Chapter Text
Sam eyes the warehouse carefully, looking through the blurry filter of the astral plane. His physical presence would have tripped the wardings and alerted the well dressed and equipped people inside.
Invocations like this rarely pinged his radar. He's long since made sure that only people who genuinely know who they're praying to actually get to his ears. But looking at this, he's almost impressed.
The coagulation of enochian phrases he's looking at is invoking him in just about every conceivable way, matched up with over three dozen binding spells. Everything is properly burned into the walls and floor, so much of it that a team of artists must've needed hours to set it up. The warding let him inside easily, but the powerful spells were masked akin to camouflaged bear traps.
He wouldn't admit this once he returned to Heaven, but he was too curious about the attempted summoning to properly check what would happen the moment he breached the warding, just gave a once over to the basic plaster and flapped in. This must be why hunters survive this suspiciously long.
He's kept quite thoroughly in place, and breaking the warding would cause too much destruction to the area for him to consider other than as a last resort. Seeing his wriggle work on the news later in the day isn't appealing.
Sam glares at the humans. There's 23 of them, a team of soldiers interspersed at strategic locations and two smaller groups, one manning a strange boxed contraption on the center table and one with their hands ready above angel banishing sigils at every wall.
All together, he can see far too much knowledge in their hands.
He's only been here for a minute or so, but the power in some of those sigils is pulling him to the physical world. Screw it.
Lucifer weighs his options. He can't wait--he'll be unceremoniously dumped into the spacious room. And like most angel deterrents, the magic is targeting his connection to his vessel instead of him; if he can't keep it stable he risks losing the ability to control it or accidentally ejecting himself out, both of which are terrible options. So he's gonna need to suck it up and get out of this before he can no longer do so.
He assesses his landing next. He'd usually have the advantage of a menacing dark corner, but they didn't give him that: there's no blind spots. But there is the more concentrated group in the center, closer to the summoning circle, and they probably wouldn't shoot at their own people. He likes being dramatic every once in a while, for flavor.
He lands in the midst of them with a leisurely flutter, hands in his jacket pockets, and looks around while they yell out and scramble away from him. He can look down all the gun barrels they have packed. “Hello, guys.” He grins, shark like. The room is drowning out his grace, and his sight is muted. He regrets not calling for backup now. “What have you got here? An art project?”
A severe looking, possibly highly trained woman narrows her eyes at him. “Lucifer, we presume.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Well, you'd have to fuck up your wizardry quite a bit to call me and expect Michael to show up.”
A few hands drop cautiously towards the banishing sigils, but summoning him and then forcing him away wouldn't make any sense. They're a last resort. He purses his lips and tilts his head. “So, why'd ya ring? I'm quite a busy person, so you better have a good excuse ready.”
The woman frowns, and there's a click of something opening behind him. “I'm sure you are. We are the British men of letters.” She says in the accompanying accent, and oh boy he didn't know that was a thing. “And we've been watching you.”
He leers at her. “You naughty pervs.”
She shifts her weight to one side but doesn't show a reaction otherwise. Strange, when even non-Christians would usually be put off. “We know how often you stop in one of the bunkers belonging to our organisation. You were not permitted access to our records.”
His usual tactic won't work on these people, it seems. Lucifer drops his smirk and decides a diplomatic approach will be more effective than directionless mockery. “Whatever your concerns may be, and,” he waves a hand around the warehouse, “Clearly, they're great, I don't have ill intents with your Kansas bunker. To my knowledge, the American Men of Letters had died off.”
“We have no way of verifying this,” she states, “And neither can we verify that the deaths caused by a demon who recently had control of Hell weren't influenced by you.”
He scoffs. “Then your intelligence is incomplete and wildly inaccurate. Clearly so, if my stance on Hell or current affiliation aren't known to you.”
The armed guards tense up, focus reset after his aggressive tone. She narrows her eyes at him. Finally, a way to insult their pride. “Our information is as well reconstructed as it can be from six decades ago. And we've kept up with your actions since your existence was recently confirmed.”
“Well,” he says, truly angry now, “Then I don't see why forcefully summoning me and pointing guns at my face seemed like the right course of action. Whatever confusion you seem to be in could've easily been cleared up by asking me politely. Given that we've allowed your existence for so long, Heaven doesn't hold any particular animosity towards your organisation. But I can assure you this will change from now on.”
The woman holds her hand up, stopping the soldiers nearest to her from shooting. “Are you threatening us?”
He decides to merely raise an eyebrow at her. “You're the first to approach me aggressively. I don't see why I'd owe you luxury treatment in return.”
“That is a blatant lie,” she scoffs, “After your attempt to destroy our species in 2010. You were determined a threat to humanity a long time ago.”
“I'm not exactly launching an Apocalypse here now. I've done enough for your species recently for you to thank me. Besides,” he narrows his eyes at her. “Nothing you have can harm me. It's surprisingly hard to end someone who's been here for as long as I have.”
She straightens up. If only this situation wasn't as dire for him and she'd be a smear on the cement already. Theres a few people moving behind him, rustling fabric and gesturing. He doesn't want to appear alarmed in case there's a way to salvage this conversation somehow, so he takes a breath and looks at the woman again. The many suppression sigils are taking a toll on his soul bonds, and his tongue and fingers are growing numb.
“We're aware of your limitations. You can only interact with our world or use your abilities through your true vessel,” she states, and she'd be so much more pleasant to be around if she didn't have a face. “It's our duty to neutralize dangerous entities.”
This was never going to end peacefully.
Lucifer scowls, stepping towards her and opening his mouth to retort, and somebody fires off a warning shot into the cement floor, ricocheting off to the side and luckily not hitting somebody. He makes an unfortunate hissing sound with his uncooperative mouth, and whirls around when the loud clank of metal goes off behind him.
The box that was on the low table is open wide, and light is filling up the place, waves and pulses of it burning into his retinas. It's a golden egg, he registers, an engraved, odd thing. There's something taunting being said behind him, but he's not listening.
It's happening too quickly, and he attempts to snap his wings open and get the hell out, but the spellwork directly targets his vessel bonds, eating through them like acid. In a second, every thread between his grace and his flesh is ripped apart, and he's forced out like a gag reflex.
He lets out a furious, confused shriek of a melody when his true mouths manifest and all the humans can hear of it is high pitched white noise before he's too far away on the celestial plane to reach them and somebody slaps their bloody hand on a banishing sigil.
* * *
Dean grabs a cherished copy of Ruby James Jensen's The haunting from his shelf dedicated to pulp horror to take it to a comfy sofa and read.
He was never much for books before, but he's been hunting less now and started branching off into more hobbies he didn't have the chance to try before. He still conducts cooking experiments, but with nobody but him to taste them, that's been placed on the back burner, so he's taken to this and it's more enjoyable than he would admit.
Even if Sam keeps trying to introduce him to more 'adult' books, because what he's reading is childish, Dean's been adamant about reliving his younger years first before he reads the Song of fire and whatever, Sam mentioned it in his annual 'Books are better than their movies' rant.
He's just about to leave the library when Castiel violently lands in it and catches his balance on a table.
“Dean,” he says, out of breath like he flew too hard or something, panicked and wide eyed. “Something dire has happened.”
Okay, Dean drops the book on the table and takes three long, fast steps towards the angel. “What's going on?” He asks, worried now. Castiel takes a deep breath to steady it. “It's Sam. He was forcefully expelled from his vessel by a powerful spell.” He informs him.
Dean's eyebrows knit together. “He's outside his body? Like, vesselless?” That's not something he's thought of before. The idea of Sam in the same sentence as possession is always a bit unnerving.
Castiel nods.
“Who could even do that?”
“Apparently it was the British men of letters.” Castiel says. “They summoned him before expelling him.”
“The British men of letters? That's a thing?” Dean asks disbelievingly. He thought everyone was killed by Abaddon in her self appointed extermination decades ago.
Castiel shrugs. “I've only just talked with Sam. But they expelled him from his vessel, and likely don't have good intentions for it, which is all that matters now.” He breathes harshly through his nose. “We have to get it back.”
Dean shakes his head at the situation. “Obviously. Where's he right now?”
“The celestial plane. He can't reach us, but he is listening.”
Dean looks up at the ceiling, scrunching up his forehead. Not that he can see any sign of a haloed winged being, but he imagines LuciferSam is just hanging around somewhere above them, or at least what counts for his head. “Oh-kee. So what are we gonna do?”
Castiel bites his lips. “Our options are limited. These people are protected by powerful warding, and lesser angels cannot find them. But I have a plan.” Castiel gives him the determined look of I'm about to do something stupid, do not stop me. “I will say yes to Sam and he will get back his true vessel as quickly as possible.”
Dean stares at him for a whole two seconds before voicing his opinion. “No. No way in hell am I letting you do that again.”
“Dean, he won't do anything untoward-”
“Untoward?” Dean snaps. His memories of the time Lucifer shared Castiel's vessel burst to the front of his mind. The different voice, the cruel, petty attitude. What the archangel did. Sam wouldn't do any of that, but Dean still deflates a little. “Cas, he was burning you out last time. And I... I can't watch that again.” He says quietly.
Castiel's eyebrows lower in concern, and his eyes glance up briefly before he answers. “There's no other option. Jimmy was remade into a perfect vessel for me, and searching for a human that won't combust would take too much time. They might destroy Sam's body before then, or ward it until it is unusable.”
Dean rakes a hand through his hair, feeling helpless. They're on a time limit apparently, a damn urgent one. And he can't see the archangel possess Cas again. He literally can't bear it, even less so when he knows what Lucifer's mere presence would do to the angel. “What if I do it?” He blurts. “What if I say yes?”
Castiel looks at him in indignant shock. “No! Of course not, Dean, that's a terrible-”
“Nothing bad would happen though, right?” Dean interrupts. “I share the dna from our parents. I'm the closest thing to a true vessel that he could find. I mean, Adam held Michael just fine and he's only dad's.”
Castiel just looks at him, defiant, but he isn't retorting and Dean knows he's right. Maybe Lucifer's bloodline is the Campbell one, but Dean is just as much a part of it as Sam, the only difference is whatever special trait makes him specifically Michael's. Then he thinks about what he said.
That's agreeing to possession. Maybe it would be Sam, and Dean knows he wouldn't hurt him, but Dean's never been possessed before. When Sam was Sammy, he shared headspace three times: with Meg, Gadreel and Lucifer. Trippy. And Dean's wondered before, what it's like, but he can't actually know.
But the other option is Castiel, and Dean won't let him. “I'm right,” he states.
Castiel frowns as he looks up. “Sam says that you are a dumbass who doesn't know what he's doing.” He sighs. “He also says you have a point, and he needs to get past the wardings they have.”
Dean stares up at the ceiling again. “Uhuh.” Then he looks at Castiel, who has a pained expression on his face. “Do I... say yes now? Are we doing this?”
Castiel glances away from him. “Sam is uncertain. You shouldn't be doing this if you aren't sure. I know what I'd be asking for, you don't.”
Dean looks stubbornly up and decides to address his uncertain ethereal brother directly. “Well, I'd rather we do this and get you back into yourself asap instead of wasting time and risking you losing your body. So yes. I consent to you hitching a ride.” He grimaces at how this sounded, tensing up while waiting for Sam to... do something.
Castiel doesn't look up, and stands there waiting in silence.
Dean is just about to remark on how long it's taking Sam to float down when the air in front of Dean's eyes ripples with light, skin prickling at the sudden cold.
Then Dean experiences the disturbing sensation of another consciousness brushing against his, triggering senses he never even knew he had.
An alien presence pokes at the corner of his awareness, barely giving him a moment to panic before it pushes in through doors that Dean must have recklessly opened, and his vision whites out along with any shred of logical thinking he had.
It's everywhere, horrible and a tiny bit familiar and so goddamn bigger than Dean.
Dean feels more than hears a slow, ringing tune reverberate through his head. The light reconstructs every thought Dean's ever dared to think into a sharper, sadder replica, and after a few short moments, their little lightshow transition is over.
It feels like his skin will split and his bones will shatter, and he can't even grasp how it all fit so well into a single body, one perfect vessel without bursting it like an overfilled water balloon.
There is no space for Dean in this body, even less space for the archangel. He's cramped into crevices he never needed to occupy, mind put under a crushing pressure like he's trying to hold up a boulder.
The presence slowly recedes into more bearable levels and the room fades into view, zooming in and out over familiar shelves. Dean's seeing colors he never knew existed, seeing the air drafts, the electricity in the walls. Hears so much it's garbling together into unrecognisable noise, the taste of his own saliva overwhelming him, the bacteria under his lax fingers crawling over his skin.
Dean is an old box of a television made for ten channels, but Sam can't help feeding him three thousand of them anyways. Dean sees the world in black and white, pixelated and simple, and Sam's eyes are an hd, liquid crystal display screen that is on the verge of boiling Dean's eyeballs in their sockets.
Then his eyes flit around the room and his head moves to the side, turning away and skimming over the old control panel the war room has, the vivid blue of the map table in the next room over.
Oh god
His head is turning, his shoulders are rolling and his leg twitches, outside of his own volition, his limbs feeling so, so far away from his own control. His mind jerks and screeches in terror.
OhgodOhshitshit stop stop stop
“Wow. Cool your jets, man.” His throat vibrates and his mouth moves, Dean is losing his freaking mind-
GetoutgetoutgetoutFUCK it's enough I want it to end-
“Oof. Calm down, Dean, I'm really trying to be gentle here. You're making it harder.” Something ripples across his back and nerve endings Dean doesn't have move, allowing his agonized mind to experience... wings? The tips of stark white feathers glide over his periphery before his head turns around again jesuschriststopmovingalready and he sees it, light and mottled and feathery and huge, over three times as long as Dean's body and expanding through the wall and away but Dean can see it, seperate like a crop out transparent piece of paper on top of another drawing, the shutters of many layers of Lucifer's vision lifting and dropping.
Dean wants to hyperventilate but he can't even do that. He feels like he's choking to death inside of his own head. It's the most horrific thing he has ever experienced and if it goes on for a moment longer it's going to destroy him, his soul will freeze, his mind will break-
“Okay, way to be poetic. Not my fault you're so... tight.”
The inflections are wrong, forcing his mouth to follow patterns he doesn't use and vocal cords to relax, the color of his voice gliding higher than he uses it. He can't scream.
He wishes to God he could still be sitting on the couch, not knowing what it's like to have Sam hug him from the inside, stuffed into his arteries.
“Seriously, you're like wearing spandex. It pinches, man. If you resist, I might tear something on accident.”
Not Sam, so very not like Sam.
He feels like a puppet instead of a living organism, like Lucifer isn't even using his brain to make the commands when he uses his muscles to get up from the floor.
Dean forcefully stops himself from panicking, putting all his effort into processing Lucifer's senses currently leaking over to him instead of the breach of privacy he's experiencing by having Sam inside his head.
The picture is warped and stretched a little, sight stretching oddly around objects. It stings to try and translate it into what it should look like, but without Sam closing Dean's eyes, he can't unsee it. He's never realised how much noise the world makes, from electricity to the ground shifting far below, to how many particles are in the air for him to sift through.
Still, it's an immediate distraction from how he and Lucifer are sharing a tiny room, but Lucifer is so big the walls are cracking and Dean is squeezed into a corner.
“Sam, we don't have time for this.” A stern voice booms, vibrating and polyphonic behind the familiar tone. The archangel currently behind the wheel hums something and turns around and Dean wants to gasp and gape but all he can do is stare through eyes he has no control over.
Castiel is a glowing figure surrounded by swirls of light, dancing over his pale skin and forming into a loose halo above and around his head.
Sam locks Dean's eyes onto their friend, and sees further all of a sudden, as if Castiel is a multilayered being, and Dean catches impressions of color; stark white, dark, greyish blue warping and twisting with purple, sparks of forest green and amber, and Dean is so mesmerized he needs a moment just to comprehend the wings even though they're glaringly obvious.
They're black, almost iridescent in the way they reflect the many colors. They frame him, the tops reaching his head and the tips of folded up feathers extending to his calves.
Then Lucifer starts talking again and takes all of Dean's attention with the complete lack of control he has. “I know. I'll hurry up. You wait, be on stand-by just in case I need help. I don't think it'll be necessary, but well. I didn't think they could boot me out either.”
Castiel's head moves into a slow nod, the dark colors Dean is seeing lightening up into a bluish green. He wonders what those are, the hurricane palette on the inside of Castiel's head. Lucifer whips him around, making him yelp mutely, and he gets a view of the room again, along with the foundations of it and the rushing orange lines running everywhere like a 3D hologram. 'Brace yourself,' Lucifer's voice says, straight into his thoughts, and it sounds nothing like him, high and melodious and swishy.
Sam steps forward and Dean is pulled into a vacuum, slammed and sucked through a pipe or something, the world a blur around him, and ringing in his ears unbearable.
He suddenly slows, and there's pulling at his spine, pressure hitting something like a giant parachute in a giant circle with six points around him, and the spinny blue world doesn't scream into his retinas anymore.
'Sorry. I'll go slower now.' Sam's apologetic "voice" goes again. It's curiously high pitched, but then again, it doesn't even sound vaguely organic.
Dean still feels like there's a fifty ton weight pressing him from all sides, and the world is going so fast his insides should by all rights be in the wind by now. Jimmy was right, it's like being strapped to a comet.
'Nah, I tried that once. That's just a really intense rollercoaster, it doesn't compare, but it is fun. You should try it sometime.'
Dean feels violated beyond belief already, and Sam can now read his mind, too. Sure, let me just grab my jetpack. He thinks angrily. There's a wave of something embarrassed and warm ticking over his mind for a moment, and then it's gone again.
His wings, they're wings Dean can feel actual wings, flap, and it really clicks to Dean that there's not just one pair of them. He can clearly tell now that he isn't distracted by the overwhelming power Lucifer is made of, that Sam is made of now, the way they pull at him, and the white, silver and copper limbs making a downstroke. He's turned horizontally, has probably been for a while and hasn't noticed, and Sam swerves and spirals in the air like an owl, turning Dean's head down.
'They've left.' He says angrily, and Dean can't really see anything but too much color and energy and shades of the spectrum he isn't made to witness.
Sam flaps his... middle pair of wings, and Dean's center of gravity shifts even though he feels completely weightless, the limbs briefly extending in front of him. 'They teleported,' Sam gasps, Dean's eyes widening, what the fuck is he looking at? Where even are they? 'They used magic.'
Where are they?! Dean feels like he'll get an epileptic attack from the stabbing chaos. Sam sighs. 'Outside the warehouse. I'm still flying, and we obviously can't go in there. Which we won't anyway, because they used a teleportation spell and I don't know where they are.'
Dean would gape angrily if he could. How can you not know? Just find them or something! He hopes to god Sam isn't hearing garbled bullshit. How is Sam talking to him?
'Just think what you want to say, I can hear you just fine,' Sam snaps. 'And I can't find my vessel because I didn't remove the wardings and they're hiding it anyway. They were useful and I didn't think something like this could happen.'
Well, if they can't find Sam's vessel in time the situation will get even worse, and Dean can't imagine feeling all this for much longer, so him being a backup vessel is a definite no-go.
No matter how much he might trust Sam, losing all agency is more terrifying than he could have imagined. And that's just the bodily rights he signed over, not even mentioning the utter lack of privacy in his thoughts. Find the people then! Just hurry before they do something freaky!
Sam releases a long, rumbling sound akin to the shifting of tectonic plates that nonetheless communicates frustration, and flaps all his wings in rapid succession before he suddenly extends Dean's legs forward and they're standing. The chaos slows until Dean can see a field, the grey mound of a warehouse he mentioned sitting in the distance.
He doesn't have time to wonder why Sam's in the real world again before he feels the pressure get stronger again. It pools in his chest and head, compressing like a gas tank, and Sam's presence seems concentrated on it, deliberate. Whatever is swirling through his veins and his synapses and bones (it's Sam, that's Sam) spins harder, tightens around his bones in a vice, and suddenly Dean explodes outward. Or, he doesn't, but the energy does, shooting out like a shockwave of blue and white and going far, farther than Dean can comprehend before he loses focus.
Dean feels, for a second, like he's standing on top of empty space, on a machine made of a million little spinning cogs, and there's a silvery line of intent between him-Sam and every single one of them. Like he's touching everything, every blade of grass and creepy crawler in the dirt and he has fingers playing with stardust way, way above.
And it's loud and busy and shifting, everything everything moving and breathing; Dean can feel everything for a few of those seconds, delirious and overwhelmed and nauseous with it, and there's something inherently glorious about it all, until suddenly it stops. It goes quiet, the absence of sound absolutely deafening. Vacuum. Outer space.
Dean jerks, convulses spiritually, shrieks. It's silent, like he and Sam are wrapped in cotton inside one of those sound dampening rooms with a bunch of cones on their walls, where you can hear your blood rushing. It's still. Dean tries to gape at their surroundings. It's unnaturally, impossibly still, no wind, no movement from the clouds in the sky. Absolutely nothing, a still picture of a world, just as detailed.
Dean realizes what Sam just did. Jesus fucking Christ.
'Language.' Sam reprimands him. He doesn't sound out of breath at all, just more relaxed, because, hey, he's not in a hurry anymore. He has all the bloody time he needs to get wherever he wants to.
'Yes, so you can stop panicking.'
Dean tries to take a deep breath, but Sam is keeping his breathing perfectly even. So time will just stand still? You stopped time?
Sam shrugs and twirls to look around. 'Yeah. It won't move until I let it.'
What, nowhere? Did the planets stop moving as well? Are there people frozen in Asia right now, because Sam willed it? Won't this have cosmic consequences? Sam sighs again, peeved. 'Yes, Dean. I can travel in time with no problem, you should've known this is easy for me. Hell, a powerful enough seraph can stop time on the physical plane. Now, since they're the British men, let's go to the UK first, see if they have a base there.'
And he's already flying again, in the insufferable silence, and Dean can't understand what he's seeing again. He grits his teeth and waits it out until Sam lands, which is only about four eternal seconds later, perching on a metal beam of a giant shadowy bridge overlooking a city.
The world is a rippling canvas of cool tones. Dean doesn't clearly see buildings, or even the ground. The uncountable flecks and spots of light and color that swirl on the surfaces are the only framework outlining where these landmarks even are.
Souls, Dean startles. Humans. And whatever else.
Why does everything look different? He thinks in Sam's direction, which is everywhere. I mean, dark. What's all that shiny stuff?
'We're on the astral plane right now,' Sam answers, and this time his not-voice sounds more watered down, flowy, like he's more patient than he was before. Indulgent instead of peeved that Dean is asking so many questions, now that they're not wasting time. 'Obviously on Earth, but on a different layer of reality. In a way, we're not in the physical universe right now. Can't interact with matter from here. I always see the souls, but this distances me from the physical, so I can focus on everything that's not.'
Oh. It's neat to know what Sam sees all the damn time, even though Dean is still stuck in a car crusher and wants out. Or, Sam out of him, which is gross thought.
Dean suddenly sees how constrained, small he is. Everything Dean is or has ever been is his body, and the extent of what he can do is how far his body can reach. Sam isn't limited to his vessel. His metaphorical hands can reach as far as he wants them to, he can affect and touch whatever the fuck, like reality is a piece of store bought play-doh to him, senses the rest of the existence's spectrum of which Dean only sees 5%.
'True. Though, some humans can break free of the bonds to some extent. Psychics, for example, can utilize their souls' energy to reach out.'
Dean tries to jerk, but it just reminds him of how far away from his body he feels. How powerless and at Sam's mercy, but he quickly pushes that line of thought away. Sam's presence darkens for a short moment, cringing and growing just a little muted. Don't read my mind. 'Sides, what are you, a professor?
Sam shrugs with his shoulders. 'I'm just saying.'
Dean feels his wings stretching again, unfurling while Sam stands up from the bird-crouch he was in, and flaps off the edge. Dean isn't as overwhelmed anymore, and he can focus on it, on the mechanics archangel wings apparently follow right before they're sucked into whatever space Sam is in while he flies where everything goes so fast Dean was so sure before that they were teleporting.
'It's not space, actually. I'm between the planes while flying, so I can go anywhere, which means I can see the pathways into every other dimension. You can't see the layers individually, and you can't look at everything at once either. So you're seeing what your brain is trying to process.'
Oh. Okay then. Spaces in between sounds like a movie title. Dean simply watches Sam's wings from the corner of his eye, which isn't hard because nothing Sam sees is blurry and 'peripheral' isn't a thing. The non-air presses against the undersides, an air pillow Sam uses to propel himself up, and then fold them as he lifts his wings up again, and his feathers tilt until Dean can see right through the gaps, wind rushing through without resistance. It's weird to feel. The wings are so huge. Dean should have known though - he's seen the imprints of dead angels on the ground. Sam the Swirling Energy flinches and his grace gives Dean a distinctly sour taste.
'I figured their base will be warded at least as much as our bunker. It should be obvious.' Sam comments, and they tilt... somewhere. Dean gets the impression that Sam is pointedly looking around for something, but it's going fast - Dean only sees blurred colors and impossible textures stacked on top of each other - so he just holds on tight again. How does Sam speak to him? After all, Sam doesn't have a mouth unless he borrows Dean's, so is he speaking through grace?
'I have four mouths.' Sam mumbles, sand filtering through Dean's thoughts. Dean “gawks”.
Sam cringes to the side of Dean. 'Ugh, I've brought up all the wrong mental images. Jesus.' He flaps. 'I have four faces.'
Dean is so weirded out and confused. How?! Do you have four necks too? Do you have a spine? Is Sam just four floating heads with six wings around? Are all the heads crammed toge-
'OH MY DAD, DEAN. NO.' Sam rings, so loud Dean's ears pop. He lets out a frustrated, indignant wind holler. 'I have one head, fuck you very much, and I have a... body. With legs and arms if you wanna call them that. Ugh.'
You JUST said you had four faces. Are they all on one head? One on each side like a weird pokémon?
'You're thinking about reality like it applies to me, dumbass. In theory, I have one head and a face at the front, like a normal head, but there's four of them.' Dean can feel the way Sam flounders for an explanation, tries to dumb it down for him. 'I fracture into myself. I have four visages, but in a way, they're in the same place. I can turn them around in different directions, and I can wear multiple expressions at once. Speak different things at the same time. Most humans would go braindead just from glimpsing my kneecaps though, so actually showing you is out of the question.'
Dean does a mental blink. He imagines one head, okay, but he won't assume any of the overlapping faces are anything resembling a human. Maybe more animal-like? Lucifer has existed before any of that was a thing, so it's possible he's so far from what Dean knows he literally can't imagine it. He tries to think of two things existing in the same place, or one thing existing in two, but it's hard to wrap his head around and he thinks of those spinning four dimensional cubes. Just the word fracture brings up associations that most likely don't fit what Sam is trying to present, but Dean has wondered how somebody of archangelic proportions can fit into a human body. Is he crammed between the clusters of Dean's synapses? Is he just folded up? He thinks most of Sam is settled in the back of his head and behind his eyes, but he's also everywhere, including outside of Dean somehow. He doubts Sam actually has kneecaps, given the way he added the joke as a buffer. Sam speeds up, making Dean's soul squeeze further before it releases again. There's a victorious flicker of a smile at Dean's lips, which is still so, so wrong, and Sam lands.
And, wow. They're still on the “astral plane,” and the structure before them is... Dean just stares wherever Sam turns his eyeballs. Every wall, inside and outside, is covered in marks, sigils, wardings, practically building a structure of their own - lines of protection stretching far off the property and creating barriers that tingle at Dean's feet harmlessly, but Dean honestly can't imagine anything that could stop the archangel from getting anywhere he wanted. He's a terrible, unstoppable, giant glacial river and Dean is sure wardings would be like trying to hold it back with bare hands. Defeating Lucifer that first time is gaining a whole new perspective, especially now that Dean is so goddamn stuck and tiny and intermittently getting squashed-
'Daww, you're so sweet.' Sam drawls, dripping like syrup before walking towards the entrance of the giant, castle-like building in front of them. He hops up the stone staircase and directly through the shut door, passing through the wood like a ghost.
The rustic hallway is filled with ghostly, uniformed children. The lit silhouettes of their faces are stuck in various expressions of a day to day life, but it doesn't diminish the creepiness.
Well, maybe more like teenagers, but Dean feels like Sam is walking them through a wax museum out of the Harry Potter books, what with the black robes. The archangel simply walks past them, swerving through the crowd while Dean tries to get a look at the kids - or rather their souls. They're still, looking like frozen energy or flame of various colors. His eyes stop on one, and Dean can stare at the swirl of emerald green, peach and flecks of dark purple. Not one of them are the same, all of them a different combination of colors and textures, and Dean wonders if like Castiel, their colors change and shift when they're not frozen.
'No. These are who they are, the... colors solidify over their childhood. It's hard to change, and their experiences imprint on them. What angels have is something completely different.'
But Cas was made of color. Or full of it, I guess, Dean thinks.
'That's how my eyes process his thoughts and emotions. I can hear them too, if I want.'
Dean suspects this implies that Castiel cannot see Lucifer's, but that isn't surprising given that the latter is more powerful. Dean tries to imagine what his own soul is like, and squashes the thought. He's done terrible things, spent a lot of time in Hell. God only knows his soul reflects that.
Sam's presence shifts just a bit, his steps slowing when he veers into an emptier hallway. The frozen ice in Dean's veins turns weirdly tentative.
'I could show you. How I see you.'
Dean would bite his lips at the conflict and curiosity he feels, but settles on squirming inside his skin. A non-physical sensation caresses the side of his awareness, offering something like a reassuring shoulder squeeze. 'You're a very... adequate looking soul,' Sam decides, so awkward it scrapes on Dean's inside-ears.
He cringes. Sam's voice dissolves from its usual coherence into a dragged out sigh, windy and distant before he talks again, or uses intrusive thoughts to communicate, however it works. 'It could be good for your self-esteem, but you don't have to see it if you don't want to. Not gonna sugarcoat, your life does show on it, but that doesn't mean it's ugly.'
He lets Dean consider this, and speeds up his pace to a large double door, steps through straight down into a staircase. The walls lose their rustic, almost ostentatious look the further Sam walks and turn into bare concrete, dropping down stairs until they arrive into something that's probably a basement, but has to be deeper than two stories underground.
Dean follows Sam's line of vision, noting the increase of wardings circling the sterile walls like a door. Probably protection, or something that stops a wayward student from coming down here, given that this seems to be a school of some sort.
'Kendricks Academy,' Sam quips, 'it was written at the entrance.'
He slows down again and spins in place while he keeps walking, his already over developed eyesight stretching further until Dean feels like Sam's ethereal-hands-senses are mapping out the layout underground and he catches glimpses of rooms and spaces beyond those walls, even a level below them. Sam looks up, through the ceiling, maps out the mansion this building is, stops on the massive library for a moment.
You're making me nauseous, and my eyes are burning. I can't even tell what you're looking at most of the time. Dean thinks as bluntly as he can.
Sam doesn't answer him, but his sight recedes. He stabs his eyes into the direction of the metal door they're approaching and starts walking faster, clenching Dean's fists together.
Then Dean feels a pressure, or rather he feels Sam feel it when they get to the entrance to the underground base (men of letters just have something with underground bunkers, although this one seems way bigger and modernized), and Sam sighs out loud.
It feels odd. It's not pushing at Dean's chest like a physical pressure, but it is close, like trying to run through water. It's difficult to go forward, and shit Dean remembers this sensation from the time he was a demon. It's warding, and it's keeping Sam out.
'Like hell it will,' Sam scoffs. 'It's not nearly as deliberate as it was back in the warehouse. But yeah, I wouldn't come through without a sturdy vessel.'
Dean tries to ignore how objectified he feels at that, and follows Sam's grace as best as he can. It reaches out, and if Dean needed to describe what Sam seems to be doing it's... reaching into a basket of tied ropes and taut string. He can feel Sam insistently poking and prodding, dismantling something itchy, and then what he assumes is wardings sort of flops and sizzles, and the pressure is gone.
Sam saunters with Dean's bowlegs and comes straight into a giant room, a hub of sorts given the corridors it splits off to. There's books and computers scattered across the placed tables, large monitors on one side, and one of the walls is holding an array of weapons Dean might find intriguing some other day. There's a few people present as well, frozen souls clutching at books or personal belongings, but many of them are either looking at the left hallway or were clearly planning on going there. Sam twirls him around and goes in the direction. 'I think I can feel my vessel,' he says, 'there's a lot of my grace still stuck inside.'
Ugh, that sounded filthy. Sam speeds up again, and wings he's been keeping away from Dean's face shiver. They walk past an open room with a looming, arching construction that catches the hunter's interest but Sam hurries past it without giving it a closer look.
Instead, he walks into one of the smaller research rooms, full of equipment with a large clear space in the middle, and okay this is an honestly disturbing sight. There's about ten people in the room, clearly in the middle of something... nefarious, and Sam's body is laid down on a surgical table.
Sam stops Dean right in front of it, stands beside a woman with a pyrography pen. They took off the jacket and shirt Sam was wearing, though they thankfully left the rest of his clothes on, and there's the beginnings of a sigil engraved on his pale chest, just a few bleeding, burned in lines. They must have been ridiculously organized, getting the body here and starting the 'no Lucifer allowed' mark in fifteen, twenty minutes.
The vessel is damaged, too. Dean can tell Lucifer was forced to leave. There's black, purplish marks of frostbite already forming around the lips and mouth, and the half open eyes are webbed with burst capillaries. It's a surprise the eyeballs weren't blown out entirely.
Great, get in, Dean thinks hurriedly, his earlier panic rising again, urgent in his desire to be himself, behind the wheel like he's supposed to be. The archangel's grace tightens in worry, hesitance and something that Dean thinks is growing anger. Aw, shit.
'In a minute. I'm making this efficient.'
He turns around, scanning the frozen people until he stops on one.
It's an older looking lady, but she's dressed the most formally, in a dark burgundy power suit. She looks authoritative, overlooking what the others are doing, and Dean comes to the conclusion that this is the head honcho. Her soul, though. It's a deep, dirty turquoise, streaked with wine red and grey, and Dean feels like there's something... repulsive about it. Not the color, but the longer Sam stares the more it reminds Dean of the splotches of dark discoloration growing like fungus, rotting at the red.
'Dean, these people.' Sam's voice goes, quiet and even more inorganic than before. Dean feels his fury slither up Dean's spinal cord and settle in his chest, freezing and sharp. Bordering on painful.
'They know too much. No human should ever know this much about heaven or about us.'
Sam turns around and walks over to the computer, the glowing screen slicing into Dean's eyes with pixels and light and electricity. He manages to decipher Lucifer's name though. And his photo.
It looks like one of the basic, coloured security camera ones, monitoring a street, and Lucifer's sharpened, androgynous face isn't looking directly at it, betraying the fact that he wasn't aware he was being filmed. The oddest thing is that Sam is wearing dirty, torn flannel, dark-eyed and hunched into himself.
There's a basic description beside it, and Dean feels dread rising up like a tidal wave when he spots a date. 25th of may, 2016. The day they sort of beat Amara and God merged Sam and Lucifer together. Not even a month after Sam turned thirty three. The date recorded at the edge of the photograph is barely three days after it.
Dean feels nauseous, and Sam quickly finds the mouse and starts clicking. There's photos, some of Sam both as a human before, some of him together with Dean, most of them as he is now. Some of Lucifer's old vessel from the first apocalypse. Yeah, Dean wants to scream and/or puke, and just in time Sam jerks, grabs the laptop and smashes it.
It doesn't make much of a sound, the pieces don't fly away when they break off, the information is still there, but the photos aren't visible and Dean can calm down a little.
Sam turns around on his heel and sets his hand against the forehead of the woman he looked at before, and for a moment Dean is sure he's about to experience what a smiting feels like from this side, but Sam just hisses into his ear, 'this might be disorienting,' and Dean feels himself get... blurry.
His mind trashes, he's under water and can't see, everything is muted, and he's so much further away than he was. He's forced away from his eyes, like he's being put into a small dark box, switching from the passenger seat to the trunk. Sam's presence isn't calming, is too furious to try to be, and Dean has to concentrate by himself to hear distant conversations, see flickering, blurred images over the eyes Sam is using right now. Sam is inside of the woman's head.
He waits, tries to judge what Sam's doing by the feelings the archangel isn't trying to hide from him. It scares Dean a little, seeing the controlled wrath and righteousness for a concept Dean doesn't know well at all. It simmers down, but it doesn't go away, lies coiled inside of Dean's skull while Sam's focus sharpens, the edges of him like cutting knives against Dean's flesh. He's planning something, but unlike how Sam can read his thoughts, he doesn't get insight other than the control Sam just lost.
He's suddenly wrapped up in Light again, rushes back up to the surface and slips back into seeing and hearing mode, right beside Sam like he's breathing into his neck while Sam's driving. 'She's the tyrant who runs this place.' The archangel announces.
Don't ever do that again. Dean thinks, as hard as he can. You can't do that. This is my frickin body.
Sam recoils, his grace sparks. He feels guilty. 'I'm sorry. I'll get out soon anyway.'
Dean takes a look at the woman when Sam looks at her, and feels like retching. Cas told him before that mind reading is dangerous and can cause damage when somebody tries to dig out memories or information by force. Sam clearly wasn't careful. Her open eyes are bloodshot, dark red like they were frying up but didn't burn up all the way, temples grey with frost. But one look at her soul and Dean knows he killed her.
It's not tethered to the body anymore - Dean didn't even notice how it was knit to it before, holding on, but now it's just suspended there by the unmoving time. It's twisted up into itself, frayed at the edges, looking like a closed flower a toddler pried open and accidentally messed up the petals to get to the center.
'I wasn't careful with her mind,' Sam admits. 'She's a vegetable now. But it's not like she was going to Heaven.'
Dean feels... he doesn't even know. Stunned and a bit horrified. It's that easy? Enough anger at a soul and it's braindead? Is that what Raphael did to the temporary vessel they took or was the man just rendered into that because his soul baked in the grace with no protection?
'I'll need to keep time stopped for a while,' Sam starts, quiet. 'I'm sending down a garrison to erase the divine from their records. From their memories, too. Then we need to get at all their storages and libraries, all their computers. We'll let them deal with monsters; it's not our business how earth deals with those so these modern hunter idiots can keep that. But we're removing everything about Heaven.'
Dean needs a moment to comprehend and collect himself. Both from the brief shutting away and the death of that lady. For some reason, it's more brutal than it would have been if Sam just snapped her neck. Right, yeah, logical.
That will probably require a lot of gymnastics. People would notice holes in their memories, so erasing that suspicion will need to be a thing, and the evidence of that knowledge...
'That's not something you need to concern yourself with. We're very efficient. Besides, we'll probably smite all the ones working specifically with heaven related stuff.'
Right, that's logical too.
Dean visualizes an exhausted sigh, the constant influx of sensory information tiring him out. Are we done, he thinks at Sam. The light prickles like dull, gentle needles over his shoulder blades.
'Yes.' Sam answers simply, and turns Dean back to the metal table and his own vessel. He takes two steps, lays a finger on his... own chest and Dean feels a small flicker when he heals the small amount of damage they've done.
Huh. I've never seen you shirtless before, Dean sends Sam, looking at the empty vessel more intently. SamLucifer looks skinny, but he's well toned, with lean, sinuous limbs that give him the appearance of a... dancer? Dean hasn't seen enough naked men wearing their sports descriptions to judge that. He thinks Sam used to look better though, with his wide shoulders and bigfoot muscles-
'Wow, Dean.' Goes Sam, sounding perturbed. Okay, Dean deserves that, and that is technically a tweaked corpse of his brother, but he can't help where his mind goes. He's human, sue him.
Sam groans, hoists his primary body up by the armpits, lax like a puppet and seemingly light as a box of matches, and suddenly rips into the astral plane with beating wings faster than Dean could notice it happening. It's just as taxing on his mind and eyesight as before, except now he's vaguely aware of the added weight, wondering why Sam didn't jump bodies in the academy already.
Sam lands in the bunker, just as geometrically scribbled over as before. Castiel is sitting at the table, rising already, and Dean is surprised for a moment by the fact that Cas isn't frozen in time. Sam doesn't waste time speaking to the younger angel yet, has possibly already explained the situation over angel radio and Dean hadn't heard or noticed it.
'Alright Dean, this will be disorienting and a little uncomfortable. Get ready, okay? It's gonna be just fine.' Sam's floaty, disembodied voice goes, reassuring and calm, and Dean wants to scoff for a moment because Sam is getting out and that's a good thing, he doesn't need to console him about it.
Dean then feels his grace start to do the opposite of what it did when Sam entered.
Sam peels and separates, and instead of it feeling clean and freeing, Dean would compare it to peeling away a half healed scab, taking skin and blood with it. Except it's like a million times worse.
Sam is leaving and painstakingly slowly taking all his organs with him, along with his nervous system and skeleton; leaves Dean a hollow husk, aching and fragile like it wouldn't even take a gust of wind to bowl him over.
His ears pop, his skin feels like it's about to slough off his flesh. Dean feels so empty he could scream, but his throat feels shredded. He reaches out with what he thinks is his soul, claws at Sam to pull him back, holds on to maybe leave with him because there is no way he can live without the light.
And then Sam's entirely gone, and Dean is vaguely aware that he's on the bunker's floor, shaking in a fetal position because he's carved out and so, so empty.
Sam's voice is saying something urgently, but Dean doesn't hear all that well anymore and his ears are stuffed with cotton. There's gentle hands propping him up, and he opens his eyes to Sam's worried, girlish face.
He can't see. It's flat, discolored, like he's trying to view something small over a great distance. Everything lacks detail to the point that Dean thinks he's going blind. He coughs out something incoherent, thinks he'd better not speak before he accidentally tells Lucifer to get the hell back in.
Sam gets him up and starts dragging him towards Dean's bedroom, Cas helping from the other side because his legs feel like jelly.
“Sam,” Dean manages to blurt. Christ, he's so weak right now. I can't see, he prays instead.
“It's okay. It'll be okay, you just need to sleep it off.” Sam says, and he sounds strangely panicked. “It'll fade away. You just don't have my senses anymore. Your hearing and eyesight are fine- you're okay, Dean.”
He's laying in his bed next time he blinks, and Sam lowers him down so he plops onto his pillow. He feels like a wringed out, wet towel.
Yeah, Dean isn't consenting to possession again any time soon.
There's no way his eyesight was this bad before.
“Sleep now. Yeah? I'll make it better,” Sam promises, and with a soft caress over his forehead, Dean sleeps.
* * *
Sam exhales a long, weary sigh as soon as Dean's soul stops it's panicked, desperate spinning and his thinking slows down as he sleeps.
Dean has the reaction he expected from him as a vessel that was always meant to house an archangel, but it does pain him to see it, a reminder of leftover destiny. His grace isn't Michael's, and Dean will get over Lucifer's absence easily enough, which he considers a dodged bullet.
If he had stayed, Dean's heritage would have enabled him to grow used to the grace until it was tangled and imprinted on his psyche. Dean will dream about it, he'll keep remembering it, but he won't crave back the Light the way he would Michael's. A great relief, that.
The strings he's holding to keep the timeline still are a gentle pull at the back of his mind, and the Host has noticed the physical world staying still. Reapers will start getting antsy over this unexpected break they're getting soon.
Dean is a glowing speck standing out in a bubble of exception, sleeping soundly unlike the rest of the world, but Lucifer reluctantly lets go of him until he sinks into the frozen fabric making up the universe.
Dean won't notice he was frozen when he wakes up, and 'by then' time will move on.
Lucifer reaches out with a direct prayer, into the Host's shared mindscape with a great deal of concentration, and lets his new knowledge flow among his siblings so they can see the human organisation for themselves.
They view the memory quickly, the mere fact that he's the one sharing it making it interesting, and he can vaguely feel perturbation and indignant comments as it spreads like a viral video.
It's already proof that humans have held and interrogated an angel in the past, that they gained forbidden knowledge about Heaven through nefarious means, but that they made a weapon capable of expelling an archangel from their true vessel, something that was previously known to be impossible.
But they've also meddled with humanity as a whole.
The men of letters have existed for a long time, even before they became so organized. They had taken it upon themselves centuries ago, for whatever reason, to keep the supernatural under wraps and limited to a small part of the population, which, as far as Lucifer knows, counts as a conspiracy. If they hadn't done that, there's a good chance the world would have a new dominant or multiple dominant species in the form of monsters.
Or, and Lucifer seriously doubts this given humanity's track record with destroying anything they don't understand, they'd be living in harmony with other sentient species. But monsters hide just as much as humans try to hide them, which does make it even more improbable.
Monsters, or really just anything Other, mostly have an appearance just like humans, thanks to Eve's limited power when it came to reshaping something to a greater extent - she was just tweaking the human design and polluting souls to get them to purgatory.
Destroying the organisation as a whole might topple their invisible empire and reshape this entire society. But Heaven doesn't actually have jurisdiction to do that, as they aren't allowed to work outside the paths Father permitted - which is largely limited to bloodline control, documenting their progress, and cleaning up divine and infernal messes.
This is one of those messes, and they will erase themselves from the MoL in entirety. Angels are safer when they're regarded as a myth, where nobody can create loopholes where it comes to their afterlife.
Lucifer grabs his blade.