A/N- The rest of this is already written (plot twist: I was organised!), so it'll be updating every Sunday. The title was inspired by a post from markpellescreamo on Tumblr.
I've rated it T because there's nothing sexual, but as a warning there is a fair amount of gore, swearing and angst. It jumps between present day and flashbacks, but hopefully it'll be easyish to follow. I hope you like it- please review and let me know!
When James Novak is five years old, his teacher asks him what he wants to be.
"So the whole class can hear, Jimmy," she says. He looks out at the others, all waiting as patiently as five year olds can, and turns and hides.
"Sweetie, it's okay," she soothes, laughing slightly. "Everybody else has already said theirs. Scott wants to be a train driver, don't you, Scott? Would you like to drive trains like Scott?"
Jimmy shakes his head against the material of her skirt. Trains are loud, and scary, and he doesn't like them at all.
"Do you want to be a builder like Andrew? Or maybe a doctor like Melissa?"
He shakes his head again. After a moment's pause he says something, but it's too muffled for anyone to hear.
"Go on, Jimmy," she encourages. She takes his small, clammy hand in hers and he shyly turns out to face the others, nibbling anxiously on his free thumb. "Tell us what you want to be when you grow up."
And taking some strength in the reassuring squeeze of her hand, he swallows hard and does exactly that.
"I want to be an angel."
There is a ringing in his ears that will not go away, and that's the one thing that's never changed.
He thinks they've changed everything else they can in every way they can, and in some he was sure they couldn't. He recalls a time when everything was so hot, so blisteringly hot, that he watched his skin blacken and fall from the bone, fat dripping like candle wax. And he remembers a time- afterwards, he thinks, though it's difficult to know- when they cut his skin open and the blood froze before a single drop could fall from the wound. He thinks the cold was worse in some ways, a kind of slow burn.
But the ringing, the incessant, dizzying ringing, hasn't dipped or wavered once. There's never been another sound. Demons speak but he doesn't hear what they say; he feels bones crack and sees ice shatter, but no noise reaches his ears. All there is is the ringing, the white noise blocking out the rest. After a while, it starts to get him. Sometimes it gets to him so much that begins screaming to try and hear anything else, anything at all, but it never works. He screams until he spits blood but it still doesn't work.
And so when the ringing finally stops, Jimmy knows something big is coming.
"Got you a friend," the demon declares. His demons work shifts; both their true faces and the people they wear switch every time a new torture starts. So far there have been hundreds, possibly thousands of different demons. This one is in the body of a teenage girl. Her hair is tied up in bunches and her belly is jutting out over denim shorts, the only thing she's wearing.
At first, Jimmy had sympathy for the vessels. Once or twice, he even tried to speak to them (not that he could have heard them if they replied; he couldn't even hear his own words). With time, that sympathy rotted into pity which decayed into shame which mutated into anger and now he loathes the vessels as he loathes the demons. Maybe there's something about them that hits too close to home.
When he dealt in air and life rather than blood and brimstone, Jimmy didn't think he had the capacity to hate.
Got you a friend. Jimmy's mind has been preserved much as his body has, and whilst the words sound strange after so long with nothing, he can recognise them- though he doesn't understand the demon's meaning. The entire time he has been in Hell, he hasn't seen another soul. Why change that now?
Because this place is change, he answers himself. They couldn't choose which flavour of chaos they wanted, so they ordered the sharing platter.
Two demons approach, dragging a slumped body between them. Their arms curl around the figure's hips, leaving its toes and fingers scraping against the floor as they haul it forwards.
Suddenly, a third demon is behind him. In one swift motion, it yanks the bolt clean out of Jimmy's wrist. He screams but stops the instant he hears the noise. It's alien, too loud. He's not used to hearing himself scream. The demon removes the other bolt and Jimmy falls to the ground, landing in a heap on the floor. The wounds at Jimmy's wrists pump angry red blood, speedily forming pools on the stone, but he has known worse pain and it won't kill him; it can't.
"C'mon, boys!" one demon enthuses. "Say hello, make friends."
Jimmy shakily pushes himself up onto his hands and knees, trying to ignore the crimson steadily coating everything. He places a foot on the ground and, after a few attempts, manages to rise and stand.
"You got all these," a demon pipes up gleefully, gesturing at a table that stretches back further than Jimmy can see. It's piled with glistening silver and black, a tangle of knives and swords and guns and hammers and stakes and chains and things that Jimmy doesn't have words for.
"You can always use your hands, but sometimes they get too slow," the one wearing the teenage girl says. She giggles and flashes her lurid pink nails at Jimmy. He thinks he sees a small fragment of bone lodged under one.
Jimmy doesn't understand what they want from him until he glimpses who the other person is. He scrambles backwards, desperate to find somewhere to hide, but there's nowhere. They're in a vast cavern with dark rock walls and a dark rock floor and not that much else. The demons are sniggering.
"Something wrong?" one asks innocently.
"Please," Jimmy whimpers. "Please, leave me alone." It's been a long time since he begged, and the demons boo in disappointment. He forces himself to look at the other figure and finds them stood frozen in place. He doesn't know why, but he knows it can't be good.
They stay like that for a while, in a scared and silent stand-off, until the demons grow tired of waiting.
"Talk, preacher boy," one hisses behind Jimmy, stubby fingers gripping tight on his shoulders. Do they want him to beg? Would it work?
The silence is broken, but not by him.
"I don't understand," Jimmy's opponent says. They sound different; their voice tremors. "How- how are they holding you here?"
Jimmy doesn't understand. "What?"
"How are they keeping you here?" they say again. "You, you're an angel. You could rip this place apart."
Jimmy debates lying. He thinks about claiming that he's still got the power of grace coiled inside of him, but they'd know it wasn't true, know it the instant the words left his lips. How could he lie to the Prince of Lies?
"Castiel isn't here," he says.
"What?"
"He's gone, I swear! Check if you don't believe me."
"How would I be able to tell?" Lucifer is looking at him in confusion, and Jimmy responds in the same manner.
"You're- I thought you'd-" Jimmy tries. Lucifer's eyes widen in sudden understanding.
"What? No, I'm not- no, not anymore."
"I don't believe you," Jimmy says bluntly.
"I'm telling the truth!" he insists. "He's gone, he's out. Lucifer has left the building."
Memories are leaking through, drop by drop. Jimmy did see Lucifer in Sam's body, didn't he? But that was only for an instant, in the half-second before Lucifer took out his pesky younger brother and Castiel dragged Jimmy down him. Being a vessel is like catching every fourth episode of a TV show, except the show is your life and you come to with blood on your hands and dirt in your teeth and you don't know how any of it got there.
"Lucifer killed me," Jimmy says without really knowing why.
"Congrats. Welcome to the club."
"He killed you?" That unnerves Jimmy. Castiel had always promised that when- if- he ever let Jimmy go, he'd be fine.
"I was barely even alive," the man says. Maybe Castiel knew the vessel's name, but Jimmy doesn't. "He kept me hanging on and when he left I just… got let go, I guess."
"That doesn't sound quite right, does it?" the demon behind Jimmy says, breaking their silent watch. "Are you sure he's telling the truth?"
"I am!" the man shouts. His voice echoes off the cavern walls, a hundred different voices claiming a hundred different things
"Getting angry?" another demon asks innocently. "You'd better be careful, Jimmy. Don't you remember last time?"
"He killed you," the demon behind Jimmy croons. "He snapped his fingers and he undid you."
"I didn't!" the man says desperately. "I wasn't there! I wasn't even fucking alive!"
"You really want to trust him on that, Jimmy?" comes the voice from behind again.
"That's Lucifer," the demon in the teenage girl says confidently. "I would recognise him anywhere." She licks her lips and smiles at him. "Daddy."
"Please," the man begs, backing away. "Please, I'm not him, I'm not Lucifer-"
Jimmy doesn't know what to think. The man cowering opposite him hardly matches his memories of Lucifer, but…
"I was hoping they'd do it on their own," one of the demons sighs heavily. The others murmur in assent. The demon who spoke raises its hands and utters a handful of words and then suddenly, everything falls into place.
Lucifer straightens up. He is Lucifer, Jimmy sees this now. Wrath takes Jimmy over, utterly takes him over, wrapping around his veins and knocking on the walls until it breaks through and pulses through him, the blood pouring from his wrists to make room for liquid rage. He will destroy, he will cleanse, he will purge and he will make it right.
Lucifer springs forward, snarling, and snatches up a weapon. The action disgusts Jimmy. As if Lucifer has the right to harm Jimmy, as if he hasn't already done enough, as if Jimmy hasn't given enough-
The blade ghosts Jimmy's neck but he swerves out the way. Lucifer sneers and darts forwards, trying to plunge the knife into Jimmy's stomach. Jimmy dodges it and grabs at the table, taking up the first thing he can. A mace. He tests the weight of it in his hands and when Lucifer runs at him again, he swings.
When Sarah first met Nick, she thought he was an arse. As far as 'so how did you two meet?' stories go, theirs usually gets the best reception at parties.
"An 'arse'," Nick always specifies. He doesn't know why he likes the way she says the word so much. He guesses it's the same reason he likes that she can't do her mascara without opening her mouth and that she cuts her apples into slices to eat them and that she hums along to the theme songs of TV shows without realising.
"Why?" someone tends to ask.
"Isn't it obvious?" another guest usually jokes.
"I still think Nick's an arse," someone will invariably finish off, and then everybody laughs and laughs.
"What made you change your mind?" Sarah gets asked once, by the kind of woman who spends ten minutes a week staring down the 'find your perfect match!' ads at the side of her screen and persuading herself that she's not that desperate yet.
"I changed," Nick answers for her. "And thank fuck I did."
"You weren't that bad," Sarah objects.
"Bad enough," Nick says.
"Well…" she says, and they both giggle like schoolchildren caught talking in class.
"Sarah made me a better person," Nick tells the captivated woman.
"And that's absolutely mutual," Sarah says, though that's stupid because you don't get better than Sarah. He tells her as much and she mock-argues, rapping him on the head when he keeps on insisting. He kisses her in retaliation and she smiles against his lips, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him in close.
The woman sighs dreamily, but after a few seconds grows uncomfortable or depressed or just plain bored and wanders away.
"Hey, your friend's gone," Nick says, pulling away slightly.
"I'll find her later," Sarah murmurs. Nick grins again and rests his forehead against hers.
"I love you so much," he tells her, in the kind of way he never imagined he'd be able to.
"I love you more," she answers simply.
Nick feels the blade slice through Castiel's flesh and it makes him want to laugh. It feels good to get at the angel, to the one who ruined everything.
Lucifer had a plan, and it had been going to work. He used to whisper as much to Nick, late at night when the town was quiet and still. He would tell Nick that he would clean the world and make right wrong, take this concept of a great and glorious God and make it burn.
"Don't you want to see God burn?" Lucifer had whispered with Nick's lips, lying on a worn-down bed and staring at the ceiling. And from his trapped half-existence, Nick had answered 'yes'.
It was only ever supposed to be short term. Lucifer spoke with others and Nick learned of the angel and the two more-than-humans he fought alongside: the Michael Sword and Lucifer's True Vessel.
"Don't go getting jealous," Lucifer would tease sometimes. "You're a favourite, Nick, but Sam is my destiny. You understand."
At first, Nick cared about whether he'd made the right choice, whether they'd win- whether he wanted them to. Lucifer found his conflict adorable. When Nick finally realised that he'd made a mistake, Lucifer took delight in showing him just how right he was. Nick stopped caring soon after that.
Now, he cares. No, it's more than care- it's passion, it's fire, it's life and light and it's all so clear to him. Before, Nick had denounced Lucifer, but he sees now that he's been blaming the wrong angel. The pain, the suffering, even Sarah- it was all down Castiel, all his doing. Nick knows this now, and as he darts forwards with the blade, he feels good. He feels alive.
When Jimmy is six, he goes through a phase of proudly telling everybody that he has two fathers. The teacher overhears this one day and discreetly pulls him aside after the lesson finishes.
"Jimmy, why did you tell Maria you had two daddies?" she asks him. "I've met your mummy, and she's lovely."
"I have a mummy and two daddies," he answers her, not really sure why having a mummy would affect things.
"But your mummy and daddy are still married, sweetheart," she says, trying to understand.
"I know," he says impatiently, eager to go and rejoin his friends.
"So you only have one daddy," she concludes. He shakes his head stubbornly.
"I have two fathers and they both love me lots, and I love both of them lots and lots. I only ever met one but that's okay, 'cause I know the other one's there, and even if I can't see him or hear him, he can still see and hear me," he tells her.
"Oh," she breathes. "Jimmy, are you talking about God?"
He screws his face up. "Thought that was obvious," he says.
They decimate each other.
They've both learned from the angels who walked in their skin, and they put their knowledge to good use. Jimmy pins Nick in place and hits him over and over again like Castiel hit Dean, never giving him a second to recuperate. Nick grabs at Jimmy's arm and twists, and Jimmy's bones break more readily for Nick than the Pagan God's did for Lucifer. They throw each other at the rock wall, at the ground, at the massive table itself. The demons clap in delight when Nick holds Jimmy to the bench and brings a hammer down onto his face.
If they were on Earth, they would both have been dead long before the time the demons call an end to it. As it is, one mutters a few words and suddenly the absolute conviction, the need to hurt disappears. It doesn't ebb or fade- one instant it's there, and the next it's gone.
They've both been aware of the pain, but with all desire to express it as anger gone it's too much to handle. Jimmy collapses to the ground, a bleeding, shredded wreck. He is missing most of his fingers and he'd hazard a guess that at least ten bones are broken. A short distance away, Nick is in a similar condition.
"We'll be back," one of the demons says smoothly, and they dissolve back into darkness.
Jimmy lies and stares at the wall and feels his wounds begin to heal. It's every snap of bone and every slice of blade reversed in slow motion, and it hurts a thousand times more than the original fight ever could have. He and Nick howl their agony as their bodies slowly knit back together.
Some time later, a new demon enters. This one's wearing an old man, beard long and knotted with lumps of what Jimmy identifies as lung. Most of their injuries are gone, but one of Nick's ribs is still fractured and the vision out of Jimmy's left eye isn't good, and they both ache with pain permeating so deeply that they never want to get up again.
"Begin," the demon says. He raises his hands and the anger pours in and the tiredness pours out and they begin, and they do not stop.
"What about your father?" Sarah asks gently. Nick's hand stills; he sets the pen down.
"What about him?" he asks, aiming for blasé but missing the mark.
"Do you want to invite him?"
"Might as well invite the mailman," he grunts.
"He's your family, Nick," Sarah says. "Shouldn't you at least let him know?"
"I don't want him there, Sarah," he says. He's still not looking at her. He sits staring at the desk, eyes aimed a short distance above the guest list itself. She lays a caring hand on his shoulder.
"He loves you," she says.
"He had an interesting way of showing it."
"I didn't say he was a good man, or that how he treated you and Sandra can be forgiven," she says. "I'm not saying you should forgive him. But are you okay with your family not being there for something this big?"
"I am," he breathes. "Don't you see, Sarah? I really, really am. I want to get a new family, not drag back my old one. Your dad's been more of a father to me than mine ever was, and you know how much I love your mom. I want to leave all this crap behind- you know, start afresh. Please, try and understand."
"I will," she says, and it sounds like a promise. "I do. Nick, look at me."
He does, forcing his lips into a smile to try and hide the wateriness in his eyes. Sarah notices but she doesn't say a thing, just looks at him with so much compassion and so much love.
"We won't invite your parents," she says. "But your sister's still coming?"
"Sandra would make us get divorced and remarried if she missed it," he points out. Sarah snorts.
"True. Remind me to introduce her to Dave, they'd get on."
"Stop trying to hook up my sister and your brother."
"Why?" she teases. "We could double-date."
"Oh my God, no."
"We could go on cruises together."
"You're hurting me, Sarah."
She giggles and he chuckles too, sombre mood scattered. "Okay, so tell me how much money you want to waste on flowers," he says, picking the pen up again.
"You old romantic, you."
"Tell you what, I'll go out and pick daisies from the garden beforehand. Fair?"
"Only if you pick enough to decorate the entire church," she warns. "Actually, I'd pay good money to see you outside picking flowers."
"I don't think I'd ever recover my street cred."
"I don't think that would take very long."
"That was just mean."
Jimmy watches the flames pull at Lucifer's head, a flaming halo apt for a fallen angel. Lucifer screams in agony, but Jimmy doesn't care. He doesn't care about the pain pulsing through the stump of his right arm, or the blood pouring from his left ear where Lucifer burst the eardrum, or the demon cackling in the corner with the body and voice of a nine year old girl.
Lucifer grabs Jimmy's coat and pulls him close, and before Jimmy can get away the flames catch. He tries to beat them out with his left hand but it only makes them worse, and so he screams alongside Lucifer, their voices carrying on until their larynxes burn out.
The fights are anything but short. Sometimes they start to tire- often to the point where it takes a full minute for them to get up from where they've been thrown- but they don't let it stop them. The periods of recovery vary in length depending on the injuries sustained. Lucifer manages to hack his way through Jimmy's neck muscles once, freeing his head completely, and mending that takes a very long time. The healing is the worst pain Jimmy's felt yet.
The pattern continues. The desire to kill flares in their bodies and they wage war on each other until a demon says 'enough', and they are patched up enough to hold a sword again.
It takes Jimmy longer than it should to join the dots and fully comprehend that no, this isn't Lucifer. Jimmy remembers enough aboutLucifer to know that that neat finger-click disintegration is definitely something he would have pulled by now. He guesses the man trapped with him really is just another empty vessel. Still, he tends to forget that when they're fighting, and even when he does finally get the knowledge to stick it doesn't make any difference.
In one recovery period, over fifty fights later, there is a break in their screaming. The final shards of Jimmy's femur are slotting back into place, and whilst it's awful, at least it's localised.
"You know, I never-" Jimmy winces at a particularly intense burst of pain- "got your name."
It's the first time they've spoken since they were first dragged together. It takes the other man several minutes to reply. Whether that's due to pain or distrust or confusion, Jimmy has no way of knowing.
"Nick," he eventually says. "You?"
"Jimmy."
"So, Jimmy," Nick says. He arches his back and hisses as the deep gash down his spine begins to sew itself shut. "You come here often?"
Jimmy finds himself laughing. It's a low, slow and thudding sound, and it's so strange after so long without it that he's almost grateful when it stops. They're judged well enough to fight soon after that, and the conversation drops from Jimmy's mind as the demon raises its hands.