#snickifer

Sam doesn’t know how long he’s been down here. He only knows that this prison was intended for one archangel. Now there are two of them, fighting for what feels like an eternity by now. Michael seems convinced, if he can finish this, if he can kill his brother, God will come and get him out and everything will be well again. Well, except for the fact that he killed his brother. And Sam thinks that thought is the only reason none of them has won yet. None of them really wants to be the one who killed the other.

So Sam can do nothing but wait, wait for it to be over, curled around his own brother in a corner of the cage. Razor sharp archangel wings slice his back and grace burns his skin, because there’s just not enough space to get far enough away from this fight. But at least Adam is mostly safe. Poor Adam.

Then Lucifer falls, his blade clattering to the floor. Sam risks a glance and he sees Michael towering over his brother, angel blade ready for the final blow. Sam isn’t sure why between all the relief about it being over soon he feels sorrow, too.

Suddenly another figure is there. For a moment Sam thinks it’s a trick just like the ones Gabriel likes so much, because Lucifer seems to be there twice now. He has assumed Nick’s form as soon as he’s been forced out of Sam’s body by the fall, and the second Nick picks up Lucifer’s archangel blade and points it at Michael. “Don’t you dare hurt him!”

Michael looks at him in puzzlement for a second. “Step aside, human. I have no intention of hurting you, but I will, if you don’t leave me any choice.”

Lucifer groans, pushes himself up again. “Nick,” he says. “Step aside. You’ve done enough for me.”

So this is Nick? Slowly Sam gets up, too, not sure what to do, but feeling like he has to do something.

The blond man shakes his head. “No.” Then his resolve falters a bit, though. “Please. He still loves you. Please! What kind of father forces his sons to kill each other? This won’t make it better.”

“Nick!” Lucifer’s voice sounds a bit sharper now, but Nick doesn’t takes his eyes from Michael for one second. And before he can even think about it, Sam steps forward and stands next to Nick, putting himself between the two archangels. Distantly he notices that he leaves a bloody trail on the floor from the wounds he got from just trying to stay out of this fight. If this goes wrong, they’ll all be dead, but at least that way it’ll finally be over, too. “He’s right. It’s enough. He’s your brother and you don’t have to do this. We tore the pages out of the book anyway. There’s no great plan anymore. You have a choice.”

For a moment, Michael just stands there, angel blade ready to strike. And suddenly Sam feels cold metal press against his palm. When he glances in Nick’s direction, the blond man is trying to hand him Lucifer’s blade. “Here. I have no idea what to do with this anyway.”

“You stepped between two angry archangels and you don’t even know how to fight?” Sam takes the blade, feels the cold metal hum against his skin with an echo of Lucifer’s grace, sees Michael’s eyes – his father’s eyes technically, because Michael is in John Winchester’s form – follow his every move.

Nick shrugs. “He showed me beauty, when I thought there was nothing left worth living for anymore. And he’s the only good thing I’ve left now.”

Maybe Sam is imaging it, but Michael’s expression gets a bit softer at that. He doesn’t lower his weapon, though. Sam tightens his grip on the archangel blade, waits for an attack. He tries to tell himself that he’s defending Nick, poor Nick, whose life had been turned on it’s head, because Sam had said no. But there’s also that part of him that remembers what it feels like to share a body with Lucifer, to feel whole for the first time in his life. And they’re in the cage now, no one will get hurt by him giving in to the pull he feels since that day in the chapel, where Lilith has died.

There’s movement behind Sam. Lucifer’s presence makes his skin prickle and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, but Sam doesn’t turn, he keeps watching his opponent. Then there’s an icy cold hand on his shoulder and the shadows of wings furl around Sam and Nick, shielding them from Michael.

“I don’t want to fight you, Michael,” Lucifer says. “I never wanted to kill you. But if you hurt my vessels, you’re dead.”

Finally, Michael takes a step back. “So you care about humans now.”

“Those two are mine.”

It’s not an answer, but Michael’s archangel blade clatters to the floor. “You idiot,” he mutters. “You had to fall into this wretched pit twice, before you started to do what he asked you to.” And just like that, he retreats into the farthest corner of the cage.

“I don’t love them!” Lucifer calls after his brother, but it doesn’t sound very convincing even to Sam.

Finally, Sam turns. He holds Lucifer’s blade out to him, hilt first. A peace offering. Lucifer takes his weapon back with a slight smile on his face. Then there is a cold hand on Sam’s forehead, and the pain in his back subsides.

“So you did what I asked of you after all?” Nick says after a while.

Lucifer just shrugs and turns away.

Sam looks from one to the other. “What did you ask him to do?”

Nick grins. “To let you win. You don’t think you can win a mind wrestling match against an archangel, if he doesn’t want you to, do you?”

Sam gapes. That can’t be true, can it? On the other hand he had thought the same thing before. That all it had taken was calming Lucifer’s rage after Michael had called him a freak, and then it had been surprisingly easy.

“Don’t get any ideas.” Lucifer folds his arms in front of his chest. “I still think humanity is a crawling pile of cockroaches and I’m happy about every single one of them I got to take out, while I was topside. But what kind of revenge would it have been, if I had followed Father’s plan? He wanted Michael and me to fight after all.”

And Sam has to admit, that makes sense. In a way.

“Great,” comes a voice from where Adam is still more or less curled up. “Just great. That’s exactly the kind of company I wanted to spend the rest of eternity in.”

Lucifer shoots him a smile that’s more a show of teeth. “Be grateful I don’t touch Michael’s stuff, little one.”

“You better not!” Michael calls from his corner.

Sam sighs. At least they’re not fighting any more now. And maybe, if they give this a few thousand years, they can work something out that’s more than a very brittle peace. Maybe their stay down here doesn’t have to be absolute hell.

There are a few more windows. No more battles, no more death. The flourishing of nature, the beginning of the reclaim of cities by wildlife, and always Lucifer alone in them. Alone. With Sam. Sam can fill the abandoned parts of her grace better than Nick could.

“What do you think?” She asks when he has seen them all. 

“It’s beautiful,” he answers, honestly. He looks out at the empty pews that lead up to where they stand. “But who is it for?” He can’t imagine She would build something like this for demons to sit and worship Her in, not when She despised them so heavily. But a church must have a congregation. A God must have a devotee. Lucifer steps up behind him.