#gift work

The Lucifer who visited Sam’s dreams in the aftermath of Gabriel’s death was a very different one than he had been. Or, rather, he was in the process of becoming something new and Sam was the only one (he had left) to bear witness to it. To see Lucifer mourn, in a way that was vicious and ugly and lost, dragging Sam in their shared dreams back to the scene of the crime. Sam wasn’t even there, but now, he’d had it replayed so many times, he felt like he was. Lucifer went through the same steps, again and again and again, Sam helpless to do anything but stand and watch, listen to Gabriel whimper on the end of a blade and to Lucifer’s choppy breathing when he finally let his brother fall.

And that was always the part where Lucifer would look at him.

Like he thought Sam could explain it. Why he’d done this. Why it hurt.

Sam had been in this position before, stuck in an endless loop. Gabriel and Lucifer were more alike than they realized. His resentment for being forced to watch this every night kept him from seeing for weeks that he was not the only one trapped.

“Don’t do it,” Sam said, one night. He’d never spoken up before, only glared at Lucifer from across the room and watched in horror as Gabriel fell. This time, he stepped closer, at Lucifer’s side. Lucifer looked like a wild animal, bloodstained and cornered.

“I have,” he answered. “I will.” They meant the same thing, the way he said them.

“No one makes us do anything,” echoed Gabriel’s memory, chastising his brother from beyond the grave. Lucifer flinched.

“I can’t change it, Sam.” His words were bigger than this room, this moment. They encompass the past year. The whole of Sam’s life. The fall of mankind. Every step, preordained.

“You don’t even try.” Sam didn’t want Gabriel’s sacrifice, but he respected it for what it meant. Dean had told him to stand up to his family, and he did. It was a deadlier game to play when that family was still around and kicking than it was when they were burned and buried before you were. Sometimes, you stood up and got your heart run through. Sometimes, you stood up and had to find your own way to the bus stop while nursing a black eye. Sometimes, you stood up and were locked away for asking the questions no one wanted to answer. “It doesn’t even matter here. It’s a dream. You can do whatever you want. You don’t have to-” Behind him, Sam heard Gabriel step up, blade drawn.

He heard, as Lucifer heard, unsteady breathing, the shake of the blade, the slight unconscious shift in Gabriel’s stance that he didn’t realize left him vulnerable. Lucifer was not looking at either of them. Sam could put himself in Gabriel’s way, but that wouldn’t matter. He stepped aside. Lucifer was stiff and silent. He’d kept to the script for so many nights that Sam could have said the words for him.

“To kill him,” Sam finished. Gabriel went in, and as ever, Lucifer turned and caught the blade.

And he held it. It shone between them, the light inside beating like a heartbeat and painting both their faces starkly. The part of Gabriel waited for the next act of the play, expression frozen between the surprise that came when Lucifer turned and the horror that would settle into his features when the blade pierced his heart. Lucifer clutched his blade between them like someone might hold onto the edge of a cliff for dear life after tumbling over the side.

“Just once,” Sam whispered. Maybe Gabriel should have let him boil half a year more. His lesson hadn’t seemed to sink in as well as he wanted. Sam wasn’t even sure who he was trying to save anymore. If it mattered at all, when no one here could be.

Lucifer let go.

There was no fanfare in it. No lunge and retribution from Gabriel now that his brother wasn’t defending himself. No gasp as he was spared. No sudden leap back from Lucifer as he brushed his own demise and narrowly escaped.

The real Gabriel might have done any of those things, or none at all.

But it was not Gabriel. It was a memory. Lucifer’s memory. And Lucifer’s memory only knew one way this story went. Here, Gabriel’s image became trapped in amber. Without Lucifer, the play could not continue, but it didn’t end, either. It waited with the patience of inevitability for him to wrap his hand around Gabriel’s blade again and finish the job.

Lucifer reached up and cupped the side of Gabriel’s face. Sam had seen him do that too many times to count, always in Gabriel’s last moments. Lucifer let Gabriel leave the world with a taunt in his ears, but he called him little brother, too. He held him when he shattered and before he fell into the cold embrace of death. For Lucifer, euthanasia was a form of love.

"I'm not supposed to have your blood on my hands," Lucifer told his dead brother. Gabriel did not answer. Corpses rarely did, even in Sam's experience. Ghosts, on the other hand, always had far too much to say. "They are not better than us, Gabriel. They are not better than you." Lucifer's hand fell like he couldn't bear to touch Gabriel any longer. "Why would you choose..." He trailed off. For all that this play had become well-rehearsed, Lucifer's grief was never a performance. Sam wished it was. It would be easier to swallow a lie. "Why would you choose?"

Sam didn't know if he really wanted an answer. Still, "Because this mattered to him. All of it." Lucifer turned on him. He used to appear to Sam without a mark on him, no matter how his vessel deteriorated in the waking world. Now, Sam watched his skin blister in real time. (It was almost more comforting than the nights when Lucifer's face looked more put together than it did before. Sam knew the price other people were paying for him to avoid saying yes, all that blood to patch up an unfit vessel. Just because Sam stopped drinking from demons didn't mean he wasn't responsible for every life drained.)

"Do you think it doesn't to me?" Lucifer asked. "Do you think I don't care about this world or my siblings' lives? If I could show you what it was like before the cancer of humanity set in-"

"That's not the world," Sam argued. "It hasn't been for a long time." The thing about being indispensable to Lucifer was that it had made him bold. "You don't love what it is now. He did"—Sam gestured at Gabriel—"and you cut him down for it."

But there was a line between bold and suicidal.

Lucifer hardly needed to try to be intimidating. He was already wearing the aftermath of the hotel massacre.

"In self-defense. I would never have hurt him if he backed down."

"So now you're not a fan of standing up for your beliefs?" Sam already had one foot in the grave. No harm in continuing to dig. There was a glint in Lucifer's eyes that was not human. It reminded Sam uncannily of the shine of a knife right before it plunged. "Or is it only when they conflict with yours?"

"I'm not my Father." Lucifer said, a warning. Sam did not back down. Behind them, Gabriel watched blindly, instigator to the devil's newest doubts.

"From where I'm standing, you're starting to look like Him," Sam lied. In truth, Lucifer had been the closest thing to God Sam has ever encountered, and that had left him in equal awe and horror since he laid eyes on him. Lucifer took a step towards him. Sam swallowed and prepared to pay for his blasphemy.

Lucifer stopped. He looked back at Gabriel. Gabriel was still frozen in fear, forever waiting to be struck down, only to rise the next night and play pincushion for Lucifer all over again. All Sam wanted was a sign that things could change. (All Sam had wanted was for it to not be Tuesday anymore. And he'd gotten his wish. He'd gotten his wish for six long months.)

"If this could be any other way-"

"Can't it?" Sam pleaded. Lucifer put his hand back on the blade that had been waiting for him.

"He's already gone," Lucifer said.

Sam didn't ask who.

"You aren't." Lucifer's hands were folded over Gabriel's as he guided the blade to his heart. It pressed unerringly against its final resting place.

"Oh, Sam," Lucifer said, and the anger had faded from his voice. He cupped Gabriel's cheek again. His brother's eyes met his. Sam flinched when he heard the horrible sound of the blade sliding in. "I have been since before we even met." Light burst from Gabriel's eyes, and Lucifer held him as his grace tore itself apart from the inside out.

"I won't let his sacrifice go in vain," Sam said as Gabriel fell. His wings scarred the ground. "You won't win." Lucifer stood over his brother.

"Please," he said, "prove me wrong."