It hurts.

Fuck, it hurts like nothing else, even to someone who's spent most of his life learning every kind of pain there is, a malicious, burning kind of rot gnawing into his body, into his soul, every particle of ether screaming as they come into contact with something that is the complete antithesis of anything made in the Skies.

This is what Lucifer has been shielding him from, this is what Lucifer has been bearing by himself, for months, for ages—

—this is what tore Him apart, what that fucking piece of scum used to defile and kill Him, while you were safely sleeping your days away, this is what He was feeling while you were busy making up more lies so you wouldn't have to deal with the fact that He went and took you *into His core* —

—this is what Lucifer has been shielding the world from, for all those thousands of years—

He can't see. He can't hear. The world's gone dark, his whole being focused on the decay spreading through him, a putrid hollowness seeking to swallow him from within. He strains, trying to force muscles and sinew to tense against the pain, to bear it, to push back against a spell, a physical blow, even though this is neither — this is being meeting unbeing, Sky-made flesh pitted against its polar opposite and yielding helplessly, ether flaking apart like dead wood eaten through by parasites.

Pain, pain — and he should be used to it, familiar with it — he knows what it's like to have his bones dissolved into sludge, what it's like to spit out half his body weight in blood and have his wings burned down to their roots, he knows what it's like to wake up blind or deaf or mute because they simply cut sight and sound and speech out of him, he knows what it's like for his core to be submerged in a sea of poison—

Stars be damned, stars be /fucking/ damned, didn't you always pride yourself on this? That they did their worst, and still you'd come back from it, you'd live despite not knowing why you were alive in the first place?!

—but that was pain from Sky tools held in Astral hands, not— consumption, undoing, the rot peeling him apart inch by inch to get at the sacred space where white wings have made their home —

No—

It wouldn't change anything even if he could find his voice, if he could scream defiance in the face of this violation, except to give him something with which to put up a fight —

Don't— don't you dare—

—something to give the rot pause, something to prove he won't just keep crumbling in the face of it like — a spare, an imitation, and by the Skies, how laughable is it to know that all it takes is one blow for him to fold like a house of cards, that Lucifer, hanging onto the last scraps of life, would keep fighting, would keep resisting for Sandalphon's sake, when he himself, whole and protected and carrying more power than he ever thought possible, can't even seem to do what he's been doing his whole goddamn life, when he didn't even have anything riding on his own survival—

But that's it, isn't it, you can do it when it's for yourself, when you know who to hurt, when you know your target is someone who'll let himself /be/ hurt, you can't do it when it's finally time to put your core where your mouth is, when you've got to make good on all that grandstanding and prove you can keep even a single, simple fucking promise — by the gods, how could they actually start calling *you* the Supreme Primarch when you're just—

~...Σ̴̛͘͠α̢҉͞ν̷̷̢δ̛̛͠͝α̴͝λ̵̷͘͝φ̨͘͠ώ̵̷͢ν̕͞.̴̨.̛͜͞.̕͠͏.~

—Just a spare, a piece of scrap, a vessel for a gift so much better, so much brighter than anything he deserves to hold. A useless vessel unable to protect what has been entrusted to it, a stupid, pointless fucking box with ideas above its station, unfit to hold anything, not even a stolen purpose, forever failing at anything that matters—

Decay unspooling in his veins, threading through his flesh to grasp at the place where that gentle power has come to rest — wrapping around it like greedy fingers poised to pry it open and take — and for a second, he wonders if he will get to feel what Lucifer felt, having his innermost strength torn out by the foul hands of that murderer—

—oh, don't you dare take His hurt for your own, don't you dare use His suffering to comfort yourself — you're not losing anything that was ever *yours*—

~Σ̸α̵͠νδ͝α͟͡͠λ̢̡φώ̷̸ν͢.҉̛.̧.͏̢͟...~

It's true, of course, a long-accepted fact, but to realize in full how easily it can be taken from him — this gift, this legacy, something he vowed to protect and cherish with his own life — no wonder he was never chosen for a purpose, no wonder he was never asked to prove his usefulness, when it must have been so obvious to anyone looking how easily he would fail at even this simple task—

—and didn't you often wonder why you turned out like this? Why you were born in this form, so plain and graceless, why you came into this world with this terrible hunger in your heart, why you couldn't look at Him or think of Him without dripping impure wants all over your insides? Didn't you take stock of yourself and realize that this couldn't possibly be what He wanted when He made you, that you simply came out wrong and He was kind to you anyway, forever wasting His care on a fucking box that can't even do the one thing it was *meant* to do—

~Σαν҉δ͡α̢λ͜φών̕..̕.~

A sound. He feels more than hears it, past a body so consumed with its own breakdown, every nerve screaming its end at him, and yet, here it is, this whisper-soft thing, like a feather brushing past—

~Σανδαλφών...~

—and heavens, he knows it, he knows that sound, its silver-bell sweetness so often a comfort, a warm memory to focus on whenever he was dragged back for an extended torture session in the labs, telling him stories about the outside world — gods, it would be funny if it weren't so pathetic, that for all his boastfulness, he's still just what he's always been, a needy, worthless child—

~Σανδαλφών...~

Another sound, closer and clearer this time, and—

A room, white and plain, furniture in the utilitarian design of the lab complex. A workbench full of phials and documents, notes in an elegant, flowing script he's never seen but knows who it belongs to anyway, instruments and measuring tools taking up every bit of space in a way that should look chaotic and untidy, but instead ends up looking strangely orderly, as if every implement and piece of writing has been placed where it has with careful intent, and will be made use of at the appropriate time.

For a moment, he's self-aware enough to notice these things, things that wouldn't stand out to the actual owner of the room, the memory, and to fill in the gaps of self-awareness with his own time-displaced knowledge of how Lucifer's presence always affected any space he was in — the low, gentle hum of his aura, the quiet rustling of his feathers, large and numerous enough to sound like wind moving through a grove of trees, the faint scent of sun-warmed flowers.

Then, something shudders, shifts, and he has the strangest sense of both holding and being held, of cupping a crystalline shard in his palms and of being cradled in a grasp so delicate it should have been holding a hatchling bird instead of a piece of raw material.

The warm-cool sensation of ether flowing into him, coupled with the feeling of channeling it, increment by increment, particle by particle, slowly nudging each one at the shard with fingertips and breath, and waiting patiently for the moment when it will begin sustaining its own existence, its first act as a self-determined entity.

He's thinking of nothing, both times, once with careful deliberation — it would be so frightfully easy to impose his will on this core in the making, to nudge too hard and have it take the encouragement as instruction, or worse, as an order — and once with the emptiness of a creature not yet in existence, a spark of pre-consciousness that is beginning to grow but not knowing why, or how, or into what—

"Ah."

An exhalation of surprise, buoyed by the feeling of a wave swelling as it draws closer and closer to the shore, and although there is no way Sandalphon could have actually seen it at that point in time, when he didn't even have a mind or a core to actually remember, he still sees the face gazing down at him, is intimately familiar with the expression that would have accompanied the little noise: that gleam of summer blue, pale lashes lowering as if they could, should, hide even such a small expression of delight—

"Don't rush."

A voice soft enough that it could never even approach a gentle scolding, and all directed at what amounts to a crafts project at this stage, an experiment to see if the Supreme One can surpass even His creator and bring forth life from nothing at all.

"You needn't rush. It will all come to you in time."

"I will give you shape, I will prepare for you a form to take in order to experience this world, I will provide everything you need to grow, but I cannot— I will not tell you who to be. ...What do I wish for? Ah, I suppose you can still sense..."

A dull ache from a core that is not his, in the exact shape of the shard held in those careful hands, and Sandalphon barely has a moment to process the sensation, the mere idea of a core with a piece cut from its center — the core of a core, the first piece, the origin, split in half in an act of unimaginable sacrifice. He knows, with horrific intimacy, the feeling of tools sawing at his own, testing to see if it will chip or splinter, of days afterwards spent curled into a ball, tasting bile and remembered pain, and can't even imagine doing so willingly, cutting himself apart with his own hands—

"No, do not search me for an answer. There's none I can give you, anyway. You are — will be — you. And you is... whoever you wish to be."

A surge of warmth, the feeling of the tide pulling back a little, of a shore awaiting its return.

"Know that whatever you decide will be good, and right. And once you are ready to manifest, I will be there to meet you. And then, if you wish, perhaps... and only if you wish, you can tell me who you are."

—and—

He's thrust from the vision reeling, suspended within himself — too full to feel anything, too shattered to think, destroyed in ways no adversary could ever think of, desiccated by the sweetest blade —

Why would You— towards me, even before— before I was ever *me*— *how*— I wasn't even— that was an *object*, and You looked at it and saw—

Potential, endless potential, wrapped in feather-soft care, born free of any fetters, any expectations, accepted and welcomed, awaited like the dawn after a long, dark night—

—all that, towards something that was hurting You from the moment it came into being—

—and it's all useless anyway, just another gentle thing to be consumed by the rot when it burns through the last of him, a warm cloak to protect him against the ice of his failures when what he actually needs is a weapon, a plan, anything to fight back against the overwhelming tide, not this comforting pittance—

He pauses.

Rewinds.

Carefully rolls around the thought that crashed its way into the haze of disbelieving awe, past the sweetness of the memory that is not his, that has been gifted to him.

That ugly, piercing, rotten thought that takes this gift and douses it in acid, that dares to look at such a memory and condemn it to irrelevance, trying to gut it and throw its carcass into the pit where all of Lucifer's tenderness has come to rest over the millennia, ruined and swamped with pain.

It's him, of course, it's him to the core, taking what is offered without guile or expectation and burdening it with all of himself — but the swiftness of it, the precision, faster than even in his darkest days in the bowels of Pandemonium, the sheer intent—

...Oh, you absolute *fuckers*.

*.*.*.*.*

Resurfacing is like bursting from the depths of a poison lake, coughing and panting past mouthfuls of toxic sludge, shaking like a leaf and clawing for purchase in the world above, anything to escape the foul current seeking to pull him back under — and undeservedly, against all odds, it provides.

There's the silver bell in his ears, in his mind, breathless and trembling with something past exhaustion, sounds slowly resolving into something he can understand, syllables, words— his own name, over and over—

~φών… Sandalphon...~

"Sandalphon..."

~You mustn't listen~

"You must believe..."

~Do not let this break you~

"You will not let this break you."

~My solace, my dearest light~

"You are strong."

Like a spell, a charm trying to ward him against the voices of his own heart, that arsenal of his own making left for the Otherworld to exploit — so weak, so gentle, but so insistent he can't but listen, can't but want to believe—

He knows he's not strong, has always just postured until he ran out of lies to tell himself, and he's never been less strong than in this moment, but for this voice, this lovely, trembling, breaking voice, he'll be anything—

Anything, huh? Look at you. Some savior you are, falling apart in the arms of the one you promised to save... what can you possibly do?

/Shut *up*./

He needs to focus. He needs to think.

The rot is eating away at him regardless, perhaps a little slower, a little less easily, but he's practically made of things that can be corrupted and consumed. Sandalphon knows he's nothing so much as a giant open wound for the Otherworld to carve out further, knows he doesn't have Lucifer's strength or his endurance, that quiet acceptance of pain and failure and loss, and he can't be gentle and understanding and wise, but what he can be — what he's been for so long, what he's had practice in for thousands of years — is angry.

Anger is what kept him alive, what propelled him forwards, anger is what fueled his ascent to some facsimile of Primarch, anger is what kept him from falling apart completely in those horrid days and months after— after— and gods, he's angry now, so fucking furious he could tear the skies apart from the sheer unfairness of it all — he's here, he's made it, and Lucifer is still alive, still with him, still inexplicably bent on helping and protecting him, and he's going to fail him again after failing him a hundred times in ways both big and small, is going to condemn Lucifer to dying along with him, and a part of him, the part that wanted to end itself months ago, that wanted to die alongside Lucifer, is still — still — elated at the prospect, at the idea of facing the end together—

How dare you. How dare you use Him like this, how dare you — He wanted to *live*, and you knew it, you always knew and just chose to comfort yourself with His acceptance of His fate — He wanted to fucking live and see the skies He bequeathed to you, and you discard His wish like it doesn't even matter because what matters is that *you're* comforted, *you're* relieved, but actually doing anything to grant His wish is fucking hard and painful and the most important person to you will always, always be *yourself*—

And oh, there it is, there it is, blazing like a comet's tail, and he grasps it with both hands, delighting in the searing viciousness of it — this is true rage, at himself, at the world, at the entirety of creation — and he can feel the befouled swords buried in his back responding to it, rattling and stabbing with renewed hunger —

"Yeah, that's right, you useless pieces of shit. You know what you were made for. You know this."

He's no healer, no protector, but just this once, just this once, what he is might be enough—

"You're mine, and it's time you remember your purpose—"

Ain... Soph… AUR!

*.*.*.*.*

Later, much, much later, dreams will tell him what a sight it made — a thousand swords lighting up like kindling, of the pure white fire bursting forth from his back to engulf them all — and how they ripped free of his body, their discordant screeching giving way to battlesong, guided by a single focus, a single will — Lucifer's power and his fury, united as a holy kind of vengeance.

He'll learn what it looked like to have them arching through the air as one, a thousand pieces of a single massive blade, and how the crimson scar screamed and lashed in impotent defiance as they struck true, at last cauterizing the blight upon his core.

In the moment, however, all he can do is close his eyes, and tip forward, spent and empty but for sheer relief, straight into the embrace of exhaustion.

Absurdly enough, it smells like coffee flowers.

*.*.*.*.*

TBC

Author's Notes: Please do yourself a favor and set the entire last scene to the absolutely gorgeous piano rendition of Ain Soph Aur by the incredibly talented Ein ( zhonglidaren). This version of the song (and Ein in general, bless them) has been a huge inspirational force behind this entire fic; the moment I heard how sweet, bold and hopeful it sounded, I knew I wanted to write a scene to try and match those feelings.

- Yes, Lucifer basically performed open-heart surgery on himself to create Sandalphon. Because that's how this man rolls.
- The moment when two characters' out-sacrificing themselves for each other tips over into out-saving each other instead. /proud tears