Chapter 13: Carrying the Cross

Dean didn't think he'd be standing in front of Lucifer's Cage so soon. But there he was, facing the archangel again. Dean's ability to hit his head repeatedly against his own stupidity amazed even himself. Regardless of the Cage's bars between them, it was disconcerting.

Lucifer had opted to stay sitting in this visitation, having materialized a long ass Cleopatra couch. He leaned towards its side, head cradled within his folded arms while looking at Dean lazily.

Dean just bet Lucifer was a cat person.

"Are you coming to your senses and bargaining for something, Dean Winchester?" Lucifer asked, grin wide, and Dean felt the distinct shudder of fear run through him. Talking to Lucifer now felt like dealing with a predator playing with its prey. Lucifer smacked his lips. "The bargain is still the same, Dean: my freedom, for whatever the hell you want. And believe me, I can grant a lot of things."

Why couldn't he just deal with the less evil of brothers? Did he have to deal with bordering on insane Lucifer?

Lucifer gave a tutting sound. "Now, now, Dean. I've never been evil, just sorely misunderstood."

"Yeah, okay, rule number one: this here, is my personal mind-space, and you're not allowed in it." Dean motioned with his finger drawing a small circle around himself.

Lucifer raised his palms up in surrender. "Whatever you want, Winchester. And what is that, exactly?" He brought his hands together in anticipation.

"I want the string of Pharzuph, you extracting a pinprick of my blood, and your grace." Dean shrugged, as if to imply that the entire thing was rather easy. It was probably easy enough for Lucifer. Castiel had labored for it in a matter of days; Lucifer probably needn't be bothered for more than a few seconds.

"This tastes like a spell," Lucifer said slowly, sitting up to attention despite the lazy smile never leaving his face. "I can take the string, and since you're quite willing, I can manage the blood, but you can't take my grace without entering the Cage."

That wasn't happening any time soon. Castiel might have opened a crack and lifted Sam out of the Cage, Death might have relieved Lucifer of Sam's soul, but Dean wasn't anything close to power with those two beings. Entering the Cage would be more torture than staying in Hell for forty years. "No can do."

"Be reasonable," Lucifer snapped, standing up from the couch. "My grace cannot leave this Cage; it's the definition of this prison. So either you come and pick it up or find something else to power your spell."

"Your wings then," Dean bargained.

Lucifer grimaced in distaste. "I shall grant you my feather. It should be enough for whatever idiotic plan you've got."

Well, an archangel's feather probably had the same amount of power as a seraph's grace. Power seemed to grow exponentially from one circle to the next in Heaven's hierarchy, so it would have to do. "What do you want?"

"What have I always wanted, Dean Winchester? The Apocalypse." Lucifer smiled, lifting up a goblet that he'd created and filled it with blood-red wine. "Freedom."

"That still ain't happening," Dean said, because there were some deals that he didn't ever mean to make. And that was one of them.

"Yes, yes, I know," Lucifer nodded in acknowledgement, swirling the goblet thoughtfully. "You do realize that you're missing the point of bargaining, yes? You named your price and I've accommodated it, then I name my price so that we can reach for compromise. You cannot tell me no after I'm willing to listen to your plight."

"There are some things I ain't willing to compromise on and the Apocalypse is one of them," Dean said, decision firm, arms crossed in his chest and resolute.

Lucifer shook his head. "You Righteous Men, there's no point in bargaining with you, is there? Not even for that little curiosity you brought here? How about if you promise to be reincarnated as my vessel in your next life?"

Another negative was already forming in his lips before Lucifer interrupted, "Remember, Dean, I still need your consent before I can truly posses you. You have been unwavering in this, the entire time. You are only promising to be reincarnated as a vessel; it will still be up to you to decide to accept me or not. With your rather obstinate talent to be stubborn, I am sure my work will be harder with you, rather than Sam. Furthermore, I am still inside this Cage, and I would need to be free of it to work on tempting you."

Sam, well if he can take out the burden of being a vessel from Sam that was just good all around right? And Dean has held out on Michael this entire time, over Dad even. "How do I know that all of this works, that this bargain would work?"

"Dean, I am an archangel." Lucifer sounded offended that Dean would even question him. "I am still bound to my word, especially here in Shehaqim. Besides, you get all of the things that you request now. I will get your promise in the unknown future when you do decide to get reincarnated. You get more out of this than I do, whereas I don't even know if you're planning to be reincarnated at all."

The angel did have a point. It was a sad day in Heaven when Lucifer started making sense. "Yeah, sure, quick question. Abbadon and Crowley are holding elections on who's gonna be the next King of Hell, who're you gonna vote for?"

Lucifer blinked at the non sequitur but answered all the same, "That should be easy: Crowley." Lucifer paused, waiting until he was sure that Dean's attention was on him. "Because I'd vote for someone whose ass is easier to kick into the next Apocalypse."

Dean laughed to cover the deep uneasy feeling that was permeating in his gut. But hey, he was backed into a corner. There was no way that he could get the Pharzuph or any fallen angel here in Heaven, and he couldn't access anyone's grace either. Metatron was a big fan of humanity, so he wasn't going to be able to be a substitute for the last ingredient, and Dean suspected Metatron was a tad less naïve and trusting than Cas was.

"Yeah, okay, you got a deal." The words still left a sour taste in Dean's mouth. "I promise to get reincarnated as your next vessel if and when I want to be reincarnated, if you get me the string of Pharzuph, a pinch of my blood, and one of your primary feathers, but only if the spell works."

"Human, you sorely test my patience." Lucifer didn't shout, but he managed to connote fury in the tightness of his eyes, the stark brightness of the Cage and the sudden intense flickering of the Cage's bars. "It's not my problem if you fuck up."

"Yeah, well fuck you very much too," Dean retorted. Dean, however, wasn't above shouting; and he was shouting plenty. "It's quality control. How the hell should I know if you got the right string? And besides I need your grace, not a fucking feather. How should I know if your lazy ass substitution is going to fucking work?"

There was a stretch of silence, with Dean wondering if Lucifer was going to take the bait or not. Lucifer had other chances to get gullible fools and he was practically forever. Dean only had Lucifer,that was saying something. Lucifer let out a predatory smile. "Do you still know how to get to the Cage in Raki'a—the second circle?" Lucifer waited for the nod before continuing, "I'll give you all you need once you're there. I'll even extract the blood there. I promise I won't leave anything nasty behind."

With that, the lines of the Cage collapsed and it was a gaping hole with the distinct netting over it again. Dean took a deep breath to steady himself. This was one of the dumbest things he had ever done in his life, ranking a close second to selling his soul, but before working with Crowley.

oOo

Dean discovered that getting to the second circle of Heaven was a lot easier than finding Lucifer's Cage. Raki'a still was a mess of prison cells that felt so close to a fucking maze that it had Dean's brain reeling. Dean took the first corridor, planted his hand on the wall, and kept turning right, even with the dead-ends. Dean's dad had always told him that if he put his hand against the wall, it's the wall he's following and not the hallway: he looked at it as a dented wall, not as a hallway with a dead-end.

It might have taken longer, but at least he knew that he wouldn't be doubling back, and that he'd be walking through all the corridors. He hoped that these cells were finite, rather than the third heaven's always expanding bull crap, because other wise, he'd be stuck there searching until god knows when.

It was close to a miracle then, when he started feeling the tingling sensation in his bones that he'd come to associate with Lucifer's Cage. That or he was getting gas again, and since it'd seriously been way too long since Dean had some decent food to begin with, he highly doubted it was that.

It was confirmed by Lucifer's annoyingly smug voice welcoming him with, "It took you long enough."

Dean flipped him off with an easy gesture, before standing in front of the Cage and eyeing the string that Lucifer was—of all things—playing cat's cradle with. It was blood-red and faintly glowing, tied around the smallest finger of Lucifer's right hand.

"That the string of Pharzuph?" Dean asked dubiously, because it was in him to doubt.

"One of many," Lucifer confirmed smile playing on his lips. "Tore it out of Seth and Maggie. It's rather red-string of fate-ish now that I've held it."

"Really, referencing angelic rom-coms to me?" Dean scoffed holding out his hand and Lucifer flicked his finger, the string flying out of the Cage and into Dean's waiting hand with the gesture.

"Your definition of rom-com needs improvement," Lucifer admonished. Dean decided against flipping him off again, because that would just be one fuck you's too many and decided to tell Lucifer where he could shove it with thought-speak. Lucifer seemed vastly amused at the thought. "Much as I'd like to regale you with the entire movie that's your tragic life story waiting to happen, I do have to play fight with Michael again. He can't do anything in this Cage without me. So step up, give me access, and let's get this done."

Dean held out his arm, which Lucifer eyed in distaste. "Is there a problem with getting blood from this?" Dean demanded, because he's had enough of Lucifer's bull and he'd donated plenty of blood for spell-work, thank you very much.

"Blood is less potent from the vein. You do want this spell to work, seeing as you've traded away your entire reincarnation for it, I assume?" Lucifer was all patience and smiles and Dean did not trust it one bit. "Besides, you're expecting me to extract something corporeal from your spiritual unit. I need room to flex my prowess. I need an artery."

Dean slapped his palm over his neck and glared at Lucifer. "There's no fucking way I'm bearing my neck to you, so you can just kiss that thought good-bye."

Lucifer raised an eyebrow, and then shrugged. "I could get it in other places." His eyes travelled to Dean's groin and stayed there. Dean suddenly felt like he had the hives. Lucifer ogling him was driving him crazy.

"Arm or no deal, asswipe," Dean demanded, sticking his arm as close to the Cage as he could manage. In the third heaven, the Cage barely allowed Lucifer to pass, in the second circle Lucifer could manage to let his fingers slip through. It did amaze Dean that Lucifer actually wanted this deal.

"Yes, human, remind me how much less I am getting in this deal so that I can renege. It's sorely tempting," Lucifer threatened before grabbing Dean's wrist and pulling it through the bars.

Dean had a moment of panic before he was struggling and trying to pull his arm back out. In the moment that his arm passed through the gaps in the bars of light, images of his arm returning to him hacked in pieces were bombarding his head. It was so much more disturbing when Lucifer lifted Dean's wrist to his mouth and Lucifer sucked. It renewed Dean's struggles to try and force his hand free until the fallen angel released Dean's wrist. Dean stumbled back as he stared at the perfect set of puncture points on his skin and realizing belatedly that it had fucking hurt.

He released a few more choice curses before he looked up to see Lucifer smiling and holding out a bottle of bright cherry red blood in his hands. "Properly typed and crossmatched, type Dean Winchester positive with a distinct flavor of—" Lucifer licked his lips in gusto. "—angelic longing? Vessel disease?"

"You crack me up sometimes," Dean muttered as he checked his wrist again, the bite marks already fading. "I said a pinch! You a blood-sucker now?"

"Not even close. It's so easy to get in your headspace, Dean, I couldn't resist." Lucifer shrugged nonchalantly, waving the bottle of Dean's blood in the air, mostly to taunt, but also to show Dean that he did have it. Extraction by weird ass angelic-vampire teeth. Dean repressed another shudder at the thought. "More is always better, I always say, and you have enough for a second batch."

Lucifer pushed the bottle out of the Cage, Dean still eyeing him shiftily. Lucifer reprimanded him, "Relax. We're two-thirds of the way through. So distrustful."

Dean was already regretting going through with this deal. He wanted to go immediately to the Tree of Life and just bathe in the Falls. It might not clean out his soul of Lucifer, but it might give him some comfort.

Lucifer flared out his wings, all six pairs, and with burning, shining light that Dean was sure would have killed him if he was still corporeal. Dean was made to hold an archangel, but the Lightbringer was light personified and it was blinding. "You've never seen wings, have you?" Lucifer chuckled at the begrudging awe that Dean must be showing.

Lucifer got a hold of his largest wing, folded the wrist, and wrapped it around his torso so he could reach it better.

"I've seen Cas', dick," Dean retorted, unimpressed.

"And how was that, Cas' dick?" Lucifer asked in mild curiosity as he brushed through his feathers and hummed. He was straightening the feathers as he passed, moving over the primaries and the coverts as if wondering which, of all the feathers he had, he would give to Dean.

Dean snorted. "We're down to crude humor now?"

Lucifer paused stroking his greater primaries, a ghost of a smile in his face. "You just make it so easy, Dean."

Dean couldn't deny that he had really walked into that one. Still. "Get this: we're not friends. This here, it's not even a business partnership. I need things, you get it, and I pay you. It's a transaction." Dean's shoulders tensed as Lucifer eyed him over playing with his feathers, oddly intimate, and weirdly what Dean imagined angel-porn would look like. Not that he'd admit to imagining angel-porn ever.

Lucifer chose to ignore his outburst then settled on one of the largest and brightest of his primary feathers and tested its veins against his fingertips. "You haven't actually seen Castiel's wings. Even these are not true wings, they are how your mind infers what in essence is grace and celestial intent built-in and contained into a three-dimensional sphere. Castiel probably showed you shadows of what they were. Had he shown them to you in truth you'd have been blinded. I'm sure your pretty green eyes have been with you up until your sad untimely death."

Which reminded Dean of the first time he and Cas met: Cas' true voice had made his ears bleed . But no, he wasn't interested in Angel Anatomy 101. Especially not from Lucifer. "Hurry it up. Sometime between now and before the next Apocalypse preferably. But mostly now."

"I could never understand what you see in Castiel," Lucifer sounded out the angel's name in distaste. "Father's little favorite. The little angel that fucking could. I've never seen him display much of a personality, he's never been particularly bright, and he has no super powers other than the occasional smiting of demon—and even that has been over used as a plot-device, not to mention outliving its usefulness since you've stumbled on leviathan. He's always needed you. He's a needy little worm, isn't he? Even this, opening the Gates, you're doing for him. He's even managed to get all the archangels attention on him at some point."

"What are you, a troll?" Dean spat out, and on some level, he understood that Lucifer was doing this to get a rise out of him. And wonders of wonders, it was working. Cas was theirs because of his friendship; he's needed because he's family, despite his flaws. It was something that Lucifer could never understand.

"Obviously, if I wanted naïve and clueless I would have gotten a puppy and choked it to death." Lucifer tugged on the large feather, a pearl dropped where the feather had loosened, and the wings disappeared all together. The instant the feather was free and in Lucifer's palm it glowed brightly, pulsing with light once before settling. Lucifer closed it in a fist and then slowly opened his fingers to show a bottle filled with what appeared to be thunderclouds, snow, and fog, if something like that can be forced in a small space and bottled.

Lucifer then flicked his finger again and the bottle flew from his care to Dean, who barely caught it with both hands. "You have what you came for, Dean Winchester. Now go do that silly spell of yours before your ingredients lose potency. I will be waiting."

Dean couldn't get out of there fast enough.

oOo

Dean did end up bathing in the waterfalls under the Tree of Life. He needed Lucifer-decontamination because dealing with Lucifer three times in a row, twice of which without Michael as a buffer made him feel dirty.

That and washing in the sparkling clear waters of the falls was awesome. He had learned that the falls distinguished between "Dean bathing there" and "Dean passing souls for reincarnation" before while he and Ash had been horsing around in the Garden.

It was still all kinds of awesome that the Tree gave in to most of Dean's wishes. The Garden molded itself to a beach with a high surf and big waves, when Dean asked for it. It was impressive as hell, but Dean usually settled on the botanical gardens. It was called a garden for a reason.

When that was done, Dean decided to find a space to cast the spell. He definitely wasn't going to do it in the Garden because anything that went awry in the Garden might harm the Tree and Dean wasn't willing to risk that.

So he ended up crafting a separate heaven from all the other heavens, making it self-contained and more like little sandbox where he could work. His very own craft-room; who would've thought?

It was easy to find the edge of the unknown plane of the third heaven. It was also surprisingly accessible, especially with the help of the Impala and a few of the Enochian sigils that Ash had once written down and left in the glove compartment of the Impala for easy reference.

After that, it had taken just a few minutes to imagine and then build up a small, demolish-able part of Heaven. Dean put together a sort of Stonehenge in the middle of a beaten path, just off the main road to stir up the ingredients. Once he finished making his sandbox, Dean left the Impala out on the interstate, which was doubling as Dean's axis mundi, and entered the cleared out space. The space was built with stone, sand, open air, and a small, stone workbench. He set down some of the things he whipped up and began to work on his little magic formula.

Dean rolled his fingers to conjure up chalk. He then meticulously copied down what Ash had given him while he was still recouping from Charis and Metatron. Ash had given him the Enochian words for purity and forgiveness. Dr. Badass threw in the word love because it was apparently the working theme for Metatron's Spell and it couldn't hurt.

Once the entire base for the spell-work was written down on the massive stones, he fashioned a large bowl made of iron. The hunter set the iron bowl on the stonework before lighting candles, all conjured out of nowhere and all working just fine.

He tugged out the string from his pocket and put it in the bowl, followed by a dollop of red blood. Dean rubbed a thumb over his wrist before he pulled out the shining snow globe that was Lucifer's feather slash grace.

Once he poured the ingredients into the mixing bowl, it literally snowed for a few moments on the concoction, before the entire thing froze, melted, then started swirling on its own, all with the same eerie light that Dean associated with grace.

Then it suddenly stopped, and all the ingredients fizzled down, evaporated until not a trace of the grace was left.

Dean stared at the mess that was the makeshift workroom, where he'd crafted this largely made-up spell. Sure, he understood that it was mostly done on the fly, last-minute and he didn't know what the hell he was doing, but he'd expected something flashier than the small fizzing of everything to nothing. It felt reminiscent of the time they'd mixed up stuff for The Killing of Dick Roman. (That still felt like a title of a sordid gothic penny novel)

He could feel the frantic beating of his heart, which was still a novelty, because dead and beating heart don't usually go hand in hand. It largely told him that he was nervous as fuck. He held his breath, waiting for a flicker, a light show, a sign from God—anything that would signify that his little scavenger hunt around heaven had worked—because the alternative was that he'd failed and that just wasn't an option.

He waited for as long as he could, until he dropped his head in defeat and had to admit that yes, it was another one for the failed record books. He gulped up the air that he didn't need, forcing even breaths to slowly calm his nerves.

Temporary set back then, because he couldn't take this as a loss and if there were Winchester words, "die trying" definitely fit the bill.

He swiped his hand against his hair and sighed before leaving the sizzling mess of nothing in the middle of the nameless highway in Heaven that suspiciously looked like I-90, cobbled together in its fake Stonehenge that Heaven was slowly reabsorbing, its function done. Dean walked to the Impala to take him back to his corner of Heaven, where he could sulk and lick his wounds.

It took him more than nine hours by guesstimate to return to his personal patch, and that was saying something for his state of mind, because, as Tessa pointed out, time was a variable in Heaven dependent on how much your soul can bear it.

By the time he was home, he was tired and needed to fall into the dreamless sleep of the dead. Although he didn't need the shut-eye to work, he craved the rest. He'd just gone through an emotional bender, thank you very much, and he wanted a vacation. It'd just be his luck if Ash came up with something on his radio in a few hours.

As soon as he reached the lake, he ignored the clouds that were obscuring the sky; it was downcast and gloomy and not really conducive to anything but lying down, head buried under a pillow with comforters and a hot chocolate. Which was more reminiscent of Christmases before the fire that killed his mother, rather than the calm before storm but what the hell, right? It fit well with his mood and he just wanted to send a big shout out saying "fuck you" straight to Metatron because Heaven was made to be something, surely something more than this.

Well, on the bright side, he didn't have to hold up his bargain with Lucifer, because he obviously gave faulty string, or he'd tainted the blood, or those ingredients just weren't right and Lucifer had just ignored it.

He tensed up when he noticed someone was sitting on his harbor and what the fuck man? He had been assured that people who could actually travel between heavens was a rare trait.

It wasn't Ash' mullet hair and if Sam had died and gone straight to raise hell in Dean's heaven then he'd be a moose in Dean's chair. But though this person was unexpected, there was something overly familiar about the dark curls and the eerily still reflection.

Dean cautiously walked to his harbor, because unknown entities showing up in his corner of the world rarely meant good tidings. He winced when he stepped on a large branch, because seriously, his heaven was sabotaging his stealth and he checked the intruder.

His visitor was standing now, head cocked to the side in small inquiry, and Dean's mind had only been able to process the parts and not the whole. The perplexed knot of a wide forehead, hidden by thin eyebrows, roughly shaved stubble camouflaging perpetually chapped lips... and the deepest set of blue eyes shining with the unnatural light of grace.

Dean broke into a small smile, a ray of light filtered through the thin wisps of clouds covering his heaven. He tried to come up with something witty (or even dumb) to say, but ended up reaching out and assuring himself that yes, this was actually real and not really a hallucination borne out of an already fucked up day.

"Hello, Dean."