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[righthemisphere]

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[endoftheverse]

Lucifer watches with placid interest, as the world around him changes. Human minds are such a terrible thing, aren't they? Always funneling into chaotic, nonsensical images, chemical imbalances... dreams presenting all of someone's traumas and flaws like a soul laid stripped of flesh in hell. Lucifer's familiar with it, the intricate way a human is built; Dad did well at that, he'll admit. They're flawed, horrible little things, but their machinery is complex and difficult and not so easy to put in little neat boxes. You can carve and carve and carve into them and unearth more in their bones, in their brains, than any yowling cat or whimpering dog.

It's gross, really, but in that fun way you'd dissect a frog.

False sympathy pulls at his face, brow furrowed and frown a ghost of Sam Winchester.

"You poor thing. You're such a mess in here, it's any wonder you can function. Maybe that's why you're filled with so much animosity... like I was." Sam's muffled voice begs Lucifer to stop. I hear you, I know what you're doing; please, just stop. Lucifer ignores him and continues, "It just... starts breaking you apart, doesn't it? Watching person after person suffer. I'll admit, my dreams used to look a lot like yours. Messy. Full of death and failure."

Smiling, though, he gestures towards poor Yancy, so close to a grizzly fate.

"They're all replaceable, though. That's the secret to a good night's sleep. There are a million other Wu's out there. A million other... sad little girls." He glances at Mako, glances at Raleigh. "Plenty of people to shove into a cockpit and use until that one dies and the next comes in."

Yancy is about to be ripped out of the cockpit.

"People's worth is the blink of an eye." Yancy is fear, looking up at that terrible creature. Trapped in his final moments. "What they do and don't deserve doesn't matter, in the grand scope of things. They're all ultimately... pretty worthless. So why cry over spilled milk, champ?"

[righthemisphere]

Raleigh opens his mouth to answer but the scene to his left is swirling towards the finish line.

He wants to yell that Sam is wrong. That these people, these relationships, are one of a kind. That knowing and cherishing them is the reason to live. He burns with anger for the death of his friend. He carries the sorrow of loss and feels it so acutely in every breath that it almost feels like needles on inhale.

Inhale sharp, stinging nettles.

Exhale fire and wrath.

Instead there's only the sound of metal screaming as it's torn by a monster. The scream of claxons. Finally he turns and looks, lurching towards it as if pulled by an invisible rope around his heart. A bond. The Drift. Blues and ambers offset by darkness and white armor slicked with red.

RALEIGH, LISTEN TO ME-

And then he wakes. Like clockwork. Heaving for breath with sweat at his temples in a nice, warm bed with a nice, warm body curled against his side. Chuck murmurs something in his sleep and throws his arm over Raleigh's waist the way he does most nights. It's just routine now. Try to lull him back to sleep. It doesn't work but it's the thought that counts.

No, no the only thought he's got is that he needs to find Sam.

Find Sam Winchester and make him pay.