standing in front of the door, rocking gently in place, slow circles.

            He hadn’t heard Sam move.

            “Do you want to go back to your room Sam?”

            Sam made no response, simply continued swaying, eyes trained on the door, back to Dr. Woland.

            “Sam?” It was likely futile to keep trying to reach the man, but he had to try, had to believe that they hadn’t somehow hurt Sam permanently with meds.

            Standing up, he made his way over to Sam and laid a hand on his shoulder, meaning to guide him back to his chair. When his fingers touched the coarse linen of Sam’s shirt, he almost drew his hand back, surprised at the cold that resonated off of Sam.

            “You’re freezing. Come on Sam, let’s get you sitting down and get a blanket over you.”

            Sam’s head rolled forward and the man crumpled to the ground.

            Something was going on inside of Sam’s head, and Dr. Woland promised himself that he would get to the bottom of it. He wasn’t going to lose another patient.

            Sam is thirteen and he hasn’t talked to anyone in ten days.

            The snow is cold as he picks his foot up and trudges forward another step, each one a little slower than the one before, a little harder to force himself forward.

            He stopped being cold a few hours ago, and he knows from Dean that that’s not a good thing. There is no doubt in his mind that he is finally going into hypothermia, the last of his dry clothes soaked through when the fresh snow fell last night. No dry wood for a fire, no food left, not a lot of hope.

            And there will be no rescue.

            Sam can’t move his fingers very well, so he balls them into fists and jams them into wet pockets, thin ice cracking as he moved the material.

            When he finally falls into the snow, there’s none of the smarting pain he was expecting, just the sound and a distant warmth.

            He just barely felt it as Lucifer wrapped his arms around him and held him close. “We’ll get you out of here, Sam.”

            Sam wasn’t sure if he believed Lucifer this time, but he’d never lied to him before, so he held on as best he could, trying to remember to shiver as they sat back against the trunk of a tree.

            “See Sam? Isn’t the day room nice? So much brighter than your room.” The orderly asked, trying to smile but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Ruby had never gotten much response from the man, but now that he was completely checked out, her heart broke for him. But she took him out of his room twice a week and took him to the day room, putting him in front of a window so that he could watch the blue birds building their nest.

            Spring would be coming soon, and then the world outside the window would shrug off its blanket of snow and things would start to grow again. Maybe Sam was like that, maybe he just had a blanket of snow over his mind right now.

            Well, whatever was wrong with him, she fervently hoped he’d beat it.

            Another patient walked over, nervously clasping at his hands as he approached them. “Can… Can I sit with you guys?”

            Ruby smiled slightly and nodded, “Sure thing, Andy, pull up a seat.”

            Andy nodded and sat down, pulling one leg up onto the chair with him and wrapping his arms around it. “He’s… he’s gone, isn’t he?” he asked gently, resting his chin on his knee.

            “Andy,” Ruby replied, a gentle reprimand in her voice, “don’t say that.” But she didn’t deny it, knowing that she didn’t have the answer.

            “Yeah, that’s what I thought… It’s a shame, you know? Because I think I would have liked him.”

            Raising an eyebrow, Ruby turned a little more to look at Andy. Sam had always adamantly refused to leave his room and join everyone in the day room, so he had only been taken there on the rare occasions when the higher ups decided that it was in the benefit of his health to be forced to walk through the compound or sit in a slightly different whitewashed room. So she was surprised by Andy’s reaction. Yes, of course Andy was a friendly patient who got along with everyone, but she hadn’t noticed that he had ever paid any attention to Sam.

            “There’s still a chance that you’ll get to know him.”

            “I don’t think so…” But Andy didn’t explain why.

            “Andy.” She warned again.

            “I know you want to help him, but take my word for it, Ruby, he’s… gone.” Nodding gently, he stood up and smiled sadly. “But maybe he’ll come back?”

            “Yeah…” Ruby hated the haunted look in Andy’s eyes that made him look like he’d lost a friend he’d never had. “I’m sure he will.”

            Days turned into weeks, which turned into a month.

            Which turned into two.

            And then finally a morning dawned when Sam’s eyes opened and there was a light in them again.

            “It’s time for your appointment with Dr. Woland, Sam. Ready to go?” Ruby asked out of habit, busying herself with checking his room. She almost jumped out of her skin when Sam turned his head and looked at her.

            “Thank you.”

            Two words and she almost flinched, not expecting the silence of his room to be broken. She looked at him with wide eyes, taking in the fact that he was actually looking at her. “Sam? Oh, you’re welcome. But come on.” Knowing better than to make too large a deal of the change in his behavior, she tried to hide her smile as she helped him up and walked him to the office.

            As they walked to the office, she couldn’t quite help herself from stealing glances at Sam, wondering at his sudden change in cognitive state. She had been working with him for almost the entire time he’d been in the asylum, and something about the way he walked, or perhaps how he breathed or looked around them as if seeing everything for the first time, had her worried.

            She was overjoyed that he was no longer completely cut off, but something about how he was acting now just seemed off.

            Then again, he was a patient in an asylum who’d almost died because of medication complications, so maybe she was being overly sensitive.

            When they reached the door for Woland’s office, she knocked gently and pulled it open, peeking inside.

            “Bring him in,” Nick said without looking up, jotting down a few last notes from his patient who had just left.

            “Sir…”

            He looked up and saw Sam’s eyes staring at him, Ruby holding her hands lightly on Sam’s shoulders. “Oh. Are we feeling better today, Sam?”

            “Much better. Not dying any longer, at least.” The words were spoken with an even enough tone, but something about them was barbed and threatening.

Ruby didn’t notice, but Nick did.

“That’s good. We were all very worried about you. Do you remember your heart stopping?”

Sam glanced around the room, eyes lazily moving over each object. “Sam was dying.”

Nick’s eyebrows pulled together, as he parsed through what Sam just said. It was certainly not unusual to have patients refer to themselves in the third person, but he’d never heard Sam do it before. Had the near death experience caused him to have a dissociative episode? “Yes, you were,” he replied, very lightly stressing ‘you’.

A shadow flicked behind Sam’s eyes, but as swiftly as it appeared, it was gone.

Ruby looked between the two men and clapped her hands together, “Ok, well you two look like you have everything in hand. I’m gonna go back to my rounds.” And with that less than subtle transition, she backed out of the room and away from the suddenly stifling atmosphere.

Nick watched her leave, feeling some of the same, strange tension she had, but not wanting to react to it. “Well, would you like to take a seat, Sam?”

Sam didn’t respond, but he did walk over to one of the seat and sit down, arranging himself so one leg was pulled up against him. Something in his stance was looser now, more comfortable in his own skin.

“So…” For some reason, Nick was finding it hard to find his words again, too busy noticing all the strange differences with Sam. Or were they not differences, but simply the man well enough to act like himself again? “Sam—“

“Sam’s not here right now, thanks to all of you, so if you would kindly stop asking for him, I would greatly appreciate it,” Sam said languidly, voice as cold as ice.

Nick’s eyes widened ever so slightly, before he was nodding numbly. Full psychotic break after the fiasco with the panic attack and self-harm? “Well, if Sam isn’t here, may I ask who I’m speaking to?”

Everything about Sam was slower now, more assured, the regal grace of a predator that knows it’s powerful enough to not worry. “No, but I suppose in the interest of not having you continue to call me Sam, I’ll tell you anyways. My name is Lucifer.”

Religious delusions?

“I’m Sam’s oldest friend, so when I saw how terribly you all were treating him, I decided that enough was enough.”

“Does that mean that you took over—“

“Oh, please,” Sam, Lucifer, interrupted Nick again, a slight sneer on his face. “The drugs you gave Sam were killing him, destroying the very delicate chemistry of his brain, and so he regressed further. I am simply holding down the fort until he comes back.”

Generally dissociative personalities weren’t aware of each other. “Does Sam know you exist inside of him?” Now that he was looking for it, he realized that everything about Sam was different, even the voice subtly change in pitch and inflection, cadence and tone. For a moment he imagined that this personality was stressing the sibilants more, but he was certain that was just the influence of hearing the name and the immediate association with serpents.

“Sam knows I exist.” Lucifer replied, words carefully chosen.

Nick picked up on the odd phrasing. “But not inside himself?”

“If he prefers to believe that I am an external entity, who am I to disagree with him. My only concern is his safety.”

Parts of Sam’s file came to mind, and he felt as if a lock had just clicked into place. “Choking his brother,” he said quietly, processing the thought.

“Give the doctor a silver dollar.” Standing up, Lucifer moved around to the back of his chair, hand trailing along it seductively. “There are dangerous people in this world, and it’s my job to keep Sammy boy safe from them.”

“Is Dean one of them?” To Nick, Lucifer sounded like a terribly possessive personality, and his awareness of Sam made him quite dangerous.

“He might be.”

It seemed that Lucifer didn’t want to give him straight answers. Well, that could be worked around, for this was far better than the previous catatonic silences. “Alright, do you consider me a dangerous person?”

Lucifer narrowed his eyes and Nick felt a chill run down his spine, coiling into a frigid weight in the pit of his stomach.

“You brought the maggots along with you, I was ready to think of you as dangerous from just that, but then you drugged Sam.”

“Maggots?” One of Sam’s delusions? Did Lucifer share in the hallucinations and confused reality that Sam had so briefly mentioned?

“Yes, maggots. They ate through his tongue.” Lucifer perched on the chair again, leaving no doubt now that this was in no way Sam. The same frame but such completely different ways of manipulating it.

“Sam bit through his tongue in a seizure-,”

“No,” Lucifer interrupted again, obviously holding no respect for the esteemed doctor. “You don’t understand. Whatever functionally happens in reality doesn’t matter. What matters is what happens in Sam’s mind and how he perceives reality. He felt you brought maggots with you and the infected him. We both understand that he bit through his tongue, but you could show Sam evidence, photos, footage, signed affidavits, and it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“But you understand both sides?” Nick asked carefully, worried by the near omnipotence this personality was displaying. Perhaps again it was the biblical connotation of the name, but this seemed different from any dissassociative or alternate personality he’d ever encountered before. If he was a religious man he’d be looking for signs that it wasn’t possession.

Lucifer crossed Sam’s long legs, posture closing off as he became increasingly defensive, “That’s my job.”

His job? “You consider Sam a job?”

“I have to wonder if you’re actually this obtuse or if you’re just intent on parroting and postulating.” The disgust all too apparent as Lucifer talked, “Yes, I do. My job is to protect him, always has been. Are you married, doc?”

The question took Nick for surprise, and he coughed. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“So she’s dead.”

He coughed again, uncomfortable with the way Lucifer apparently saw through him. Giving away his personal information had gotten him in far too great a trouble the last time, and he had no intention of making the same mistake. “Why do you ask?”

“Cute, but deflection isn’t your forte. However I’ll humour you. When she was alive, you swore to love her until death do you part, right? It was essentially your job to protect and love her, serve and be served. Just because I think of it as a job, doesn’t mean I’m not doing it willingly.”

The air conditioner clicked to life overhead and filled the heavy silence with its metal hum.

“You make an eloquent point.” Nick forced himself to focus on the enigma in front of him rather than the memories that had been plucked at. “May I ask another question?”

“Why not, I’m just passing the time until Sam’s ready to wake up again, and you pose something of a mystery. You ask one of yours and I’ll ask one of mine. Same deal you gave Sam, seems fair.” Leaning forward, Lucifer rested his forearms on his knees and steepled his hands. “Ask away.”

Having Sam ask questions felt far less threatening than being stared down by this predator wrapped inside the man’s skin and dissected. Nick licked his lips, “That does sound like fair play. So, why Lucifer?”

Lucifer cocked his head to a side and quirked an eyebrow, “Excuse me?”

“Did you name yourself, did Sam name you, were you fully formed from Zeus’ side? I just find it interesting that you introduced yourself as Lucifer, there’s a wealth of associations that come with that name.” Associations that were worrying enough on their own, without the added complications that were beginning to present here.

“Why Lucifer,” Lucifer repeated to himself, “well that’s simple. It’s what Sammy needed.” Standing up and moving to the window, Lucifer breathed against the glass, smirking when it fogged over. He idly traced arcane symbols, “He hates himself, you know. So. Very. Much. My poor little boy blue wants to believe in religion, in something bigger than himself, but he’s jaded by all those unanswered prayers and years spent standing in the doorway to a chapel without a single priest ever asking why he had those bruises, why he as bleeding and broken.”

An intricate pattern was forming over the windowpane, a lattice of curling script and negative space. “So I’m what he needed, a fallen angel who would listen to his prayers and remind him that he has every reason to hate himself.”

“That doesn’t sound like you’re protecting him,” Nick said slowly, carefully, “that sounds like you’re persecuting him.”

The other man turned around and looked at him, “Is that so? Do you know what he went through in his childhood? No, neither does he. I do. It’s my job to remember, endlessly. So I short circuit thoughts in his brain, redirect the emotions that he simply can’t live without. Sam hates himself but doesn’t remember why, so I give him a reason. Sam knows the world is a dangerous place, so I give him a reason not to go outside. Sam knows that he’s never going to get visitors, so I give him companionship and sweet lies that are so much easier than the truth.”

He stood stock still and remote, “Sam isn’t well, doc, and it’s my job to keep him from asking why. There are wounds we don’t pull open again, and that’s all Sam is under the surface, one huge wound.”

Nick tried to follow the twisted logic, finding himself oddly compelled to believe Lucifer, even if he understood that this too was part of Sam’s delusion. If Lucifer was this self-aware and rational then it could be a sign of how the division of the brain was split. Perhaps they shared portions of the brain, while Lucifer controlled others without Sam’s knowledge. This was unprecedented. “I see.”

“You don’t, but you want to.” Lucifer blinked lazily, “Now it’s my turn. Why’d you really leave Petersburg? And don’t think you can pass off a lie to me as truth like you tried with Sam. I have far more experience seeing through things than he does. He’s a little naïve that way.” The way that Lucifer smiled it seemed like he found that cute.

“Ah,” he should have expected it would come back around to this. “Well, what I said wasn’t exactly a lie.”

“But you weren’t attacked by a patient.”

“No, my wife and son were.”

The silence stretched out between the two men, both stoically refusing to break it first.

Nick caved, “I had exchanged a few personal bits of information to help grease the wheels with the patient, tried to use my personal experiences to get more interaction. One day he broke free from a lower security section than where he was normally kept and he found my family.”

Lucifer smiled, mirthless and hollow, closer to an animal baring its teeth. “And you’re still parceling out personal information for patient response. One would think you didn’t learn from your lesson.”

The surge of anger was instantaneous and visceral, and Nick had to grip the arms of his chair to keep from rising. With a careful control he forced himself to respond kindly, “Yes, well, whatever helps my patients.”

“Oh see doc, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m not your patient. Sam is. And I’m only talking to figure out why you’re here.”

            Sam is five and the room is stiflingly cramped and contained. He is tired and lonely, but no one is here. Sam has not yet met Lucifer but he has a comforting presence that sits with him some days and waits for Dean and John to get back.

            Sam wonders if the presence is an imaginary friend, because some of the children at the kindergarden talked about how they had those. They said they could see them though, described them in all their childish glee and blind faith. He feels sad that he can’t explain to them about the presence, about how it wraps him up in cool comfort and whispers things he can’t hear but feels in his soul.

            No one would understand unless they felt it, so he doesn’t try.

            But he wants to be able to explain it to them.

            “Um… could you… could you be like them?” he asks the empty room, knowing the presence can hear him, is always there to listen. There’s silence for a long while, a quiet anticipation as his friend thinks. Then there’s a tap at his shoulder and Sam turns around.

            Someone is standing there, all edges and light, eyes blinking in and out of existence over the burning skin. A halo grows from the head, mantid eyes staring with their pinpoint fixation as strange mandibles and tongues move in sinuous motion. Wings rustle somewhere as a young child’s mind is shattered, confronted with the abyss in the depths of that being.

            The presence reaches forward and strokes Sam’s face, healing the wounds its unintentionally caused by its appearance. Madness is catching with humans, and the presence has long since delved into the end of all things. Molten feathers of burning suns drop to the floor and the pitted carpet smells like creation.

            “S…. Sam…” it manages to say, strange mouth parts fighting to form human words.

            Sam’s mind shuts down as he flings himself forward and holds tight to the monster that has come for him. There is no fear in his little body as he clings tight, knowing that at last he isn’t alone any more.

            Horns chime like crystal as the presence folds itself around Sam, holding him protectively. “Sam,” it says again, easier now as it bleeds Other. Shape changes while form and function fit into the right spectrum of things.

            It stands before Sam as a man thing, body ageless and subtly comforting. Ash blond hair and smiling frozen eyes. “Hello Sam.”

            “Hello Samael,” Sam replies, because he’d know his angel anywhere.

[wehavebecomeanathema]

Ripples

Words: 1796

Summery: The story had been told in fragments before, an errant sentence while in line to a movie theatre, a sonic vista described while stopped at a rest station, the final whispered words in the dark of a hotel room. Sam was starting to wonder if he’d ever hear it all and get a cohesive picture of the odd fellow he’d been travelling with.

Read it under the cut or over on my AO3.

“It isn’t so much the slow death that I mind,” Lucifer said as he brought back his arm, “it’s the unendurable loneliness.” His arm was a blur as he snapped his wrist and let fly the smooth stone, the ripples spreading over the tranquil lake as the river stone skipped again and again and again.

“Loneliness?” Sam asked from further down the rocky shoreline, crouched over his knees as he inspected likely candidates.

Hands in his pockets Lucifer didn’t immediately respond, merely stood watching those ripples collide and ever so slowly dissipate without leaving a trace. His fate didn’t really sound so different. “I had worshipers once.”

The story had been told in fragments before, an errant sentence while in line to a movie theatre, a sonic vista described while stopped at a rest station, the final whispered words in the dark of a hotel room. Sam was starting to wonder if he’d ever hear it all and get a cohesive picture of the odd fellow he’d been traveling with.

When had he met Lucifer? Three months ago now? And all he could really say was the man seemed to be an addled philanthropist. The delusions of grandeur and death fixation probably came from some terminal disease.

“Worshipers? This was back when you were a god, right?” Sam had to be careful not to laugh at this particular notion.

Lucifer? A god?

He looked over at the older man, something timeless and a bit shabby in his appearance. Soft spoken with a voice made for stories, eyes that held a wealth of sorrow so vast and deep that Sam’s own miserable past wouldn’t have been more than a drop in that ocean. Whatever had stripped Lucifer of his vitality and sanity must have been cataclysmic.

Like losing your fiancé? asked an insidious voice from his own past.

No, worse than that. Had to be. He’d managed to, well, function after her.

He didn’t think he could call Lucifer functional.

“You don’t stop being a god just because people forget about you,” Lucifer said, voice almost lost to the autumn breeze. “You just start fading.” The melancholy that was woven through that statement hurt to hear, the despondency of the dying.

Sam turned a smooth river stone over in his hand and studied a vein of quartz that transected it, he didn’t feel he could watch Lucifer as he spoke about this. “Yeah?” he muttered, more to fill the yawning silence than any real input.

“Fading isn’t so bad, just the loneliness. My plumage is gone, my scales are gone, but I still have the endless road, and there will always be someone who can use my grace.”

Grace, this crazy mystical energy that Lucifer had detailed once for him. Flowing life-force that spontaneously generated between god and worshiper, a perfectly renewable resource - unless you had no worshipers.

“Hey,” Sam tossed the stone, the plunk as it hit the water satisfying even if he hadn’t gotten it to skip, “why are your worshipers gone?” Did you lose them? Were you an evil god and ate them? Thoughts and unasked questions bounced around inside his skull, never quite important enough to ask.

Lucifer turned to look at Sam, the haunted shadow in his eyes bleeding into the air like winter’s chill. “They were killed.” Simple, direct, never volunteering more information than absolutely necessary.

That infuriated Sam most days; why bring all this shit up in the first place only to suddenly clam up and fall silent?

“Okay, I’ll bite, who killed them? You keep starting this story, why not just finish it?”

“Sometimes there’s healing in a telling, other times there’s only agony and remorse.” Walking out into ankle deep water, Lucifer didn’t seem fazed by the fact that his shoes were getting soaked through with cold, cold water. “There was another god who killed them. My name was stricken from the records, my mythos vilified or eradicated all together. A forgotten god.”

“Yeah, we get that you’re tragic,” Sam mumbled under his breath, not loud enough for Lucifer to hear.

“His name,” Lucifer paused, but when he finished it was on a dying whisper, “was Michael.”

In keeping with the biblical allegory, fine. Sam almost wished he’d taken more classes on psychology; Lucifer would have made a perfect case study for some sort of neurosis, surely. “I take it you were close?” There was none of the rage that he imagined should be in that statement if Lucifer had hated this Michael, only the dumb, animal hurt of betrayal.

“Have you ever had a brother whom you loved more than yourself?”

The question caught Sam off guard, his mind immediately latching onto the memory of Dean with the same hurt that he’d heard in Lucifer’s voice. His chest unexpectedly burned as he forced out a strangled breath. He hadn’t told Lucifer about himself, simply accepted a ride down Route 66 and kept travelling on with him each time Lucifer headed out.

Damn, If Lucifer had been betrayed by a brother, well, then maybe Sam could understand hiding in a pleasant dream rather than a harsh reality. Still, thinking you were a god seemed an extreme route to take.

“Michael was as near to a brother as any could be, as gods are not born of flesh and blood. It was on his feast day when he killed them, the height of his power. My poor flock…” Lucifer looked down into the water and stared long at something Sam couldn’t see.

“Why?” The question seemed drawn out almost against his will and Sam clamped his mouth closed after the word had escaped.

“Why did he kill them? I don’t know, I never have.”

“So this guy screws you over and that’s all you can say?” Sam felt himself getting angry, not at Lucifer, but for him. What sort of real life event was this whole fantasy world covering for? What had been so damning that it could leave a man completely empty and broken, shards of glacial ice and echoing silences.

“Do you imagine I didn’t try to find out?” A spark of something as Lucifer turned and locked gazes, still half buried and remembered only as if from a dream. “When I went to ask him,” silence. One beat. Two beats. Three beats.

Sam realized he was counting his heartbeats as he waited for Lucifer to finish.

“I can’t say if killing my flock was the cause or the result, but Michael had gone mad. He had metamorphosed into something… other.” The word had a chilling connotation. “His madness had been given physical form and he had no words of wisdom to share with me, only rage. I escaped with my life, which was no blessing.”

“You think he wanted you to live through his attack?”

“I am certain of it.” A muscle danced in Lucifer’s jaw as he worked to not clench his teeth in remembrance. “He wanted me to be broken, bleeding, and utterly alone. He wanted me to die the slowest, most agonizing death imaginable--.”

“You don’t seem so bad off now,” Sam interrupted. He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth, thoughts of tears between the dim and the dark and hollow eyes that reflected no soul. Whatever else Lucifer was, he wasn’t okay. “Sorry.”

“It’s... it’s alright.”

Sam could see that his apology had been completely unexpected as Lucifer momentarily floundered for words. “So, uh,” he tried to think of a bone he could throw him, something, anything to get rid of the clinging vestiges of that pain, “what exactly do you do now? I mean, I’ve been travelling around with you for a couple months now and I still don’t get it.”

“I’ve watched you help build a house, pull a kid from a fire, sit on a park bench and talk to a homeless man, and a hundred other minutia.” This was still the long summer for Sam, he had a place to return to, however hollow the apartment would feel in the absence of Jess, but he never got that vibe from Lucifer. Somehow he knew with perfect certainty that the day he told Lucifer that he was leaving, he’d never again see the man, and Lucifer would disappear as if he’d never been.

Lucifer tiled his head to the side, “I help. There’s an energy in gratitude.”

“What, like grace?”

“Similar, although nowhere so potent.” The breeze picked up, the first sign of the approaching storm as the sky began to darken. “I learned a long time ago to how to survive off very little, use very little. I keep moving because it’s in my bones, sewn into the spaces between my present and my future. I’ve lived nearly everywhere, a few years in Morocco, two decades in Lancaster, Nepal, Mesopotamia, Tenochtitlan, and now this summer on the road.”

“That doesn’t really sound like almost everywhere.”

Lucifer smirked, finally showing more emotion than a painting of a long passed winter’s day. “You don’t believe me. Is the fantasy easier to digest than reality?”

Hearing words so close to his own thoughts shocked Sam and he numbly tried to deny it. “No I… I believe that you believe it.”

“That’s not belief at all. That’s a philosophical understanding that reality is shaped by one’s own belief in it.” Sometimes Lucifer seemed so painfully lucid, razor wire wit and instantaneous repartee.

“I… fine. You’ve got me there, but come on. You’ve been telling me you’re a god. That’s,” Sam gestured hopelessly, trying to put words into meaningless kinetic motion. It didn’t explain his thoughts any better than his aborted sentence did.

“Insane,” Lucifer finished for him without judgment. “Yes, I know.”

“But you don’t care?”

“No. Of course I would like it if you believed me, but I’ve lived an eternity without faith, what’s one more skeptic?”

Sam could almost taste the pain. One more skeptic. “Alright, let’s say I humoured you, why would you want me to believe your story?”

The look that Lucifer gave him was far more eloquent than his own wordless gesticulation had been, and he instantly understood that this was all about faith.

“Would having a single person believe in you really make that much of a difference, even without worship and the whole nine yards?” That was what this boiled down to, wasn’t it? Whatever Lucifer’s malfunction was, he desperately needed to be believed in, not just believed.

“It would make all the difference in the world.”

A rain drop fell and caught on Sam’s eyelashes, blurring the world, and in that briefest of moments he thought he saw something shimmering and sliding just under the surface of Lucifer’s skin. By the time he blinked away the droplet, it was gone.

[celestial-artistry]

Of Grace Unmerited

A scene from Caught Between where Lucifer, who now resides in Sam, takes Castiel’s Grace to keep him from posing a future threat to Sam.

[wehavebecomeanathema]

I promised you guys Samifer short fics... instead I art'd fan art of one of my own stories.

I have a problem.

[wehavebecomeanathema]

essenceofbananafish replied to your post:essenceofbananafish replied to your...

My mom has dyslexia so yeah wow it can be really difficult to deal with. You do well.

Thank you. It runs in my family. I'm no where near as bad as my uncles, but let's just say that the red squiggly line in Word is my BEST FRIEND.

Spell Check is the name of my guardian angel, I'm sure of it. XD

[wehavebecomeanathema]

essenceofbananafish replied to your post:essenceofbananafish replied to your post:Oh my....

it’s not linking correctly and switches too fast for me to properly see the url! :( I love your art from what I’ve seen of it so I’m super excited you have an art blog.

Ah, it was another case of my dyslexia kicking me in the ass. I fixed it, but here it is again.

Link

[wehavebecomeanathema]

sadrobotinabowlerhat replied to your post:Oh my. I’ve been active over on my art blog and...

Do it :) I can think of no one better to provide Samifer in my life.

You're biased though hon. XD But I'll see what I can come up with.