#luphael

SPN Rare Ship CC: Round 9 | mariaghost vs. @ladysimoriah Prompt: Dingy Dungeon Ship: Lucifer/Raphael Word Count:  915 Tags/Warnings: I’m afraid it’s angst again Summary: Lucifer visits Raphael while he’s trapped in holy fire. AO3 Link 

Sorry, this is angst… But did you expect anything else? 

Raphael doesn’t want to be here. Lucifer can see it in the smallest shifts of his grace, his nose wrinkling no doubt catching scent of blood that spilled here. Blood of the innocent. It’s Nick’s home.Lucifer is sitting on the bed in the dark watching his brother not quite believing he really came. Raphael looks around, looks at anything but Lucifer, until he finally speaks.“Never thought I would hear your prayer again,” voice carefully clean from emotions. Lucifer will never get used to this.“Never did I,” but he had to see the healer once again, to be sure that… he doesn’t even know. “And you Raphael, do you pray?”Raphael’s glare is smoldering, but it’s something. He opens his mouth about to say something, but then shuts it and looks away. In shame. Something Lucifer never got to experience.“Do you? Or don’t you? Tell me,” Lucifer commands having no right to do it. And Raphael reminds him of it.“You are not the one to question me.”“Then who is? Michael?” Lucifer can’t keep the hostility in. “Maybe Gabriel? Or Father?”Window is slowly being covered with frost. Sudden and threatening rumble of thunder outside breaks freezing silence.“Not you, that’s all you have to know.”Lucifer sneers at such insolence from little brother. And he is almost disappointed that it’s only an act, a shield.“Sit,” Lucifer pats the bed invitingly.Raphael hesitates and keeps standing, his grace stills tiredly.“What do you want from me, Lucifer?” a mere whisper, broken and hollow.“I want you to sit with me. That’s all.” For now.Raphael does as he’s told. Their vessels are apart further than their grace, brushing painfully against each other. Raphael stares into nothingness refusing to meet his fallen brother’s eyes. Seems like Lucifer hasn’t lost all the power over younger angel. But now Lucifer doesn’t know what else to do. He has questions, so many questions and all of them are sharper than swords and spears. Can he afford hurting Raphael more than he already did?Lucifer catches a sight of a small book on Nick’s nightstand. No, his dead wife’s. A bible, New Testament. Ridiculous. Still, he starts flipping through it.“Lazarus. Where it is?”Raphael flinches. In quivering voice he replies:“In fourth gospel, look there.”“Read to me.”“No…” this reluctance is not a simple stubbornness. There is fear and sorrow nested between Raphael’s wing.“Why not? I’m curious, I missed that part,” he missed a lot. Yet demons were whispering about this particular miracle for a while.“Human words, empty and wrong, do you want to hear them?” bitter chuckle passes his brother’s lips.“As long as you will be saying them.”Raphael finally raises his head and looks at Lucifer strangely, then accepts the book and finds that part at once. Taking deep breath he starts reading, voice deep and calm, but his grace gets sharper at the edges. Lucifer is mesmerized by the changes occurring to Raphael with every word. He keeps his voice flat, vessel’s face doesn’t betray a thing, but Lucifer knows how to look at Raphael and see him. Raphael lets his guard now and Lucifer shifts closer, making his sibling shiver with cold.“Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha answered, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?”Raphael stops and his eyes are shining with salt water and Lucifer knows that Raphael doesn’t believe, can’t believe. His voice begins to strain as he reads Martha’s reply:“Yes, Lord! I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”Something is breaking somewhere, cracking and leaving a split leading into the abyss.“See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”None of them is blind, but Lucifer isn’t fooling himself, that both of them prefer to keep their eyes closed. It’s easier this way. It hurts less. Raphael blinks once before getting to the raising of Lazarus. His hands are shaking, but not from Lucifer’s burning. When he reads Jesus’ prayer he is shaking all over:“Father, I thank you that you have heard me…. I knew…” Raphael loses his voice completely and throws holy bible away.But Lucifer has already memorized the inked lines on the paper.“I knew that you always hear me,” he continues where Raphael finished.Not letting his brother shut him out or open wide his thunder wings, holding his wrists, Lucifer keeps reading without book. Raphael ceases struggling giving into Lucifer’s voice and the words he doesn’t want to hear.“Take off the grave clothes and let him go,” Lucifer finishes. “Isn’t it a good end?” he wonders. “Wasn’t it a miracle?”“You still have so much faith, it amazes me,” admits Raphael. “But I know. I was there. I saw Lazarus. Or what he became. He didn’t forget death, his body didn’t forget rotting in the tomb, his soul touched the eternity and that void overwhelmed him.”Raphael shivers again and leans into his brother frozen touch that is somehow warmer that this chilling fear he feels.“Nothing could warm him, even withering sun above the desert. He was always so cold, Lucifer. Even you can’t imagine how cold he was,” and oh, Lucifer would like to argue, but Raphael always knows what he is talking about.Raphael clutches his hand desperately and whispers:“If this is price of the salvation…” he doesn’t dare to say it. Doesn’t dare to say that he wants it no more than Lucifer.Rain taps the window. Ice is now melting and drips down on the windowsill. The rest is silence.

Filthy demonic remains are oozing with stench of sulfur, but there is a spot of the most perfect purity among them, the purity Lucifer never hoped to see or touch ever again. Raphael, terror and scourge of demons, with his wings guarding and folded, his grace gathered around him like impenetrable shield, so unlike Lucifer remembers. He remembers open arms and open heart and soft feather under his fingers.

“Won’t you turn around and look at me?” he asks and it does sound like a mockery. Lucifer almost forgot how to speak in any other way.

Silence and not even a slightest shift are his answer. So he tries again.

“Raphael, please…” he is not ashamed to plea here and now. “I am not your enemy.”

Letting out a bitter chuckle his brother finally faces him. Lucifer hates the way Raphael’s eyes glisten. Night envelopes him and stars are shining like a crown above his head, magnificent, but sorrowful.

“Forgive me, but I won’t risk believing you. Not again,” behind deep voice of the vessel there is murmur of ocean waves, cold song of rain and thunder yet far away.

Lucifer deserved it. He didn’t deserve many things, but this one is just. Not that he will say it out loud.

“What do you want, Lucifer?”

What does he want? Everything he can’t get, as always. But he sure as hell doesn’t want this anguish and pain mixed with the breath of the night.

“I wanted to see you, Little Wing.”

Corner of Raphael’s mouth twitches betraying the stone mask plastered on his face.

“So? Like what you see?” light in his eyes trembles.

No, Lucifer doesn’t like it at all. He expected the change in the other archangel, but not this profound. He stretches out his arms and dares to break into Raphael’s grace. It burns against his frozen being and sends electric shock through his worn out vessel. It’s not hostile, alerted. He puts his hands on either sides of Raphael’s face and caresses like he used to do when he was still warm.

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” he can repeat it over and over. “You don’t have to be like that, Raphael.”

“Judge me all you want, but I am too tired of all the pain you and Father unleashed on this world,” Raphael suppresses every emotion that tries to break his walls.

Lucifer doesn’t judge, but then again, Raphael won’t believe him.

Suddenly Raphael’s hand cups his cheek too and Lucifer feels the torn seams of Nick pulling back together, and even some of his own scars leaving no trace. It is what he longed for, a tender touch of healing hand. Lucifer for a moment realizes that Raphael could be his. If only he dared to ask. Raphael understood, always understood him better than anyone, but it’s too late. Lucifer betrayed him first

Raphael is gone. Rain starts pouring from clouds that hid the stars. Lucifer throws his head back and opens his palms to catch as much drops of this most likely last gift from his dearest little brother. Wind whispers ‘I’ll pray for you’ and it sounds like a farewell. The single tear is washed away before Lucifer is aware of it.