again, I'm sorry! Weekend angst, ya know? This isn't the only thing I'm working on, though. Anyway, I was watching season 5 ep 1 again and realized how everyone thinks of lucifer and forgets abouT Nick! So this is for Nick!

Okay, warning: this one can be a tiny bit graphic, as in a teeny bit gory. Just a little. And sadness.

Justice. All he had wanted. Besides the impossible. Just justice.

But it was happening. Nick could feel it.

For what seemed so long he had been a prisoner, trapped inside his mind while this thing (the devil, it called itself) paraded around in his body, dealing with freaking demons and spirits and all this stuff Nick desperately tried to tune himself out of. And killing people. Killing them. Ending their lives...

Nick might have not been the greatest guy. He might not have made the greatest choices in the face of what had happened to him.

But never, ever, would he kill.

He'd regretted his choice the moment he'd made it. Yes, he'd been angry. So angry. Angry at something, maybe God. So he'd said yes, but the moment this thing had seized control of his body, Nick had been given what you might call the full download. He'd been overwhelmed in this swirling, screeching, fiery pit of loathing, of revenge, of anger...

And of such intense, painful love.

At first, Nick had thought it was just his own doing, his own long-repressed finally sentiments boiling to the surface. But when he had become aware enough, he realized that this was why the devil or whatever had sought him, Nick, out. Not really because Nick was special, or chosen, or crap. Because they were (essentially) the same.

(Oh, that's great, he remembers thinking. I share personality traits with Satan)

He could understand the loathing—the general hate of everything. How people laughed and smiled when his own world seemed so gloomy, how selfish they must be not to help him. How things were cheery when they were, in reality, so dang grim. It was so easy to hate—to see the stupidity of other people, their obliviousness, their idiocy...to feel so alone. He thought only he could see the true evil of the world. There was the desire of revenge that followed. Not just hating anymore, but wanting to act on that hate in the most violent way possible. Even worse was the raw, untempered anger over the whole ordeal—where to extract revenge, how to achieve it, that awful voice in your head still telling you not to and to be good—it's called mad because it's madness. Insanity. Willingly schizophrenic.

But the worst is, of course, the love. It's the beginning and the end of you, no matter what. It's true in all forms that you fight for what you love, and it can make your life or break it, because love is a gamble. There isn't any logic to support it. You just love someone or something because. You take a chance by placing such utter faith and relying so desperately on what you love. You risk losing what you love. If you do lose it, somehow, the love doesn't leave. It still clings to you and stays stubbornly warm, even as the rest of you grows colder, until it's a burning itch, driving you forward, making you scratch it. You stop accepting and cherishing it and start hoarding it, caging it, crowding it in because you need to hold it too or you won't be you. But without circulation, with isolation, it becomes stagnant and crippled. The love still serves a purpose, but it just gets all mucked up and the next thing you know...

Nick (and the Devil, apparently) had felt all this and more.

But it was time. Nick knew it. He could see sometimes through the Devil's eyes, and together they both stared at these two boys in front of them. Nick recognized them both—Satan had been thinking about virtually nothing else than the younger of the two (Nick thought they were brothers, maybe) and images of the tall youth had crowded their shared mind.

For the most part, the Devil had ignored Nick. But now, it was like he completely forgot about him. Finally letting him go. With nothing but eyes for the slightly trembling boy before them.

Nick felt a distant stab of pity for the kid (Sam, was that his name?) and the hell on earth he was going to endure (what are you doing? Some part of him was screaming, don't let him get you too!). But most of his sorrow was drowning in his ecstasy, his relief, his hope that he could finally get out. Heaven, hell—he sure didn't care! He just wanted out!

When it happened, it was almost disappointingly anti-climactic. Nick just found himself swallowed in a blinding light.

—•—•—

Nick had never really met the man who ruined his life. The man who 'broke into his house and butchered his family in their beds' as ol' Satan put it.

But he'd seen him. And he'd know him.

The man had come for him and Sarah first. Nick was a light sleeper, unlike his wife, and opened his eyes to the sound of his front door being slammed shut.

Sarah breathed evenly and quietly, the faintest whisper of her breath grazing the side of his neck. He was turned away from her, and she was facing his back, and her back was to the door—

Without moving his body, Nick's eyes darted to the clock—11:11pm. Damn. But he'd imagined it, surely—

There was the sound of heavy, unfamiliar, uneven footfalls from the kitchen. A faint, slurred mutter, the sound seeping through Nick's half-open bedroom door. No lights flicked on. He couldn't see anything.

His heart began to thump. Too loud. Hot adrenaline poured through his veins as if he was being doused in boiling water (blood), yet he seemed to be frozen solid. Should he wake Sarah? How would he without alerting the intruder? He fought to keep his breathing quiet, and for a moment, was paralyzed.

Logan.

Nick's hands clenched silently into fists where they lay, his face half-buried in the pillow, panic assaulting him from every angle. His son—his baby boy—Nick wasn't necessarily a strong man. His son—his son, just sixteen weeks old—Logan would not get hurt.

His mind racing, he wildly tried to picture his actions. If he could just get upstairs to Logan's room...

So caught up in his thoughts was Nick that he didn't notice the intruder until the knife was in his back.

It was pain, burning agony, such agony!—Nick screamed wretchedly, his voice only half-muffled by his pillow, his body giving the oddest convulsion—the weapon was wrenched out of him, blood was spurting from the gap and flowing over his shoulders, and Nick couldn't move, couldn't—

He heard it again—the awful crunch, like crushing an animal carcass under a boot—and Sarah wailed, a long, drawn out keening that sent horror like needles over Nick's skin what Sarah Sarah no no no!—

Another cry—tinny and strange—Logan—baby monitor—

And then the stomping is distant—and climbing—Logan—but Nick is forcing himself to move, turning his head to look at his wife—

"Sarah," he croaks as his first attempt moving is thwarted by the fiery ache (oh, god!) that is lodged behind his left shoulder blade, "Sarah!"

"Oh, God—" and he scream-sobs with clots of blood flying from his lips because it's his wife but it's not, it's Sarah but it isn't—she's dead dead dead, a dark red mass in the center of her back, her mouth gaping open in a silent scream, and in her beautiful eyes (the color the richest honey, he always said) tears are still flowing in death.

Logan!

Like a burst of clarity—hideous, wonderful clarity—he hears his son's name in his head and without any thought tumbles out of the bed, hitting the floor so hard it knocks the wind and a copious amount of blood out of him—he doesn't even try to stand, but crawls, still sobbing with pain and grief and fear. Out of his room (muddy bootprints from the intruder lining the hallway) dragging himself up the miles of stairs (he thinks he smells booze that isn't his, the intruder is drunk) and hooking his fingers into the carpet when he reaches the top, shuffling dazedly on his hand and knees towards Logan's room, towards Logan's room, the only sound in his ears the thudding of his dying pulse, towards Logan's room, outside the door of Logan's room,

but with a geyser of smarting torture his nose shatters (he's been kicked in the face with that muddy boot on that powerful leg of the boozy body) and on reflex his hand blindly snakes out and hooks around the slippery shoe's ankle for an instant, just enough to make him trip.

The intruder falls on his hands and knees in an attempt to escape, and he twists around to look at Nick with cold, dead eyes (he's lost someone) that are foggy and unfeeling and hindered by alcohol.

—and then the bastard is scrambling away, tripping down the stairs, throwing himself out the door—and Nick is scrabbling with the one good arm he has left to bodily push his way through his son's door and fumbling for the light, using the one eye that isn't blinded by his blood that's spattered on his face to search for the sign that if nothing else Logan is alright, that he's okay—

There's (too much) thick, dark blood oozing down the side of the crib, soaking the blue blankets, and Nick screams and screams because his heart is ripping itself out because.

He loves them he loves them he loves them—

because

(Yes it cuts off there) Review!