Uriel calls them mud monkeys. Mud monkeys. Lucifer cannot help but smirk.
Uriel never was particularly clever.
"Mud monkey" is intended to be derogatory, and no one understands better than Lucifer why an angel might wish to insult humanity, but that alliterative pair of words is so far from describing what is wrong with the species that it makes him he think worse of Uriel, and not of mankind. As if monkeys are not also tied to mud. As if mud itself is something terrible, when it is a natural part of the inherently beautiful earth He created. As if monkeys are to be disdained, when, really, they are quite cunning considering their limitations, and they are entertaining. As if describing the interconnectedness of earthly species with each other and their habitat is an insult.
Lucifer scoffs, and filaments of ice line the window inches from Nick's disintegrating face.
Humanity might not be celestial or pure the way angels are, but they are far from obscene the way Uriel seems to think. The warmth – and not the heat – of their coloration, their bodies, and their minds is foreign, interesting, and, in its way, beautiful. They would call this warmth "natural," in comparison to the "unnaturalness" of angels, he thinks, but angels existed first so there was no reason to think of them as unnatural. Angels are not earthly, to be sure, but they are natural. We are natural, he thinks carefully. Humanity is most decidedly earthly, and, furthermore, humanity fits the earth.
Or it would, if only the species could understand what the earth was, is, and should be.
There are limitations to humanity, to having a soul, to being made of flesh, blood, muscle, and bone. But there are limitations to everything, Lucifer knows, and so it would be ridiculous to fault humanity for its limitations. What he cannot tolerate is the species' utter carelessness. Their limitations match the earth perfectly, but stupidly they believe themselves superior to their planet, and so they destroy it. When they think themselves better than each other, the result is the same.
If only they knew what they were. Not gods, not angels. Apes.
Again, that they are apes does not make them lowly. Apes are beautiful.
Humanity is beautiful, and it would be more beautiful if it realized that beauty is essentially all it is good for.
Lucifer focuses his – Nick's – eyes on the dark glass panel, using it as a mirror so that he might look at his vessel. Fraying, but still in good condition. Blond hair on his scalp, lining and above his eyes, across his jaw and around his lips. Creases in the uniquely-colored skin where Nick has imprinted his body with his favorite facial expressions. Bones and muscles making themselves known beneath their covering, obeying him as the archangel experiments with wrinkling Nick's nose. Even the growing darkness around his eyes and the bloody craters on his cheeks have a certain charm born of the fusion of the human body's nature with that of a heavenly being. Lucifer raises his hand – Nick's lovely hand – to touch one of the wounds. Unfortunately, Nick seems to be awake somewhere in the recesses of his mind, and flinches at the pain. Lucifer removes the hand and disrupts the neural signals that are upsetting his host.
Lucifer thinks of humanity as a work of art, but that does not mean he does not recognize that they are conscious. Conscious in a less advanced way to that in which he and the other angels experience creation, but conscious nonetheless. Their minds, souls, thoughts, and emotions are as valuable to their beauty as anything physical about them, and so Lucifer considers the aesthetics before he does anything to them. Sometimes their suffering is pretty, and sometimes it is unimportant relative to other matters. But much of the time human suffering is to be avoided.
The archangel decided long ago that he did not wish to hurt his current vessel, and so he tends not to. He enjoys Nick's slow sorrow, but he does not wish to enhance it. He enjoys bringing him relief, too. Nick appreciates occasional induced amnesia, as well as certain temperatures and textures and flavors and scents. He does not respond as well to scenery, although images can help to elevate his mood when they are part of a pleasant memory. After the man's family's death, he seems to prefer darkness. Lucifer can sympathize. So he gives him dream-like illusions of downy warmth and pressure, and dulls most thought so that Nick is in a perpetual state of almost-sleep. He seems to appreciate it, although at times he rouses himself and wants something more. Vision. Information. Conversation.
Lucifer has indulged him on occasion, and has come to the realization that he likes Nick. Nick is no angel, to be sure, and so does not possess the same capacities as Lucifer's kin, but he is foreign and he is sad and he feels guilty that he is slowly coming to glorify Lucifer. Once, Lucifer allowed his grace to envelope Nick so that the man might know the archangel's opinion of him. Nick would not speak to him for several days after that. Lucifer did not particularly mind or notice, although the dull throb of honored embarrassment emanating from the circuitry Nick inhabits was distracting for a while. Lucifer considers this sort of emotion undesirable in angels, but enjoys it in at least this one human.
Nick is happier when he does not watch what Lucifer does, because, as much as Nick says he wants vengeance, the man still loves those like himself. Apparently it is not easy to remove one's feelings of empathy for those similar to oneself. It does not pain Lucifer to kill humans because he is not strongly connected to them and because he resents them, but he knows that he would refrain from hurting another angel if given any choice at all. He thinks briefly of Gabriel and closes his eyes. Nick cannot fathom that bond, but to feel even a shadow of it breaking must shake him painfully. Lucifer puts him through that pain day after day, and has made him aware that it will continue until there are few humans left alive. Nick wants to be happy. But then, Nick has wanted but been unable to be happy for longer than he has known Lucifer.
Sam Winchester wants to be happy too, and Lucifer truly believes that, under the correct circumstances, he would be, if he would just come to Lucifer. It is one of Lucifer's strongest convictions that the willing union of himself with his true vessel, of Sam with his archangel, will bring completion to them both, and to both their aspirations. Sam does not see it yet, but Lucifer has faith that he will. They are too much the same for Fate's word to be false. Lucifer clenches his hand at the same time as Nick reacts.
Images of Sam are conjured to his mind and poured into Nick's, and Lucifer knows what the conflicted effect of this is on his imperfect vessel. Sam's body is large and able, and his face is oddly remarkable. He is a strangely balanced combination of his origin (the musculature is unnecessary for a pure sophisticate, and his brow is wide and impressively ridged like that of one of his ancestors) and of what makes modern humanity refined. Sam's primal instincts and lack of will in the face of his own frustration are countered by his emotional sensitivity and his intellectual – philosophical – passion. The polarities intrinsic in his body and in his mind should not combine to make anything coherent, and should be ugly. Perhaps they are in others. But in Sam they are what make Lucifer want to stare at his physical form, to delve into his brain, to handle his soul. In short, Sam's apparent contradictions are what make Lucifer want to know him, and to feel that he already does.
But the archangel withdraws this rumination and replaces it with shallower observations of Sam's face. The lid creases that extend outward, past the corners of his eyes. The delicate point to his wide nose. The thin and perfect curve to his lips, and the way the shadow is short and dark below them. These are the things that do not stir the resentment Nick has for Sam. Lucifer reminds him that these features will one day be touched by Lucifer's own will, and that his grace will spill forward and make the face even more beautiful. And Nick will be allowed to look upon him as often as he wishes, for as long as he wishes, and no longer be forced back and away within his own body by the foreign presence, and will see Lucifer in what is as close to his true splendor as is possible. Nick will like it, Lucifer promises. And Lucifer will enjoy the ability to interact with Nick as a separate being.
But Nick is possessive. Lucifer cannot blame him.
It is not particularly interesting to Lucifer to get trapped in this cycle. Nick wishes he did not adore Lucifer, but he does. Nick wishes he could be happy that Lucifer will one day possess a new and more fitting vessel, but he cannot be. Lucifer enjoys contemplating Sam, but he does not enjoy Nick's inescapable jealousy when he does. Lucifer does not want Nick to be distressed, but he finds comforting him to be tedious. It is too murky and it is too slow and it must be done too frequently, and Lucifer can feel both their minds dragging as they go over it all yet again.
Lucifer puts Nick back into his trance and pulls up the fading memories of Plato from his vessel's second semester of college, and mulls over what few details remain. Perhaps one day he will read The Republic for himself. Perhaps he will have Nick read it to him. It seems as if the philosopher's ideas are not terribly far-fetched, but maybe Nick has simplified them in a young and human attempt to understand. If the two of them should ever read these theories, Lucifer will make certain that Nick understands what they mean, where they are correct and incorrect, and in what ways they are logical and illogical. Nick will understand fairly well without his help. Nick is not hugely intelligent, but he is certainly able-minded. Lucifer looks forward to the conversation.
It is curious that humans aspire to be angels, since they cannot ever succeed. To see the "forms" and be liberated from the Cave is the goal of the earth's intellectuals, no matter what they choose to label these concepts. Uriel, Lucifer knows, is unimpressed with the "mud monkeys'" attempts because of their futility. Others, like Gabriel, find these attempts entertaining and harmless. Raphael thinks humans are admirable for trying, though he cannot help but look down on them for their failure. Those who visit earth and become infatuated with the species, like the suddenly-active Castiel, seem to find the humans' aspirations valuable in part because they will never reach angelic clarity. Michael…Lucifer has never known Michael's true opinion. And Lucifer…Lucifer wants to know what would happen if they ever did transcend the Cave to behold the forms.
Perhaps that is why they frustrate him. Because they never will. They will always be God's unsatisfying masterpiece.
They would not survive enlightenment. Their souls would ignite and their bodies would crumble. The electricity and chemicals in the folds of cells Lucifer and Nick share would all activate at once and explode.
He thinks again about showing some part of heavenly truth to Nick, just to see what exactly would happen. But he contemplates what Nick is now, and he is rather like one of the filaments of ice on the window when Lucifer exhales, or like some ornament made of shining and thin glass. The archangel remembers what happened when Nick's ancestors were given just a few seeds of the metaphorical fruit, how they were ashamed and broken, how they are still ashamed and broken. If he were to drop the whole fruit upon this fragile trinket he shares a body with, the trinket would shatter. It would not be beautiful; it would be pitiful. Lucifer feels Nick's heart rate increase with the angel's swell of affection for his host. He wonders if Nick notices, but prefers not to visit him to find out.
What no one seems to understand is that Lucifer honestly likes humanity. He adores them as he adores the earth. The difference between him and those who did not fall is not that he does not love them, but that he cannot look past their flaws, and he cannot bow to them. They do not deserve that. When angels were told that humanity was to be their main concern, and that Heaven was to become a structure with which to organize mankind, Lucifer was offended. It is related, perhaps, to the concern humans have about their role in relation to machines. A machine is a gorgeous and complex instrument, but for a human to serve a machine as purpose higher than itself is demeaning. Lucifer notices that he is sneering.
Yes, he can feel Nick say belatedly. Yes, I would love to read Plato again. I'll read it to you, if you want.
Lucifer's sneer softens at Nick's enthusiasm. Nick seems to have been harboring a desire to revisit things he learned in early life for years. Lucifer has once again touched on a subconscious want of his vessel. Of Nick. He wonders if it would be inappropriate by human standards to refer to him as his Nick. Nick hesitates, but seems to find the possessive pronoun pleasant.
Lucifer enjoys having a guide to earthly customs, even if they are geographically specific. Nick has already taught him so much.
The feeling is mutual. Lucifer can hear the weak attempt to manifest a smile.
He allows Nick to pervade further into the shared parts of their consciousness, and to take some control of their body. Nick's increased presence causes their shoulders to relax, their muscles to soften and become human. Lucifer is still not wholly comfortable with inhabiting this form, but Nick is sure he will learn. Nick is glad to teach him, and Lucifer is glad to be taught. He wonders if Nick is repaying him, doing him a favor, or offering him a gift.
I just do it because I like to, Nick says, and draws up the corners of his lips without Lucifer's help. I don't think either of us has a debt to the other. Is that right?
Lucifer wonders if Nick would hide again if he were to expose him to his grace in appreciation.
"Mud monkeys," he recalls, and Nick flinches. Lucifer soothes him tenderly.
Uriel is a fool.