Title from The Ballad of Mona Lisa by Panic! at the Disco
There's a voice in his head, one that sounds a little like Lucifer and a lot like himself.
What do you want, Sam? it whispers, words that worm into his brain every minute of the day and night. What do you want?
The answer is always the same. Revenge, Sam thinks. It's all he's ever wanted, since Dean dragged him away from school and back into the life, it's all he's been able to think about. He knows revenge never works the way it should, know that it always goes south (and perhaps that it exactly how revenge is meant to work) and yet.
He dreams.
First it was the demon, the one who had killed Mom and Jess. Growing up, he hadn't shared Dean and Dad's desire for revenge for Mary. He'd never known his mother, never mourned for her. He'd barely felt anything for her. But Jess. He'd loved her, just as he imagined Dad had loved Mom. Her death allowed him to finally understand his father's reasons for raising them the way he did, why he was so focused on getting revenge. Sam understood it all, finally.
And god did he want revenge. Need it, in fact. All he could think about, from the moment of her death, was finding her killer, and ending the son of a bitch. The feelings grew stronger as time passed, as they came no closer to finding the yellow-eyed bastard. Then Dean almost died, and Dad did die, and this whole mess with the other children just got worse. This- This poison coursing through his veins... Sam could almost feel it writhing beneath his skin, black and evil to the core. He wanted to rip it out, make himself clean again. But he could do neither. The only thing he could do was get revenge on the thing that had put it there, and in so many other innocent children.
He tried. And the demon did die. Perhaps that should have been enough to sate the revenge simmering away in his gut, but it was not Sam who fired that killing shot, and the corruption in his blood still remained. The revenge on the demon was not his own, and so it endured.
There were plenty of others between Azazel and Lucifer. Plenty after, too. Meg, Lilith, Ruby, Crowley, Gadreel... But none of them mattered. Not in the long term.
Lucifer has been a constant in Sam's life, for longer than even he had realised. He's manipulated Sam from the moment he was born, he's hurt the people he loves, he's taken everything Sam holds dear and twisted it beyond recognition.
So when Dean asks, "If you had a shot at Lucifer, you wouldn't take it?" Sam almost laughs. Of course he would. In an instant, he would take that shot. He's had a long time to imagine that shot, centuries, in fact, and to miss it would be unthinkable.
Of course, he knows he'll never get the chance to finish Lucifer; he can only pray that it one day comes around for someone else, and that he is there to see it. He wants to see the light fade from his eyes, wants Lucifer to know that, whatever he does to him, Sam has beaten him. It might not be the revenge he has wished for, but it would be a start.
He can only pretend that it would be enough.
I'm not sure if that worked. Drop me a review and let me know?