One of the worst aspects of Pandemonium – somewhere above the endless, agonized cacophony echoing around and around in its depths, but slightly below realizing he was actually getting pretty good at tearing out throats with his bare hands – was the complete loss of time.

Sleeping and waking blurring into each other to the point where a distinction between them became both meaningless and downright impossible, dreams and memories blending into thoughts and observations until each was as real, or as unreal, as the other. Flickering, always flickering, between past, present and future in his own mind, until he went from coming to life in the Astral labs to his first few, panicked hours beating against the closing jaws of that hellish cage, to having lived in it for aeons and aeons, in the same nonexistent moment, or hour, or day.

If asked even a little while ago – or a long while, who knows how much time has passed – Sandalphon would have recoiled in horror at the idea of ever experiencing it again, even for a second.

Now, though, here, he finds himself welcoming that sensation, reaching for it, even, as he's sinking through layers upon layers of his own existence, every conscious and barely conscious moment of more than two millennia of existence rushing past in slow-motion.

Some warm, some cool, some faint enough to barely register and others so blisteringly vivid it's like plunging into liquid fire, tossing him back into the past while erasing the very concept of one.

Each new moment is present, seemingly stretching into always and reigniting thoughts and feelings from two, two hundred, two thousand years ago as if nothing has changed at all.

Scalpels slicing into his flesh, peeling apart sinew and muscle to discover his inner makings, and no one in these sterile torture chambers would ever think of wasting the kindness of an anaesthetic on a simple primal, let alone one such as him, unique in his complete lack of purpose–

Wild triumph at seizing fistfuls of feathers and yanking, tearing, relishing the rush of power of making them his own – of proving them wrong, of proving everyone wrong, no longer worthless, no longer a spare, but a threat, a menace, serious enough that even He will be forced to pay attention, He will have to step down from his celestial throne, and recognize the error of leaving Sandalphon a mere spare–

Shaking, pressing himself against the walls of that horrible cage and feeling them shift with an abominable will of their own, all while he is left to face the enormity of his sentence – abandoned, more thoroughly than ever before, consigned to be forgotten, and all his cries for forgiveness will do is call more monsters from those horrid, endless depths–

He lets them all pass by, accepts the maelstrom for what it is – bits of history, experienced, witnessed, processed and done, over, just recordings, unnecessary reminders of things he is already well aware of. It's harder to do with the lighter ones, those that also burn, but with the flame of better times, offering a secret, stolen happiness.

Rushing through the halls, breathless and uncaring of who might see, might punish him for it, his heart too full with the disbelieving joy of being summoned, that the Embodiment of Light should remember his existence and should want to see him, that he might finally be able to do something to be of use–

That beautiful hand, those perfect fingers, lightly coming to rest against his cheek, and– "A skydweller greeting… it looked to be a pleasant thing, if you wouldn't mind…?" Later, much later, he will come to understand what it means that all sound turned to white noise at that simple touch, that every cell in his body was singing like it had been struck by lightning, not wholly painless but so very sweet, and how much he wanted to have the audacity to lean into that gesture and greedily drink up its warmth–

It's more difficult to shake off these memories, to keep himself from simply stopping right there, right in this moment or that, to resist the siren call of reliving them over and over, to keep existing in those shards of happiness.

He would have done it too, Sandalphon realizes.

Up until a while ago, perhaps as little as a few days, he would have been… not even tempted, not even aware enough for a struggle between want and will. He would have simply gone stumbling right into the pitfalls of his own heart, starving for those moments of bliss, for a return to innocence.

/Ignorance, really. Willful ignorance, too, because it was right there, all along, if only you'd taken a moment to look and truly /see/–/

I thought I was. I thought I did, I thought I knew the script we were both meant to follow–

It will be another thing for which he will have to apologize, or perhaps the true thing for which he has to apologize. More than the rebellion, more than the cataclysm, more even than his endless parade of failures, he will have to apologize for holding on to these memories for over two thousand years, hoarding them like precious stones, and never once noticing – truly noticing – Lucifer in any of them.

Lucifer, who would ask for him so softly, his call brushing against Sandalphon's mind like an invitation rather than the irrefutable summons of a king.

~Would you come to the gardens, Sandalphon? If it pleases you, I should very much like for us to speak…~

Lucifer, who would reach for him so hesitantly, as if uncertain of how to move, how to touch, as if expecting him to pull away at the last moment. Lucifer, whose smile would always bloom just a fraction of an instant later than it should have, as if it needed one given in answer to understand that it was alright to come and stay.

Back then, it never would have occurred to Sandalphon to understand these gestures as anything but a display of Lucifer's kindness, his attempt to make a lowly angel comfortable, rather than as someone making earnest requests, carefully feeling out each interaction, and half-expecting to be refused.

Little glimmers of a god asking, hoping to be treated as a man, and having the misfortune of baring his heart to the most self-absorbed fool in all the skies.

Once more, the gold-tinged world around him ripples, shivering with a pain as ancient as it is new – the pain of certainty, of irrefutably knowing something to be true.

It used to be the awareness that he was nothing, less than nothing, that nothing he said or did or was would ever amount to anything of use to Lucifer. He used to think it might tear him apart during those endless, aimless hours in the labs, more than any of the dispassionate torture at the hands of the scientists – the thought that there was nothing he could give, nothing that someone so strong and radiant could ever want from him, ever–

But He did– He did, He did, He /did/, if only you'd wanted to /see/–

Because there had been times when Lucifer had seemed subtly different, moments when his already rare expressions seemed less forthcoming, when the set of his shoulders made his wings look their weight, when the brightness of his eyes seemed dulled as if a cloud had moved in front of the sun.

Times that were immediately blurred, overwritten by Sandalphon's own selfish worry – he hadn't done something, had he, to displease…? – and the elation, staggering in its swiftness, when those moments would pass, allowing him to once again drink in the undeserved gift of that warmth, the petal-soft curl of that smile.

Countless moments when he could have done something, could have been someone for Lucifer, and simply never thought to try—

And You called me Your solace, like You truly thought of me as such… but when did I ever… when did I actually offer that to You?

Just waiting, always waiting, but never moving, never finding the courage, the will to reach out, for years and years and years–

I'm sorry, I'm sorry I kept trying to enshrine You, and blaming You when You would try to stand still taller upon the altar they all placed You on, when I was just adding to it myself—

"I'm sorry it took me so long to understand…"

Sandalphon swallows, slow and heavy, to wet the desert whisper of his voice.

"And I'll always be sorry, I'll use the rest of forever just to find the words to apologize, but for that, I need to see you. I need to see you, and talk to you, not just for a few minutes in some weird dream space, but somewhere it's really, actually you, and really, actually me, and I can– and you can–"

A tear, for opportunities lost and squandered, for all the wistful might-have-beens.

"Please. Let me see you. So I can tell you… I want to see you."

It's peak absurdity, of course, he realizes even as the words come tumbling out — half-formed and artless, tripping over themselves in their inability to carry the weight he means for them to hold, and yet… And yet, they seem to reach where formality and grace could never hope to get him, because the next thing he knows, there's a barest, softest glow reaching towards him from below.

So faint, but purer than anything that could ever belong to his own soul, and Sandalphon stretches out a hand to meet it halfway without hesitation, letting his own world fade away for one of soothing, pearlescent white.

*.*.*.*.*

TBC

Author's Notes: Quick clarification: I know it's popular in this fandom to blame either Lucifer or Sandalphon for how things went wrong between them (usually Lucifer -_-). None of that here. They are both survivors of frankly awful and abusive living conditions (albeit in different ways) who did their best to build something sweet and tender with their frankly abysmal communication skills and respective handicaps/traumas. The focus here is Sandalphon because he's only just starting to unravel how his own inferiority complex and idealization of Lucifer contributed to the whole mess.