Lucifer returned to the Cage to bid his time.

He would leave again when he was able - wreck and wring out that wretched creature, Crowley. None had the right to free Sam from Hell as Lucifer did. Despite the fact that Sam had pulled him back in, he would never forget that Sam had manumitted him in the first place.

Never.

So he claimed Sam as his own, for if Sam should liberate him from Hell and then imprison him again, he should be the only one able to return the favor. No one else could offer salvation to Sam; no one else could pass judgement upon him. It was just as Lucifer accepted Sam to be for him.

He overlooked Sam going to Heaven because he could not reach Sam there, although, if Sam's soul had been kept there, he would have ripped Heaven asunder. Any who attempted to hinder him obliterated, cast aside in his search, making him rend their Grace from reality, destroy that which was not tied to flesh but still very destructible before an ArchAngel's wrath.

He missed Sam, although he was unsure as to whether the affections were shared. At least a mutual sort of hatred permeated their bond. It was actually very upsetting for Lucifer. Would he eventually feel this way about everyone he loved? He loved his Father, still, despite his best efforts to forsake that love, and though he no longer obeyed, there was an inherent and undeniable love of God in the very whispers of his Grace, for the first purpose of Angels is to love God. To rid himself of that would be to rid himself of his Grace, a defining entirety of him. Also necessary for being condescending if he wanted to speak such ugly things of humanity. It was the same, too, with Michael. No matter his agonies and sadness at his brother's betrayal, there would always be a love untestable by even being cast out, for Michael was always his brother, regardless of what order his relationship to Michael took on - enemy before brother, it seemed. And now, Sam. He had expected that since he and Sam were essentially of the same quintessential core, they would be completed by each other, that he could trust Sam as he could himself. Every lie, every truth, every secret, every wish. But it seemed Lucifer had felt betrayed even by himself. He had struggled against his pride, of course. There was more to be gained from admitting rather than ignoring. He had vainly contemplated bowing. But he had found he couldn't make his vessel move, could not bow, not when he had seen the face of God and knew what true beauty was, he could not look at humans as anything more than half thought dreams. No doubt Sam still blamed himself for freeing Lucifer, too. As it was, a certain level of self loathing was evident in both parties, and therefore, a certain amount of general loathing. If he was to Sam and Sam was to him and he felt betrayed by Sam, it followed that he felt betrayed by himself, and vice versa for Sam.

It really just seemed that he would fail to have a stable relationship with someone without a little bit of anger.

He missed Sam. Being complete after existing alone and broken so long had been like dancing among the pinwheels of fireworks, it sparked and fizzed and washed over him and made him ache in the darkness that receded when he thought of Sam.

It wasn't fair, either, to forgive Sam, but finally, it seemed being tied to the wants and whims of a human had caught up with him and rather harshly disallowed any true contempt if he wasn't trying hard enough. The longer he spent thinking of Sam, the more he began to forgive him.

So he did not think of Sam.

Just as he had once refused to think of God, of Michael.

Lucifer realized quite by accident that the key to hating Sam lay not in anger, but in pain. The betrayal was always going to shock Lucifer, it seemed. So many he held absolute faith in failed him, again and again. When would he learn? But a certain sort of desperate envy rose up in him, for Sam had kept the love (if suspicion) of his father, and still had his brother. Until Sam had lost those things, he would never be Lucifer's. His soul was undeserving, though his body as a vessel was exact. And he then began to hate, for a resentment that was oil and black curled in his Grace at the thought of Sam walking above, no repercussions for the undoing of fate, whole and free.

And in the Cage, the memories halted, and then rewound. For Lucifer's priorities had changed.

He wished to conquer humanity second; and punish Sam Winchester first.

And so here the Cage failed, for it did not comprehend emotions as others would. Because Lucifer's hatred was tied to his pain, and as the Cage used pain to distract him, it began to recede from his more primordial memories, and focus instead on his newly acquired ones.

Of Sam.

To remind him and from there let fester a quiet rage that was as a white dwarf, immense and silent and seeming far away, bright but distant.

And Lucifer rewatched and relived and remembered. And then the Cage would play it all again.