A Gift That Keeps Giving
kalerya's prompt: Death gives Harry an angel: want would Harry do with such interesting gift?
At midnight, Harry opens his eyes to see Lucifer laid down beside him in his bed.
"Now, correct me if I am wrong, but you and I, we had a deal." His voice is calm and pleasant, and his smile is sincere. It is a well done mockery of humanity. Harry smelt him, the reek of dying human flesh, burnt out, used up.
"I am no demon, I do not make deals." Lucifer sighs, waving his hand in agreement. He lays unafraid on his back, belly and throat exposed as Harry sits up to look down upon him. It's just as well, for between them the line is clear which is prey and which is predator.
"Yes, yes, I know that, do you think I don't? Who is, after all, the father of demons?" Lucifer is no proud father, for he sneers down at his own (human gloved) hands as if they are dirty. He does not see human hands; he sees himself and his own doing.
Harry snorts, insensitive to a sympathetic devil.
"I like you, you know? You've got what you call it – spirit. Which is very strange, considering: you know who." Harry looks unflinching into Lucifer's eyes, which makes the devil flinch. Apologetic and seductive he looks up at Harry again though bedroom eyes. They both know Death was who Lucifer meant, but again both know that Tom Riddle's split soul is the only you know who whom Harry had – for friend's sake – never said the name of, or Voldemort. In the end it had not done them – or him – any good.
"Low blow..?" Lucifer sing-songs playfully as if already forgiven, he never hesitates to reach out to touch Harry on his knee.
"I can go lower." It's a promise and threat by the coin toss.
"I see nothing to reap." It's a reminder, that Harry will one day die and be a Reaper, which all demons fear. To which Angels bow.
"Are you blind?" Lucifer narrows his eyes, but Harry's glasses are on the bedside table top.
"You will not tempt me." Harry's smile is openly mocking, and Lucifer hisses. He moves more quickly then Harry can react to, springing up from lying down, and tackling Harry onto the ground. Harry closes his eyes as he feels fingers close around his throat.
"With your death you would serve me." Harry opens his eyes, and Lucifer is very still – Harry is smiling.
"My life is not yours to end." Green eyes flash black, and Lucifer finds himself pinned to the ceiling, Harry looking up at him.
There is a knock on the door, and without asking, the Winchester brothers enter. They carry weapons, and among the weapons, the knife that sighs for Harry's life blood. It is not the best choice, or tells more deeply their intentions then Harry has suspected. The first is more likely then the last. It is, after all, the only weapon to kill demons. It was made for something more and better, and resents the taint of another's life blood.
"Are you alright?" Sam asks, focusing on Harry, small and huddled naked among sheets on the floor as if flung there.
"I am fine." Harry glances upward and the brother's eyes follow.
"Hello there." Lucifer greets, naturally polite. Sam's eyes widen.
"Castiel!" Dean calls for the angel, naturally he must have been listening, for he appears most swiftly. Harry wonders if it is a sign of how often the brother's are in danger and Castiel must watch over them. When Dean jerks his head upward, Castiel looks, and pales.
"How did you get up there?" He asks darkly, as if Lucifer planned it.
"How do you think? I couldn't keep my hands to myself and he put me up here. Rather poor taste given their history, wouldn't you agree, little brother?" Lucifer's grin is wicked, and he winks.
"What history." Harry demands, noting that Sam is shaky, that Dean's jaw is clenched tight.
"Oh, well, their mommy dearest, Sammy's girl, all got sacrificed, looking just like this." Lucifer drags a finger across his belly, opening it up; blood rains down on Harry's upturned face. They look away, and when they look back Lucifer is gone. Only Harry had seen him go, and hadn't stopped him.
His fingers are clenched tight in the white and red smeared sheets.
Harry bows his head, and speaks.
"I hadn't realized he meant me to hurt you. I thought only that he meant to kill me." Harry blinks and his black eyes are green, and there is no blood anywhere to be seen.
"Hey, come on kid, how could you know? Give yourself a break, you didn't do anything but defend yourself." Dean asks it of Harry softly, rubbing Harry's back and kneeling next to him. It strikes Sam that Dean is good at it, at getting people – kids - to relax, and why not? It's not like Sam hadn't given Dean plenty of practice. He feels guilty and stupid for it, but nods when Harry snakes a sly glance at him, to be sure.
"Are you brothers?" Harry doesn't ask it of Sam or Dean, but of Castiel. Who shakes his head in a sharp negative: something about how Harry holds himself relaxes. Castiel sits on Harry's other side, easily picking him up and bringing him into his lap.
All is well that ends well, but – just the same – it's the last time Harry sleeps alone. And the last time they buy double rooms: double beds, Dean joked sometime later that night, are meant to have two. So Sam and Dean share - like they've been doing since they were little. It's cheaper, and a sure thing they won't wake with Satan on the ceiling. While neither Castiel nor Harry say anything, Harry accepts and expects it when Castiel follows Harry into his bed.
Castiel though, behaves as if it couldn't be any other way.
"So how much of it is true?" Sam asks, referring to the bible he holds, and asking it of Harry. Sharp green eyes look to him.
"How am I to know? I was born after you." Sam can't help but laugh, because it's true. It's easy to forget that Harry is so young, yet speaks with Lucifer as if an equal or greater, and sits calmly beside Castiel. It's all so very strange, things like that shouldn't happen in the modern day, to someone born after Christ.
"Okay, how did you become Death's Master?" Sam asks, teasingly, as if Harry might not know this either. As if Harry could forget.
"I willingly took up the three Deathly Hallows: this ring, this cloak, this wand - and then I died a hero's sacrifice. Death brought me back. Death told me I would be the last Death's Master, the last child born of his bloodline." Sam shifts, comfortable with the weight of it, the fact that both he and Harry were born different, were chosen by powers greater then they for a destiny they did not know. The difference was, Sam wasn't trapped by it, and Harry was. Harry couldn't run away and did not have a choice that he could make again and change things.
"There is always a choice." Harry reads something, his expression or his thoughts.
"What about Cas?" Dean asks, butting in, Sam had thought him put half to sleep with research.
Sam looks to him, reluctantly, warningly, but Dean goes on recklessly.
"We were told Castiel died, there were bits of him, bone, meat, blood, teeth." Dean knows no demon could survive that sort of messy parting from their host, and it does not make sense that an angel could.
"Castiel died, Death brought him back for me, gave me his life and death to choose." Dean doesn't know how he feels about that, that the whole world rested with Castiel being some kind of test for Harry. Castiel by John's teachings, died, and should have stayed dead. It's interesting, the difference the father makes, that Death taught Harry to let the world go on through bringing back the dead, and John would let lay what died.
He doesn't know what it says about mortality, about humanity, about…everything. But Dean does thing that they are lucky, just this once, to have a powerful friend rather then another enemy.
"Why haven't you freed him, given him his own choices?" Sam asks softly, looking about the room as if he expects Castiel to show himself. He's gotten the feeling that since Harry joined them, the angel has been watching over them, hovering just out of sight.
"He has made them, to bring me here, to stay by your side and mine. These are his choices. I can not make them for him." But clearly Harry goes along with them, if he does not – exactly - approve of them.
Castiel may have been given life, but in turn he had given himself to them – Harry, Sam, Dean, they were what Castiel lived for.
Dean trades a glance with Sam; in that glace is that realization.
Harry smiles to see it.