Precursor Note: I'm so sorry! I said I would post this like yesterday, but I got distracted and stuff and excuses that you guys don't really care about. But anyway, yes, I know I changed the lyrics a bit, but it just kind of fit better if the chapter titles were gender ambiguous, and so I replaced all the 'she's with 'you's (and then matched the verbal agreement). I guess if you do care about that, then you'll also have noticed that in no way am I putting the chapter titles in order of the lines in the actual song.

Also, I've got some Christmas holiday stuff in here, and if you get offended by any of it… well, sorry, but it is what it is.

Chapter 7

Even as You Run Away

Something was bothering Gabriel, and it was painfully obvious. Both Sam and Dean had asked him what was wrong, and the archangel had brushed them both off. Gabriel wouldn't tell Castiel or Mary what was going on either. Sam also had the faint suspicion that not even Lucifer knew what was driving Gabriel up the walls with anxiety.

He knew it had to do with whatever the two archangels had been up to while they'd kept Sam, Dean, Mary and Castiel away from the Bunker for over two weeks. Lucifer seemed to be doing better, but Sam couldn't say that anyone knew if Lucifer was truly getting better.

From what Sam had observed, the older archangel still had those moments when he just stopped. Then there were the times Sam would reference something he knew Lucifer had been there for just the other day, but Lucifer wouldn't know what Sam was talking about. It was... concerning.

On happier notes, however, a certain holiday season was upon them. Mary and Gabriel were once again conspiring, though some arguments over decorating were loud enough to make it from the kitchen to the game room, where Dean had convinced Sam to watch as he and Castiel co-oped through some multiplayer game or another. While Sam wasn't all that worried about the end result, he did have some concerns on how far his mother and Gabriel would take the seasonal decorating.

"Why does it have to snow? We live in a bunker! Having it snow in here wouldn't make sense—" Mary started to argue.

"So? Who cares? It's snow!" Gabriel cut her off. "I won't let it melt, and the temperature inside this place won't drop below seventy—"

"—Snow in an underground bunker is absurd—"

"—Aesthetics! It'll look cool—"

"—No, it'll mess up the rest of the—"

"—I'm telling you, it won't—"

Sam let out a sigh at their voices, tuning them out in favor of listening to the plot of the video game Dean and Cas were currently playing. Sam had been surprised to find Dean playing Minecraft of all games, but then he learned that it was Castiel who had insisted on playing the (admittedly children-targeted) game. A look from the angel kept Sam from commenting on just how domestic the scene was.

With all of the tension – as settled as some of it seemed to be since their three week field trip – in the Bunker, Sam understood that undue stress wouldn't help anyone, which was just another reason why he didn't tease Dean for playing Minecraft with his best friend. Of course, when Gabriel finally decided to drop by, there were pillows thrown in the archangel's direction for justified reasons. ("Do you not know how to build a house?" – "I'll show you how to build a friggn' house!")

Needless to say, antagonizing Dean hadn't been one of Gabriel's better ideas of the week. However, Sam did have to admit that the giant Christmas tree, which had mysteriously replaced the war room map-table the next day, was a nice touch. Mary was still working on some of her own decorations, but it was starting to look like Gabriel was in charge of the things that she couldn't do by herself – or basically, anything that couldn't be done by human means.

This also meant that by December 23 any room or area frequented by the residents of the Lebanon Men of Letters' Bunker was decorated for the Christmas season, not a square foot left untouched.

Sam had opened the door of his room that morning to find the hallway lined with actual wreaths, and hanging from each of the short strings on the wreaths was a little wooden star or a sterling silver snowflake or a red and white peppermint. On both sides of the hallway, where the wall met the floor, a cloth that closely resembled snow lined the edges along with holly leave clusters, staying away from the middle of the corridor but still making the hallway look holiday worthy.

Gabriel had certainly taken decking the halls seriously.

Sam had to take his statement back once he entered the library.

Gabriel hadn't messed with any of the books or the antiques that were on the shelves, but Sam was pretty sure it wasn't humanly possible to have decorated all of… this within the time Sam had gone to bed and when he'd woken up.

"Hey! Sam-a-lam!" Gabriel called down to him from where he was on the ladder next to the sixteen-foot tall tree. "You like?"

Moving slowly closer as he took it all in, Sam walked over to the tree. "Uh… don't you think this is a bit much?"

"Is it?" Gabriel asked after a pause, looking down at Sam once he had properly looped the white tinsel around the large tree. "Mary said it looked great."

Sam was suddenly reminded of the fact that he and Dean hadn't ever really had the best examples of what most Christmas holidays were like. It was now occurring to him that while, yes, last Christmas with just him, Dean, Mary and Cas was small and simple but heartwarmingly intimate, this was Mary and Gabriel organizing this year's Christmas. And if Sam recalled correctly, Gabriel was directly linked to a special occurrence that supposedly happened on December 25. Sam briefly wondered if Gabriel even appreciated the holiday for what it was supposed to be.

"Not really," Gabriel mused loud enough for Sam to hear him. "Ya know, you could at least try not to direct your thoughts at me while thinking about me."

"Sorry," Sam muttered, taking a seat in one of the library's chairs, which had been transformed into a cushion of Christmas cheer.

"It's fine. And technically December 25 wasn't even when the little guy was born. I mean, the Church didn't really know, so they just picked the date based on some 'calculations', and they were also competing with some of the pagan festivities going on during the season," Gabriel rambled as he wrapped another couple layers of tinsel around the tree.

Sam had read about that somewhere, and he supposed Gabriel would know when—

"Sorry to burst your bubble, but— hehe, not really."

With a blank expression, Sam stared at the archangel most associated to the birth of Christ.

"What?" Gabriel protested defensively. "I wasn't exactly paying attention to the date, and you humans have changed calendars like three times since then!"

"He's got a point," Lucifer's voice came from somewhere on the other side of the tree.

Sam startled a bit when he registered where exactly Lucifer was – leaning against the railing near the Bunker's main door. The other archangel had a large pile of Christmas tree lights and the rest of the tinsel beside him. Sam hadn't even realized that was where Gabriel was pulling the tinsel from, let alone that Lucifer had been the one passing it over the railing to him.

"And you're fine with all of this?" Sam asked the older archangel, leaning a bit to the side to get a better view of him.

Lucifer raised an eyebrow. "I don't particularly care since you aren't exactly celebrating the 'little guy's' birth or whatever."

Okay, so Sam could understand his reasoning, but was Lucifer fine with the celebrating part of the holiday? Sure, Lucifer had been cordial during the Thanksgiving dinner. Would it still be the same in two days after… well, that?

"Don't worry your pretty head over it, Sam," Lucifer said to him with a smirk. "I'm not going to ruin your little holiday."

That was not very reassuring, but Sam just went with it. "Um, do you guys know where Mom or Cas might be?"

"They're in the kitchen with Dean," Gabriel answered, stretching to get the tinsel to hook around a specific branch.

"Thanks."

~o-O-o~

Just like with the Thanksgiving thing, Dean had been a bit skeptical about decking everything out for Christmas and the New Year. Mary had quickly quashed those doubts. And between helping her make and put up the decorative details that she was taking care of, Dean was too busy to really worry any more than the occasional flare of panic that he was doing something wrong.

Eventually, Dean found himself with his mom and Cas making little Christmas treats. He wasn't sure what they were going to do with all of them, but when he snuck a couple of them into his mouth when the other two weren't looking, he decided that the treats tasted really good and that they were worth hoarding if there were leftovers.

So when Sam wandered in, Dean quickly finished swallowing the bite of snicker-doodle cookie that he'd had in his mouth. Sam gave him a suspicious look, to which Dean responded with an 'I didn't do anything' shrug. Disbelieving, Sam narrowed his eyes at him, but his attention was quickly drawn away by Cas, who bid Sam good morning.

Dean hid a smirk as Sam was soon voluntold into helping with the rest of the treats even though Sam insisted that he wouldn't be much help and would probably ice a batch wrong or something. Yeah, right. Sammy could whip up a potion like a pro; he could smear colored icing onto a couple cookies.

When an hour or so had passed, Mary suddenly asked, "How are Gabriel and Lucifer doing?"

Sam frowned, pausing in the middle of spreading some green icing on the tree-shaped cookie in his hand. "It looked like they were getting along fine when I saw them earlier," he said after a moment.

"Looks can be deceiving," Cas pointed out.

And as cliché as it may have sounded, there was a reason it was said so often. Dean couldn't even recall how many times the statement was proven true over the years. But then there were moments when everything was as it appeared. Moments like those were what really made it hurt when someone you thought you could trust stabs you in the back.

Bad thoughts, Dean. He steered his attention back to stirring batter.

But the most recent event that he could tag with the saying would have to belong to either of the last two hunts Sam had dragged them all on. The vampire nest hadn't been one but actually two nests, and neither had been small. Of course, they hadn't realized that until they got to the main town that was suffering from an abundance of vampires. Thankfully, Sam had insisted on Mary and Cas going with them on 'one big family trip'.

Then there was that stupid case over in Massachusetts. Not that the case was stupid, per se… more that it had taken them almost a week to figure out what was luring people into the wetlands wilderness. It didn't help that the locals had put it to the folks being drawn out into the swamps by ignis fatuus, which was some phenomenon produced by marsh gas getting ignited by lightning or something ("Swamp farts, Sammy. Say it with me: swamp farts."). But when yet another person was reported missing after a law enforcement warning, natural causes were firmly ruled out.

Plus, Sam admitted to Lucifer being the one to call the case in, so there was no way there was anything natural about the number missing person reports. And clearly Lucifer knew exactly what they were supposed to be hunting, but he didn't offer any helpful hints and directly avoided answering any of Sam's questions about the case. The archangel was messing with them in his own way (remarkably different yet similar to Gabriel's methods of 'helping' on a case). Still, it was refreshing to be on a case without any higher-power help – excluding Cas because he hadn't been sure of what they were against for a while too.

But then, by the fifth day, Cas – having gone paired up with Dean while Sam went with Mary out into the wetlands around the area where the majority of people had been before going missing – had suggested that it might be a will-o'-the-wisp, or ghost-light. Basically, it was a ghost of someone "doomed to haunt the marshes (wetlands/swamp) with only a light (torch/ember) for some misdeed, which may or may not have kept the soul out of Heaven but the deed wasn't enough to send him/her to Hell, so the soul just got stuck on Earth to do things that were bound to send him/her one way or the other".

Knowing that didn't help too much because none of them really knew how to get rid of the ghost since they didn't have any reference to whom the soul was. Day seven had them back out in the swamp, armed with the basics. In the end, however, Mary took the ghost out by forcing the ghost's 'light' (an orb-thingy that glowed – Dean didn't really get a good look at it) into the water and putting the light out. Cas said that it had sent the ghost to Hell as the light was the only thing keeping on Earth but the ghost's actions on Earth was bad enough to send it downwards.

The missing people were later found by the authorities to all have been drowned or eaten by wildlife.

Yeah, cheery hunt. A wet and mostly made up of miserable searches in a marsh kind of hunt, but Dean had to admit that it had been a bit cool in terms of variety. It wasn't everyday that you got to deal with a ghost that couldn't really do anything to you except get you lost in the vast wilderness of the Massachusetts wetlands with a glowing orb thingy.

And, hey, at least there hadn't been any tentacle monsters. That would have sucked.

Something smacked him on the back of his head. A jerking, sharp head turn showed his mom with a cloth towel ready to hit him again to get his attention. When she saw that he was now looking at her, she gave him a warm look and nodded to the bowl which had a couple batches worth of dough ready to be put in the oven.

Right, back to business.

~o-O-o~

It was a quiet night. Which was somewhat surprising, considering that it was the night after Christmas Day – long into the dark hours after the light festivities of the day. But, alas, 'partying' had taken its toll on the humans, and they were fast asleep in their rooms.

Many gifts had been given (to each, at least three or more presents were received). The gifts were taken back to the owner's respective room, and then dinner was served. Someone (no names shall be given, but both Dean and Gabriel stood rather close to the bowl of milk punch) spiked the eggnog. However, it was only when Lucifer tried it that they all knew it had been spiked… and more alcohol was added. The end result was, of course, the humans getting wasted by the end of the evening in true celebratory hunter style.

As an aside Christmas present, the angels agreed to save their hunter family from the inevitable hangovers that came with drinking copious amounts of alcohol.

By, perhaps, a strange occurrence of events, it had been Lucifer who actually received the most presents. Collecting several books from Sam, a brand new phone from Dean, an ugly sweater from Gabriel and some kind of stuffed animal resembling a cat from Castiel, Lucifer had a pile growing next to him as Mary presented him with her own gift to him. It was a scrapbook.

For a moment, Lucifer had been confused about what the point of a scrapbook was supposed to be, but when he opened the book to the first page…

"Hey, isn't that from when Mary went with you and Gabriel to that fair a couple towns over, like three months ago?"

The picture of Gabriel waving cotton candy in front of Lucifer's amused face was indeed from the time Mary offered to accompany the two archangels to the regional fair. The captured moment had been from when Gabriel was in the middle of trying to get Lucifer to try the cotton candy. Mary must have taken the picture while they were distracted.

As he turned the pages to see the test of the pictures, Lucifer noted that they weren't in any particular order and were loose enough to take out of their holders if he pleased. He supposed that Mary had done that on purpose so he could put the photos into an order of his choice. He also noticed that all (outside during the solar eclipse in August; at a homecoming parade that the town hosted every year or something; in front of the entrance gate to Disney World's Magic Kingdom; on the sand by the cold waters of the Pacific Ocean in California; and several more) but one of the pictures were dated during the time he'd spent with his brother in the Bunker.

On the last page was a photo of Lucifer and Gabriel Bennett.

Even Gabriel stopped in the middle of poking Sam to look at the picture as Lucifer brushed gentle fingers over the image. It was from that day by the river – some city festival had been going on and the boy had wanted to join the festivities. They were both smiling in the picture. Lucifer was pointing at something (a ferry on the river) with his other arm wrapped around the boy's shoulders, and Gabriel was mid-turn in looking to where Lucifer was pointing, eyes full of wonder at everything going on around them.

"I know you probably won't ever look at this again, but I hope maybe you'll remember the moments that go with these pictures."

Lucifer looked up to see Mary gazing at him with a caring smile. "I don't know what to say…"

"You're supposed to say thank you," Gabriel lightly teased with a carefree grin.

It truly lifted Lucifer's spirit to see his brother so relaxed – the most Gabriel had been since November. What really killed the archangel inside was that he knew he wasn't going to be able to keep this much longer. As wonderful as the day had been, night would soon fall. And it was going to be an eternal one.

He supposed that, at the very least, he got to be happy for once.

Lucifer wasn't giving up. He wasn't that far gone yet. He would still fight, that was simply in his nature. But he knew a losing battle when he saw one, and this wasn't something he could win.

Lucifer could tell that Gabriel knew what was wrong with him. It was the sad looks and the regretful glaze that covered those beautiful amber eyes whenever the younger archangel gained when he thought Lucifer wasn't looking that had given it away. Gabriel knew, and either he couldn't do anything to stop it or it was a task beyond reason. Either way, his little brother didn't want to tell him, and that was okay. It meant that whatever Gabriel had learned wasn't an option that he was willing to take.

With nothing left, what else could Lucifer do but let go?

A/N: I'm sorry. This is going to get painful, even for me. I'm already dying just from having to imagine the scenes coming up. My little sister was glaring at me when I told her what I had in mind for poor Luci.

Last edited: [August 12, 2018]

teabrows: You're not that far off. Be My Guest starts sometime in the first or second week of December (around the 5th to 9th), and chapter 5 of Forevermore is set around December 4th or 5th. By the end of this chapter, however, it's closer to the end of December (after Christmas even), so now it's more like a year and a month.

Borrowed Silence: Yup! And it's fine. Sometimes I miss an update and don't even realize it until I start reading the latest chapter and have no idea what's going on. I preen at your compliment, and thanks. I'm pretty sure I know which college I want to go to out of the letters I got, so now it's just doing the rest of the pre-college application stuff.