Title: Faster Than a Roulette Wheel
Author: scy
Feedback: scynneh@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: They belong to someone other than me.  
Fandom: Supernatural/Lucifer
Pairing: None
Spoilers: Generalized Supernatural season 1 spoilers and at least through Sandman: Seasons of Mists, Lucifer: Devil in the Gateway. No other actual spoilers, even if stuff might be hinted at, it's generalized. 
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Those who understand what's out in the darkness may find a temporary common ground, even if fate prevents them from remaining there for long. 
Author's Notes: So, Barb wrote Marked, which got me thinking about angels and other kinds of beings that the Winchesters might come across and we both agreed that most of the demons that they've fought have been really short-sighted. Our conclusion was that it would be intriguing to see what would happen if one of them did have a larger agenda, and where they'd fit the Winchesters into that greater scheme. Written for Barb, in her 'verse, with her permission. Title from Ani Difranco. 
October 2006

It might be said that there was something poetic about the repair of objects that most people threw away. One of the writers that Sam took attitude and fashion cues from probably wrote that, and even if they weren't looking at the same castoffs as Dean, he could understand the sentiment. He shared none of that with Sam; the conversation would have begun in a soft moment and partway through, been tied up by everything he thought he knew about Dean, their family, and the cosmos and Dean would have let him talk himself out. Sam was convinced that if everybody knew what the problem was, then there would be a solution waiting to get picked up. True to pattern, he was searching for it by refusing to let go of the demon, as if by finding the monster that had started them on this road, everything could be made better. 

Dad used to say that once the demon had been destroyed, they'd be alright. He bent over the kitchen table, elbows displacing maps and first hand accounts of werewolves to promise that it would all be over, as if finishing the job didn't open them up to a dozen more. Dean wasn't sure what the justice was in all of it, but knowing that there were other families getting ripped apart by what the didn't see was out there or even know how to fight didn't make him feel lucky or well off, he felt needed. The way they'd been brought up had given him and Sam an advantage over almost everybody else; they understood that there was no such thing as being alone in the dark, and they had the training to do some damage for humanity.

At least, that's what he'd thought before they got beaten back and spit back out by that demon, and it took their father as it went. There were things that couldn't be returned, and among those were secrets that he kept from Sam because he was the youngest and Dean would take on those burdens until Sam forgot to look for them. But, when he was raw with loss it wasn't easy to keep Sam from really noticing how much circumstances had changed. They had come to a place, isolated and independent from the rules that most followed, but the purpose that had driven them, reeled them in was no longer there. 

Dean felt like he had that time at the beach when he was out too far and a water nymph pulled him into a riptide and he got a lungful of water. He'd known what was going on and that he only had so much time before he was out of options, but he couldn't quite collect himself to act. For a couple days after he let go briefly, when he got tempted to do something, he took an inventory of the furrows pounded into the skin of the Impala. There was a matching wound in metal for everything he knew and couldn't retrieve. Once repairs were done, all of that was covered up again, and he couldn't reach any of that without pulling something else out in the open. 

Whatever they were going to do, Sam was vocally certain that he knew what their father would have wanted, and that they'd best honor him by doing exactly what he'd done for the last two decades. But as Sam harassed Ash via email for a lead, no matter how suspect, he was pulling out stories and rumors for what he called work. They didn't feel like actual jobs to Dean; even if the monsters were worth their attention. In his mind, Sam's dedication was like when he hurried through one disagreeable assignment to get back to what he rally wanted to do. That studying and hunting had been reversed in their order of importance was intended as homage, but came off as compensation. 

Dean sat out in the parking lot of their motel and listened to his brother pile up good deeds as if he had someplace to tally and cash them in and he couldn't bring himself to stop him. It kept Sam from moving in endless cycles of second-guesses. Before they left, Bobby had pulled Dean to one side, dispensed advice and claimed that Sam would wear himself out but that he'd come to terms with what had happened. Dean didn't share personal experience that went against that. He remembered staying up with their dad, watching the careful path of a pen over paper as the sightings and bloody trail of the thing that had killed their family were mapped out.

When Sam had seen what their dad left, he thought it was a new degree of obsession, but then he'd gotten a chance to take in the mass of records their dad had kept, and the notes Bobby had from other hunters. Anybody who thought they knew something important wrote it down and tried to pass it on. There were things that didn't get recorded, and every time Dean looked at Sam, he was keeping back the last words their father said.

He was accustomed to knowing stuff that Sam didn't; it was another way of protecting him from what he didn't need to deal with. Sam called it unnecessary, but Dean knew how often his brother thought that he was responsible for uncontrollable spirals of fate. Sam thought that the more he knew, the better he could direct events. Trust wasn't always a tool that cut away one's fetters, it could be an overwhelming force and Dean was feeling every word he knew. When their weight became more than he thought he could handle safely, he let Sam's suggestion guide them to Ellen's place. 

Ellen had been able to restrain herself from outright adoption of the brothers, but only barely. Sam was more open to being looked after, and if Ellen's influence was mostly limited to giving them information on opportunities for hunting, she did as much as she could. Dean stepped out of the way whenever she got a maternal impulse, but he didn't snap as much when she couldn't help it. He spent a good portion of down-time at the pool table, shoving Ash onto a bar stool or challenging and beating him at a game without making a big deal out of it. For all his computer savvy, Ash had an air of brittleness to him, and Ellen was unapologetic in her defense of the young man, but Dean had seen him trying to pick up a couple tricks and he'd be a handy one in a brawl, if he wasn't napping. 

There weren't more than a handful of tourists that were so thirsty that they wanted to chance getting stuck at Harwell's Roadhouse, but the few that did were wither too absorbed in this scene of rugged America and made dumb comments, or kept together to stay safe. Jo circulated with drinks and a smile that eased tension. 

The hunters restocked their packs and exchanged information with Dean and Sam. They weren't a very social set, each of them had their own methods and even routes that they patrolled in pursuit of a particular monster. Some of them weren't quiet about the way they thought everyone should hunt, and even Sam was short in his thanks. After the business with Gordon, his little brother wasn't feeling too eager to hang out with anyone who was full of how good they were and how it had been the thing to keep them breathing. If Sam claimed he wasn't totally set on embracing normalcy, he wasn't interested in being lectured about how essential it was to hunt at the exclusion of everything else. 

Although Ellen's bar was a rest stop for hunters, she and Jo existed outside the space reserved for professionals. They were moved away from some of the more graphic encounters, as if having a hunter in the family hadn't torn their illusions away already. It got so Dean could judge just how uppity a guy was based on the time spent ogling Jo and trying to win her over with a flash of scars and a wide grin. Dean let Jo take care of herself and then provided a buffer when they failed to understand a firm dismissal. He never had to kick anybody out; his walk was a declaration of intent and he spun a pool cue like a weapon.

Ellen told him that his gaming profits made up for any losses suffered when some hothead objected to being soundly beaten. Dean shrugged and added a couple dollars to the till as he passed through. 

Ellen was in the kitchen when someone pushed the door open just before sunset , so Jo set down a dish carelessly and it clanged on the counter. 

Ash didn't stir a hair, but Dean parked a hip on a barstool and picked up his half-filled glass as the visitor walked right up to the counter. It was too early for the dinner rush That made him either a guy traveling who was just in need of a drink, or someone who had a reason for taking the trouble to find the roadhouse.

"Hi there," Jo said brightly. "May I help you?"

"Not specifically, but tell your mother that the shotgun should be unnecessary."

Jo blinked at the man, unnerved by his directness. "Should be?"

"Are you in the habit of threatening customers?"

"When they warrant it," Ellen said as she came through the kitchen doors, shotgun visible but barrel pointed downwards. When she saw the man on the opposite side of the counter, she stepped back and then came forward. 

"You've been here before?," Ellen asked. She sounded confused, like she couldn't place his face and since it was important to her that she know troublemakers at first sight, she was doubly ill at ease.

"Not to this area." He didn't smile in that assured way some  did to let the striking combination of light hair and eyes make an impression and then playing off that. Dean knew how to use his looks, so he recognized the ploy when he saw it in practice. It would have made sense in this case; Jo was off-balance and Ellen had her hands on a gun, and that was discounting the presence of Ash and Dean. But there was no twitch in this guy's expression, he didn't seem even a little worried about how loosely everyone was keeping themselves under control.

"I merely stopped while in the area."

"Right." Ellen wasn't completely mollified by his causal explanation, but then she didn't think that anything short of the truth counted as a sign of good intentions. Just when Dean thought that he might have to step in, Ellen moved nearer and nodded at the stranger. 

"What'll you have to drink?"

"Whisky," the man said, not pausing to study the selection, and his tone suggesting that his choice was the only palatable one available. 

"Coming right up," Ellen said, and only someone who knew her caught the ironic lit she put on the words. 

Jo, doing her part to promote good will, motioned at the man's black overcoat." Do you want to take that off?"

"No, I don't." It wasn't below a comfortable temperature, but Jo still gave him a questioning look.

Taking a seat at the counter, the man sipped the whiskey like he'd already been introduced. As he put the glass down and took in the small room, gaze not settling on anyone in a way that would reveal an unspoken aim.

Ellen wasn't easily put off by perfunctory manners, so she tried a third time to get some indication of the man's intentions. She'd been eyeing him as she wiped down glasses stacked on the counter, and Dean could follow the upward tier of conclusions.

This one wasn't out of his depth or trying to get back on a particular road, so tourism wasn't his trade. He hadn't tried to win Ellen or Jo over with looks and compliments, and that made him more than practiced at the right way to get down to business. All of that stacked and added together, meant he was on the working side of hunting, and therefore Ellen thought there should be something he wanted that she could find. But he didn't ask for news or let them know where he stood. That meant, in Dean's mind, that the unknown was more extensive than those of an ally, and he wasn't readily put at ease by power held in check only by circumstance.

"Will you be staying long?" Ellen asked, no audible curiosity in her voice.

"The space of time required to confirm a rumor," was the response.

Sensing double talk that could go on for awhile unless someone cut through it, Dean spoke up. "Hey, you looking for someone?" One hand rested on his leg, next to the knife there.

"Yes, I am," he said unconcernedly. 

"You find them?"

"I did." He turned to Dean and that movement let him see the man's face, which brought him out of his seat. His eyes were an improbable shade of gold; that and his hair gave him a novel look, or more likely, kinship with the demonic.

"Christo," Dean hissed, expecting at least a reaction to the banishment, but there wasn't even so much as a wince in response to the word, and the man, or whatever, raised an eyebrow. He tilted his head to get another look at Dean, and as his profile was caught in the lights of an overhead lamp, the glow seemed to gather around him as if he claimed it.

"Given the stock you've sought to cull, I would seek out a broader command of sorcery, Winchester." He was looking at Dean in a way that made him uncomfortable, not undressing him down to bare skin, but further, past flesh and staring right into his soul.

Dean shook it off; he didn't hold a very high opinion of mind games, or anyone who assumed that just because he was young, he didn't know any better. Puffed up magicians were like that, and salesmen who wanted to sell second-rate appliances to someone who didn't even have a house. He stared back, unsettled, but guessing that news traveled among the after midnight set. "You guys must put out a memo about us."

"Your opinion of your importance is often mildly exaggerated, but paranoia is not without its benefits. Even in this time, it's rather simple to track down someone who does good deeds," he said, as if Dean had asked a question. "Going out of your way to find trouble and walking away makes you something of a curiosity, and there's little else to talk about, even at the ends of the world." 

He didn't sound as though he was scolding Dean, but more like Dean shouldn't be shaken up that he'd been found, just that it had been a matter of when such a thing happened. As he put his elbows on the bar, Dean caught on to the way he wasn't putting any weight on the stool beneath him. He looked substantial enough, and he made noise when he moved, so that ruled out him being a run of the mill spirit, and if he was a demon, he was beyond the regular defenses. Dean's experience advised him that ordinary didn't apply at present and he needed to be aware of how he came off.

"What's your name, since you already know mine?" That was a bigger deal, to identify someone on more than sight was an easy route to claiming control of them, and Dean had no need to be pulled in another direction.

"Lux will be sufficient for the present."

The name he'd given meant light, and was an alias, because Dean could tell it wasn't his only title. It did make a certain aesthetic sense. 

"That's your name, or what you do?"

"At any time of my choosing it encompasses both."

"Weird name."

Not commenting, Lux waited for Dean to gather his next words, almost daring him to take an irrevocable step and prompt a counterattack.

Ellen looked askance at Dean for his remarks, but she wasn't going to intercede when the target was an unknown quantity who was demonstrating minimal restraint.

"I see that the compounding of fate and personal tragedy doesn't still your tongue." Lux observed. That sounded like mockery to Dean and he moved himself back from the counter so he could get out of the way.

Lux noticed Dean's twitchiness and cocked his head in a very avian posture. "You have decent instincts, Winchester, I'm sure they advise you that aggression isn't the wisest course."

"Maybe not, but it's one of my favorites."

"There is a purity about seared earth," Lux agreed.

"Now, that's just excessive," Dean chided. 

"Fire scours away the undesirable elements and you've applied it to many aspects of your work."

"Yeah, but I don't start a fire because I like to watch things burn." At least not unless the job called for a hearty conflagration. 

"If you did, there would be fewer beings attempting to best you."

"What do you know about it?" He wasn't so foolish that he thought Lux would be intimidated by his growl, but it was ingrained in him. When a danger presented itself, he bristled and challenged it.

"Stand down, boy, even were I a cherubim called by that beacon you've had etched into your flesh, I care little for the designs of demons and their small gods." Lux smiled widely at Dean. "I'm much more in favor of the self-made man."

Refusing the flinch at the mention of his tattoo, Dean went forward. "So you're not in cahoots with the demon." Now that its existence had been acknowledged, there was no sense in not seeking out new information.

"I have a reputation for actively disdaining conspiracy."

"But you know the thing that's after us."

"Demons are notoriously capricious in their fancies, for one to be so determined makes them uncommon and they gain notoriety." Watching Dean's expression, Lux looked long-suffering that he had to be imparting such of-passed facts. "The demon is relatively minor in the hierarchy of Hell, but even the most tenuously connected of that number can gain enough support to undertake to endeavor to influence policy." 

Politics weren't one of Dean's preferences, but he knew when someone was speaking with authority on a subject, and this guy talked about power struggles in Hell as though he'd seen every possible scenario and then over another time. It wasn't the knowing withholding of secrets, but a weariness removed from such pointless bickering.

"Hell doesn't change, no matter who's been stabbed in the back," Dean suggested.

"One may think that with each new steward there may come a better Hell, but it's a system which eventually settles into an arrangement where those souls damned by their own perceived culpability serve a function, just as the demons that depend on them." 

"You're saying that the devil doesn't rule Hell anymore."

"Heaven," Lux said with a very sharp grin, "has reclaimed care of its own creation."

"What did the devil do to get kicked out? Fall down on his quotas?"

"You labor under the misconception that Hell was his construction, why should he have remained in that place while mortals fell by their own designs?"

"The devil is supposed to get off on people's pain."

"That view reveals a narrow perception of the situation." He sounded vaguely distasteful to hear such an idea voiced with the conviction of popular opinion.

"And all this stuff you're telling me about Hell is supposed to teach me a lesson, right?"

"If you seek to bring the weight of your problems onto a single entity, you will discover that a multitude will rise up to fill the space and inherit its agenda."

"Instead I should forget about the bastard who hurt my family and go live on a mountain?"

"That would take you only out of their immediate path."

It felt as though Lux was giving him ideas for strategy, but didn't want to hand over too much and make it easy. That put Lux in the know and therefore someone with a lot of cards he didn't have to show at one time to win.

"It's about value. What your adversary holds in reserve, what they will protect, and how effectively you can force them to move in ways that opposite their actual purposes."

"And why are you trying to educate me?"

Lux sipped his drink and looked at the liquid remaining. "To be limited by your designated duties is to lose the opportunity to exercise free will. Such limitations grow stale and the bindings are not shed lightly." He met Dean's eyes. "You've already been directed on a course where fate can shape you if that's acceptable. Whatever you decide, the mark you wear singles you out to anyone willing to take that second look." 

As he mentioned the mark again, Dean felt the tattoo drawn on his skin flare, as if he was sitting in a patch of sunlight and his spine straightened abruptly. "You can see it?"

"The design is an old classic, but it lights up under the right scrutiny." 

Dean couldn't ask a stranger, a dangerous being who read script seen mostly by the choirs of angels, whether he stood out so much that he was calling things, or if Sam's shining was amplified by by his mark, but his mouth ached to shape the words.

"Not everything that sees you can read it," Lux said, somehow bypassing being reassuring, "and if they want a second look, they're probably ill-prepared for the way you react."

"We defend ourselves."

"And actively seek out prey, that leads you across innumerable borders and into the territory of creatures used to keeping tradition alive. It's an uncommon trait, even among those who fancy themselves to be policing monsters." 

"How's that?"

Lux bent his head so that his mouth was at the level of Dean's ear. "For you, it's not solely the pursuit of vengeance. Your motives are far further reaching. You're good at hunting the dark places others cannot abide, Dean Winchester, but your distinctive flair only proves that the call is one you enjoy."

"You're nuts." Dean said flatly, and Lux shrugged, nowhere close to slightly offended. "Crazy," Dean repeated, "and sort of creepy."

"Neither register as fresh insults, and the sentiments are hardly original."

"Why did you come find me?"

"Why not confront Samuel and engage him in a discussion of his abilities?" Lux remained close as he spoke. "What your brother cannot come to terms with, he is incapable of understanding. You are more accepting of the universe's intrigues and you adjust in practical ways."

"So I'm a simple guy?"

"Mortals so often reduce nuance to inadequate understatement," Lux noted, and added, "you see patterns and you break through them. I applaud such self-awareness."

"Are you trying to offer to be my sponsor, or make me a deal?"

"You've shown no need to be coddled and there is nothing that would move me to enter an agreement when the stakes offer no reward to me." 

"All those stories about Satan making deals for people's souls are a crock, then?"

"What do I need with souls?"

As Dean turned his head, he caught the glow of Lux's eyes up close and let himself notice the unearthly luminescence of that gaze. This was a being who would set a fire to sift through the cinders, or who would turn his back on an apocalypse when he saw no profit in stepping in. He wasn't sure if there were guidelines for having a conversation with the devil but he knew that he'd already stepped beyond politeness.

"Can you prove it?" Because there were plenty of fanatics who thought they could open a portal to Hell and not get swallowed by the first demon that came through.

"That would be an exhaustive and time-consuming endeavor, and you're not really interested in following me down memory lane, Dean." 

"Then why should I believe you?"

"For the fact that I know what lengths you've gone to in the name of family, and how much further you'll still blunder without direction."

"That's it, the only reason you came all this way?"

"Did I honestly only want to see and inform you? Yes, in the course of other business."

"You don't want anything?"

"Should I have need of your skills, Dean Winchester, I will not hesitate to be plain in my speech."

That was some kind of relief, although Dean heard the chance of being asked to do a favor. "And if I thought I needed help?" He was unable to see a way to finish that sentence without sounding crass or wheedling, but Lux saw it through.

"I don't appear when summoned, and if you were to make a plea for my intervention, then it would be a singularly dire collision of events. But, given your current state of mind, such a thing is not impossible."

"Yes," Dean agreed, knowing full well what he was saying.

"In the event of such circumstances, I might find reason to involve myself." 

"Alright," Dean said.

Lux drained his glass and stood up. "Ellen, your house is ever a bastion of honest hospitality and will remain so." He made a gesture at the bar and the glasses rang like chimes. "That should tide you over." He nodded at Ellen and Jo, then lastly in Dean's direction.

"What did you do?" Dean called after him. "How did you get out on top?"

"I walked away from the path chosen for me."

"Away from everything?"

"It's inevitable that if you lead, others will follow." Lux went through the door and as he passed the threshold, a gust of air was pushed inwards, as if something had taken flight. Dean didn't need to look, he had heard wings beating.

-end