When We Were Younger & Better

A sweep of the brush, and the world changed.

That was how simple it had seemed at the time, when Lucifer and Michael broke free from the Cage together. It had been over a hundred years down there – one hundred years fighting, tearing at each other, ripping pieces of grace apart and holding each other until they shattered.

You would think that their first order of business upon escape would be to finish what they started, but that wasn’t possible as Lucifer had reached inside Michael’s vessel and peeled. Michael without his vessel was shot back to Heaven and Lucifer was left clutching the shell of a nineteen year-old boy with straw-colored hair and blue eyes.

With nowhere to go (having been uprooted from Heaven millennia prior), Lucifer had no choice but to find a temporary replacement vessel. He didn’t know the man’s name, though upon taking him from his comatose spot in the hospital bed he caught a glimpse of the medical chart tacked to the foot of his bed and the name ‘Cillian’ stood out. Lucifer blinked at the unusual name before taking off and reappearing at the boy’s bedside where he’d dumped him in a five-star bed and breakfast somewhere in the Catskills, far away from Kansas and Stull Cemetery where they’d crawled from the fire.

And it was there that Lucifer waited. He didn’t need to sleep or eat, and so he had nothing better to do than to pace the room and wait for the boy (Adam, his name was) to wake up. At first, Lucifer thought the vessel was useless and that the boy had died, but he was breathing ever so lightly and occasionally he’d twitch or moan in his sleep, so Lucifer kept him.

He didn’t even know why he kept the broken thing. Humans were the lowest of the low in his eyes, the very bottom of his list of priorities and favorite species. Not to mention this was his brother’s vessel, the very brother who’d spent every waking second of the past century in Hell trying to kill him. If anything, he should want to wrench the vessel apart, to tear its heart from its chest and finger paint in the blood. But it wasn’t an ‘it.’ It was a he, and he was lonely and cracked in all the right places. Lucifer could easily reach inside the boy with the Winchester blood and just shatter him even more, make him irreparable...

Adam moaned in his sleep and Lucifer quickly dashed the thought. He wasn’t a vessel anymore. Michael was gone from his body. He was Adam Milligan once again, the nineteen-year-old pre-med student from Minnesota whose life was caught up in one too many webs to detangle from.

He was a disposable human. Lucifer could kill him.

Except he didn’t.

Lucifer watched as Adam slept on. The hours ticked by minute by minute and eventually Lucifer found it hard to rationalize him keeping the boy alive any longer. Maybe it was because he wanted to have something to play with when he woke up. Maybe it was because he was bored and it had been a long time since he’s played in a shallow pool of blood.

Or maybe it was because of the spark in Adam Milligan, the loyalty he’d felt to a mother, the fierce fight he’d put up in Hell to try and bring Lucifer and Michael to terms with each other. Lucifer rarely, if ever, put up with humans, but Adam was different. He was a fighter, a soldier, and even if Adam didn’t see himself that way, that was how Lucifer saw him (though sometimes his vision refocused and all he saw was the weak human he’d first labeled Adam). That fighting spirit was enough to remind him of Michael, who himself was a warrior at heart and a brother dear to Lucifer no matter how many times they were brought to odds.

Perhaps that’s why he wanted to take care of Adam, to strengthen him up, to prepare him for the dangers that lay ahead. After all, the boy had Winchester blood in him. It was inevitable that he’d find himself thrust headlong into more danger no matter where in the world Lucifer abandoned him. Better to stay by the boy’s side and protect him rather than let himself get killed. Besides, Lucifer might be able to use Adam as leverage against the Winchesters.

At least, that’s what he thought.

Then things got complicated. Adam couldn’t seem to wake from his fitful sleep and instead took to tossing and turning, occasionally screaming during the nights when his dreams were at their worst. At first, Lucifer didn’t concern himself with Adam’s pain. Let the vessel suffer, what did he care? But the screams were annoying to say the least, and so Lucifer set about doing something to rectify the boy’s hurting.

One night as Adam thrashed about on the bed, Lucifer sat on the edge and touched a hand to his sweaty forehead, intent on chasing the nightmares away. He pushed back the dark clouds of distress and monsters, of ghouls and Hellspawn that Adam had fought against while in Hell, and he tried to clear the skies of his mind.

Every night for a week, Lucifer was the one who curled his grace around Adam and kept him safe and warm from the darkness. It was ironic, the Devil protecting a human, but Adam was so small and broken that Lucifer couldn’t see the use in shattering him any further, or letting anything else do so.

And so when Michael thundered back to Earth one morning to reclaim his vessel, he was nothing short of shocked to find that Lucifer, his little brother who loathed humans to the very core, was standing in his way.

“Is what I’m seeing true?” Michael sneered behind the skin of his newest temporary vessel, a tall and regal-looking man with cold blue eyes. “Has my little brother grown soft for the human race at last?”

Lucifer spread his grace out in wavering tendrils and wrapped Adam safely in its warmth, the better to protect him from what was to come. “Not all of them. Just the one.”

“The one is my vessel.”

“Once again, Michael, my brother, you will have to learn that you do not always get what you want.”

Michael rocketed towards him but Lucifer vanished, using the grace tangling around Adam to bring the human with him. He hadn’t planned on any particular location, but he recognized the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in Paris, the bright green leaves swaying underneath the surreal blue sky. He was sitting on the ground, Adam’s head in his lap, and he was about to move them to a safer place when Adam stirred and opened his eyes.

Their gaze locked and at first Adam looked confused and off-kilter before he brushed past the vessel Lucifer wore and saw him for what he really was.

“L-Lucifer?” Not surprisingly, he sounded far from pleased. Terrified, even.

Lucifer smiled down at the human as warmly as he could. The feeling was untried and unfamiliar but nevertheless, the fear in Adam’s eyes subsided. “Adam. Rest easy. We are safe here. I will take care of you, limlal.”

Adam opened his mouth to protest but found it too great of an effort to speak anymore, so his eyes slid shut and his mouth closed. Lucifer tenderly, lovingly carded his fingers through the human’s straw-colored hair before leaning back on his hands and staring out at the rippling lake that lay ahead.