Summer passed, and Sam got used to being only a small part of not-Sam. Of Lucifer. He didn't mean to. He'd hoped that his soul would keep screaming forever, if only to be a mild irritation to the other, but he must have gotten tired. Furthermore, there was so much else to think of: it was always leaving Dunwich, using something that could have been wings, if Sam looked at it properly through the clouds; they traveled. The giddiness was unfeigned. It wasn't Sam's, but Lucifer had been trapped somewhere—in the deep underneath, where it had been cold. For a very, very long time. Unfortunately murders followed them. When it went to the Louvre to see what all the fuss with the Mona Lisa was about, it became annoyed that they wouldn't let it up close. The concept of a roped-off area made no sense to it, and the glass on top of the painting reflected the light wrongly.

Okay, so humans have done some things right, Lucifer admitted. It hadn't ruined the painting, or even touched it; with a kind of care Sam would only associate with fussy curators. Peered close, though. But they walked out the door and Sam couldn't help but notice the disembowled guards and tourists; broken cameras turned upward, the reflection of not-Sam caught in the round lens. It was the same with the churches; and the skyscrapers, and the Great Wall of China; open onto a vast mist-covered expanse on the real rim of the world. It reminds me of the one we made, Lucifer said, seeming almost shocked into delight. My brothers and I. To keep out the things with teeth, and the night. It flapped upward, floating like a soap bubble under the diffuse sunlight, holding out its hands as it dove, and spun. But most times it was forests older than those around Dunwich, and the deep blue and the darkness and pressure under the sea, and mountaintops—real mountaintops, where snow glittered bright and the few animals that lived were wary, clever things. But it would never go in caves. The caves reminded it of the underneath, and it was only when it had slid between and ended up in one by accident that Sam realized it wasn't so different from him at all; it had terrors, too. But its terrors were comprised of the cold dark walls and the lightlessness; the smell of the ground, crypt-like, from the mouth of hell, and it curled up, hands on its knees and eyes watching, glowing with a blue-bright light and quiet, so quiet, while it said the walls the walls are looking at us. Sam stay where you are. I'll protect you. Don't look at the walls. The bars. Don't look or it will eat you. (I don't want to be here anymore.)

We're not there, Sam said. It's just a cave. Listen. Take your wings—no?—okay, um, here, let's get up, yeah, let's walk, we'll get out eventually even though he knew how people could get lost in caves, die without seeing the sun again, and if he'd had breath it would have been frozen from him then. But they did walk and at last it seemed to jog something loose in its head and it said, I don't like caves—just that; 'I don't like caves' but with the realization that it was just a cave and it could get out, it opened its wings and slipped between, and they were in Dunwich again, in the empty room that was safe.

/

Dean didn't seem to notice that there was something wrong with Sam, though there was a look in his eyes like he was trying to, whenever Sam was around. At least Castiel kept him happy. Dean was not, quite, as human as he had been before, Sam noticed, as though the blood had been affecting him on a level deeper than the molecular. It wasn't even the first thing Sam could think of to complain about, though; and the list of things he had to complain about got so long sometimes that it became nothing but a static-filled wail, which would make Lucifer say hush until even his mind-voice was under the soil. So he tried not to complain. Instead, he looked; there was nothing else he could do anymore. Sometimes, he would follow Lucifer's gaze across his brother's broad shoulders until he felt something like a prickle of unease; noticing his brother's mouth which Lucifer couldn't help but think would be better filled with brier roses, sharp-thorned and beaded with blood until he choked, and choked. It's not so different to the way you look at him, Lucifer said dismissively when Sam objected; it's all love. Which only proved to Sam that it had a very different definition of love than the human one. Something a little more like being a gardener, or a collector of figurines; sometimes it would appear behind the corner while Dean and Cas were making love and watch them with red-glittering eyes. Dean never noticed, but Cas did, and he would bend away from them as though in a storm, protecting Dean behind his fragile human shell until Lucifer laughed.

You're so cute with your toys, Lucifer said.

Thank you, Sam said to Castiel; because he saw how easily Dean could have been pulled in between with the fervor of Lucifer's gaze, where he would be torn apart as surely as Sam had been, with the bite of wolves. Even as, day by day, he needed the protection less; and began to glow on a spectrum not visible to the human eye.

/

Even as summer passed and it grew closer to Halloween; to the change in seasons that came to Sam first somewhere in the air. Bobby was in Arkham. He'd tracked the signs and sightings of not-Sam, and knew the horror was hiding in Dunwich. He was resting in a motel with wardings on the walls and salt across the windows and door, when Sam arrived. Lucifer wanted to kill him.

Sam had been trying not to scream, but it had been hard to stop, and it was only when he saw Bobby's worn, tired face in the sudden lamplight that he did stop. Lucifer stopped, too. They stood at the foot of the bed while Bobby calmly opened a book and began to read. The exorcism was long, and it was for demons, which Sam wasn't. It was only when the reading finished and they were still there that Bobby began to look rattled. He looked even more rattled when Sam stepped out of the devil's trap painted on the ceiling and came up to him.

"I'm offended you think that will work," Lucifer said.

But he loves us, said Sam. It's only because he loves us.

This gave Lucifer pause.

"You're the father," he said. "And you came all this way to bring them back." He laughed a little, bitterly. "Of course."

"Just kill me and get it over with, you bastard," Bobby said in a hoarse whisper. But his hand was creeping to a hex bag hidden under his pillow.

Sam waved a hand and stopped Bobby's movement. He breathed, in and out, though he didn't need to, and felt something prickling in his eyes that felt uncannily like tears. He comes after us, Lucifer said. And my father is still gone.

It was heavy. The lights in the room flickered; a static noise filled the room; thunder rolled outside and it began to rain in the night, deep and unseen.

This is my mercy, Lucifer said. He stepped forward, put two fingers to Bobby's forehead and the old hunter sagged back onto the bed, peaceful in sleep. He would wake up soon, not remembering what he was hunting, or why. He would be sad to remember how his two adopted sons had died; how he'd watched their bones burn to ashes himself; the brightness of it.

/

It was Halloween, in the evening before it got really dark. Dean was drinking tea, and he was asking Sam if he remembered when they were kids; going round on the one night they could get free food without anyone looking at them sideways. Candy, of course. But also apples, glistening with caramel; popcorn balls; "shit they don't do anymore," Dean said, keeping up the reminiscences all on his own, because Lucifer didn't have any memories of candy. He was holding a cup of Lipton that Cas had shoved down in front of him with a clatter and a sour-looking glare, and was warming his hands with it.

I don't really like Halloween, Sam admitted.

Castiel looked over at him curiously, his head tilted. And Dean looked between them, the thread of his words lost. For a moment, his brow furrowed; he struggled, as though with an impossibility. Then he took another sip of his own tea. It was barely tea, anymore; thick and sludgy with blood; and Cas was thin, and sleepy, like the cattle; hands shaking against a mug. He was making the quiet teakettle noise, thoughtlessly.

Then Dean's brow cleared. "What'd Sam say?" he asked Cas.

"He says he doesn't like All Hallows' Eve," Castiel said, startled into speech. "Perhaps it's because of the death of your mother."

Dean made a scoffing noise. "Can't be. I like Halloween. Candy. Like I said, Cas. I wish we could've gotten some. What kinda shitty town doesn't even have Halloween candy?"

"The kind that remembers," Lucifer said.

Dean looked over at him. "Yeah? Remembers what, hotshot?"

Lucifer shrugged. "How it was before. Before the walls were built and the keys turned in the locks. When it was easier to access the in between, and things slipped through them all the time. My brothers and I, we would fight things. Keep a running tally of who'd killed the most."

"Demons?" Castiel said.

Lucifer shook his head. "This was before demons. No, the others. The rest of the Old Ones." He smiled a little, abstractedly, at Castiel. "Some of you angels are so young. You barely remember yourselves."

Dean reached down to the grocery bag at his feet. "Guess I should do this now," he said. "Or there won't be time." He stared out the window into the deepening twilight, still, for a moment; haunted. Castiel took his hand. Dean looked over; smiled; then pulled the heavy cream and sugar out of the bag, and the apples, rolling onto the table, reds and greens bright under the single bulb from above; and Dean got up, banging pots and pans around, starting to put everything together, melt it. Lucifer stared at the apple in front of him, and the popsicle sticks.

"You push it in," Cas said. "Like this." He demonstrated: one perfect apple on a stick, like a severed head above the gates. This was Lucifer's memory; and Sam chided him for being morbid. The devil picked up the apple and tried to force a popsicle stick in it. It broke.

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