Chapter Text
“I put you in the Cage to keep Amara out, you know,” Chuck said, long after Sam and Dean had gone to sleep that night.
Lucifer had paced the bunker, equal parts furious and curious, for hours. Now, though, he had settled into a prickly and uncomfortable silent state, perched more than sitting in a chair, casting narrow-eyed glances at Chuck. He did the same now, the face that Chuck now thought of as purely Castiel’s (no longer Jimmy Novak’s) twisted with spite that could belong to none other than the trespasser folded inside.
“It was punishment, yeah,” Chuck admitted, uncomfortable, as he sipped at his beer. “Maybe that was wrong. I still don’t know if—if what I did, concerning you, was right. But it was supposed to keep her out of your head. So it would just be—just be you. So you could have time to think.”
“It wasn’t a time out,” Lucifer spat, hunched in on himself, baring his teeth like an animal. A scared, cornered animal, and an angry one—but one that had been bent that way by years of loneliness and pain. It hurt to look at him sometimes, to see his furious light so broken and dimmed. “It was solitary confinement. For eons.”
“It was supposed to get you ready,” Chuck said in a sigh, and turned his face away. Angry as Lucifer was, he could no more hurt Chuck in this state than he could hurt Amara. Besides, it wasn’t the physical that made Lucifer a threat, here. It was the psychological, the emotional. His greatest failure, his most bitter, personified and laid out before him.
Lucifer’s lip curled. “For what?”
Chuck sighed and set the half-finished bottle on the atlas table. “For Sam.”
Lucifer twitched. Whether it was a fight or flight response, Chuck couldn’t be sure. But he knew that it had gotten a reaction, and… that was heartening, actually. Because it meant that above all, Lucifer still cared.
Somewhere inside, Lucifer cared about Sam Winchester.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Chuck looked toward the ceiling, and considered his wording carefully before he proceeded. “I always meant for you to have one another. After your… experience, I had hoped that seeing a kindred spirit, so to speak, reflected in a human, would make you understand.”
“Understand what?” Lucifer snarled. His borrowed arms were clutched tightly around himself, and Chuck knew that if they were… home, he would see Lucifer’s many, once-glorious wings drawn just as tightly around himself, a web of protection. Lucifer could never hide his feelings from Chuck or from his brothers. He was always the most sensitive, the easiest to read and interpret. Michael had been like stone, but Lucifer—he had always been fire.
“Why I made them. How I made them.” Chuck reached for his beer, and took a sip. He considered Lucifer, what he had once been, and his sad state left a bitter aftertaste in Chuck’s mouth that had nothing to do with the brew. “I looked at you.”
Lucifer twitched again, but this time clear fury bloomed over Castiel’s face. “No.”
“You were so bright, once,” Chuck said. “So pure. In your love, in your joy. In your anger, and in your sorrow. You were so different from the others, even Raphael and Gabriel, who came after. When I made the humans, I was trying to make more like you. So when you hated them…” he sighed. “I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. It’s said we conflict with those most like ourselves.”
“It’s not true,” Lucifer said, and stood in a sweep—moved further away. A hard truth that he couldn’t face, but that Chuck finally knew he needed to. Before he himself was gone. Before Lucifer would never know… and he deserved to know.
“I knew then, after what you did to Eve—when you made her into Lilith—and when you chose Cain and Abaddon for your own, that I would someday make Sam. And Dean, of course. But Dean was a lesson for Michael that your brother wasn’t capable of learning. But you, Lucifer. You could. I knew you could. I knew if I could get my sister our of your head, get you away from her lies, that Sam would be able to help you. And he did, didn’t he? Just not… not entirely the way I wanted.” Chuck looked at him with a melancholy tilt of his head; a familial trait, a behavioral one, passed on unknowingly from Father to sons.
Lucifer recoiled; of course he did. He wasn’t ready, and he never would be, not on his own. Chuck could see that now.
“What you did to him,” Lucifer said, his voice tight. “All those things, the life he lived—”
“After my time,” Chuck admitted. “I never set out to hurt them, any of them. I just… set things up. What happened to Sam and Dean was much more Azazel and the demons than it ever was my own hand. You should know that. I never wanted Sam to suffer. I just… knew that he would.” Chuck set his beer down and rubbed his hands over his face, a long, drawn-out motion filled with sadness and regret. “He’s your echo, Lucifer. He was always going to suffer. He could have lived a perfect life and still suffered within his soul; he was never going to be whole and happy on his own. Dean was a balm, like Michael was for you, but you—you two. Sam’s Lucifer. Lucifer’s Sam. I had hoped…”
“You… hurt him,” Lucifer said quietly, finally still. “…to teach me a lesson?”
“No,” Chuck said, sad and patient, but he stood then anyway. “I didn’t. But you learned some of it, didn’t you?” He pointed at Lucifer, wished he even had the capacity to just… enlighten. And he could, but what good would that be? “You’re angry! You’re angry at the thought that I would hurt him to get to you, and Lucifer, that’s exactly it. He’s you, you’re him—he’s yours, you’re his! Protecting him, protecting all of them. Loving him, and by extension loving yourself… the way that I love you.” Chuck’s conviction faltered, then, his stride interrupted by the strength of his sorrow, his profound emotion. “Protective, and gentle, and kind. But strong, so strong. Terrifying. Enough to overcome the Darkness’ hold on you. Enough that you would be… be healed, and that you could make peace with yourself, and with your brothers. That you could enjoy the Earth, all of you, together with them—and you, together with Sam. But I… misjudged. To think that the… pain of what… happened to you, could be erased. That your love for him could smooth over your… hatred of me.”
“He hated me,” Lucifer said softly, so softly. “Because of what you did, and the stories you told to them. And then he locked me up, just like you. He wasn’t different, he was never… he was you, not me.” Lucifer turned his back to hide the pain on his borrowed face, and though he hid his expression, he failed to hide his hurt.
“But it was Michael that hurt him in the Cage, wasn’t it?” Chuck asked, though not unkindly. “You were angry with Sam, but you couldn’t do that to yourself, Lucifer, and I know you couldn’t do it to him. And now you know that he saw too much of you. So you let him believe it was you that hurt him, so you’ll never have to let him close ever again. Because you could never say no if he asked, could you? So you made sure that in never telling, he never would.”
“Stop it.”
“That in saying those unkind things to him, you would keep him away from you. And in keeping him away, you would stay weak and broken. A punishment to yourself, and in part a punishment to him. But you never believed it was he who failed, Lucifer, I know you didn’t. You blame yourself for his wounds. And you fear that in setting things straight, you’ll damage him more.”
Lucifer turned on a dime, a broken thing plagued by suffering and pain. “I said stop.”
Chuck took a step toward him, torn between sympathy for Lucifer’s plight and pain of his own at the state of his creation, his broken son. “Your silence is your only prison now,” Chuck said. “I could build you a new vessel, one that would hold. You would be free to stay, to learn from Sam and experience life here, like Castiel does. You’re no big fan of humans as a whole, but I know you love this planet, Lucifer. Is punishing yourself worth letting Amara take it, the universe, take Sam?”
Lucifer lashed out, a furious fling of Castiel’s arm sending the map table and Chuck’s unfinished beer flying through the air, shattering against the concrete floor and sending glass flying all over the room. Down the hallway, Chuck felt as much as heard Sam jolt awake, heart racing and combat-ready.
Lucifer, bitter and uncertain, stared at the wreck for a long series of seconds that, to two celestial beings, stretched on for a profound yet inexplicably small eternity.
Sam’s footsteps echoed as he ran to the map room, taking in the mess for only a moment before, with a blink, table and beer was restored to exactly the way it was.
The fact that this made him startle, even after all this time and everything he had seen, was somehow inexplicably funny to Chuck. But the understanding and uncomfortably nostalgic look on Sam’s face was anything but.
“I, uh,” Sam said, disheveled and awkward. “Didn’t mean to intrude. I just. You know. Um.”
“No harm, no foul,” Chuck said. He noted that Lucifer stared at Sam until exactly one heartbeat before Sam looked at him.
“I don’t know what you expected,” Lucifer snapped, and turned away from them both. “Bringing me here, with him.”
Which of them that was directed at, even Chuck could not tell.
“You’re our best chance,” Sam said, quiet and contrite. He didn’t sound half as afraid as he probably should, though he sounded twice as old. “And this, I mean. Put us together, and there’s always an uncomfortable family reunion bound to happen, right?” The joke fell flat; nothing could be funny when said in a voice that sad. “Like, every time we’re in the same room—Michael, Gabriel, Castiel. This.”
“Sam,” Lucifer said, and didn’t turn to face them. “Go back to sleep. You need your rest. Your day was long. You almost died.”
“So did you,” Sam said. His eyes fell from Lucifer’s back to the floor.
Even now, with their history stretched to the breaking point between them, Sam Winchester still cared just as much as Lucifer did. That was so incredibly… Sam. Chuck couldn’t help the sad tilt of a private smile.
“Don’t worry,” Lucifer scoffed. “Your Castiel is perfectly safe.”
“I wasn’t just talking about Cas,” Sam said.
If Chuck ever had to choose another son to bring peace to the Earth, he could think of none better than Sam Winchester.
“Boys,” he said quietly, and finally, both turned to look. “I think we could all use some rest. Sam, no need to worry. Lucifer, just… think about what I said.”
Lucifer, tucked behind Castiel’s eyes, was baleful and contrary as he was hesitant, thoughtful.
Sam nodded finally, and retreated down the hall. Chuck watched Lucifer watch him go.
“One way or another,” Chuck said. “You will have to make a choice. And the longer you wait, the more likely it will be that Sam makes it for you.”
Lucifer remained silent.
“There are guest rooms down the hall and to the left,” Chuck offered as peaceably as he could. “Or there are no shortage of books, if you prefer. The Winchester Gospels included. Not my best work, to be honest, but. If you wanted some perspective.”
Chuck picked up his beer as he turned to go, intending on resting as well as he could before he gave any attempt at the uncomfortable communication another go.
“Father,” Lucifer said. His voice cracked on the word; it had been thousands of years since he’d last said it in any capacity to its intended recipient.
Chuck paused.
“Without… without Michael, or Raphael or Gabriel. Is there even a chance?”
“I don’t know,” Chuck answered honestly. He swirled what was left around the bottle, and drained the last of it in one swallow. “But after all they’ve managed to do on their own, despite all we’ve done to them… perhaps we owe it to them to try.”
Chuck left then, and considered heavily that despite his many failings, perhaps John Winchester had been a better father and raised better sons than He ever had.