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“You get it now, don’t you?” Lucifer says quietly, once Dean’s left them in the library. “Why I rebelled against my father.”
Sam scoffs a little. His breath ruffles the reams of research he has laid out in front of him. “I always got that,” he says. “That was never the part of you I struggled to understand.” He’s three tables from Lucifer. It’s not far enough. He feels reckless, moorless. The world is dead and gone, and they’re on a fast track to join it. Lucifer can’t hurt him anymore. Not in any way that matters.
(It’s the first time in his life that’s true.)
The devil frowns. “Then why were you always against me? From the beginning you fought me. Your brother I’d understand, but you?”
He seems, of all things, genuinely confused. Fucking hell. “I don’t know,” says Sam, caustic, “let’s see if I can remember past the centuries of torture to tell you what I thought about you at first.” He waits a beat for effect. “Hmm, no, sorry. I can’t really recall. Guess you erased it the hundredth time you raped me.”
It’s faint, but Lucifer flinches. Flickering, bitter vindication rolls in Sam’s stomach.
Christ. It’s him and the devil at the end of the world, again. Jack’s dying. Cas’s dead. Dean’s so mired in grief that he barely realized he was leaving Sam alone with the devil.
Sam has always been alone with the devil. “You always said it would end this way,” Sam says. It was one of his favorite tortures - letting Sam spin himself a story where they won, then taking it out at the knees. The details changed, sure. The message didn’t. (Sam and the devil at the end of the world.) “Did you know?”
Lucifer sighs. “A thing about the cage, Sam? When I wasn’t torturing you, I was bluffing you. I really thought dear old dad was gone for good. I certainly didn’t dream that he’d yank your chain for another decade.”
Ah. Does that make it better or worse?
There’s a hole in Sam the size and shape of Lucifer. There always has been. There always will be. Lucifer dug it with nightmares and needles and tiny, glittering razor blades. He scraped it out of Sam with promises and portents.
The prince of lies, they call him. What does that make Sam?
“I fought you because of what it meant,” Sam says, “if I was yours.” He takes a deep breath. Him and the devil at the end of the world. “You were locked up for most of history, so maybe you don’t know the stories.”
“The stories?”
“The ones they tell about you.”
“Ah. Those stories.”
Yeah. Those stories. Sam forgets them himself, sometimes. He knows Lucifer so much better than he ever knew the stories. He knows the exact frequency at which his halo hums. He knows the color of his own lifeblood on his claws. He hasn’t needed the stories in years.
“Anyway,” he says, “the stories.” He casts his mind back, to when he was young and foolish and still thought he could do some good in the world. Back when he thought he was more than his blood and his deeds. “The stories,” he says again. He never thought he’d have this conversation. (He never wanted to have this conversation.)
“I’m waiting.”
“They call you the evil one. The father of lies. The tempter. The deceiver of the whole world. The accuser of god’s people.”
Lucifer raises an eyebrow. “They also call me the day-star, the anointed cherub, the roaring lion. The angel of light. I thought you knew better than to place stock in stories, Sam.”
Sam doesn’t really know what to say to that. He barely remembers who he was, that night he learned who he was supposed to be. (He has Lucifer to thank for that.)
(He has Lucifer to thank for a lot of things.)
“My whole life,” Sam says, “I knew there was something broken in me. Something hideous and ugly and wrong. Something evil. And I discover what Azazel did to me, and I think, that’s it. That’s what’s rotten in me. And I think, I can fix this. I can move past this. I can use this, I can be better, I can be good anyway -
“And you come along, and you tell me, no. The evil is deeper than that. It’s fundamental. It’s baked into my essence, and even if I could exorcise the demons from my veins I would still be knitted together with all of your lies.
“So, yeah, I fought you. I fought what it meant to be you. I fought you, and even in the cage I never stopped fighting, because if I gave in then that scared little boy would be right. I’d be evil.” He’s heaving for breath when he stops talking, like he just ran a mile in high Kansas summer. He’s never said this aloud, before. Not to anyone.
Now he’s saying it to Lucifer.
Sam and the devil at the end of the world.
Lucifer sits quietly for a long time, like he’s processing. Some small, sick part of Sam - the part that never left the cage - wants to cower away from his silence. Lucifer quiet always meant Lucifer plotting, or Lucifer angry, or (worst of all) Lucifer trapped in the twisting halls of his grief. If Lucifer was quiet, Lucifer would soon be very, very loud.
But Lucifer can’t hurt him anymore, so Sam sits in the silence and waits.
“I handled you all wrong, didn’t I?” Lucifer says, like it’s a revelation.
Sam has a feeling he’s not talking about the rack, or the fire, or the needles, or the rape. “Your mistake was in thinking I needed to be handled at all.”
“Maybe it was,” Lucifer says, waving a hand airily. “Maybe it wasn’t. I had no idea you had all this inside of you, Sam.”
“You were more interested in replacing it.” And then he was more interested in Sam’s organs.
“Yes, I suppose I was.” A pause. “I should have just told you what a piece of shit my father was.”
And isn’t that a thought? “I wouldn’t have believed you.”
“Oh, that’s right. You had all that lovely faith.” Another pause, a little longer. “I wish I’d been around to see it break.” His tone is wistful, not sadistic, like an absent father who missed his child’s first steps. (Sam has some experience with that, too.)
He has to laugh, a little. “I shot him, you know,” Sam says. “Your dad.”
A beat. “With what?”
Sam shrugs. “The gun’s gone, now. He called it - Chuck, I mean - ‘the Equalizer,’ like something out of a bad thriller. It was a… symmetry weapon, I guess. It created the same injuries in the wielder as the victim.”
Lucifer makes a face of distaste. “He’s still harping on about that whole ‘brother killing brother’ thing?”
“Basically.” Sam’s not about to tell the devil that his dad wanted to kill his son.
“Ugh.” Lucifer rolls his eyes. “Get a new thing already.”
This is… so fucking surreal. Sam and Lucifer, laughing about the ugly predictability of God himself. Sam and his rapist, confessing terrible truths to one another.
Sam and the devil, at the end of the world.
“I sometimes wonder,” Sam says, “about if things had gone differently.”
“You and every other living thing. How so?”
Oh, Jesus, in so many ways. If he’d stayed at Stanford. If Dean’d never made that deal. If he’d succeeded in shutting the gates of Hell. If Amara never brought Mary back.
That’s not what Lucifer wants to hear, though. That’s not what Sam wants to tell him.
“If things had gone differently,” Sam says, “between you and me.” He pauses. “If Ruby and Lilith had told the truth, and given me the chance to free you by choice. If you had approached me honestly instead of wearing Jess’s skin. If Dean and I never reunited and my self-loathing drove me into your arms. If, after we dove into the cage, you had treated me with respect and kindness.” He wonders about that last one most of all. They were together down there for almost two hundred years. If Lucifer had been a little more manipulative and a little less vengeful, that would have been more than enough time to woo Sam over to his side. Who would he have been, if he came out of the cage loving Lucifer?
“I confess I’ve wondered about some of that, myself.” Lucifer sighs. “Do you ever regret your sacrifice, Sam?”
Every goddamn day. “No. Do you ever regret what you did to me, Lucifer?”
“No.”
(The prince of lies, they call him.) “Really?” Sam presses. He’d have given his left arm, once, to feel this reckless before Lucifer. This cost a hell of a lot more than that.
“A lie for a lie, Sam,” Lucifer replies, voice teasing. “Do you ever regret your sacrifice?” he repeats.
Sam sighs. “I regret it every day. I wouldn’t change a thing about it.” He repeats his question, too. “Do you ever regret what you did to me?”
Lucifer tilts his head to the side. He must have picked up that mannerism while wearing Cas, because he never once did it in the cage. “Yes and no,” he says. “You were my perfect vessel, designed to fit me like a second, better skin. I destroyed that when I destroyed you, and I regret that destruction. But no, I don’t regret the pain I caused you. I was very, very angry, Sam. I still am.”
There was a time Sam thought he was angry, too. Maybe he really was. His memories of himself are so warped, and the further back they go the more frayed around the edges they appear. He thought he had enough anger to burn the world. Depending on your interpretation, that’s exactly what he did.
He’s not angry anymore. He hasn’t been angry in years. Something - Lucifer, Gadreel, Michael, Chuck; losing Jack, losing his faith, losing the world - something beat it out of him.
“All those years ago,” Sam says, “is this what you wanted?” He gestures at - everything. The whole broken world.
“We’re just as much pawns in his game as you,” Lucifer says, in lieu of answering. A beat. “I suppose I hoped that, in making hell on earth, I could draw dear old daddy out of retirement, get a few choice words in with the old man.” He laughs, shakes his head. “And he was right under your nose the whole time! Funny how these things work out.”
Lucifer has something of a flair for the dramatic. The thousands he killed, the millions he could have killed, the billions he wanted to kill: Funny, says the devil, how these things work out.
“But is this what you wanted?” Sam asks again. “Is this what you hoped for?”
Lucifer sobers. “No. I don’t know if you noticed, but this is boring, Sam. There’s nothing here! A tempter’s not a tempter if there’s nothing to tempt. A torturer’s not a torturer if there’s nothing to torture.”
“You wanted the world to look more like your cage, then? Vast fields of fiery torment and deep pits of despair?”
Lucifer’s eyes narrow. “That place was no better for me than it was for you and you know it, don’t pretend otherwise.”
The nerve of him. “At least I wasn’t torturing you.”
Lucifer waves his hand, like centuries of agony can just be brushed aside. (Maybe they can.) “No, what I wanted, Sam, was revenge. My father wasn’t content with simply exiling me. He had to lock me in with all my worst nightmares, just because I had the gall to question him.” A beat. “We’re not so different, you and I.”
Sam has to laugh. “That old chestnut?”
“The cliches are cliche because they’re true.”
Sam sighs. “We’re different in the ways that matter.” And the same in all the ways that don’t.
“And what ways are those?”
Christ. “I don’t torture people, for one. I don’t rape them.”
Lucifer rolls his eyes. He actually rolls his eyes. “Sam, you’re so hung up on the torture. What was it? Three years? Four?”
“One hundred and eighty-four years, three months, and nineteen days.” Just a blip for an archangel. Almost seven times Sam’s life, when he jumped in the cage.
Lucifer tilts his head again. “That would feel longer to you, I suppose.”
Sam gives a hollow laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, it would.”
So, what now? The face in all of Sam’s nightmares (well, most of Sam’s nightmares - ), that face belongs to Lucifer. To Lucifer he’s a mouse, a gnat. An annoying thing to be squashed. An animal to be skinned, and left to squirm, and forgotten about.
Well. The world’s ended. It’s not like it matters anymore.
“I don’t want you to think I don’t care, Sam,” says Lucifer suddenly, actual concern on his face.
“You raped me,” says Sam. “You tortured me. For - years. Centuries.” For the first time in this conversation, his voice breaks. “I hallucinated you for a year, it almost killed me. I still flinch at loud noises. I have flashbacks. I’ve never been the same. I’ll never be the same. Is that how you show you care?” There are tears in his voice and his eyes, and he’s past caring.
“Yes,” says Lucifer, frank and straightforward, and they call him the prince of lies, but somehow Sam knows he’s not lying this time. (He’ll always be Lucifer’s.) “Yes, actually, it is. Would you prefer me to have left you completely alone down there? You saw what that did to Michael, to your younger brother, and they at least had each other to lean on. You saw what it did to - me, the first time around.”
“You didn’t have to torture me to keep me company.”
“It’s Hell, Sam! If I’d been nice to you it would have twisted all out of shape, so why even bother?”
(The prince of lies, they call him.) “Don’t tell me that you didn’t want it. That you didn’t love it. That you wouldn’t have done it anyway.”
“Of course I did!” Again, quieter, “of course I did. I am what I am, Sam.”
“So am I,” Sam says - then again, louder, in an inverse of Lucifer, “so am I! I’ve been angry my whole goddamn life! I have actual demon blood in my veins! I’m your fucking vessel! But I chose to be better! I chose to move past it! For the people I love! So why couldn’t you?! Why couldn’t you?” He’s shaking with the emotion of the outburst. “If I’m made for you. If I fit you better than anyone else. If you waited centuries for me. You say - you said, in the cage - if you love me. Why couldn’t you?”
It’s the first time Sam’s ever acknowledged it, that thing Lucifer crooned to him in Hell. That lullaby he sang while he peeled off Sam’s skin. The hymn he hummed when he held Sam’s feet to the flames. The anthem that followed Sam everywhere in the cage, and that lingered even once he was outside it.
Lucifer just. Shrugs. “I am what I am,” he says again, as if that explains or excuses any of it. And maybe it does, for him. Maybe it’s different for an angel, or for the devil, or for any being who spent millennia in solitary confinement.
But Sam feels all of his anger and all of his fear curdle, abruptly, into disgust. It seems like he’s stronger than the devil.
It’s the end of the world. It’s probably the end of Sam. But at least he got to know that before he had to go.
He stands up. He tries to think of something to say, some witty last words, something cutting to shove in Lucifer’s face. But it’s not about Lucifer.
He leaves the room.
“Sam!” The devil calls after him. “Sam!”
But Sam just walks away. Lucifer can’t hurt him anymore.