PLEASE NOTE: This is the THIRD chapter I have posted tonight - be sure to catch the first two ('To Hold On' and 'How Little You Care') before you read this. Otherwise you're going to be sooooo confused! ;)

The big confrontation, folks. And a clash of gods. Things get kind of wild. Hopefully it makes sense. ;)

Btw, I know some of you think Lucifer is back. Not quite. ;) That chapter before was a moment of incredible healing for Samael, and a connection to something much more. And that's all I'll say without wanting to spoil anything that's about to happen.

Hope you enjoy. Hope you'll leave a comment, let me know what you thought. Regardless, I'm incredibly thankful you're reading this :)

You are done here.

The Third stood in the heart of a sun, his being bombarded with burning waves of light, and fixed a smile on his face.

It was hard. He didn't feel like smiling.

Because he was terrified.

The being in front of him wore no form he could grasp or manipulate. He could not find the shape of the being's mind to suggest or force his will.

"Fake dad?"

You are done here.

"Neat trick, Father. How'd you do it?"

He reached out, hoping to hasten the 'letting go' he'd started on the Second's schoolmates. The distraction might give him time to regroup. And of course, he'd be finishing what he'd started.

He'd never had a chance to start a project before, so it was important for him to finish.

But... they weren't there?

Why couldn't he find them?

Another wave of searing heat slammed into him, dissolving the first layer of his skin, before he managed to quickly grow it back.

Wincing, he reached out for Trixie, knowing he'd dropped her to his right, and sought the smothered essence of the Second.

But she was gone as well.

WHERE ARE THEY! he roared back, trying to fold space around the being, hoping to contain the angel who'd become so much more, to crush him and reclaim his moment.

He needed to finish this! He needed the Second to see!

And he screamed as his body was dissolved completely.

Reforming, he staggered back, and raised his hand.

"Your father did this to me," he moaned. "Just like he did terrible things to you. We've both suffered by him!"

The light began to fade, and the being before him became clearer.

The copy of Lucifer, wings outstretched, incandescent, was suspended above the stage.

His features, outlined in light, betrayed nothing.

The Third tried to crush him, to make the matter of his being malleable and extrude it into infinity.

Samael merely watched him.

"How are you doing this?" the Third whispered, seeking the edges of Samael's mind, as he had before when he'd forced him to hand over the Second. But his manipulations unraveled and fell to nothing.

Samael lowered, and where his feet touched the stage, the wood burned, tendrils of smoke snaking up from each step.

The Third moved back, hating himself for doing so.

"He took the First from me," he said, his hands raised in the only defense he had left, as Samael stepped nearer.

His eyes grew wet. Because what he said now wasn't layered with anything but truth. And it hurt.

"My race, angel... that of your father and I... we must join with another to spark the creative force that fuels everything we do. I was to join with the First. I sang my songs in frequencies that don't exist anymore, in the nothing before this reality your father made. The joining was to be mine."

His human voice broke.

He'd never felt that before.

Inconvenient. Unwanted.

He stared up with Chloe's brown eyes into eyes of pure light, as Samael drew closer still. "I would have made so many beautiful things, dad. I was going to create worlds of such wonder. Whole realms of life that would have brought you... and me... to awe. Good things. Where there was such joy. I was going to do so much..."

Samael's molten hand reached to grasp his shoulder, burning swiftly through his flesh.

The Third tried to flee, to blink from this space into another, as the remade father of his human body pulled him into an embrace.

But it was fruitless.

Pointless.

He was dissolved, screaming, his flesh evaporated, leaving behind his true form - a being of pure energy, radiant with sworls of purple and azure light.

I was going to do better

Samael held him still.

I know

The Third began to sense his own unraveling, as this angel - whatever he had impossibly become - began to blaze again, his light overwhelming the Third's own.

He did not understand.

He did not want to end.

He had simply wanted a chance to begin.

"Brother! STOP!"

The sundering abruptly ended, leaving the Third dimmed and flickering, the remaining essence of his consciousness scrambling to catch up.

That voice.

Reality began to mean something to him again, and the world resolved into forms that made some sense.

But not much sense, because...

Uncle?

It was! Amenadiel was standing in front of them, his hand smoldering on Samael's shoulder. Wearing the same clothes he'd fallen through that tear in the universe in?

Didn't I kill you? the Third mumbled in his own tongue, about as confused as a god-like being could be.

"You can stop now, Luci," Amenadiel said, before pulling his hand away, red and blistered. "It's over."

Samael's form faded again, until the light was gone completely.

Frowning, he reached out to grasp Amenadiel's hand, before pulling away to stare over the angel's shoulder.

Amenadiel stared at his unburnt hand, confusion rippling from him in waves.

Someone clapped and made a bright, happy sound of utter gibberish.

The Third finally grasped the presence of others, and as he reached out to understand them, his being began to flicker and flare rapidly.

Because the child, Amenadiel's awful spawn, was being held by a tall, long-haired woman.

Who wasn't really a woman.

Beyond her burned a wide tear in the fabric of the Second's universe.

The Third shimmered. He began to pulse in vibrant cerulean waves. He tried to speak, and failed, his energies scattering nervously.

The First

It... it is you

The woman smirked, bouncing Charlie in her arms.

"I heard you made quite the mess."

I was upset by my imprisonment, I sought-

"You tried to kill my son," she said over his crashing tones, silencing him. Grasping the child's little hand, she wiggled it fondly as her human smile grew very sharp. "And my grandson."

I acted... unwisely. His light dimmed dramatically. I must confess I killed your daughter, Remiel, in my misguided attempt to hurt the Second. I apologize.

The woman froze momentarily, her eyes still fixed on Charlie.

"Amenadiel, take your son," she said quietly. "Lucifer, stand back from the Third."

"I am not Lucifer."

The woman blinked and stared at Samael.

The Third started hiccuping indigo.

I may have also played a part in the irrevocable destruction of Lucifer. Which was not my intention, honestly, I sim-

"HUSBAND!" the woman roared, handing Charlie back to Amenadiel, who was staring at Samael in shock.

The Third wished now for nothing more than his dissolution to continue, and considered trying to rope Samael into resuming.

It is also... possible that I caused the Second to forget his true nature, and triggered the breakdown of this entire reality, but-

STOP SPEAKING, the First snapped.

The Third's colors shifted to mud.

Samael shifted reality in the slightest amount, in some way the Third failed utterly to grasp.

Until he suddenly did, as the people he had killed were revealed slumped in their seats - and the rest had run and were still running through the doors, the halls. Healed and whole now.

Samael had played with his mind. Had hidden the vulnerable from his senses.

How?

To the far left of the stage, the Second, still wearing the guise of the girl, crouched over the body of the boy the Third had killed.

She was crying.

The Third released a sigh of pure white.

He had done what he came to do.

Reaching out with his muted energies, he undid the memory bindings he'd placed on the Second's being.

Remember

The girl stiffened, drawing in a long, strangled breath.

"Stand back," the First said softly.

The Third prepared, sending out jagged rays of silver. His destruction was imminent - too weakened from Samael's workings, his ability to deflect the Second's attack too compromised.

But there was one thing he could do, as he watched the form of the girl turn, a small human rage twisting her face before her form dissolved in a roaring explosion of light.

He sang.

He sang to the First, the songs he had first weaved for her eons ago in the void. He sang them, twining them with shifting streams of gold and lavender that danced and shimmered through the air towards and around her.

It had been a promise then, one he had thought she accepted.

He would die making that promise again, and that was fine.

The Second's attack was as brutal as he had expected - pierced by the jagged edges of splintered realities, and siphoned in streams through gravity-thick dimensional tears, he screamed in the voice of his race, shuddering in waves of crimson.

Samael's undoing had been so much kinder.

His consciousness flickered and began to dissipate.

THAT IS ENOUGH, the First growled.

The Second was torn away from the Third's fading form - the dull twinkling light of a dying star.

And when his enemy rushed him again, seeking to finish what was started, the First stepped in the way.

STOP OR I WILL MAKE YOU

The Second flared in anger. HE KILLED OUR CREATIONS

The woman sighed.

"He killed your creations, husband. I have little care for the lives of your humans." She folded her arms in front of the blazing, raging form of the Second.

Her head tilted thoughtfully. "Except for Dan of course." She looked back at the diminished Third, an eyebrow arched dramatically. "You didn't hurt Dan, did you?"

The Third could barely speak - thoughts rose and fell, losing consistency and meaning. But he did his best.

Made him... sleep... more?

The First smiled.

"Oh, I'm glad. He was always so... tense."

HE KILLED OUR DAUGHTER!

The entire building shuddered with the Second's rage - the effect mitigated by the Second himself, as the Third felt the ever expanding resolving the Second was doing across this dimension, restoring stability and identity across every level and facet of life.

It was a little disappointing. He'd hoped for a more lasting destruction.

The boy's body lay where the Second had left it though. Eyes open and staring.

That would have to do.

A last ray of fractured reality speared through the center of his being, thrust there by the Second.

FOR MARK

And the Third flickered in bright sparks of delighted yellow.

As his consciousness faded to nothing.