Work Text:
Soft blue light bathes every surface of Castiel’s self-made prison. It leeches all the colors out of his face and makes the lines gouged into his forehead and the crinkles at the corners of his eyes look deeper than they truly are. He sighs and slumps more on to his hand to get closer to the tiny pixels on the screen.
“Cas? I still don’t know if you can hear me, so I guess this is kinda stupid, but…well. Claire told me you could pick up on longing, or whatever, so I thought—well.”
Cas shuts his eyes with a tired groan and pushes the screen away. Every so often, he gets an unwanted message, a message from the outside world that (for now), he’s pretending doesn’t exist.
The sound of creaking floorboard announces his brother’s presence. He’s not sure he can ever call Lucifer a wanted distraction, but at the moment, it’s a little better than Dean’s voice slipping through the barriers Castiel had uselessly thrown up against him.
“You look well,” Cas tells him drily, not even bothering to look up from fiddling with the reception.
Lucifer mumbles something offensive under his breath in response that Cas doesn’t bother listening to, opens the freezer and roots around for a few moments before withdrawing with a steak. He drags a chair up beside Cas and slings one leg over, straddling it.
The flickering light of the television throws the wounds on his face into sharp relief. Cas wonders, with the air of someone who has sold a car and is wondering where its new owner is driving it, what his poor, shredded vessel must look like if Lucifer’s Grace is damaged enough for him to see.
“You’re one to talk,” he says, slapping the steak over his slightly puffier left eye. “You haven’t moved since the last time I was in here.”
Cas shrugs noncommittally and reaches forward to try to change the station again. Dean’s voice, tinny and strained, is still coming through in static-y bursts, and the last thing he needs is for Lucifer to pick up on that.
He only succeeds in making the static clear and allowing an image to break through.
His breath catches in his throat. Cas hasn’t seen Dean—except for a brief moment a few weeks ago—for several months, but suddenly he’s there, sitting in his room in the bunker. For a moment, everything is silent and still, Cas staring at the image as if he wants to reach through and touch, and Lucifer simply staring between him and the screen.
“Oh, you’ve got to be joki—” he begins, a laugh tugging at the corner of his mouth, but Dean cuts him off.
“Sam keeps picking up cases. I just wanna throw all our time into looking for you, but—I guess he’s right. We’ve got to keep trucking, doing our job. Saving people, or whatever.”
He gives a shuddering sigh, entire body seeming to deflate. Without thinking about it, Cas skims his fingers over the screen, almost surprised when his fingers meet glass.
“But we think we’ve found something related to Amara. So you’ve got to know that we’re coming for you.”
Cas lets his entire body crumple until his forehead rests against the screen.
“We’re gonna get you away from her, we’re going to kick Lucifer to kingdom come and then we’re all going after Amara together, all right?” His voice breaks. “We’re coming for you. I swear.”
He doesn’t even register the hand on his shoulder until it’s too late. Lucifer shoves him, hard, and he goes down on the tile, tasting blood. Cas scrambles to get his footing, but a booted foot catches him in the chest.
With a crash and the tinkle of glass, the screen shatters. Cas throws up his arm to avoid the worst of the glass. Boots crunching on the shards, Lucifer takes a few steps towards him. Cas doesn’t bother getting back up again.
Lucifer seizes him by the front of his shirt and hauls him to an almost-standing position.
“They’re not coming for you,” he hisses through clenched teeth.
Bruises and long gashes mottle his face. When Castiel looks down at the hand wrapped around his dress shirt, there are shards lodged in his skin. But right now, Lucifer doesn’t seem to feel any of the pain.
“You think they can beat her?”
He shakes Cas a little. Cas determinedly picks a spot a little over his left shoulder and does his best to ignore him.
“Dean told us, didn’t he? That pull he feels towards her? You think he ever felt that for you?”
For the first time, Cas swings his arm up to defend himself. Lucifer snatches it out of the air before it can strike and twists it. Cas grits his teeth, but doesn’t make a sound.
Lucifer smiles, wide. Blood flecks on his teeth make the look all the scarier.
“You know, I knew you’d fallen. I knew that the first time I saw you. Remember that? I trapped you in holy fire, you turned Meg into a demonic bridge? Good times.” He laughs, and Cas wonders if Amara has stolen the little bit of sanity the Cage hadn’t managed to steal. “But I didn’t think you’d fallen like that.”
Cas closes his eyes and tries to pull away, to no avail.
“You think he loves you.”
He releases Cas so suddenly that he doesn’t have time to gather his legs beneath him. Cas hits the ground, glass shards shredding his knee.
“Pathetic,” Lucifer spits, before turning around and stalking off to his own corner of the mind they share now.
Cas picks himself up off the ground and starts piecing the TV back together.